[geremiiah]

To me it seems like EU countries are independently embarking on the Canada-policy of importing a whole bunch of South East Asians and Latin Americans. From Hungary to Ireland, you see the same trend.

Part of it is by economic necessity. For example finding nursing staff is very challenging and you have to compete with the US and Australia and other rich countries.

But part of it doesn't make much sense. We really don't need to import any kind of engineers from outside of Europe when we have about 2,500 EU universities pumping out graduates each year.

[vladms]

> We really don't need to import any kind of engineers from outside

I was involved in a startup in the Netherlands. We tried to recruit Dutch people, all wanted safe 9-5 jobs where they would know what they would do in 1-2 years. A startup can not guarantee that.

We ended up with most engineers foreigners, many (but not all) that have studied there.

So I would say that it is also risk and opportunity related. Someone "from outside" will be willing to do more, will have to prove himself, will take more risk. A "local" will have family support, wealth, a network, might want and value stability.

I don't have an opinion about how things "should be", I am just sharing how I saw them (myself an immigrant, multiple times)

[true_religion]

I guess the question for society is: do we want businesses who cannot pay domestic workers a fair wage to exist in our country? Or do we want them to exist elsewhere and we import those products?

To society a startup with a 99%% chance of failing to IPO is no different from a sweatshop which also wants skilled but cheap labor.

[jnwatson]

The solution is obviously the American one. Make everyone so afraid of their job prospects that working for a startup isn't materially different in terms of job security.

[andrewmutz]

When a person relocates to a country where their labor is more productive, a large amount of new economic value is created. Much of that value is captured by the migrant through higher earnings, but a lot also accrues to the people in the community they join.

So an engineer joining a country that already has engineers still creates a ton of value in the destination country

[Avicebron]

And if they displace someone trying to join the engineering workforce say right out of school? What about housing?

[andrewmutz]

There is no fixed demand for jobs, nor fixed supply of housing. Immigrant consumption creates a lot of jobs and immigrant labor creates a lot of housing

[tadfisher]

Look up the "lump of labour fallacy". The jobs market is not a zero-sum thing.

[Avicebron]

The timescale that the "lump of labour fallacy" operates on, as in the aggregate effects on employement, doesn't necessarily work for most people (individually).

Therefore it isn't really a good metric at the scale required to alleviate the problems people are facing.

"Eventually it will work out." Isn't proffering a solution.

[bluescrn]

> For example finding nursing staff is very challenging

No. Finding staff that'll work for very low wages is very challenging. It's not really about bringing in essential skills, it's about driving down wages.

[JumpCrisscross]

> It's not really about bringing in essential skills, it's about driving down wages

Sort of. You’re simply not going to have an agricultural sector with at Canadian and American wages without significantly higher food prices and protectionism. One day we may automate that. But that will still be more expensive for the foreseeable future.

Voters seem to be picking domestic production and low prices, with low wages being a side effect. (Business interests of course love those.)

[Muromec]

Free borders policy is a special case of free market, so of course more competition is intended to drive the cattle prices down .

[michaelmrose]

This is literally what anyone means when they can't or can't easily find anyone for anything which isn't evil or suicidal.