How big is immigration an issue on people's minds (USA and elsewhere)?

[Akka]

What does this mean

I don't see how anything here is hard to understand.
The same people who are always raving about how identity should be respected, are displaying a complete inability to understand why other people would like their identity to be preserved when it's about immigration (or are simply pretending to, of course). I guess it's a case in point.

 

[warpus]

I've heard there are plenty of jobs. It's just that they don't pay enough to let a person rent a decent apartment in a non-drug infested part of whatever city they live in, and have enough left for utilities, food, transportation, and all the other things people need.

This is why there are a lot of people who say Trudeau is stark-raving nuts for letting so many people in when the housing situation is so bad. And we have a government that thinks housing means literal houses. They don't seem to care about apartments that are affordable and accessible.

Yeah, it can't really be argued at this point that our temporary foreign worker program is exploitative, both from the point of view of your average Canadian as well as the temporary foreign workers who come here. Companies pretend that they can't find Canadian workers to fill certain jobs, and so they bring in workers from abroad who are willing to get paid a lot less, plus who are far less likely to understand our labour laws..

This program really needs to be axed and rebuilt from scratch. Sure, there's probably a couple jobs that we actually need this program for.. But 90% of the jobs these temporary foreign workers have been filling can be done by Canadians. The greedy corporations doing the hiring do not want to pay a living wage and so they've been bribing our government to expand this program every year.. If they have their way they'll be able to hire all of their employees from abroad, so that they don't have to pay a living Canadian wage.

As for the housing, I'm not so convinced immigrants are the problem. A huge chunk of our GDP is our real estate sector, the people who have a lot of money in real estate want the prices to go up.. up and up.. We'd have a similar problem with housing if our immigration levels were a lot lower.

 

[Gorbles]

I don't see how anything here is hard to understand.
The same people who are always raving about how identity should be respected, are displaying a complete inability to understand why other people would like their identity to be preserved when it's about immigration (or are simply pretending to, of course). I guess it's a case in point.

To be clear, because this doesn't quite make sense to me. You're equating gender identity r.e. an individual to some kind of far more nebulous and harder to agree upon communal (or even country-wide) identity?

 

[Farm Boy]

I don't see how anything here is hard to understand.
The same people who are always raving about how identity should be respected, are displaying a complete inability to understand why other people would like their identity to be preserved when it's about immigration (or are simply pretending to, of course). I guess it's a case in point.

The stance is often a weapon, not a shield.

 

[Farm Boy]

Yeah, it can't really be argued at this point that our temporary foreign worker program is exploitative, both from the point of view of your average Canadian as well as the temporary foreign workers who come here. Companies pretend that they can't find Canadian workers to fill certain jobs, and so they bring in workers from abroad who are willing to get paid a lot less, plus who are far less likely to understand our labour laws..

This program really needs to be axed and rebuilt from scratch. Sure, there's probably a couple jobs that we actually need this program for.. But 90% of the jobs these temporary foreign workers have been filling can be done by Canadians. The greedy corporations doing the hiring do not want to pay a living wage and so they've been bribing our government to expand this program every year.. If they have their way they'll be able to hire all of their employees from abroad, so that they don't have to pay a living Canadian wage.

As for the housing, I'm not so convinced immigrants are the problem. A huge chunk of our GDP is our real estate sector, the people who have a lot of money in real estate want the prices to go up.. up and up.. We'd have a similar problem with housing if our immigration levels were a lot lower.

I watched for years while generalists passed over workers they had provided schooling benefits to, applying to entry level jobs in the field they trained in, because hiring from inside requires a backfill and doesn't provide a worker that stands to get deported of they don't work hard enough. Which was super dooper never ever the reason. Not all of them did that. The HR guy out in the warehouse aggressively promoted his workers up to corporate. They didn't see it from where they were, but he did.

 

[Gorbles]

The stance is often a weapon, not a shield.

Apples and oranges are in fact different fruit!

 

[EvaDK]

Immigration and especially its negative aspects, were a political hot potato here in the late 1990s/2000s. A topic that decided the outcome of elections in the favor of right-centrist government constellations. Not so much in the last two generel elections.

Last time I read a nationwide poll on voter topics, immigration scored low on the list. Voters today are generally more focused on the politicians solving issues concerning healthcare, climate, economy, defense & security, utility costs, psychiatry and schools and kids/youth.

 

[EnglishEdward]

According to the attached article,

Maga v Musk: Trump camp divided in bitter fight over immigration policy

Feud flared up when president-elect chose Sriram Krishnan, an Indian-born entrepreneur, as his AI adviser

www.theguardian.com

it remains as clear as mud as what the actual re-elected old POTUS' immigration policy will be.

 

[Voidwalkin]

The stance is often a weapon, not a shield.

Somewhat interesting and perhaps related, it was pointed out to me in an Atlantic article that professors aren't really getting canned anymore for moderate trespasses.

It seems to me that armor has been remade to counter the new swords. Or maybe it is more simple, that when racism is thought to be everything and everywhere, it ceases to be meaningful to people.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Yup, like so many other words, colonialisation, conservatism, fascism, imperialism, investment, liberalism, nazism their use is expanded until they have little commonly understood meaning.

 

[Birdjaguar]

This program really needs to be axed and rebuilt from scratch. Sure, there's probably a couple jobs that we actually need this program for.. But 90% of the jobs these temporary foreign workers have been filling can be done by Canadians. The greedy corporations doing the hiring do not want to pay a living wage and so they've been bribing our government to expand this program every year.. If they have their way they'll be able to hire all of their employees from abroad, so that they don't have to pay a living Canadian wage.

It's good to have goals: In the UAE 80% of the population are foreign workers.

 

[Gorbles]

Yup, like so many other words, colonialisation, conservatism, fascism, imperialism, investment, liberalism, nazism their use is expanded until they have little commonly understood meaning.

Struggling to understand how this is related to immigration.

 

[Farm Boy]

Just tracking along with a fundamanetal contradiction in a popular lip service.

 

[stfoskey12]

What I find interesting is that there were apparently record numbers of people crossing the US-Mexico border in 2021-23, but I didn't notice it in my daily life one bit. From a personal standpoint, immigration is rather low on the list of political issues I care about, so I'm surprised it has become so important in US politics since 2015. I tend to think we should make legal immigration easier and illegal immigration harder, but current rates of immigration seem basically fine to me.

I don't get the far-right xenophobia about immigrants in the US, because we are very much a nation of immigrants. A lot of my friends when I was a kid were children of immigrants. Some of my current friends are too, and I have befriended international students at college as well. Sometimes right-wingers like to talk about diversity weakening societies, but the world's most powerful country is made up of people whose ancestors came from all over the world to form a new society. A lot of our scientific and technical innovation comes from allowing bright scientists from elsewhere to come here to study and work.

 

[Birdjaguar]

What I find interesting is that there were apparently record numbers of people crossing the US-Mexico border in 2021-23, but I didn't notice it in my daily life one bit. From a personal standpoint, immigration is rather low on the list of political issues I care about, so I'm surprised it has become so important in US politics since 2015. I tend to think we should make legal immigration easier and illegal immigration harder, but current rates of immigration seem basically fine to me.

I don't get the far-right xenophobia about immigrants in the US, because we are very much a nation of immigrants. A lot of my friends when I was a kid were children of immigrants. Some of my current friends are too, and I have befriended international students at college as well. Sometimes right-wingers like to talk about diversity weakening societies, but the world's most powerful country is made up of people whose ancestors came from all over the world to form a new society. A lot of our scientific and technical innovation comes from allowing bright scientists from elsewhere to come here to study and work.

Trump and the right wing media need issues to throw at the Dems and keep MAGA fervor alive. Immigration is one that is supported by the many USians who need people to hate. It was the new Abortion once Roe was overturned.

 

[Gorbles]

Just tracking along with a fundamanetal contradiction in a popular lip service.

That doesn't explain much. Or maybe it does, but only along existing lines that people already run by. Huh.

 

[Arwon]

I don't see how anything here is hard to understand.
The same people who are always raving about how identity should be respected, are displaying a complete inability to understand why other people would like their identity to be preserved when it's about immigration (or are simply pretending to, of course). I guess it's a case in point.

I am very unclear on what connection you think you're making here? Can you give some concrete examples?

 

[Farm Boy]

That doesn't explain much. Or maybe it does, but only along existing lines that people already run by. Huh.

Fans of imperial enforcement always have useful chosen identities. Those in power shift, and suppress and eliminate different identities in turn. It's not like German immigrants didn't have thier culture mostly eliminated in the early 20th from the American Midwest, alongside the many other noted examples of our history.

It's not like these younger people's creeds are anything particularly new under the sun.

 

[Gorbles]

Fans of imperial enforcement always have useful chosen identities. Those in power shift, and suppress and eliminate different identities in turn. It's not like German immigrants didn't have thier culture mostly eliminated in the early 20th from the American Midwest, alongside the many other noted examples of our history.

It's not like these younger people's creeds are anything particularly new under the sun.

So just to be clear - again, as you're not Akka - you're putting an individual's gender identity in the same basket as communal and / or national identities (as nominally agreed upon by some kind of presumably evidenced majority)?

 

[Farm Boy]

A communal identity is many individual ones, in thier part.

Particularity when they're allowed to express local determination. But that's probably contentious in its messiness. A popular chunk of culture has defined localities as racist entities that need to be exploited by national control. Totally not self interest. Totally.