Wouldnโt they benefit from more people? Of course it would come with the condition of learning the language at an acceptable level and that being tied to residency.
Because people fear having their culture and race replaced by immigrants. Even if theyโre not overtly racist, few people wish to become a minority in โtheir own country.โ
The US is famously a melting pot, and yet we still have a bunch of descendants of white immigrants from Europe who fear that South Americans will take over; that Mexican culture will replace good old-fashioned hodge-podge Western European culture. That their language will become less dominant. That theyโll find themselves strangers in their own country.
Itโs usually an indistinct fear. It seems obvious from the verbiage in the dog-whistles, but white European immigrant descendants donโt want to become second-class.
Now, if we treated our own minorities well, they wouldnโt be so afraid. They wouldnโt be afraid that theyโd be the ones with Hispanic cops kneeling on their necks; or that Hispanic immigrants would be living in giant homes and theyโd themselves be the ones having to eak out a living as seasonal workers.
I think itโs not despicable to want to preserve your cultural heritage, your cultural language, and to have your country legislated with the values you grew up with; but people react poorly when they think itโs happening.
What I most despise in the Republicans in the US is that theyโre advocating for preserving cultural values that never existed broadly in the US. The closest subculture to what theyโre pushing is a return to the Confederate South: religion, and white supremacy. The Confederates got their asses handed to them, but the racist fuckers never gave up their values, most most Americans are blind to what their real agenda is. And theyโve been good insurgents, cleverly taking advantage of weak areas in our democracy to return power to a minority: themselves. Itโs been said and itโs true: if America was a true democracy and we selected leaders by popular vote, no Republican under their current platform would ever be president again.
Anyway, getting back to your question: immigrants bring their own culture with them, and very few completely abandon it and adopt the culture and language of their new country. This dilutes the host countryโs native culture, and people are afraid of that. In the US, itโs the highest form of hypocrisy, because our native culture displaced the indigenous culture, and now weโre afraid of someone else doing the same to us.
I agree with everything up until you said โdilutesโ. I would argue that immigrant cultures donโt dilute the host countryโs culture, they add to it. In other words, the culture that was there still exists in the same amount and in the same โconcentrationโ, and immigrants bring their culture to newly developing areas of the country/state.
The word has negative connotations, but I stand by it. I an not saying there result isnโt stronger, but if you extend cultural mixing out to the maximum - say humans and the planet survives another thousand years, and global travel is no harder than traveling to the next town over - what you end up with is homogeneity, and this would be sad, I think. Imagine it: the entire world speaking some pidgin derivative mashup of Mandarin, English, and Hindi, with essentially the same culture everywhere on the planet. Just as has already happened, languages are lost, because nobody speaks them natively anymore. All thatโs left of the original cultures are some UNESCO sites and preserved old movies. I canโt say the world wouldnโt be stronger for it, but in the process, something irrecoverable is lost.
Its very hard to add more of something else and not have dilution.
Take 1 litre of vodka and add 1 decilitre of water - there will be more fluid but the vodka will be?
framing is important though. Nobody considers a cocktail โdilutedโ even if thatโs technically applicable, the resultant mixture usually improves the beverage.
Definitely agree with your points but maybe โdilutesโ. Isnโt the right term. I donโt think theyโre worried about their culture being โwatered downโ or โthinnerโ, but replaced.
I had a recent conversation with my brother that fits here. We grew up the same, but he became more conservative and moved to a conservative area, or maybe I became more liberal and moved to a liberal area. Iโve been exploring cooking, and actually this has been several conversations where Iโm excited over learning about preparing a different cuisine, being able to appreciate what that brings, and he responds with โwhy canโt you make regular American food?โ โDilutingโ the cuisine we grew up with would be to use salsa instead of ketchup or mayo. But I have entire meals replaced with new and different. I have a much bigger spice cupboard full of new and different. I make meals that he doesnโt understand, doesnโt know how to prepare, so he gets defensive about what he is comfortable with being replaced
I donโt disagree. In fact, I think a strength of US culture is the diversity in embraces. I do feel sorry that this came at the cost of indigenous cultures, but the end result has been a wonderful melting pot, ruined only by Laissez-Faire economics and some badly wrong turns in how we do Capitalism. Plus the inherent bigotry that hypocrite descendants of immigrants are unable to recognize. Or, worse maybe, an attitude of โwe stole this land fair and square, and now itโs ourโs and everyone else fuck off!โ
All Iโm saying is that my personal preference would be that this not happen to the entire world. Iโd like to visit Germany and see a historic Germany, not another version of America with different preserved buildings. Iโd love to visit the Basque region and immerse myself in Basque culture, not some mashup globalized culture selling Basque trinkets, which no-one uses at home anymore, to tourists. Itโs selfish, I know.
Edit 2024-07-04 relevant comic
The birth rates are low because of the terrible environment that doesnโt support having and raising children. All youโre doing is importing more people who will also barely have any children within a generation or so. Mass immigration is just throwing bodies at the bottom of the pyramid scheme. You can see this in action in Canada where housing is absolutely unaffordable, but large numbers of immigrants are brought in who have to work for shitty wages and live with multiple families in a single rental unit.
The screaming about low birth rate is because corporations want to keep a high labor pool so they can drive down the price of labor while keeping up demand for consumption.
The screaming about low birth rate is because corporations want to keep a high labor pool so they can drive down the price of labor while keeping up demand for consumption.
Itโs not only that. By the time you want to retire, there wonโt be enough people to pay taxes for your retirement fund. With more young people than old, that is less of a problem.
This is one area where weโre supposed to benefit from the greatly increased automation. We donโt need a huge mass of people doing make-work. The current situation is that we force people to do make-work to continue making on-paper profits which mostly go to a tiny set of wealthy people. The current situation is unsustainable even if population growth increased because itโs a pyramid scheme. The system relies on infinite growth.
Poor countries, such as the countries people are immigrating from, have a more terrible environment and higher birth-rates.
The problem is that birthdate is dropping even faster in those countries. An even bigger โproblemโ is that in general life is getting better, even in developing countries. There is no infinite supply of immigrants waiting to save the developed world.
Encouraging immigration is far from a panacea. It will work for a few countries, for another generation or so, but you can see the end of that coming
But isnโt it better to have a few years but then growth vs absolute death spiral due to low population which we would have to increase immigration for regardless
The problem is that most of the growth goes to the already rich as they pay immigrants poorly and make them pay high rents (hence the need to have multiple families living in a single unit). Itโs still a death spiral, just with higher profits for the rich few. The only way to make it not a death spiral is to force the rich leeches to stop sucking the blood out of everyone else.
Countries like Korea donโt have a cultire of welcoming people from outside and therefor you would have so many clashes that a huge number of imigrants - which is needed - would destroy the country. There is no one here who knows how to treat and integrate those immigrants. There are no programs for them, etc. and even if you know the language you still have huge culture clashes.
A lot of eastern Asian countries are extremely xenophobic in other words.
I think thereโs a difference between being prejudice towards an outside group and not wanting your own culture replaced.
There is nothing inherently wrong with countries and their cultures not wanting to have others integrate. In the past this is what helped them survive.
Itโs only a big issue in countries like the US that want to be a mixing bowl/melting pot and also are being xenophobic.
Do you understand the difference between integration and immigration?
Yes there is something wrong with not wanting to allow people from other cultures to integrate into your own.
A lot of Europe did so and for this exact purpose. Immigrants are net contributors of tax money and help a lot with demographics. Now however European countries have a sizable portion of their countries as immigrants and it turns out a lot of people feel like their culture is getting lost.
Add that up with corruption is more out in the open, austerity after the 2008 financial crisis generally failed as a policy and people are very prone to believe โImmigrants are to blameโ and vote for right wing parties since they run on an anti-establishment platform.
The left generally believes that we need more immigrants and more social programs and so on but there has been a massive crusade on tax rates which hinders the governments ability to pay for them.
This is all coming together now and the far right narrative is being given a chance in Europe with their anti-immigration stance.
In my opinion this is basically the centre-right trying to get votes by cutting taxes, end up taking on massive debt or gutting quality of life social programs so the only way forward is to fuck over minorities and making the most vulnerable people suffer for the greater good. But tax the well-off, rich, wealth, land, capital gains, profits? Nooooo, canโt do that because they fund the political parties. ๐
Add Canada to that list. 1 million immigrants a year and everything is collapsing - our housing, healthcare, education, nothing can keep up.
Odd I was in B.C. about a month ago. Seemed like civilization was still operating there.
proof you werenโt: BC has had a huge homeless problem for decades that is only getting worse.
Unless you live there, your visit to BC likely did not involve needing to use any of those systems or services. You saw the country through tourist eyes.
Xenophobia propped up by political groups. Many official immigration programs existed in the 19th century that, when allowed to, had immigrants integrated into society.
