[ajsnigrutin]

You can spin many things to sound as racism if you want them to.

My small eu country has in the recent years started importing workers from asian countries, and people are against that... of course it's branded as 'racism' in the media.

The reality is, that some businesses have been having troubles with finding workers to do hard work for minimum wage (which is easily solvable by paying people more and creating better working conditions, but hey, think of the profits), and importing foreign workers means that wages can stay down. We're talking about AI and how we'll all lose jobs,and at the same time, importing new people, and that doesn't compute for many, especially those underpaid who can't negotiate for better options because the government approved new foreign workers in their field.

Then you have the more on-topic problem of importing thousands of "outsiders" into a relatively small city (~300k pop), without building any housing, neither for them, nor for locals, who want to move out their 30+yo "kids" out of their childhood bedrooms, nor for others living a bit further away who'd like to live closer to work. Sure, you can fit 8 "poor foreigners" into a 2-bedroom apartment with 4 bunk beds for 200/month each, and it'll be cheap for them, but for a young couple wating a child, 1600eur for such an apartment is around 1/2 of their combined income, so nope, no apartment and no kids for them, since they have nowehre to put them, and "we need foreigners, because our people are not having enough kids".

Then the third problem is integration... and the government does nothing about it, no language courses, no nothing... the laws say that businesses must use our native language, but in some areas, you can interact even with waiters or shop clercs (so, first line of interaction with customers) who can't speak a word of it.

But hey, it's easier to say "racist people hate foreigners", than to solve the issues.

[pixl97]

Because the issues are nearly unsolvable.

Your small EU country probably has a replacement rate of something like 1.5 which means you're heading towards extinction. This puts a crimp on labor and increases wages, and it leaves openings in higher paying jobs which people want. You end up with no one to do naturally lower paying non-specalized labor.

Modern standards of not having 100 people die in a house fire have changed the dynamics of where immigrants live when they moved to a country. New York City, for example, just shoved people nut to butt in the smallest most unsafe places they could make. We don't do that in first world countries now, so something has to give.

[ajsnigrutin]

It could be 1.7 if we actually built apartments young people could afford.

It could be 1.9 if we had better paid jobs for those without college.

We could have even more if kindergarden didn't cost as much, and if people could afford everything else.

"Back in the time", you'd start work at 18 (or even earlier, most people didn't go to college), settle down with a partner at 20, 21, and what else is there to do than to make a kid? And since it was communism, having a kid meant you'd get a larger apartment. You're 23, 24... another kid, why not, you're still young. Third kid? An even larger apartment!

Now, you need college to get any kind of proper job, so nothing before 25yo, then you need to build up your career, and the age of first kid is going towards 30yo (for mom) or more. That's before accounting for the place to put your kids in. We used to build apartment buildings in communist times, now we don't. And it's not unique to communist areas, even in places like london and paris, low income housing blocks were being built in the 1960s, 1970s and even 80s,... now? Almost nothing.

So, change the law, import as much workers as you've built housing for, give priority to locals with zero houses already, give tax breaks and create assimilation programs (language first) for foreigners. You can't just bring people in, without having (livable) places to put them in and then leave them be. Hey, you big company needing workers... until you pressure your mayor to approve more housing, you won't get them, and mayors listen to "big money". But nope.