innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2006
- Messages
- 15,060
I don't know about your country, but in most of Europe, the first immigrants (and most of the succeeding ones) came from colonies or former colonies- India and the West Indies for the UK, for example. They were brought in for economic rather than humanitarian reasons.
They still are brought in for economic reasons. But it should be pointed out that with this, as with all other engineered social changes, there are winners and losers. It's no mere coincidence that support for right-wing, anti-immigrant politicians is higher among low-paid workers - those who mostly compete with immigrants on the labor market.
The middle class mostly ignored immigrants, and the intellectuals liked them - but still regarded them as inferiors! An unemployment in Europe is rising also among educated, young people, things are bound become very interesting in immigration politics in a few years.