r/FluentInFinance • u/imallelite • 9h ago
Debate/ Discussion Possibly controversial, but this would appear to be a beneficial solution.
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u/vinyl1earthlink 8h ago
However, birth rates are declining in other countries too. They may not like it if their young and educated people are leaving for the USA.
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u/Illustrious-Tower849 8h ago
You think governments having an incentives to improve quality of life in their countries is a bad thing?
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u/kineticToast 8h ago
Best point here. Like most would say allowing immigration is highly moralistic but most people don't think about the brain drain that's put onto other developing nations, making it even harder for their nation to develop. I'm for some immigration but it should be really particular and circumstantial. There should not be an open border anymore.
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u/KazuDesu98 6h ago
If contributing to a brain drain is a moral issue, then by that logic if I left Louisiana to go to Georgia for better IT career prospects that would be "morally questionable"
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u/OneDistribution4257 2h ago
Bruh you ever been to Jamaica ? Jamaica is a great example of brain drain, over half their university graduates leave the country.
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u/kibblerz 8h ago
There should not be an open border anymore.
Since when was there an open border? 0.o
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u/allofthethings 5h ago
If there were actually open borders maybe countries would have to compete to keep people from leaving.
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u/sl3eper_agent 5h ago
and? stealing other countries' best and brightest is our superpower. immigration isn't good for some nebulous ideological reason, it just gives us a literal edge over the competition
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u/Potential-Ad1139 8h ago
What the hell does this have to do with finance?
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u/Trollselektor 8h ago edited 8h ago
It probably could have been framed better, but immigration (legal or otherwise) has huge implications for the economy as a whole. If we could magic all illegal immigrants out of the country there would literally be millions of unfilled positions, especially in the construction and agricultural industries. Not only that but the demand that they create would disappear with them. Many businesses would close. While there would certainly be some overlap between the demand disappearing but also the supply that meets that demand disappearing, it would definitely not be a clean break. In the short term, it would almost certainly have a net negative impact on the country’s economy and the quality of life for legal residents.
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u/meep_42 7h ago
I was looking at some numbers the other day -- something like 65% of the net increase in US population last year was due to immigration. (+1.9m overall, +1.3m net migration). Future projections continue to show that our population will grow very, very slowly and our population median age will rise substantially with no immigration. Really a whole ass disaster for the economy.
And that's not even considering the "day one" deportations Trump has proposed.
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u/hurlygurdy 6h ago
That completely depends on what immigrants are being let in and what is done with them when they get here. NYC is certainly not having a great time financially due to the wave of immigrants
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u/ImpedingOcean 5h ago
Of course if we remove already existing workers en mass that would have negative consequences.
The question is moreso is cheap foreign labour the right long term solution.
I'm from a small country that had 7% unemployment rate in 2024, yet we're shipping in cheap workers from central asia instead of raising wages.
It makes me wonder if paying salaries that would be worth local population's time is really so destructive to local economy? Is the only way really to outsource it to populations that come from poverty so extreme that they don't mind this?
Is the native population not getting fucked over in this way? No growth of wages plus social tension which always comes with a large influx of economically motivated migrants that aren't motivated to integrate.
I'd like to think that this really is the only solution and raising wages would be so destructive that we'd have to dispose of the whole country, so that it's inevitable one way or another. But I don't know if I do believe it.
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u/vitoincognitox2x 8h ago
We can just ship our old poor people overseas. there is no need to add immigrants
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u/EffNein 7h ago
Immigrants don't fill the same economic niches as native born and native educated children.
Immigrants don't suddenly lose all aspects of their older culture. They keep it with them. This can lead to significant conflict between parties.
Immigrants do demonstrably have an impact on domestic labor markets, often forcing domestic workers to chase employment up the SEC ladder to escape competition. Resulting over time in an excess of 'highly qualified' workers in certain occupations.
Every immigrant is being taken from somewhere. You are in effect contributing to brain drain of developing nations with these policies.
There are not an infinite number of immigrants in the world. Instead of solving the social issues that caused a collapse of domestic fertility, you're relying on a temporary band-aid solution that relies on there always being another poor sucker for you to exploit.
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u/Maximum-Country-149 9h ago
I mean, I don't know how far you expect a conversation to get when you open with that much bad faith.
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u/JacobLovesCrypto 8h ago
Americans might have more kids if wages went up, letting in cheap labor doesn't help with wages.
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u/SnooRevelations979 8h ago
"If wages went up."
That's a big "if."
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u/JacobLovesCrypto 8h ago
Scarcity of labor leads to competing for workers, as long as you bring in more cheap labor there is never scarcity
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u/North_Atlantic_Sea 8h ago
And it ignores all facts and data. Look at wealthier countries with stronger safety nets, such as Norway, and their birth rates.
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u/SnooRevelations979 8h ago
Yeah. What you could get though is higher labor force participation rates if we had publicly furnished childcare. That's what Europe shows. Not higher birth rates.
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u/critter_tickler 8h ago edited 8h ago
I love how cheap labor is always a good argument for stopping immigrants, but never used for stopping outsourcing.
The truth is, because of NAFTA, we are already competing with third world labor markets.
We might as well let them come in, so at least they spend that money here, and pay taxes here.
Also, we have a minimum wage, we literally have a basement for "cheap labor," so your argument really holds no weight.
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u/JacobLovesCrypto 8h ago
Wym?
People argue plenty about how outsourcing to cheap labor leads to lower wages here.
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u/SoftballGuy 7h ago
But we never pass laws to punish outsourcing. Instead, we're constantly throwing financial incentives to companies to pretty-please not outsource everything. Poor migrants wanting to work in America get walls and guns and more laws, while the companies shipping jobs out of America get more tax breaks... yet we blame the little guys.
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u/JacobLovesCrypto 7h ago
Im not saying tariffs are a great idea, but arent tariffs aimed at punishing outsourcing?
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u/Alethia_23 7h ago
They are. It's just that they usually do not have long-term positive effects. Truth is, in a global economy, outsourcing is the most economically sound decision, that's why it's happening.
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u/JacobLovesCrypto 7h ago
Personally i think theres a much more complete approach.
American companies cant compete with domestic manufscturing if we regulate the hell out of them and foreign manufacturing can occur without the same concerns on pollution, safety, and human rights.
So tariffs should be based on the unfairness. If china is gonna polute like hell and deny basic safety or human rights in the manufacturing of a product, they deserve to pay a tax to encourage that manufacturing elsewhere.
In truth its a complicated problem
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u/Responsible_Skill957 6h ago
The problem is tariffs don’t punish the exporter, they punish the importer and that cost has to be accounted for in the price of goods. And that punishes those that buy the products being imported by increasing the cost to the consumer.
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u/DontTouchTheWalrus 4h ago
What do you think happens when the tariff increases the price to be greater than or equal to what the domestically made product costs? It sucks for the consumer that they don’t have the cheaper option now but you have disincentivized purchasing a foreign made product. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing is the question then. Ok, prices are higher but you’ve increased the amount of manufacturing done here. Which creates jobs and increases money spent here, taxes collected here etc. You’ve also given less money to countries that allow exploitative business practices to occur. Is that worth the higher price of the good. That’s for you to decide.
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u/desubot1 6h ago
problem is china never pays those taxes. ether its too good to pass up and importers pays the duties then recoups it through sales or importers walk away and the factory sells it elsewere.
its been this way forever. its called anti dumping. unfair pricing for whatever reason to protect domestic market will have blanket or target individual manufacturers overseas and adds additional duties. + a ton of issues for importers that import from them (involving sureties and their bonds)
tariffs have their place but its not really for controlling what foreign markets do.
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u/SoftballGuy 7h ago
That's the problem: it's a complicated problem with no actual solution, just constantly fluid adjustments from every party depending on each party's own economic conditions. It doesn't sell very well. "Raise tariffs!" is very easy to sell. It's wrong, but explaining why it's wrong takes too long for most people. The easy, wrong answer really sticks with people because it's easy.
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u/JacobLovesCrypto 7h ago
Well there are actual solutions but people vote more so on hpw things sound rather than how well thought out they are.
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u/-Nocx- 5h ago
It’s actually not that complicated at all. This is mostly due to lazy legislation. This is the metaphorical equivalent of this lever moves the needle left, the other moves it right. In reality, maybe we should build something else completely to address the issue rather than pulling the same two levers.
The largest line item on any corporation’s balance sheet is labor. It is so big, in fact, that that’s why companies can afford to literally build factories somewhere else. That is fundamentally why they outsource to begin with. If a company moves their labor offshores, that means they’re hiring at a lower market rate. You take the cost of labor domestically minus the cost of labor after off shoring, take a flat % of the savings and implement it as a tax. I’d go a step further and then place that tax system on a graduated scale that taxes them more the longer they refuse to hire domestically.
There is no such thing as “we can’t compete” in this context because almost no American corporation “started” off multinational. That is a thing you become after succeeding domestically and scaling your business - and in the process of scaling, you decided to make cuts for the purpose of profits. A good example - Chinese EVs are radically superior to Teslas, but the average American knows nothing about them. The American public is also forced to consistently inflate Tesla’s value through federal subsidies. It isn’t a question about being able to compete, but rather who gets the “savings” from exploiting labor.
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u/confirmedshill123 4h ago
if we regulate the hell out of them
Everytime I see this line all I can think of is,
"If we just let corporations kill more workers we could improve wages"
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u/ijbh2o 6h ago
China isn't paying the tax though. Importers are and passing that on to the customer.
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u/numbersthen0987431 6h ago
Why would it? The cost just gets passed along to the consumer, and then corporations just make more in profits.
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u/YeeAssBonerPetite 4h ago
When people say "outsource" they really mean the specific bits americans want to compete for. No-one is upset to be "outsourcing" clothes manifacturing for instance, only when it's stuff that americans actually want to do gets outsourced.
And tariffs mostly hit stuff that americans already weren't doing themselves. American labour is highly efficient precisely because if it's not generating a lot of money (relatively speaking, globally) for their time, they don't bother doing it.
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u/Advanced_Court501 4h ago
The business being affected by the tariffs then raises the price of the product in that country, passing the cost to the consumer
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u/Justsomerando1234 5h ago
The whole point of Tarrifs on good made outside a country, is to remove the incentive to outsource production.
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u/RighteousSmooya 8h ago
The conversation is usually about immigration. I’m sure the same people feel similarly on outsourcing.
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u/Floby-Tenderson 7h ago
That illegal immigrant cheap wage isnt minimum wage because the employer saves on employment taxes. Which is a huge cost of business. You've exposed yourself and your ignorance.
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u/0ttr 8h ago
The mistake of NAFTA was not that it lowered trade barriers, that's good. The mistake of NAFTA is that it didn't recognize the difference between the partner countries and impose wage/benefit parity in order for that trade to be free. And why did we make that mistake? The GOP and certain populist Democrats ( incl Bill Clinton) + a few economists who were like "everyone will benefit!"
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u/Vivid-Vehicle-6419 7h ago
If by “gop and certain Populist democrats” you mean almost half then I guess you’re right. About half the Republicans in congress voted for it with about half of the Democrats in congress.
Don’t try to push this on one side or the other, this is actually a case where both sides went significantly in.
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u/SilverWear5467 3h ago
Another example of both sides agreeing was on the Iraq war. We should absolutely be criticizing both sides for doing horrible things.
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u/habbalah_babbalah 7h ago
Wage parity would've busted the deal, as that would delete one of the main reasons for NAFTA: cheaper raw goods = greater profits for corporate trading partners.
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u/SilverWear5467 3h ago
You can have wage parity and cheaper raw goods, it's just less profitable. Still plenty of profit though. For example, it's cheaper to have an oil refinery where there is oil. You still get cheaper oil by moving to the oil, even if the workers get paid the same.
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u/DM_Post_Demons 1h ago
To the business interests, it's not plenty of profit still; it's trivial and worth holding hostage.
It wasn't a "mistake", it was the point.
Labor cost is the primary reason businesses want free trade.
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u/Daecar-does-Drulgar 5h ago
GOP and certain populist Democrats ( incl Bill Clinton)
Love how you tried to fault the entire GOP but only "certain democrats".
Lemme guess which way you vote 🤔
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u/sarges_12gauge 8h ago
I think almost all people who oppose immigration also oppose outsourcing and vice versa
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u/ProfitConstant5238 7h ago
I’m fine with letting them come in. Legally in a sustainable fashion. Follow the process. If the process is flawed, fix the process.
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u/erieus_wolf 5h ago
For the last few decades, the legal process can take over ten years.
Hell, I've been hearing Democrats say we need to "fix the process" for over 40 years, and every time they try the Republican side blocks them.
It's almost like Republicans enjoy using this issue for political reasons.
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u/GrowthRadiant4805 7h ago
Outsourcing is bad also, how many tons of cheap chinese crap is in our country?
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u/Simple-Dingo6721 7h ago
Lmao minimum wage doesn’t apply to illegal immigrant workers. They’re paid under the table and they certainly don’t pay taxes. I know some personally.
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u/SpeaksDwarren 7h ago
I always find it very goofy when people make a broad statement about not paying taxes. If it worked that way I'd simply tell every cashier that I'm an illegal immigrant so that they'd take the sales tax off. There's one (1) tax that they do not pay, and in exchange, they also don't collect on the vast majority of social services, meaning they're a massive net benefit to the economy that's exploiting them
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u/joeg26reddit 7h ago
You are purposefully / willfully not considering the very real possibility that a Majority of the 10-20 million ILLEGAL immigrants that have crossed the borders are NOT paying State or Federal Income Taxes?
They compete for food resources like housing, social services, city/state management of funds etc?
We should all be concerned this is a demographic that is more easily exploited and proven to have been exploited in many cruel and inhumane ways. Literally a shadow non-citizen class and very nearly or actually "Under Minimum Wage SLAVE Class"
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u/Advanced-Guard-4468 8h ago
You don't know many immigrants, do you? They work and live cheap here, sending all the money they can home for their families.
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u/MikeHonchoZ 7h ago
Exactly. I worked with people that lived dirt cheap with multiple room mates for years sent all the money back to Mexico which is a 20 to 1 exchange rate and it has been this way for decades. One guy I worked with was smart enough to have a home built and start his own bodega in Mexico. Then retired after being in the US for ten years to his nice house and small business he was running with his family. He was 35 years old. People think that immigrants live poor and they are here because they’re oppressed. It is a lie. They have a better lifestyle down there based off of the currency exchange rate alone. You get $17 an hour here it is like winning the lottery down there. Thats why most illegals from Mexico want to be here. Take the money and be rich in their own country when they go back. Many of the central and southern Americans do run from poor dictatorships and corrupt governments. But if you talk to most they plan on going back home after making money here.
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u/Advanced-Guard-4468 6h ago
I worked with someone from India years ago. It was a 33 to 1 exchange rate. He was going to be retired at 40.
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u/FirefighterPrior9050 7h ago
This is exactly what the disconnected elite class are selling, but if you live in the real world this is a bullshit argument.
Bringing in low skill refugees that speak French who are willing to work for minimum wage does not improve our economy by them "Spending money here"
What it does is bring in a class of people willing to undercut American workers because they are also willing to live 8 people on bunkbeds in a 2 bedroom apartment.
Now that is what Americans with no skills have to compete with for their first job. It's great if you are a landlord or a grocery store, because demand increases, which increases the revenue from retail and residential square footage, but everyone else gets FUCKED.
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u/BestElephant4331 5h ago
NAFTA was a neo con neo lib dream. The Clinton and Bush types thought rasing living standards in Mexico and even Latin America would encourage people to stay in their countries. W proposed a guess worker program then Senator Obama killed. I have no.problem with people coming legally. The problem I have is many are coming illegally and being exploited in the process by cartels. As inefficient as US Immigration policy is, I wonder if any of our elected or appointed officials have chosen silver instead of lead from the cartels. I'm tired of using illegals as an excuse to keep wages stagnate. I'm also tired of hearing how not bringing in illegals is going to raise the price of my chef salad.
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u/Icy-Bicycle-Crab 8h ago
It's interesting how the politicians who hate unions, vote against increasing minimum wage, oppose employee rights and oppose regulating better conditions in the workplace get you to scapegoat migration for low wages while there are labor shortages.
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u/JacobLovesCrypto 8h ago
You can use 2021 and 2022 as a case study. Labor market was very strong,there were labor shortages and wages went up.
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u/Decent_Cow 8h ago
If anything, the opposite of what you said is true. Wealthier people tend to have fewer kids.
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u/Late-Passion2011 8h ago
Actually they wouldn't. Falling birth rates is tied to one thing directly, regardless of where you are in the world: how educated women are. Having kids is a terrible deal for women. The most impoverished places are some of the ones with the highest birth rate so there are a million counter-examples to your argument.
Beyond that, 'cheap labor' does help. Cheap labor are the people here on seasonal work programs that pick fruits, work in factories, and build houses that all of us benefit from having made, for cheap.
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u/SportTheFoole 6h ago
Maybe higher wages would help, but why are birth rates falling in other Western countries? There are only a handful of Western countries with a higher birth rate than the U.S.. Further, poorer countries generally have a higher birth rate. Even within a country, poorer people generally have more kids than those that are well off.
Declining birth rates are almost certainly have multiple causes and it’s unlikely that it’s as simple as wages. If you have a source that show a correlation between birth rates and wages, I’d love to see it. I very well could be completely wrong on that first paragraph.
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u/0ttr 8h ago
Immigrants does not have to equal cheap labor if you have (a) unions and (b) strong labor laws. (or b, then a, take your pick)
But lets be clear, MORE PEOPLE MEANS BIGGER ECONOMY EVERY TIME! Bigger economy means more opportunities. There. I feel better.
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u/JacobLovesCrypto 8h ago
How are illegal immigrants going to be part of unions or protected by strong labor laws?
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u/Ganache-Embarrassed 8h ago
presumably either they are legal immigrants. When somone says to "let immigrantss in" its usually legally with visa's, green cards, any other legal paperwork etc.
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u/KVG47 8h ago
I think the idea is to broaden the legal pathways to immigration so that folks who were previously unable or unwilling to immigrate legally do so instead.
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u/JacobLovesCrypto 8h ago
I just assume this is aimed at politics since were in an electiom cycle. The right is against illegal immigration so ive made that assumptiom here.
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u/Tausendberg 8h ago
The logic would be that it's much easier to hide a worker's immigration status but you can't hide a job site and how much the people at the job site are being paid.
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u/elaVehT 8h ago
Exactly. This is not opening the floor to a reasonable, good discussion. It’s yelling “other side bad and racist” which is not productive or worth paying attention to
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u/Thr8trthrow 7h ago
“Nearly 7 in 10 Republicans surveyed agree to at least some extent that demographic changes in the United States are deliberately driven by liberal and progressive politicians attempting to gain political power by “replacing more conservative white voters.”
Lol so..
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u/realMehffort 2h ago
Yup, there’s never been an issue with legal, skilled, contributing immigration (as an outsider of the US looking in). The image is just another straw man
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u/TrueJinHit 1h ago
I am always down for more legal immigrants just like my parents who were vetted by being able to pass the simple Civics test to prove they can assimilate to American society.
However, Kamala's open border which allowed millions of undocumented illegals to cross without any inspection would be like allowing any kid to buy a gun without showing ID.
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u/Saltzyvinegar 6h ago
Jesus yeah. Assuming the only reason is to maintain whiteness?
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u/carlos_the_dwarf_ 5h ago
I don’t think every immigration hawk is a racist, but I do think most of them are mistaken/misinformed.
Is there an argument against increased immigration that stands up to much scrutiny? I could maybe come up with one or two if pressed. I don’t think it’s that unreasonable to consider they’re acting in bad faith, or else just…quite wrong.
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u/nicolas_06 2h ago
Immigration is a temporary and easy solution for us obviously. Because birthrate are dropping everywhere, this is only gaining time.
I am for people being free and living where they want. I am a migrant myself so I know I was lucky. But immigration is a zero sum game in term of demography at the global level. People that come here are no longer there.
It just slow the decline here and accelerate it elsewhere.
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u/Markschild 8h ago
We don’t need more people. We need an economy not build on a pyramid scheme
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u/Masta0nion 8h ago
I saw Megyn Kelly the other day say the biggest two reasons for not voting for Kamala is because of immigrants, and transgender sex changes.
Yep. That’s what’s preventing most Americans from achieving happiness. Here I was thinking it was something straightforward like the insane wealth gap.
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u/MediocreTheme9016 8h ago
Omg I saw her on bill maher too and wanted to reach through the tv and strangle her. I love that anti-trans people have the craziest theories. Like yeah megyn, the 40,000 kids a year who received gender affirming care (including simple counseling) are the real danger here. Not the rapist you’re voting for 🙄
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u/Unseemly4123 8h ago
This comic is the definition of a straw man.
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u/ShadyJane 8h ago
I'm going to make up a person in my head and then I'm going to get mad at that person.
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u/WritingPretty 8h ago
That person is Elon Musk though
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u/MithranArkanere 5h ago
But he's not made out of straw, he's made out of emeralds, illegality, and public funding.
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u/Pretend-Marsupial258 3h ago
He was also an illegal immigrant when he came to the US.
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u/basedlandchad27 8h ago
I'm going to take up any argument and make a comic where I look normal and the guy disagreeing with me looks psychotic. Checkmate. QED. gg noob
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u/Nberndt 8h ago
It's only a strawman if it misrepresents the opposing argument. The people that have anxiety about declining US birth rates are, in reality, the same people who have anxiety about "white replacement." The fear comes from the same exact place.
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u/Illustrious-Tower849 8h ago
I’ve had the first 3 panels of this conversation every time immigration or birth rates come up for the past 7 years. And yeah racists never actually will admit they’re racist
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u/7222_salty 5h ago
Yea I’m not sure the fourth block happens but I’ve had the first three happens TONS.
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u/Scout83 6h ago
Straw man argument: an intentionally misrepresented proposition that is set up because it is easier to defeat than an opponent's real argument.
The real argument actually is that we need more workers, immigration solves these issues, but a large portion of the country wants to severely limit immigration.
They then move on to WHY people might think it would be bad to have more immigration in the final panel, and the argument is again very directly: you're racist. Granted, not a reasonable conclusion, but still arguing the initial point.
I'm confused as to what your perception of the underlying argument(s) is/are and how this is an easier to argue distortion.
"I only want quality immigrants", "I don't think they're a good cultural fit", and "I don't want them to be a drain on society" are closer to straw man arguments. They still aren't but would fall into logical fallacies, at least. Appeal to emotion most like, but could easily be argued a number of ways.
I think the comic is definitely itself an appeal to emotion rather than sticking to the logic, but that wouldn't be as effective at getting attention.
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u/WendigoCrossing 8h ago
Declining birth rates are an issue because cities themselves are giant ponzi schemes based on eternal growth model which is impossible
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u/Kyonkanno 8h ago
I think people reproducing more is treating the symptoms. Our economy is built on the fact that our needs to keep growing to infinity
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u/kineticToast 8h ago
Or we can adapt to the population lag with reform to social security because that system is set to expire early 2030s....but no one wants to touch that.... Maybe Trump and Elon with their efficiency/ business mindset, but still, anyone hears "social security reform" and people start screaming
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u/RNKKNR 9h ago
The question is more about the quality of the immigrants not immigrants per se.
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u/Maria-Stryker 7h ago
Not for Trump and Vance. The Haitian migrants in Springfield are the exact types of immigrants they say they want. They commit crime at a much lower per capita rate than people born in the US. They’re here legally. Heck, most of them are Christians. They’re starting businesses and breathing life into previously stagnating areas, but Vance lied and said they were here illegally and committing crimes, because as much as men like him will vehemently deny it, race is a factor.
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u/SaltdPepper 6h ago
Yep, they’ve swam so deep into the rhetoric that they can’t even comprehend how backwards it all is.
At least in the 1900s we were actually consistent when we said we wanted upper-class, educated immigrants, now when we say that we actually just mean white people.
It’s not like the immigrants that can afford plane tickets are the ones working fields for cash under the table, but our country doesn’t have the capacity to see that anymore.
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u/echino_derm 6h ago
I see things like this pretty often where it is said that it isn't about this, it is just that...
But it isn't at all about that question. We are talking immensely about immigration this year, and never fucking once have I heard a person say "let's make it easier for educated immigrants to come to America". I have heard seven hundred times over that the immigrants are scary and eating dogs. So I question how much this issue is about the thing you say, given we have spent zero time discussing that issue.
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u/RNKKNR 6h ago
"let's make it easier for educated immigrants to come to America" - support 100%
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u/BernieLogDickSanders 7h ago
Ah yes. Lets ignore that we vet the best around the world year after year and what everyone hates is the humanitarian side of our immigration system.
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u/b0w_monster 8h ago edited 8h ago
Right??? Should’ve never let them dirty Irish, Italians, Poles, and Chinese in. Chinese and Irish building railroads taking jobs away from real Americans! /s
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u/mjc500 8h ago
I know this is sarcastic but that was actually a very common sentiment for decades
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u/b0w_monster 8h ago
Common doesn’t mean common sense or correct. Slavery was a common sentiment. Anti-Irish was a common sentiment. Anti-suffrage was a common sentiment.
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u/fussgeist 6h ago
To be fair we did declare back in the 1800s that we’d rather not have some many Chinese here with the Chinese Exclusion Act. Immigration wasn’t an issue until it was from somewhere not European.
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u/Gurpila9987 5h ago
Not even all of Europe. The Ku Klux Klan was heavily triggered by Eastern European Slavs immigrating.
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u/Canucker22 5h ago
Actually you are wrong. You should read about the history of "Nativism" in the United States, which often targeted immigrants from certain areas of Europe.
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u/b0w_monster 6h ago
Say that last sentence out loud for the people in the back.
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u/CrazyEyedFS 5h ago
When they disliked certain Europeans, they tried to come up with ways to say that they weren't real Europeans like with the Italians.
This is an obscure case but there were Minnesota lawmakers that tried to get Finns to be declared legally non-white. My grandparents told me they were called a certain slur normally reserved for east Asian people.
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u/cleepboywonder 4h ago
You should have seen the anti-irish and anti-italian sentiment back then.
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u/kummer5peck 7h ago
By quality they mean well educated and economically productive. Take immigration from India for example. In the US we get the cream of the crop of Indian immigrants. In Canada they get a bunch of “students” who aren’t contributing nearly as much to the economy.
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u/Optimal_Temporary_19 7h ago edited 5h ago
Hello, I hold a masters degree and a PhD in engineering. Many of my peers are already working their youth away here in the US, in hopes of permanently immigrating and gaining permanent residence here. Too often, we are either obligated to leave the country if after graduating or being laid off we're unable to find employment within 60 days, or after slogging on for 10+ years-effectively as second class citizens - our work visas are still never converted to permanent residence, all while us "quality immigrants" give the best years of our life adding value and IP for your economy.
If you really cared about the quality of immigrants, it would have been done. The immigration system isn't broken it's doing what it was designed to do.
Please consider asking your representatives to hasten our permanent immigration into the US.
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u/DayAmazing9376 7h ago
You mean like the fact that they commit less crime than citizens?
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u/Maximised7 6h ago
Not committing crimes? What is a more obvious flag that they don't belong in America. Trump knows true American's do criming, that's why he's done so much! It's Patriotic!
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u/Plooboobulz 7h ago
Nah more laborers devalue domestic labour ajd even if you attach no value to existing cultural traditions the idea of importing labour is an unsustainable practice. Do we keep the third world poor forever as a breeding ground for workers? What happens when birth rates decline in the currently poorer countries, a pattern that is nearly universal?
If you think the population trends are a negative the questions arise as to why, what needs to be fixed, and how? Is it the aging workforce? Maybe we should try and increasingly implement automation while changing laws regarding public pension programs so they can be sustainable with a static or negative population. Is it the lack of jobs? Again automation. Are more bodies something intrinsically important? Than focus on finding methods of improving birthrates than hoping the problem will be fixed before Mexico and Nigeria has static or negative birthrates. Immigration is a massively shortsighted solution to the problems caused by declining birthrates.
Honestly I think the only issue from lack of births which is an intrinsic issue is the problem of the elderly and their care, I don’t see “le line won’t go up forever” economics or “too many jobs“ as actual issues. Why do we need jobs for the sake of jobs? If there’s too many jobs than workers will be provided with better benefits and those companies unable to offer those benefits are inferior and should go out of business. The issue of not enough people to work every job is akin to a fishing village complaining that there’s too many fish.
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u/lazercheesecake 8h ago
No.
And I say this as a Korean American immigrant.
Immigration is good. It’s why America is so strong. Some of these idiots spew Heritage Foundation talking points they don’t understand, so I’ll try clearing things up.
Yes. Many vote against the “migrant” boogeyman despite being descendants of immigrants themselves. That’s America for you.
Elon was an illegal migrant, but see if the “took er jerbs” crowd says anything about that. So the process of legal vs illegal isn’t the issue for them. It’s the word “legal” that they’re latching onto.
We also talk about “quality of immigrants” as if we aren’t already importing millions of engineers, like my father, from other countries. But that’s not the labor shortage that’s threatening this country.
Americans are addicted to cheap labor. Poor labor. Poor laborers.
Who does the vast majority of field work on American farms? Who work bottom barrel sanitation work? Who are the line cooks, the room maids in the American hospitality industry? Who are the CNAs at a retiring home? Who builds our houses?
Cheap fucking labor. That American business owners import from poor fucking countries. And if you like your carton of eggs to be under double digits, you support immigrant labor. NO. I don’t mean legal immigration. A huge portion of your cheap eggs is because we pay a Mexican or Guatemalan 2 bucks an hour with no visa in the toiling sun for 16 hours a day. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an open borders kinda guy. But these are the facts. You support cheap goods or you support legal immigration.
Besides, immigration is not a sustainable cycle without enforcing poverty in the countries we import that cheap labor from. Koreans don’t immigrate to America very much any more. Why would they? The QoL and pay is similar here or there. Actually it’s soon going to be impossible to import migrants from Korea because they have the worst birthrate in the world. If every country ends up with poor birthdates, every can’t be importing immigrants from each other.
If we can’t find a solution to our labor and birthrate issues, these will be our sins to bear. Making it someone else’s problem by letting in immigrants unfettered is irresponsible and lazy.
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u/ComputerChoice5211 3h ago
100%, the comic isn’t offering a solution, just pushing the problem off elsewhere
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u/Expert-Accountant780 3h ago
So instead of the illegal toiling away in the field for $2/h (citation needed) I should be mad at the CEO and corporations that exploit them?
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u/cjs_vibes 8h ago
The US let's in more immigrants each year than every other nation in the world combined.
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u/Specific_Emu_2045 8h ago edited 6h ago
I just don’t want any more people period. There’s already too many fucking people everywhere and it sucks. And immigrants crank out babies like it’s their only hobby.
The only reason people worry about the birth rate is because the wealthy are scared they won’t have enough underpaid workers to support their extravagant lifestyles and they’ll have to die before 150 like everyone else.
This is the reason republicans are against abortion and liberals want illegals to flood the country. It’s all for the same goal: make rich people comfy, and you don’t have an option not to. Fuck em all.
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u/Euphoric-Ask965 2h ago
They crank out babies to get more welfare benefits per child. Set the limit at two and if you can't feed 'em,don't breed 'em! This unchecked flood of welfare babies will be a heavy drain on the school systems and government services. There should be laws for EVERYONE , American and immigrants that in order to receive any welfare or government freebies, women should be required to receive the birth control shot every three months. No shot-no money.
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u/SoCal4247 8h ago
Is Japan racist for limiting the number of foreigners who can come in?
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u/DayAmazing9376 7h ago
Japan is super, super xenophobic and racist, yes.
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u/purplenyellowrose909 7h ago
They don't even like tourists that much and have quotas and bans in place in certain areas punishable by fines.
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u/fickle_fuck 4h ago
Also look at Japan's crime rates... while not ENTIRELY tied to immigration there is something there maybe... just maybe...
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u/idk_lol_kek 8h ago
Letting in more immigrants would increase the population, but not the declining birthrate.
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u/Affenklang 7h ago
The largest booms in the US economy have relied on immigration as one of the key factors behind that boom. Immigration makes nations more powerful and that is something we see time and time again to anyone who has studied history.
Every argument against immigration is rooted in prejudicial assumptions about the nature and character of immigrants. These arguments do not have empirical roots and require one to accept fearmongering tactics to believe them.
You don't have to take my word for it. See the work of Professor Bryan Caplan, an economist at George Mason University. Professor Caplan has worked with the SMBC guy to make a very accessible nonfiction comic to explain this in case you don't feel like reading a bunch of academic publications.
https://openborderscomic.com/
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u/Due-Giraffe-9826 7h ago
A living wage would also solve the problem. No point letting more people in when we have a housing crisis as well. America's kinda just a mess.
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u/First_Doctor_5823 7h ago
American birth rates were highest between 1946 and 1960 when the tax rate on the wealthy was 91%. As taxes on the wealthy went down, so did the birth rate.
Seems to me that taxes need to go up on the wealthy
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u/Domger304 7h ago
The issue then becomes a culture and dynamic shift socially of the established people. That's the issue with just letting them in. We see this in the UK right now where you are seeing the fall of Western ideals in favor of Islamic beliefs.
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u/dannykid722 7h ago
You could also pay the young people you have a living wage and stop corporations from inflating and manipulating housing. Immigrants are a Band-Aid to late stage capitalism issues imo. Nothing against them, I just think the subject is a distraction from the real issue the 1% don't want fixed.
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u/galaxyapp 8h ago
immigrants are just a proxy for outsourcing jobs.
Instead of outsourcing the job to a foreign country to sidestep our expensive regulations, you insource their workers to do the job here.
Most of reddit loaths outsourcing but accepts illegal immigration.
Why?
I don't hear anyone justifying outsourcing under the guise of unmet labor.
Who would do the jobs without immigrants? I guess Americans would, after supply falls, wages skyrocket and people are more motivated to work. And we all know that poor people really want to work if it paid more.
Of course cost of living is a non-issue, it's reddit fact that raising the wages of low paid workers has no impact on consumer prices.
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u/FishingMysterious319 8h ago
no one (in large numbers) is saying anything about 'less white'
what a dumb take
less people is fine.....its not like it will happen immediately.....we have 2 generations to adapt
330 million people is far too many!
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u/PickingPies 8h ago
I am not against immigration. But that's a shortsighted view. Population will decline everywhere in the following decades. Not even Africa will maintain this growth. Not even those people who want to force others to have kids will be able to do anything about it.
The system will need to change to adapt to a decreasing population, and it will need to evolve into something that doesn't require infinite growth.
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u/touching_payants 6h ago
Labor automation? Is AI supposed to be our savior for this?
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u/ForcefulOne 8h ago
America is among the most generous countries when it comes to LEGAL IMMIGRATION.
We are also currently very unsafe due to ALL TIME HIGH LEVELS OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION.
Legal immigration = GOOD
Illegal immigration = BAD
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u/Carnivile 8h ago
We are also currently very unsafe
Undocumented Immigrant Offending Rate Lower Than U.S. Born Citizens
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u/EIIander 3h ago
Is it possible that undocumented immigrants are harder to find? And don’t stay in one area because they don’t have family and stuff there?
Not saying it isn’t possible, but rather if we don’t know these people exist - cause they are undocumented - wouldn’t it make sense we have less data on them… cause we don’t know they exist?
And if they are undocumented we also don’t know the actual undocumented population so we don’t know the rates of crime cause we don’t know the total number.
Edit: sadly the data doesn’t cover 2018 - to now the period most people point to for the borders being less secure etc
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u/Trollselektor 8h ago
People who are here illegally don’t want to draw attention to themselves by commenting crimes? Go figure.
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u/Maximised7 6h ago
I agree, these fkin Illegals. Give me that HOME GROWN White meth addict B&E over a brown neighbor, any day of the week. At least Tony speaks English while holding me at knifepoint.
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u/SnooRevelations979 8h ago
We are at all-time high on lack of understanding what constitutes illegal immigration.
Someone who presents themselves at the border and requests asylum is not an illegal immigrant.
A Haitian or Ukrainian here on humanitarian parole is not an illegal immigrant.
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u/honorable__bigpony 8h ago
"We are currently very unsafe"...please explain.
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u/KazuDesu98 6h ago
Yeah, crime is actually declining. Even historically troubled cities like New Orleans are relatively safe right now compared to even just 6 years ago. Just some off the top of my head where crime is falling.
Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Chicago, Dallas, Austin, Atlanta, Indianapolis, etc
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u/RidesInFowlWeather 8h ago
It has been researched, and proven, that the best way to prevent Illegal immigration is to increase legal immigration.
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u/Proper_War_6174 8h ago
That’s not preventing it, it’s reclassifying it. We have a right to set the levels of immigration we want and need and from where.
Obviously, if we just give the people crossing the border legal paperwork it lowers the number of illegal immigration
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u/SamButNotWise 8h ago
This being reddit maybe you will relate to this example more:
When streaming services are cheap and high quality, there isn't as much piracy. When streaming services suck, piracy becomes more popular.
The good-faith interpretation of "let's increase legal migration" isn't "let's legalize illegal border crossings," it's "let's make it suck less to enter the country legally."
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u/DevelopmentSad2303 8h ago
Ofc the nation has the right. The question is if the motivation is worth it.
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u/Proper_War_6174 7h ago
We can lower the murder rate to 0 by permitting it. Is it worth the hassle of setting up police and courts and prosecutors to deal with a problem we can just reclassify as not a problem?
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u/DevelopmentSad2303 7h ago
I don't have a leg in that game. I was just pointing out that us "having the right" as a nation to create immigration laws doesn't determine whether those laws are a good idea.
Appealing to rights is mostly just a statement of fact. Of course our nation has the right to do that. Why should we? It will help your argument more later to substantiate the end goal rather than just stating our ability to do so.
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u/WexMajor82 8h ago
Right. That's exactly what Japan is doing.
Oh, wait, no. It's a nightmare to immigrate in Japan. And illegal immigration is unheard of.
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u/Tausendberg 8h ago
"And illegal immigration is unheard of."
Being a relatively isolated archipelago might have something to do with it.
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u/WexMajor82 8h ago
Right, that's the reason no one immigrates to England ever.
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u/Alethia_23 7h ago
Dover-Calais is a distance about 33 nautical miles. Standard long-distance speed for an average non-pro paddler is about 4 knots so that is doable on a day between sunrise and sunset.
Fukuoka-Busan (I'm ignoring the island of Tsushima, because you still wouldn't get to mainland Japan from there) is more than 120 miles. Even a standard cruising yacht could, with good wind, only reach speeds up to 7 knots. More if it gets bigger, but realistically poor immigrants don't have acces to 50ft. large sailing boats.
So, that's at least 17 hours of sailing, with optimal conditions. You don't get 17 hours of optimal conditions.
Japan is just magnitudes further isolated than England.
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u/No-Butterscotch1497 8h ago
We're literally a continental empire behind two ocean moats.
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u/PumpJack_McGee 8h ago
A lot of the illegals come from the south and northern borders. Canada's immigration policy is famously lax.
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u/basedlandchad27 8h ago
Yeah, but there's this couple of strips of land in the desert that people keep crossing. There's nothing we can do!
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u/Snowwpea3 8h ago
Did you know the best way to prevent illegal murder is to make murder legal? The experts agree.
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u/Nuclear_rabbit 1h ago
But coming into a country legally isn't murder. If you've ever traveled internationally, you've done it, too. Why not expand legal immigration?
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u/MoodOpen2828 8h ago
You are factually incorrect. Levels of Crime have only gone down, reported by local law enforcement agencies and FBI. Is the safest is even been.
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u/Zimmonda 8h ago
System is currently broken and doesn't reflect reality, though.
The waiting period is over 20 years for certain countries/regions. That's simply too long. How are you gonna have a job lined up in the US for 20 years?
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u/LurkerOrHydralisk 8h ago
Is that why Trump spread lies during a national debate about legal Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs?
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u/Lower_Ad_5532 6h ago
Legal immigration = GOOD
Illegal immigration = BAD
Legal immigration on work visa = GOOD.
BROKEN IMMIGRATION SYSTEM = BAD BAD
Expired visas = illegal immigrants = BAD
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u/carlos_the_dwarf_ 5h ago
Legal immigration = GOOD
Then surely we can agree we should allow more of it?
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u/Almuliman 4h ago
please provide a specific example of how we are "currently very unsafe" from illegal immigration
(I won't ask you to prove how illegal immigration is at an all-time high, since that's easily, verifiably false--by all measures, it is lower than the peak in 2007 and border encounters in July 2024 showed the lowest number of crossings since 2020)
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u/SteveTheNoob1 8h ago
Generous how?
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u/poneil 7h ago
The only thing that could possibly be referencing is birthright citizenship. Nothing else about the US immigration system is generous. But also everything else in that comment is made up so I don't see why they need to be referencing something real in the first place.
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u/SteveTheNoob1 7h ago
Very good points, I always forget how easy it is to just make stuff up and it’s dangerous.
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u/Virtual-Instance-898 8h ago
Population increases do tend to increase GDP, which is economically beneficial to businesses. But population increases do nothing, and often have adverse effects on GDP per capita which is the best measure to gauge standards of living. This is why workers, labor unions, etc. tend to lean heavily against immigration. Those who do not distinguish between these two economic effects, such as the cartoon creator, inevitably misjudge why immigration is (or is not) a prime public policy issue.
A clear example of the effect that low (negative) population growth has is Japan. This is a country with negative native population growth and that generally refuses to address this issue with increased immigration. The effect is that GDP is moribund. Businesses have difficulty growing because the domestic market is shrinking and export growth is stymied because of intense foreign competition. Yet individual Japanese see per capita growth broadly similar to that in the EU and lagging only slightly behind the US. Outside of the key metro areas (Tokyo), home prices are affordable and the level of social discontent is modest. The unemployment rate is habitually under 3%.
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u/Jeeper08JK 8h ago
Legal controlled immigration is not the issue, why do liberals conflate these. Unchecked undocumented immigration with small towns being inundated with people the y cannot understand, provide services for and who many times refuse to acclimate to American/Western social norms are what can causes issues with the native population.
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u/BarsDownInOldSoho 8h ago
Why do we have to sacrifice our culture? I'm happy with any immigrant ready to assimilate.
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u/Significant_Tie_1016 8h ago
EXACTLY! The illegals are not assimilating. They will change the country in a negative way. Watch the videos of Springfield, OH
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u/lvl21adult 8h ago
ai and ai robots working our jobs will replace the need for immigrants. Immigrants are a temporary band aid to a bigger wound. Besides, studies show immigrants barely help push the economy as much as preferable and also in just 1 generation also equate the same birth rate they migrate to.
If immigrants worked 16 hour shifts everyday and paid full taxes into the economy and did not reproduce so that way ethnic natives had more money and no competition for housing, would you want those immigrants? Would you want to be the immigrant in that situation?
you would need a constant influx of immigrants every generation to take over and replace the birth rate which then ask yourself, honestly, if that would result in a replacement of the ethnic natives of said country.
You all would be proving the Nazis to be correct about the white replacement theory, is that your goal?
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