[t-writescode]

Well, okay, so just like this article talks about, people often find it easier to declare a source of a problem, rather than describing a symptom they're having.

Illegals aren't taking their jobs - there's plenty of studies evidencing that that's not true. *BUT*, people are feeling:

  1. under-employed
  2. under-paid
  3. in some level of pain, economically
  4. feeling insecure, financially

And they're saying "it's those damn illegals takin' my job" to reflect that pain.

Sure, propaganda plays a part of the experienced pain people have; but it's often not all of it. Propaganda is less effective when people are comfortable.

[renewiltord]

It's looking a lot like when you say "believe them", you mean "rewrite what they say and believe that thing instead". Yeah, I can do that for any political affiliation.

[t-writescode]

Not at all. I believe the experience they're expressing, when expressed in the most positive light. I'm not going to entertain a racist perspective, such as "there's too many brown people here" or similar; but I will entertain a more favorable perspective: "I feel like I can't get a different job if I lost mine", "I can't afford groceries", "My rainy day fund isn't large enough for a rainy day and this makes me scared". "It doesn't feel like there's enough jobs to go around". All of these could be very real, underlying statements to the statement "Illegal immigrants are taking all the jobs". Obviously more conversation would be necessary to get the exact issue they're actually experiencing.

But just like a patient coming to a doctor and saying "my back hurts, I must have a herniated disk"; or a customer coming and saying "your website sucks, you should rewrite it in React", there's not enough information there to get to the true, underlying cause; *BUT* you can wholly believe the patient that they are in pain, or at that there is something about the website that isn't meeting this user's needs. That's step 1. Believe the person in their experience, then investigate and address the real root cause of their pain.

[DangitBobby]

It is hard to understand how we can import unskilled labor and not have that impact the value of unskilled labor domestically.

[t-writescode]

Unskilled labor is a myth. When we kicked out all the agricultural workers, it wasn’t just that it’s hard to find replacements, the replacements also learned how hard it is to actually do that kind of actually skilled work.