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

[Akka]

It stands to you I suppose because you think the bar should be about equally high to join a republic and to join a family, and I think that's totally bananas. Of course, the problem with using "family" in this context is that the meaning of "family" is itself fuzzy. It can mean blood (genetic) relations, but it can also mean a group of people who choose to treat each other as family (whatever exactly that means - I am not interested here in defining the family, but I am also not insisting on the family as a valid conceptual model for a polity). I'm definitely more in favor of a polity resembling and conceived of as like the second definition here than like the first.

It stands to me because it works well enough. It's an analogy, it's not supposed to be the exact same thing, it's supposed to give an approximation that helps understanding a viewpoint.
For example, you seem to find the very concept of not allowing foreigner in a country to be highly immoral and only possible to support because of being a hateful racist. This analogy might help you understand how other people can find the idea actually completely obvious and reasonable, because to them the notion is pretty similar to a stranger entering a house - you might disagree, sure, but it might help you to understand from where comes the perception of the other guy comes. Because for now, you look like you don't, and you simply seem to imagine that everyone has the same viewpoint as you, and as such they can only be anti-immigration due to "evil".

As I already said, it's like someone who can only conceive that taking money from someone is theft, and as such will shot down every argument you make about taxes by throwing "it's theft, so it's immoral".

Saying something is racist doesn't prevent discussion unless the person whose argument is being called racist has a meltdown about the other person "trying to silence me!"

That's just blatant bad faith here. The whole point is that the political debate can't get anywhere because it's shut down by a social taboo of "there is nothing to discuss, it's just racism", and here you're saying that it doesn't prevent discussion ? Please, that's ridiculous.

First sentence here is just flatly untrue. At the very least, I simply don't agree with it. I absolutely do think that feeling threatened by mere difference is inherently racist (or, again, at least chauvinist in some way). A person certainly doesn't need to consciously consider others to be subhuman in order to be racist, and the specific manifestation of racism that is consciously considering others to be subhuman is not the only reason that racism is harmful.

Okay, so what is actually harmful and immoral in not wanting to see one's own culture be altered by foreigner, then ? Without the circular reasoning of "it's bad because it's racist" <=> "it's racist so it's bad".

In any case my main concern with anti-immigration politics is the inevitable practical consequences of enacting them, not theoretical concerns with how they are justified. You can't hermetically seal the French border and coast, let alone much longer borders like the US-Mexico border, and therefore in order to "keep people out" you will inevitably need to detain and deport them after they're already in your territory, and you just can't really do that on a large scale without creating a police state.

That's, err, flatly false. People keep coming simply because they know they have a good chance to actually make it and stay here. You don't need a police state to make it hard enough for an illegal immigrant to benefit from the trip so as to make it on the whole not cost-effective. More work inspection and harsh fines on anyone employing people who have illegally entered the country, fines and penalties on people who facilitates illegal immigration, actual deportation when someone is sentenced to it (less than 10 % of the sentences are actually carried out), etc.

In the US the prospect of returning to the pre-Civil War status quo with regard to race is very real at this point - people of color will be considered effective nonpersons by the law, able to be detained into the (largely for-profit) immigration detention concentration-camp archipelago at the whim of any ICE officer. The actual real-world manifestations of anti-immigrant politics are quite enough reason to oppose it beyond any theoretical or moral-philosophical argument. Whatever benefit you imagine we would derive from removing the immigrant population is just massively outweighed by the damage caused by what would amount to the destruction of the republic itself.

You want to talk about practicality ? I'm going to talk about practicality. The practicality is that if you keep ignoring what 70 to 80 % of the population is wanting, you're going to destroy the republic anyway, either through making people cynical and indifferent due to seeing how their concerns are ignored, or making them radicalized and pushing them to vote for the only ones who make a focus of dealing on it - while the self-righteous lesson givers blame them about said concern instead.

That's what's at risk of happening right now in Europe. In France specifically, far-right went from a fringe of 5-10 % raving extremists in the 1990s to by now the first party by far (30 to 40 % of the electorate), predicted to win against every other candidate in the next presidential (the most resounding defeat being polled to be inflicted by 75 % to 25 % on the very guy who is the closest to your political leaning, BTW).
So what's worse : actually dealing with what the vast majority of the population considers a problem, and do it in a way that limits the damage, or pretend it's not a problem because only racists and fascists see it as a problem, and ending up with the actual true fascists and racists dealing it in the way they see fit ? Or maybe just bet on chancing on having someone who is loud in claims but timid in actions (like Meloni, who manage to make a grand show of actually doing nothing), which feels like a really, really responsible way of dealing with it all ?

Because obviously, as I pointed before, your opinion about how countries are not legitimate and people have no right to own their land, are simply not shared by the vast majority of the world, so if you're going to worry about practical consequences, you might wonder about how responsible it is to act as if it were the one and only legitimate way.

And all that is not even taking into account of the moral problem of ignoring three quarter to four fifth of your population in a democracy (which is certainly something pretty huge, and not just the easy-to-dismiss "bah they're fascist, ignore them" you rely upon each time the subject comes on the table). Not because I don't think it's not a problem, mind you (my position is actually that it is the MAIN problem, democracy that doesn't listen to what its people want is not a democracy to begin with), but you seem to simply bounce off any of it by saying that we should ignore democracy when it goes against your wishes, so, well, let's remember that the practical consequences are also going against your wishes.

 

[Senethro]

No. 75% of the population are not signing up for a police state to enforce immigration, and a lot of those who might a little will change their minds very very quickly.

Until you can solve enforcement, you've got nothing.

 

[Lexicus]

It stands to me because it works well enough. It's an analogy, it's not supposed to be the exact same thing, it's supposed to give an approximation that helps understanding a viewpoint.
For example, you seem to find the very concept of not allowing foreigner in a country to be highly immoral and only possible to support because of being a hateful racist. This analogy might help you understand how other people can find the idea actually completely obvious and reasonable, because to them the notion is pretty similar to a stranger entering a house - you might disagree, sure, but it might help you to understand from where comes the perception of the other guy comes. Because for now, you look like you don't, and you simply seem to imagine that everyone has the same viewpoint as you, and as such they can only be anti-immigration due to "evil".

As I already said, it's like someone who can only conceive that taking money from someone is theft, and as such will shot down every argument you make about taxes by throwing "it's theft, so it's immoral".

That's just blatant bad faith here. The whole point is that the political debate can't get anywhere because it's shut down by a social taboo of "there is nothing to discuss, it's just racism", and here you're saying that it doesn't prevent discussion ? Please, that's ridiculous.

Okay, so what is actually harmful and immoral in not wanting to see one's own culture be altered by foreigner, then ? Without the circular reasoning of "it's bad because it's racist" <=> "it's racist so it's bad".

That's, err, flatly false. People keep coming simply because they know they have a good chance to actually make it and stay here. You don't need a police state to make it hard enough for an illegal immigrant to benefit from the trip so as to make it on the whole not cost-effective. More work inspection and harsh fines on anyone employing people who have illegally entered the country, fines and penalties on people who facilitates illegal immigration, actual deportation when someone is sentenced to it (less than 10 % of the sentences are actually carried out), etc.


You want to talk about practicality ? I'm going to talk about practicality. The practicality is that if you keep ignoring what 70 to 80 % of the population is wanting, you're going to destroy the republic anyway, either through making people cynical and indifferent due to seeing how their concerns are ignored, or making them radicalized and pushing them to vote for the only ones who make a focus of dealing on it - while the self-righteous lesson givers blame them about said concern instead.

That's what's at risk of happening right now in Europe. In France specifically, far-right went from a fringe of 5-10 % raving extremists in the 1990s to by now the first party by far (30 to 40 % of the electorate), predicted to win against every other candidate in the next presidential (the most resounding defeat being polled to be inflicted by 75 % to 25 % on the very guy who is the closest to your political leaning, BTW).
So what's worse : actually dealing with what the vast majority of the population considers a problem, and do it in a way that limits the damage, or pretend it's not a problem because only racists and fascists see it as a problem, and ending up with the actual true fascists and racists dealing it in the way they see fit ? Or maybe just bet on chancing on having someone who is loud in claims but timid in actions (like Meloni, who manage to make a grand show of actually doing nothing), which feels like a really, really responsible way of dealing with it all ?

Because obviously, as I pointed before, your opinion about how countries are not legitimate and people have no right to own their land, are simply not shared by the vast majority of the world, so if you're going to worry about practical consequences, you might wonder about how responsible it is to act as if it were the one and only legitimate way.

And all that is not even taking into account of the moral problem of ignoring three quarter to four fifth of your population in a democracy (which is certainly something pretty huge, and not just the easy-to-dismiss "bah they're fascist, ignore them" you rely upon each time the subject comes on the table). Not because I don't think it's not a problem, mind you (my position is actually that it is the MAIN problem, democracy that doesn't listen to what its people want is not a democracy to begin with), but you seem to simply bounce off any of it by saying that we should ignore democracy when it goes against your wishes, so, well, let's remember that the practical consequences are also going against your wishes.

Your distinction between "French culture" and "foreigners" relies on a false essentialism regarding French and other cultures. Following from this, your argument does not look any different to me from declaring Jews outsiders whose presence damages French culture, and declaring they must be expelled and if you claim this is antisemitic you are only trying to shut down discussion of the Jewish Question, oh and actually it's your fault that we rational Jewish Question believers are now antisemitic.

If four-fifths of the population are fascist (I don't believe this, but this has certainly been the case at times e.g. more than 80% of Germans probably supported Hitler circa 1937), they're fascist. Fascism doesn't become reasonable just because a majority of people support it. The idea that the mainstream of a society by definition cannot be fascist or racist is complete nonsense.

Your last point accusing me of "ignoring democracy" is also nonsense; my arguments against immigration restrictionism, even to the point of calling immigration restrictionists racist and fascist, contribute nothing to any French policy outcome. All I'm doing is calling it how I see it.

Incidentally, my position is not "we should ignore democracy when the majority don't want what I want", it is "there are things the state should be forbidden from doing no matter how many people support them" which is
a perfectly normal and consistent liberal position. It would be absurd to say the US is not really a democracy because the First Amendment forbids Congress from making a law that restricts press freedom no matter how many people support such a law!

I would just conclude by saying that your arguments fundamentally don't matter to me as much as what the immigration restrictionists in power are saying and doing in my country. Your idea that immigration can be effectively curtailed without draconian policies that infringe on the fundamental human rights of people inside the host countries is deeply naive. Your idea that there is a kind of Platonic ideal version of immigration restrictionist politics that is pristine and free of racism appears absurd given the practical reality of anti-immigration movements and policies in the entire western world.

So what's worse : actually dealing with what the vast majority of the population considers a problem, and do it in a way that limits the damage, or pretend it's not a problem because only racists and fascists see it as a problem, and ending up with the actual true fascists and racists dealing it in the way they see fit ? Or maybe just bet on chancing on having someone who is loud in claims but timid in actions (like Meloni, who manage to make a grand show of actually doing nothing), which feels like a really, really responsible way of dealing with it all ?

I see no functional difference whatsoever between these outcomes. People determined to remove foreigners because they "damage" French culture are never going to be satisfied by "a way that limits the damage" (assuming that such a way is even a real thing that could plausibly be done, of which I am skeptical). Immigration restrictionism is always going to lead to fascism by the very nature of things.

Abraham Lincoln as usual has an apt quotation for this whole issue:

"I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes." When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics." When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty-to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy [sic]."

For reference:

Know Nothing - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Cloud_Strife]

just a little bit of racism and fascism, as a treat

 

[Lexicus]

It stands to me because it works well enough. It's an analogy, it's not supposed to be the exact same thing, it's supposed to give an approximation that helps understanding a viewpoint.

I want to return to this point separately - I notice you didn't answer any of my substantive questions here. An analogy works because there are salient parallels or similarities between the two things or situations being compared. What in your view are the salient similarities between a family and a body of citizens governed by a republican state on the other?

To answer this we first need to answer: what is the definition of a family? I think if you really make an effort to come up with one you'll quickly see how difficult it is, but you can't insist on the validity of this analogy without a good definition. Otherwise you're not making any sense of the issue - family connotes different things to different people, as we've seen in the thread already from the responses by @Yeekim and @Cloud_Strife.

Without attempting to define the family what I can say is that family is a matrix of relationships between individuals. How I treat my mother is different than how I treat my father, which is different than how I treat my son, different again from how I treat my sister. All of these are individual interpersonal relationships. The problem for the analogy is that, generally, this is the exact opposite of how I think the state should work, which is through legalistic processes that treat people as essentially interchangeable equal entities.

The specific issue of how someone becomes part of a family is apropos. The way to join a family is to form individual relationships of the kind I mentioned above - perhaps just by being born to parents, but there is also marriage, adoption, "found" family etc etc. This, again, is completely different from how I think the process for becoming a citizen should work - that should depend on the relationship between the person and the impersonal, legalistically-operating state. In practice in the US you can apply for citizenship and even if every single other US citizens loathes you for whatever reason, you still can become a citizen if you check the legal boxes to become one. This is how I think things should work.

As far as the connection with fascism, the salience of the analogy when the family is conceived of as a group of people genetically related to one another is obvious and I assume does not need to be discussed further here. This sense of the nation as a big family was and is explicitly invoked by many fascist movements who also have their patriarchal father figure to exercise the traditional absolute authority over the "family," for its members' own good of course.

 

[Akka]

Your distinction between "French culture" and "foreigners" relies on a false essentialism regarding French and other cultures.

Okay, you'll need to explain what this does even mean, because what I can parse is that there is no difference between someone from an heritage and culture, and someone else from a different heritage and culture, and that's conceptual nonsense, so I guess I'm not getting what you want to say.

Your last point accusing me of "ignoring democracy" is also nonsense; my arguments against immigration restrictionism, even to the point of calling immigration restrictionists racist and fascist, contribute nothing to any French policy outcome. All I'm doing is calling it how I see it.

Yeah, and that's what I treated here :

you might disagree, sure, but it might help you to understand from where comes the perception of the other guy comes. Because for now, you look like you don't, and you simply seem to imagine that everyone has the same viewpoint as you, and as such they can only be anti-immigration due to "evil".

"how you see it" feels to me to be fundamentally warped due to only seeing it through your own lenses, which lead to the copious amount of circular reasoning you have been doing.

Incidentally, my position is not "we should ignore democracy when the majority don't want what I want", it is "there are things the state should be forbidden from doing no matter how many people support them" which is
a perfectly normal and consistent liberal position. It would be absurd to say the US is not really a democracy because the First Amendment forbids Congress from making a law that restricts press freedom no matter how many people support such a law!

It's a pretty understandable opinion, but only as long as you can explain what state should be forbidden of doing and why, and give actual reasons that have a universal reach enough to not just be "what I would prefer". Cultures can be very different and what you consider absolutely unthinkable can be considered completely normal and even desirable from someone's else point of view, and you'll have to prove that he's wrong and you're right, and not just because you claim so.

I would just conclude by saying that your arguments fundamentally don't matter to me as much as what the immigration restrictionists in power are saying and doing in my country.

Maybe you should extract yourself from your provincialism and realize that the US aren't the world, and so it's not because something happens in the US that it will happen everywhere else. Taking it into account to draw lessons is certainly very important, but believing it can only happens like in the US is just incredibly arrogant.

I see no functional difference whatsoever between these outcomes. People determined to remove foreigners because they "damage" French culture are never going to be satisfied by "a way that limits the damage" (assuming that such a way is even a real thing that could plausibly be done, of which I am skeptical). Immigration restrictionism is always going to lead to fascism by the very nature of things.

You realize that many countries in the world have much stricter immigration policies than France, and aren't fascist nevertheless ?

Abraham Lincoln as usual has an apt quotation for this whole issue:

Funnily, it's basically exactly :

Yet, the entire reason why words like "racism" and "ethno-chauvinism" are negative is because they mean that someone consider a person "less human" than another due to its ethnicity.

And when I pointed this, you said that the specific manifestation of racism that is consciously considering others to be subhuman is not the only reason that racism is harmful. To which I asked you to then tell what is actually harmful outside of considering someone "worth less" due to his ethnicity (twice), and I can't help but notice you haven't answered this, but you went immediately back to the previous "it's bad because it considers someone worth less than another" (that you, yourself, just said wasn't the only bad thing). That's running in circle while avoiding the point.
Care to actually answer the question ?

 

[Lexicus]

Maybe you should extract yourself from your provincialism and realize that the US aren't the world, and so it's not because something happens in the US that it will happen everywhere else. Taking it into account to draw lessons is certainly very important, but believing it can only happens like in the US is just incredibly arrogant.

Anti-immigration movements and policies everywhere in the world from Australia to Hungary to the Mediterrannean coast to the English channel look broadly the same and completely repulsive to me, sorry. In fact I think many of the people carrying out these policies deserve the same fate as their Nazi forebears.

Care to actually answer the question ?

Not really, I hold "racism/ethnic chauvinism is bad" to be a self-evidently true moral precept. I mean I think there are practical harms that go beyond what you're saying but I'm not really interested in getting into that; suffice it to say I think it's axiomatically bad and wrong. And note this isn't "circular reasoning" because I'm not claiming to arrive at the position through reasoning.

 

[Zardnaar]

Anti-immigration movements and policies everywhere in the world from Australia to Hungary to the Mediterrannean coast to the English channel look broadly the same and completely repulsive to me, sorry. In fact I think many of the people carrying out these policies deserve the same fate as their Nazi forebears.



Not really, I hold "racism/ethnic chauvinism is bad" to be a self-evidently true moral precept. I mean I think there are practical harms that go beyond what you're saying but I'm not really interested in getting into that; suffice it to say I think it's axiomatically bad and wrong. And note this isn't "circular reasoning" because I'm not claiming to arrive at the position through reasoning.

No offense you tend to be completely out of touch. Youre open borders no matter what.

Anti immigration generally ranges from less visas through to say ICE. While claiming theres no downsides whatsoever.

When 30% or close enough of the population are immigrants guess what happens to house prices(Australia, Canada, NZ)?

That whole cost of living thing which is the big issue everywhere?

25 years ago locally guess who did the agricultural work vs now? Used to get free rent as incentive to do it. That's kinda of gone now.

Throw in issues around labour exploitation and differing cultural values.

 

[Angst]

When 30% or close enough of the population are immigrants guess what happens to house prices(Australia, Canada, NZ)?

do they go up because population pressure? down because too much melanin in my shrubbery? who knows

you're somewhat left, so the former.

the housing crisis is wholly independent of immigration and is caused because housing is treated as a speculative property instead of a need, ie, a utility

y'all don't actually lack actual houses in most bad housing markets. you just distribute them like crap. dunno about new zealand. might be a wonderful unicorn where you don't actually build houses. but truth is that development happens rapidly, everywhere, all the time, but it's chokeholded because the properties are tied up in speculation and are done in price ranges that don't help the general population

in 30 years y'all will say immigrants drank all the freshwater instead of like, you know, nestle bought it

 

[danjuno]

No offense you tend to be completely out of touch.

Ironic, since I have no idea who you're talking to half the time when you post on here.

When 30% or close enough of the population are immigrants guess what happens to house prices

That's right blame immigrants instead of the people actually driving up housing prices by treating a place to live as a commodity.

 

[Zardnaar]

do they go up because population pressure? down because too much melanin in my shrubbery? who knows

you're somewhat left, so the former.

the housing crisis is wholly independent of immigration and is caused because housing is treated as a speculative property instead of a need, ie, a utility

y'all don't actually lack actual houses in most bad housing markets. you just distribute them like crap. dunno about new zealand. might be a wonderful unicorn where you don't actually build houses. but truth is that development happens rapidly, everywhere, all the time, but it's chokeholded because the properties are tied up in speculation and are done in price ranges that don't help the general population

in 30 years y'all will say immigrants drank all the freshwater instead of like, you know, nestle bought it

Its both. Investment plus demand.
. Plus pressure on infrastructure. One rowns stopped issuing building consents as they've hit max capacity on water and sewage.

 

[Zardnaar]

Ironic, since I have no idea who you're talking to half the time when you post on here.

That's right blame immigrants instead of the people actually driving up housing prices by treating a place to live as a commodity.

You have 5.2 million people. 27% are immigrants.

If half a million decided to leave would house prices go up or down?

New Zealand New Dwellings Building Consents MoM

Building Permits MoM in New Zealand increased to 2.80 percent in November from -0.70 percent in October of 2025. This page includes a chart with historical data for New Zealand New Dwellings Building Consents MoM.

tradingeconomics.com

34000 building consents issued.

Prices are flattening and we have high emigration atm. Crap dollar. Our cheapest city (100k +)average house prices are still close to 400k usd.

Which is close to the average US house price.

Australia and Canada are more borked but they have a similar % of immigrants.

Investment makes a bad situation worse. The demand is more or less purely driven by immigration. If the population was static supply would catch up eventually becoming over supply.

 

[Zardnaar]

https://www.rbnz.govt.nz/hub/publications/financial-stability-report/2024/november-special-topic-1/update-on-the-housing-market

Reserve bank directly saying falling migration pressure has helped with lower prices.

Very early in PDF. 2024 so not to long ago.

 

[Angst]

Its both. Investment plus demand.
. Plus pressure on infrastructure. One rowns stopped issuing building consents as they've hit max capacity on water and sewage.

not aware of the nz situation but all other nations i've read about "housing crisises" in have more than enough housing to house everyone, including homeless, and then some. including in reasonably urban areas. the problem is that developers only build housing at a specific price point that optimizes income (barring actual use), and people with houses think of them as their piggy banks.

it's speculation. not melanine. whoever decided your house should be an investment you earn money from (instead of just living in) is the culpit. the fact that your house value dropping is bad is what's fundamentally wrong with this.

denmark is at ~9% non-eu immigrants and we still have a housing crisis. everyone does. and we have plenty of empty housing, including hotbed demand areas (eg copenhagen). greater copenhagen has construction spam. but the new housing that isn't like tiny student housing (ie useless when you need more than a studio) is all investor/upper class homes

 

[Zardnaar]

not aware of the nz situation but all other nations i've read about "housing crisises" in have more than enough housing to house everyone, including homeless, and then some. including in reasonably urban areas. the problem is that developers only build housing at a specific price point that optimizes income (barring actual use), and people with houses think of them as their piggy banks.

it's speculation. not melanine. whoever decided your house should be an investment you earn money from (instead of just living in) is the culpit. the fact that your house value dropping is bad is what's fundamentally wrong with this.

denmark is at ~9% non-eu immigrants and we still have a housing crisis. everyone does. and we have plenty of empty housing, including hotbed demand areas (eg copenhagen). greater copenhagen has construction spam. but the new housing that isn't like tiny student housing (ie useless when you need more than a studio) is all investor/upper class homes

The investment thing is making it worse.

Take whatever immigration is in your country and double or triple it for 17 years. See what happens.

Canada and Australia are worse. High immigration fuels demand. We had prices jump 20% one year then 20% following year.

No capital gain tax fueld by 25% population growth in 17 years.

Not such an issue atm. High emigration due to recession prices go down.

Prices are still rising in Australia/Canada. Its not a political thing here no one's wanting ICE equivalent

For some strange mysterious reason the right is pro immigration here along with the Greens (10-15% progressive left).

Anti immigration is more visa reform and deport the criminals. Theres no Reform/AfD/GoP equivalent or movement.

 

[Senethro]

If half a million decided to leave would house prices go up or down?

I think they would go up. I think mysterious forces would be conjured by which prices are "forced" to go up.

 

[Angst]

The investment thing is making it worse.

Take whatever immigration is in your country and double or triple it for 17 years. See what happens.

Canada and Australia are worse. High immigration fuels demand. We had prices jump 20% one year then 20% following year.

No capital gain tax fueld by 25% population growth in 17 years.

Not such an issue atm. High emigration due to recession prices go down.

Prices are still rising in Australia/Canada. Its not a political thing here no one's wanting ICE equivalent

For some strange mysterious reason the right is pro immigration here along with the Greens (10-15% progressive left).

Anti immigration is more visa reform and deport the criminals. Theres no Reform/AfD/GoP equivalent or movement.

"the investment thing" is not making it worse, it's the cause.

you point at smoke and says smoke is the cause of fire.

the actual material state of affairs is that we have more than enough housing (outside NZ at least), everywhere, all the time, and more is being built. but it's speculative so it doesn't properly enter the market. for affordable homes, indeed, immigration will cause some uptick in demand, increasing cost. but what you don't get is that supply side is whack. the amount of empty houses, expensive housing units traded in speculation for potential future gains, and new housing development of units that are made inherently outside your personal price class, is astounding.

could you answer the nestle/water thing please, i am honestly not particular tongue in cheek with that. it's the same structure of your logic. you didn't answer because you probably thought i was being silly. explain to me how it's different.

edit: fwiw to understand where i'm coming from, and what i'm not accusing you of. i'm not saying you're a pro ice afd/reform/gop kind of person. i understand there's nuances to the degree of anti-immmigrant sentiment, and one is definitely more materially grounded than others. but i am saying that you're falling to the same basic trap that some of those people do (those of that group with a liberal conviction) - you see a problem expressed, but you don't seem to engage with why the problem is actually there. it's a presumption of an invisible, natural order of the world, where people are definitely missing the forest from the trees. you are working your way around the root cause without dealing with it. does that make sense? like you may disagree, but does it make sense to you? i'm really trying to be clear - not trying to be hostile here.

editedit: doing another edit. like the reserve bank report is true, because it is true, it's natural, base economic fact. fewer people decreases housing prices. supply-demand. yes. good. i just wanted to express that in good faith. i didn't respond before because it didn't answer the core point! nowhere in this discussion have you engaged with the idea that the supply side of the equation is wholly goddamn screwed. tinkering immigration numbers is symptom treatment, it doesn't actually deal with a systematic issue. does it make sense? you can naturally argue for immigration numbers to go down, but you have to understand that this is a bandaid fix for a problem that has been destroying western housing markets for ages

 

[Akka]

I want to return to this point separately - I notice you didn't answer any of my substantive questions here. An analogy works because there are salient parallels or similarities between the two things or situations being compared. What in your view are the salient similarities between a family and a body of citizens governed by a republican state on the other?

Otherwise you're not making any sense of the issue - family connotes different things to different people, as we've seen in the thread already from the responses by @Yeekim and @Cloud_Strife.

Both are about groups of people who have a common background and a shared legitimate ownership of their home.
As I already pointed, analogies are about helping to understand a concept - EVERYTHING connotes something different to EVERYONE, it's ALWAYS possible to find something to nitpick about if one's determined to not understanding a point. Communication rely on some degree of good faith from both participants, and if someone is intent on simply finding a way to reject whatever the other is saying, then he'll be able to.
Mind you, it's perfectly fine for you to find that the analogy doesn't work because you have a very different perception from the guy making it or he's stretching it way beyond what's reasonable or something else, as long as you're honest about really "not getting it". But if you actually see what he means and just try to find a way to take fault in the analogy, then it's on you. I can't know what's the case here, but what I'm trying to convey is this notion - shared by a lot of people, and I'd even say most of them, and no, not just "fascists" - that a "tribe" owns a "territory" and strangers have to get its authorization to get there, and that people rejects intruders. You can disagree with the notion of nation-states (that, fundamentally, are just that : a "tribe" that owns a "territory" and has a specific "identity" that it's a strong connection to and wants to preserve) and still understand why those people think that, and can think that without being evil.

I think if you really make an effort to come up with one you'll quickly see how difficult it is, but you can't insist on the validity of this analogy without a good definition.

Yeah no actually, a good definition is needed when you're actually dealing with the specific subject (like, I don't know, "racism" when you want to claim that something is "racist", you have to define what it means so as to show how it actually applies). Analogy, by their very idea, actually rely on making rough parallels and so looking at the rougher pictures rather than the details.
If I'm going to go too dumb into the details, then I'm going to end up with idiotic conclusion like "people shouldn't be marrying anyone in their own nations because that would be incest".

This, again, is completely different from how I think the process for becoming a citizen should work - that should depend on the relationship between the person and the impersonal, legalistically-operating state.

We already went over this : and who decides which criteria will be applied by the impersonal, legalistically-operating state ?
I mean, I agree with the process you're talking about. But you seem to dance around the issue of "who decides the conditions of accepting who ?".

Anti-immigration movements and policies everywhere in the world from Australia to Hungary to the Mediterrannean coast to the English channel look broadly the same and completely repulsive to me, sorry. In fact I think many of the people carrying out these policies deserve the same fate as their Nazi forebears.

Not really, I hold "racism/ethnic chauvinism is bad" to be a self-evidently true moral precept. I mean I think there are practical harms that go beyond what you're saying but I'm not really interested in getting into that; suffice it to say I think it's axiomatically bad and wrong. And note this isn't "circular reasoning" because I'm not claiming to arrive at the position through reasoning.

Well, thank you for admitting it straight here.

That being said, do you realize just how devoid of any weight it makes your argument ? Your entire point is that it's bad "because you consider it bad". And when asked why it's bad, your answer is "it's self-evident", despite providing neither actual definition, nor any reasoning as to why it should be self-evident. In fact you even admit that you don't arrive to the position through reasoning, which kinda means "you should agree with me because I want it so". That's... weak.

Something self-evident is either a logical conclusion (conceptual truth by relying on definitions and reasoning, for example "1 + 1 = 2", because that's what the definition of each means) or something ubiquitous and easily observable (like "grass is green, day follow night, people need to eat to live). Saying "wanting to preserve your group identity is bad" is neither the first (no definition, no reasoning) nor the second (what's actually kinda ubiquitous and easily observable is in fact the opposite).

Your argument is actually the same as religion : it's true because it's my faith, and as it's faith it doesn't require proof ("it's true because I want it to be true").
It's not really a surprise - I've been trying to hint to you that your arguments always rely in the end on your moral precepts being considered true and applicable to everyone, while you never manage to prove them - but don't you think you should reflect hard on why you hold these ideas and want to enforce them on everyone else, while can't even justify them ?

 

[Marla_Singer]

@Akka: I’m not really sure I understand what you mean exactly when you say your identity is threatened. I acknowledge that this is something you experience, but I don’t know what concrete things make you conclude that way, and that’s what bothers me. I can only guess, and I may be completely wrong, that it relates to your understanding of what France is and how society has evolved. I’m also French, and I simply don’t recognize things the way you describe them, which makes it difficult for me to treat these concerns as self-evident. I’m not claiming to be right or representative; I just want to underline that different people in the same country can have different experiences.

Now, there are frankly two very different ways to look at the idea that immigration should be better controlled:

• A pragmatic angle: immigration can create social and economic challenges, especially when it’s large and mostly composed of poor or unskilled labour. In that perspective, a selective policy like what exists in Canada, the US or Australia makes sense.
• An identity-based angle: opposing immigration as a matter of principle because it threatens cultural identity. This is much harder for me to grasp. Why would I want to prevent a hard-working Vietnamese, Pole or Egyptian from coming to France if their intent is to contribute economically and integrate socially? In what way are they a “threat” to my identity? That’s really what I’m struggling to understand.

I feel that for this conversation to move forward, we need more concrete examples of what is actually concerning or changing in daily life, rather than abstract theorizing about what a Nation is. Nations differ depending on their history and geography, so there isn’t a single “correct” definition that everyone will naturally agree on. As long as we stay at the level of general concepts, I’m not sure we can make real progress or understand each other’s experiences.

 

[Lexicus]

Your argument is actually the same as religion : it's true because it's my faith, and as it's faith it doesn't require proof ("it's true because I want it to be true").

My faith in the equality of men has today been defeated by your skull science and the natural philosophy you employ to support it; good day sir!