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Who do you think is building the houses that are being built? Without immigration we'd still have massive housing shortages because internal migration is much
by bryanlarsen 2y ago
Who do you think is building the houses that are being built? Without immigration we'd still have massive housing shortages because internal migration is much larger than external migration -- people moving from the hinterland to cities with jobs. But housing would be a lot more expensive because we would no longer have cheap labour to build & renovate our houses.
- quacked 2y agoThis is the constant refrain of pro-illegal/poor/migrant immigration. My answer is: "in the first world, businesses should operate by offering competitive wages, and the lifestyle costs of first worlders should be balanced against those wages". I am uninterested in living in a materially wealthy society that can only operate on the back of a recently-arrived serf class, and it's bizarre to me that so many people defend this system as desirable and morally righteous.
- bryanlarsen 2y ago"serf class"? Immigrants to America come here because they choose to. They're not serfs, they're not locked to the land. They move freely, and at much higher rates than other Americans do.
- quacked 2y agoOkay, "serf" was the wrong word, since they are indeed not bound to parcels of land under a feudal government. What do you think about the content of my point?
- bryanlarsen 2y agoI think it only applies to illegal immigration, not legal immigration.
- jazzyjackson 2y agoimmigrants come because they have no better choice that's called exploitation
- bryanlarsen 2y agoNo it's not. We're offering additional choices to the immigrants, all the moral blame lies on the people who are persecuting the immigrants so much that they are forced to flee. Yes, we often exploit illegal immigrants, but legal immigration is not exploitation.
- jazzyjackson 2y agogiven the context of paying less than what residents are willing to work for I assumed we were talking about undocumented folk, in which case i would say moral blame lies with bosses willing to pay under the table
- jononor 2y agoThose people would still exist though, just live in places with (even) less possibilities. And even without immigration, the first world is still very dependent on low cost labor, because of all the material goods produced abroad.