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> Immigrants don’t generally earn much, let alone work legally and pay taxes. They are not paying our retirement. They require doctors and produce our “medical

> Immigrants don’t generally earn much, let alone work legally and pay taxes. They are not paying our retirement. They require doctors and produce our “medical deserts” (the name we use in France where social security fails because of lack of practicians). My mother is a doctor and her father was a doctor before, and both are immigrants (from Scotland to Australia) - my grandfather was already a doctor when he immigrated, my mother was only 3 or 4 at the time but she ended up doing medicine too. Our children’s paediatrician did medicine in Sri Lanka and then immigrated to Australia post-graduation; my psychiatrist likewise graduated from medicine in India. My psychologist was born in Czechia, grew up there, moved to Australia as an adult and did his psychology degrees here. My closest personal friend is a lawyer who was born in Peru, grew up in Australia - but he isn’t Peruvian, his ancestry is Argentine-Uruguayan. One of my coworkers I work closely with immigrated to Australia only 2-3 years ago, from Argentina-he already worked for our employer in Argentina, but got an intra-company transfer to here. I don’t know any poor immigrants-I’m sure they exist, but I just don’t know any of them personally-I know lots of immigrants but they are all university-educated professionals Of course, I am talking about Australia, you are talking about France - but France has a great many middle class or better immigrants (and their descendants) too. The big difference is France also has huge numbers of socially disadvantaged immigrants, while Australia has significantly less (proportionally speaking). But the problem then isn’t immigration, it is mismanaged immigration-who, not how many

xp84 1y ago
> France also has huge numbers of socially disadvantaged immigrants, > mismanaged immigration-who, not how many Until I got here I was going to post to suggest that you were allowing yourself to believe that because some of the immigrants were of the successful type that there wasn’t a vast number of immigrants who are very poor and of the type GP was talking about. But I, you and GP agree on the “mismanagement of who.” I believe Western countries, especially the Left in Europe, UK, and US, are in a very awkward state right now because it’s obvious that we are losing the very things that make our countries attractive to these economic immigrants if we keep the de facto open borders policies (meaning most professionals can’t immigrate to the UK without years of paperwork and just the right job offer, but if someone with no marketable skills and a long criminal record and no ID shows up on a dinghy he gets free hotel for several years while they prepare to adjudicate his claim that he faces danger at home). Anyway anyone not in utter denial knows the above is unsustainable but they also are uncomfortable knowing that the people of hundreds of completely failed countries are suffering, and in theory if we could let one of them come to France, Australia, USA, UK, he/she would be better off. But they don’t know how to reconcile “can save a few” with “can’t literally bring all poor people here without destroying our country.”
- supplied_demand 1y ago
  == But they don’t know how to reconcile “can save a few” with “can’t literally bring all poor people here without destroying our country.”== It’s also possible that they hold a fundamentally different view than you and aren’t just naive idiots. The phrase “destroying our country” is very charged and completely unsubstantiated in your comment. It’s almost like you are falling victim to the same type of emotional reaction you accuse others of holding.
  - skissane 1y ago
    Part of steelmanning / reading charitably is trying to put aside overly emotive/rhetorical/alarmist presentations of an idea and just concentrate on the facts of the matter. Suppose that Madeupistan is a wealthy developed country with a population of 1 million. Over the next decade, its government has decided to admit 100,000 immigrants. It is evaluating two plans for doing: Plan A: Admit 100,000 university-educated professionals with established careers and no criminal records Plan B: Admit 100,000 people at random from all who apply, with no restrictions on who can apply At the end of the decade, will the people of Madeupistan be happier under plan A or plan B? Almost surely the answer is A: plan B will admit a lot more socially disadvantaged people, worsening crime rates, poverty, social cohesion, violent extremism, etc, compared to A Now, plans A and B are “ideal types” which don’t correspond to any real world immigration policy - really they represent extremes on a continuum of immigration selectivity, with A being a super-selective immigration policy and B being super-unselective In the real world, Australia is significantly closer to A and further away from B than France is; and, unsurprisingly, France has significantly greater immigration-related social problems than Australia has. And the real tragedy of it, is people end up blaming immigration and immigrants in general, when many of the problems they complain about are not inherent to immigration in itself, just to the mismanagement of it by many (but not all) Western nations The question then is, do the people who “hold a fundamentally different view” agree or disagree with this argument about mismanagement of migration flows - and if they disagree, what is their counterargument to it?
    - supplied_demand 1y ago

xp84 1y ago

> France also has huge numbers of socially disadvantaged immigrants, > mismanaged immigration-who, not how many Until I got here I was going to post to suggest that you were allowing yourself to believe that because some of the immigrants were of the successful type that there wasn’t a vast number of immigrants who are very poor and of the type GP was talking about. But I, you and GP agree on the “mismanagement of who.” I believe Western countries, especially the Left in Europe, UK, and US, are in a very awkward state right now because it’s obvious that we are losing the very things that make our countries attractive to these economic immigrants if we keep the de facto open borders policies (meaning most professionals can’t immigrate to the UK without years of paperwork and just the right job offer, but if someone with no marketable skills and a long criminal record and no ID shows up on a dinghy he gets free hotel for several years while they prepare to adjudicate his claim that he faces danger at home). Anyway anyone not in utter denial knows the above is unsustainable but they also are uncomfortable knowing that the people of hundreds of completely failed countries are suffering, and in theory if we could let one of them come to France, Australia, USA, UK, he/she would be better off. But they don’t know how to reconcile “can save a few” with “can’t literally bring all poor people here without destroying our country.”

supplied_demand 1y ago
== But they don’t know how to reconcile “can save a few” with “can’t literally bring all poor people here without destroying our country.”== It’s also possible that they hold a fundamentally different view than you and aren’t just naive idiots. The phrase “destroying our country” is very charged and completely unsubstantiated in your comment. It’s almost like you are falling victim to the same type of emotional reaction you accuse others of holding.
- skissane 1y ago
  Part of steelmanning / reading charitably is trying to put aside overly emotive/rhetorical/alarmist presentations of an idea and just concentrate on the facts of the matter. Suppose that Madeupistan is a wealthy developed country with a population of 1 million. Over the next decade, its government has decided to admit 100,000 immigrants. It is evaluating two plans for doing: Plan A: Admit 100,000 university-educated professionals with established careers and no criminal records Plan B: Admit 100,000 people at random from all who apply, with no restrictions on who can apply At the end of the decade, will the people of Madeupistan be happier under plan A or plan B? Almost surely the answer is A: plan B will admit a lot more socially disadvantaged people, worsening crime rates, poverty, social cohesion, violent extremism, etc, compared to A Now, plans A and B are “ideal types” which don’t correspond to any real world immigration policy - really they represent extremes on a continuum of immigration selectivity, with A being a super-selective immigration policy and B being super-unselective In the real world, Australia is significantly closer to A and further away from B than France is; and, unsurprisingly, France has significantly greater immigration-related social problems than Australia has. And the real tragedy of it, is people end up blaming immigration and immigrants in general, when many of the problems they complain about are not inherent to immigration in itself, just to the mismanagement of it by many (but not all) Western nations The question then is, do the people who “hold a fundamentally different view” agree or disagree with this argument about mismanagement of migration flows - and if they disagree, what is their counterargument to it?
  - supplied_demand 1y ago