[blfr]

It is constantly shocking to me that no matter how many times and where in the west people vote against immigration (which is what most of these votes boil down to), they can never get it.

It's truly a crown in the gutter moment where you can be completely off-the-wall nuts (vide AfD) and, if you're just willing to campaign on anti-immigration, your ranks will instantly swell. Yet the establishment is somehow completely incapable or unwilling to capitalize/capture this.

[thisisit]

Most of the politics comes down to tribalism. And within this tribalism nothing works better than Us vs Them. Immigration is one of the best "us vs them" debates. It rallies lot of support.

But then often immigration isn't the problem. It is a solution preying on the fear of people that "outsiders" are harming their opportunities, housing, way of life etc. The real problem is that people are not making living wages and wages are not catching up to cost of living.

As politicians pushing anti-immigration come to power they also realize this problem. They'd rather not solve immigration because then they need to face up to the actual living wage crisis issue. It also helps keeping the immigration talking point open so that it can be used in next election.

[znzjzjsj]

> But then often immigration isn't the problem

There has never been a successful multiracial democracy in history. There are many books on this - one was even on Obamas summer reading list awhile back.

> The real problem is that people are not making living wages and wages are not catching up to cost of living

Importing labor devalues native labor. This is outside of the cultural change, etc. These are real problems.

> They'd rather not solve immigration

Because they serve the rich and the rich benefit from immigration at the expense of natives. Immigration is a solved problem. Do it only when needed or when it benefits the people, not a select few.

[breakyerself]

Because the establishment knows how integral to the economy immigration is and because it isn't that easy to stop even for an island. Unless you want to shut down tourism and trade.

[alecco]

> Because the establishment

Let me fix that for you: because the establishment is owned by the corporations who want to suppress wages, rise demand, pump gross GDP, and pump real estate.

And because governments running on deficits are slaves to the banking cartel, too.

[kjksf]

Based on what data?

The immigration we're talking about, the one of Africans etc. immigrants flooding west, is destructive to the economies based on pretty much every statistic I've seen.

Those immigrants are on welfare in disproportional numbers compared to native population.

E.g. in US 72% Somalis are on welfare and the same stats are in West Europe.

They cost the state gigantic amount of money.

And per-capita crime stats are so bad that governments are hiding them from public.

This is all documented by government's own statistics and reasonably well reported.

Immigration COULD be a net positive to the economy IF it was managed properly but it isn't and it isn't.

Tourism isn't immigration and I don't see what trade has to do with it.

[davidguetta]

Stopping is a long way from "actively encouraging it and calling racist everybody who disagree" (and actively hide horrific stuff like the rape gangs).

[JCattheATM]

The real problem is the uneducated masses who buy the propaganda that immigration is the issue they should care about the most.

[spwa4]

The real problem is that for >10 years the a green-left coalition was in power, at least in most of Europe and immigration was greatly encouraged because it would provide clear economic benefits for everyone.

There's many stories, but let's call this the average story: "Immigration brings growth, growth advances everyone".

Well, it doesn't, at least not at the moment. Oops.

Now we can argue why, of course, but a certain amount of backlash was to be expected. It was clear for 20 years or more exactly what would happen when "the alternative" to the prevailing "left+green" coalitions gains power. To an extent I don't understand how anybody can claim to be surprised.

Also, in a democracy I would think that arguing that "the uneducated masses" are wrong is a quick path to irrelevancy. That, by the way, is exactly how we want the system to work. The system needs to work well for the uneducated masses. Figure it out, or accept that the other guys are going to win the election.

[smspillaz]

But they do meaningfully try to address this.

Almost every country in the west is tightening it's system. In the UK claiming ILR will take a significantly longer period of lawful residence, and a shorter time will require you to meet a high income threshold. It is nearly impossible to get PR in Canada now unless you are fluent in both English and French and have a PhD or several years of canadian work experience. The bar has also gone up in Australia too.

The reason why this doesn't seem to move the needle on the anti-immigration vote is because the folks on that side can always just move the goalposts and be the "true" anti-immigrant party. I believe these days Reform UK wants cancel all ILRs and start actively deporting long term residents who don't meet an ever raising bar. Its madness.

[kjksf]

The only meaningful action would be to stop well fare for immigrants. You don't work, you don't have money.

Madness is for UK government to tax UK citizens to pay for housing and food of immigrants.

Incentives drive behavior. If you're African and see you can live for free in England, of course you'll try to get that deal. And in age of social media, they know.

Denmark did that and saw dramatic drop in number of people trying to immigrate there.

What you desperately try to paint as racism is just immune response from UK citizens.

They can see their taxes are raising, gov services are getting worse but gov finds the money to pay for housing for 110 thousand immigrants.

They connect the dots and that's why Reform UK would win the elections (if the elections were done today).

Because Labour, which won election recently with good majority, is not, in fact, ignoring voters and not doing anything meaningful.

Reform UK promises drastic changes because that's what majority of UK votes are demanding now.

It's how democracy is supposed to work. The politicians are supposed to be responsive to demands of voters.

[gnufied]

Nicholas Taleb has a great article about this - https://medium.com/@nntaleb/the-world-in-which-we-live-7255a...

[tolerance]

The transition from Nationalism to Globalism and back to Nationalism (rather, a more broad iteration of it) cannot be achieved with micro revolutions like what we see in the US.

[demosito666]

In countries with functional democracy it actually is happening. In Sweden anti-immigration sentiments allowed for right party to gain significant share in the parliament and now immigration rules are changing and immigration rates are lowering. One may argue that this is 20 years too late, but in the past the majority of the population public actually didn’t actively oppose the policies. They do now, the situation is changing. No swexit required.

[varispeed]

This is because of massive unchecked corruption. In the UK this has become multibillion per year industry where connected landlords / agencies get lucrative contracts from Home Office for keeping immigrants in their properties and then you have complete supply chains developed around this where each entity skims money.

There are billboards where offers of guaranteed rents are advertised etc.

[haizhung]

Please. The establishment is dying to capitalize on it, and puts out one ridiculous anti-immigration measure after the next. And all it does is that it simply boosts far right parties even more.

It’s completely obvious to me (and often supported by exit polls) that people who are voting far right aren’t actually against immigration - only on the surface. Once you dig just a little bit deeper, often socioeconomic struggles surface. The working class has been taking a beating since the what, 1980s now? And it’s not like there’s any sort of legislature on the horizon that would fix their predicament.

So people look for a scapegoat. The far right gives them a scapegoat goat, and the enlightened center doesn’t know how to handle it.

[NullCascade]

the anti-immigration right in Denmark was successful because they were data-driven and could show that unskilled non-Western immigration was a net negative even by 3rd generation.

the American and German far-right by contrast seem to be the polar opposite of data-driven. No the lazy 'IQ by country' maps don't count.

[ffsm8]

> the anti-immigration right in Denmark was successful because they were data-driven and could show that unskilled non-Western immigration was a net negative even by 3rd generation.

That is very true however you're misunderstanding why the German (where I'm from) and Americans parties aren't publishing this data. It's not because they're lazy, but because they can't.

And before you're now thinking: "aha! So they're not net negative!" ...well, these statistics aren't available either.

The reality is that the data to create these graphs aren't public, or never created. The likely reason for that being labeled 'nazi' for even considering gathering such data.

I personally suspect that they're net negative, in total but net positive on average (so numerically, most immigrants being positive). At least that would reflect my personal experience with with immigrants. However, you only need a very small percentage of immigrants to game the system in order to make the whole sample size negative because of the insane amount of money a bad actor can drain.

[ForHackernews]

I assume it's economically catastrophic to cut off the supply of young, low-wage labour and that's why no responsible government will ever do it.

[jgb1984]

Numbers from Denmark and the Netherlands (the only two European countries where it's allowed to gather such statistics) show that non-EU immigration is a net cost to the society (and economy). In the Netherlands a non-western asylumseeker comes to about 800.000 € to 1.300.000 € net cost to the state over the persons lifetime, depending on what you take into account. And that's purely the financial part, we're not even talking about the increase in crime and the ghettoisation of most western European cities. It's a tragedy, for everyone involved (because most 2nd and 3rd generation non-western immigrants still live a life of poverty in Belgium/Netherlands).

[blfr]

This would be a good explanation but most of these immigrants, especially from outside the EU, are not net contributors.

vide https://www.economist.com/sites/default/files/images/print-e...

from https://www.economist.com/europe/2021/12/18/why-have-danes-t...

And I highly doubt other governments don't have similar calculations or aren't aware of them.

[canadiantim]

That’s funny in light of one of our Canadian governments (Alberta) recently calling for a referendum on immigration levels, with the government claiming immigration levels are too high to support the housing, economic and social needs of the sheer quantity of people coming in. Seems like the government is trying to be responsible by making sure the social welfare system can still support people as it was designed

[breakyerself]

Bingo. Just like wanting to leave the EU was self destructive cutting off immigration is as well. The US is in the process of trying to hobble its own economy right now.

[tirant]

If that’s indeed the case, how do you explain the lack of catastrophe in Japans economy ?

Japans big catastrophe happened in 1990 with the bubble bursting, but that was years before the peak in working age population. Since then, the economy has not improved much but also has remained somehow stable.