Why don't low birth-rate countries make immigration to their country easier?
Wouldn't they benefit from more people? Of course it would come with the condition of learning the language at an acceptable level and that being tied to residency.
Because people fear having their culture and race replaced by immigrants. Even if they're not overtly racist, few people wish to become a minority in "their own country."
The US is famously a melting pot, and yet we still have a bunch of descendants of white immigrants from Europe who fear that South Americans will take over; that Mexican culture will replace good old-fashioned hodge-podge Western European culture. That their language will become less dominant. That they'll find themselves strangers in their own country.
It's usually an indistinct fear. It seems obvious from the verbiage in the dog-whistles, but white European immigrant descendants don't want to become second-class.
Now, if we treated our own minorities well, they wouldn't be so afraid. They wouldn't be afraid that they'd be the ones with Hispanic cops kneeling on their necks; or that Hispanic immigrants would be living in giant homes and they'd themselves be the ones having to eak out a living as seasonal workers.
I think it's not despicable to want to preserve your cultural heritage, your cultural language, and to have your country legislated with the values you grew up with; but people react poorly when they think it's happening.
What I most despise in the Republicans in the US is that they're advocating for preserving cultural values that never existed broadly in the US. The closest subculture to what they're pushing is a return to the Confederate South: religion, and white supremacy. The Confederates got their asses handed to them, but the racist fuckers never gave up their values, most most Americans are blind to what their real agenda is. And they've been good insurgents, cleverly taking advantage of weak areas in our democracy to return power to a minority: themselves. It's been said and it's true: if America was a true democracy and we selected leaders by popular vote, no Republican under their current platform would ever be president again.
Anyway, getting back to your question: immigrants bring their own culture with them, and very few completely abandon it and adopt the culture and language of their new country. This dilutes the host country's native culture, and people are afraid of that. In the US, it's the highest form of hypocrisy, because our native culture displaced the indigenous culture, and now we're afraid of someone else doing the same to us.
I agree with everything up until you said “dilutes”. I would argue that immigrant cultures don’t dilute the host country’s culture, they add to it. In other words, the culture that was there still exists in the same amount and in the same “concentration”, and immigrants bring their culture to newly developing areas of the country/state.
The word has negative connotations, but I stand by it. I an not saying there result isn't stronger, but if you extend cultural mixing out to the maximum - say humans and the planet survives another thousand years, and global travel is no harder than traveling to the next town over - what you end up with is homogeneity, and this would be sad, I think. Imagine it: the entire world speaking some pidgin derivative mashup of Mandarin, English, and Hindi, with essentially the same culture everywhere on the planet. Just as has already happened, languages are lost, because nobody speaks them natively anymore. All that's left of the original cultures are some UNESCO sites and preserved old movies. I can't say the world wouldn't be stronger for it, but in the process, something irrecoverable is lost.
Definitely agree with your points but maybe “dilutes”. Isn’t the right term. I don’t think they’re worried about their culture being “watered down” or “thinner”, but replaced.
I had a recent conversation with my brother that fits here. We grew up the same, but he became more conservative and moved to a conservative area, or maybe I became more liberal and moved to a liberal area. I’ve been exploring cooking, and actually this has been several conversations where I’m excited over learning about preparing a different cuisine, being able to appreciate what that brings, and he responds with “why can’t you make regular American food?” “Diluting” the cuisine we grew up with would be to use salsa instead of ketchup or mayo. But I have entire meals replaced with new and different. I have a much bigger spice cupboard full of new and different. I make meals that he doesn’t understand, doesn’t know how to prepare, so he gets defensive about what he is comfortable with being replaced
I don't disagree. In fact, I think a strength of US culture is the diversity in embraces. I do feel sorry that this came at the cost of indigenous cultures, but the end result has been a wonderful melting pot, ruined only by Laissez-Faire economics and some badly wrong turns in how we do Capitalism. Plus the inherent bigotry that hypocrite descendants of immigrants are unable to recognize. Or, worse maybe, an attitude of "we stole this land fair and square, and now it's our's and everyone else fuck off!"
All I'm saying is that my personal preference would be that this not happen to the entire world. I'd like to visit Germany and see a historic Germany, not another version of America with different preserved buildings. I'd love to visit the Basque region and immerse myself in Basque culture, not some mashup globalized culture selling Basque trinkets, which no-one uses at home anymore, to tourists. It's selfish, I know.
Edit 2024-07-04 relevant comic
The difference is US culture is bland and stupid. Its con artists, police and shitty corporate bullshit. In fact the last time the US lost a major cultural element it was slavery. I think its about time ditch some more bullshit. The con artists need to be tried for fraud, the police need to be disarmed, the supreme court dismantled and the corporations razed.
The birth rates are low because of the terrible environment that doesn't support having and raising children. All you're doing is importing more people who will also barely have any children within a generation or so. Mass immigration is just throwing bodies at the bottom of the pyramid scheme. You can see this in action in Canada where housing is absolutely unaffordable, but large numbers of immigrants are brought in who have to work for shitty wages and live with multiple families in a single rental unit.
The screaming about low birth rate is because corporations want to keep a high labor pool so they can drive down the price of labor while keeping up demand for consumption.
The screaming about low birth rate is because corporations want to keep a high labor pool so they can drive down the price of labor while keeping up demand for consumption.
It's not only that. By the time you want to retire, there won't be enough people to pay taxes for your retirement fund. With more young people than old, that is less of a problem.
This is one area where we're supposed to benefit from the greatly increased automation. We don't need a huge mass of people doing make-work. The current situation is that we force people to do make-work to continue making on-paper profits which mostly go to a tiny set of wealthy people. The current situation is unsustainable even if population growth increased because it's a pyramid scheme. The system relies on infinite growth.
Poor countries, such as the countries people are immigrating from, have a more terrible environment and higher birth-rates.
The problem is that birthdate is dropping even faster in those countries. An even bigger “problem” is that in general life is getting better, even in developing countries. There is no infinite supply of immigrants waiting to save the developed world.
Encouraging immigration is far from a panacea. It will work for a few countries, for another generation or so, but you can see the end of that coming
But isn't it better to have a few years but then growth vs absolute death spiral due to low population which we would have to increase immigration for regardless
The problem is that most of the growth goes to the already rich as they pay immigrants poorly and make them pay high rents (hence the need to have multiple families living in a single unit). It's still a death spiral, just with higher profits for the rich few. The only way to make it not a death spiral is to force the rich leeches to stop sucking the blood out of everyone else.
Countries like Korea don't have a cultire of welcoming people from outside and therefor you would have so many clashes that a huge number of imigrants - which is needed - would destroy the country. There is no one here who knows how to treat and integrate those immigrants. There are no programs for them, etc. and even if you know the language you still have huge culture clashes.
A lot of eastern Asian countries are extremely xenophobic in other words.
I mean to some degree yes, but as I said they are absolutely not prepared for it and have no one who could do the work of preparation of integration of migrants.
I think there’s a difference between being prejudice towards an outside group and not wanting your own culture replaced.
There is nothing inherently wrong with countries and their cultures not wanting to have others integrate. In the past this is what helped them survive.
It’s only a big issue in countries like the US that want to be a mixing bowl/melting pot and also are being xenophobic.
A lot of Europe did so and for this exact purpose. Immigrants are net contributors of tax money and help a lot with demographics. Now however European countries have a sizable portion of their countries as immigrants and it turns out a lot of people feel like their culture is getting lost.
Add that up with corruption is more out in the open, austerity after the 2008 financial crisis generally failed as a policy and people are very prone to believe "Immigrants are to blame" and vote for right wing parties since they run on an anti-establishment platform.
The left generally believes that we need more immigrants and more social programs and so on but there has been a massive crusade on tax rates which hinders the governments ability to pay for them.
This is all coming together now and the far right narrative is being given a chance in Europe with their anti-immigration stance.
In my opinion this is basically the centre-right trying to get votes by cutting taxes, end up taking on massive debt or gutting quality of life social programs so the only way forward is to fuck over minorities and making the most vulnerable people suffer for the greater good. But tax the well-off, rich, wealth, land, capital gains, profits? Nooooo, can't do that because they fund the political parties. 🙃
Xenophobia propped up by political groups. Many official immigration programs existed in the 19th century that, when allowed to, had immigrants integrated into society.
I talked to Japanese colleagues about this a lot. The issue isn't just plain old xenophobia. In a lot of cultures, when someone gets married, there are considerations about marrying 'the right kind' for the family. As silly as that might sound to U.S. 'melting pot' ears, these could be tribal, economic, linguistic, geographic, class, education, age, gender, and yes, race.
In traditional settings, the elders have to bless that marriage, welcome the person, and ideally have the families mesh together and be on the same page.
Inviting foreigners with vastly different backgrounds on almost all those axes, it's a pretty tall order to ask everyone to change those attitudes. And saying one family should close their eyes and do it for the sake of the country while their neighbors hold out for a 'suitable' match is going to be tough. The demographic 'time bomb' has been a known issue since the 80s and people are still resistant to change.
At some point, though, realities catch up.
My bet would be it would take a generational turnover and a few years of popular sitcoms normalizing it.
So, indirect xenophobia. That's much better.
Call it cultural inertia if you prefer.
Wouldn’t they benefit from more people?
The wealthy win when there's more workers than work.
Historically the greatest gains in workers rights and the times we make the most gains against wealth inequality is when there isn't a surplus of workers.
Xenophobia and racism, mostly. And yes, it's a solution to the aging demographic crisis many countries face (at least in the medium-term).
I remember seeing a video of a presentation back in the Bush years by some neo-con group that advocated for immigration to Pentagon or DoD officials or something. The argument for immigration was mostly the same: we have an aging population, so we could integrate immigrants (who are statistically younger) to solve this issue. I didn't agree much with the broader idea of the presentation though. The broader idea was that there were still some parts of the world not a part of the global U.S.-led hegemony (mostly the middle-east and Africa), and we must spread democracy and capitalism to them. The argument was that globalism/capitalism ensures peace, and that both WWI and WWII happened because globalism was falling apart shortly before those wars. So, to ensure world peace, we need to globalize the entire earth and bring all countries into the the U.S.-led hegemony, even if that means starting wars to spread democracy, lol.
Good write up! My version was much snarkier.
But other factors include
Some countries, maybe like Japan and South Korea, have low birth rates and a history of discouraging immigration. I’d argue it’s too late for them: you can’t suddenly develop and support a large wave of immigration, especially when most developing populations are doing better, most are seeing lower birth rates. They have a lot of work to do and little chance of succeeding
Other countries, notably China, have a rapidly declining birth and already see the impact, so are just going to discourage emigration. The supply of immigrants will quickly dry up (except refugees)
So for example, the US has a history of significant immigration. We’re already in the scenario of insufficient birth rate to sustain our population but sufficient immigration to keep growing. Maybe I don’t know enough about other countries or I’m falling to some sort of exceptionalism, but to me this boils down to why doesn’t US encourage immigration. We have the easy case: if we can’t figure it out, how can we expect anyone else to.
It's bigotry. Whether it be racism, or classism, or political, or religious, or whatever. People have endless reasons for wanting to consider others as outsiders or lesser or different.
Because most low birth-rate countries are first-world countries, and they generally want to only accept people who can contribute to their society and not be freeloaders to the social system. This means they need to filter out the people that come in, and being first-world countries, there is no shortage of people trying to get in. Sometimes they want low-skill, not-highly educated people just for the cheap labor, but not the person actually staying permanently, hence temporary worker visas. If a foreigner really wants to stay permanently, they then need to ensure that you are educated, able to support yourself long term, do background security checks, and make sure you agree to integrate as you mentioned in the OP.
Ah, your post history tells me you’re in texas, that explains your post. I understand your concern about immigrants coming into a country without proper verification, swarming across the land and replacing the actual native population. Such populations usually move in and immediately assume the land is theirs, and do their best to forget the legacy of the original native people. We can only hope that arrogance and bigotry becomes less common over time.
You understand wrong. I am an immigrant myself and literally experienced what I said. I merely recounted my own experience and the hoops I had to go through to be admitted into the country and be allowed to stay permanently. I have first hand experience of what the USCIS requires and checks in order to be granted work visas and the entire lengthy and expensive process to get permanent residency if you’re coming from a third world country. You are literally asked in application forms if you’ve ever applied for government benefits and how much debt you currently have, because that raises flags for them. You also have to prove your skills by showing evidence of the work you’ve done and what special skills or knowledge you have that a local can’t otherwise do. I’ve been denied a visa once just because the consular officer wasn’t convinced that my skills were special enough. It was a long drawn out process just to get admitted in. Oh and you also need to undergo a medical exam because they want to make sure you don’t have any serious issues that can potentially make you a burden to the healthcare system.
So before accusing someone of arrogance and bigotry, make sure you actually know where the person is coming from. I am not against immigration at all. I am merely explaining how the government picks and chooses who to admit into the country through their standard immigration processes. Show me a first world country that doesn't have those requirements (except for asylum seekers). I'll wait.
Lot of assumptions in your comment about someone you have not met.
Similar to high turnover rate at major corporations is the justified fear that the current residents will be abandoned by their own government in an attempt to drive economic incentives
Unless the system is built correctly, you could accidentally drive people away because you didn't build with your citizens best interests in consideration
For example Japan and South Korean (my heritage) has this exact problem still at large as they encourage people to have children yet systems like high working hours in combination with low wages means that people just can't afford to have children
This is a gigantic can of worms that will cause arguments.
So basically the perfect question for the internet?
Basically every question
Fear of being outnumbered by immigrants ("they shall not replace us" bullshit) is a big one.
"We cannot be outnumbered by immigrants!" die out because their own population won't make babies*
Why don't fat people hit the gym and eat salad?
Because salad is boring and fat-shaming is the last kind of bullying still considered acceptable.
I was out on my bike the other day and someone yelled "YOU FAT BASTARD". Fortunately I'm pretty thick skinned and have lined up a few choice remarks for next time.
Imagine if fat had been replaced with black, or Chinese, or gay, etc. They'd be in jail for committing a hate crime quicker than I could get to the nearest Greggs.
But being fat is not the same as being black. People do not get sick and die 30 years earlier because they are black, for instance. People are black not because they ignore physical exercises and eat too much. I don't support bullying, but acting like this is a normal condition that we should cherish is wrong.
I’m pretty thick skinned
The generally acceptable response is “I’m just big boned”
Xenophobia
You have to feed and house the people. The people currently living in those countries may have a shortage of housing already.
I think the "baby boom" from years past has shown that there are too many people around. It's too costly to raise their own kids. People are xenophobic and don't want many immigrants changing their cultures.
The issue becomes caring for the boom population and maintaining a stable economy at the same time. Immigration is a natural support to the pressure of worker shortages, and countries that don’t accept this will learn long, hard lessons in capitalism, and pay a premium for end of life care to compete with other jobs in demand that are much more desirable.
Oh boy, you need so much stellaris /s
The low birth rates are a concern because they need the bodies to generate revenue so they can take care of old people who will lean on government services.
Why should you care about population decline? Fewer people are good for the climate, but the economic consequences are severe. In the 1960s, there were six people of working age for every retired person. Today, the ratio is three-to-one. By 2035, it will be two-to-one.
Some say we must learn to curb our obsession with growth, to become less consumer-obsessed, to learn to manage with a smaller population. That sounds very attractive. But who will buy the stuff you sell? Who will pay for your healthcare and pension when you get old?
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/birthrates-declining-globally-why-matters/
Ok, so what does that have to do with your question…
What age group tends to be the biggest voting bloc, the most xenophobic, the most nationalistic…? Old people. Get those foreign people off my lawn, keep those foreign drug dealers, thieves, and layabouts out of my country.
Then there’s exploitation of foreign labor to undercut wages and work rules of citizens of the country the labor is being imported into.
I’m sure there’s more, but basically it’s a hefty dose of xeonphobia and nationalism along with groups not wanting to literally lose jobs to someone who will do it for a lot less.
Because racism
God, the comments in this thread are nearly all awful
This is a part of the SNP's manifesto already, FYI.
Tldr:
Having too many cultures that have not established a "market share" in politics makes the, people who run a country, job harder as it has to contend with dealing with the potential of new cultures forming and the inevitable culture clashes that follow as differing values and ideals will demand different things.
It fractures and dilutes points of control which encourages politics to try ensure loyalty though aligning itself with views of the majority.
End tldr
Unironically, Stellaris is probably a decent example of the thought experiment played out. Unless a species is built with ideals of the intergration and/or has its proper foundation set then it can quickly spiral out of hand as you have to deal with " a hunded voices asking for one thing".
It is far easier to control and secure a foundational majority based off of one species as it can be more easily guided towards an established outcome.
Adding too many "outsiders" has the potential to cause an imbalance and a shift in thinking which then requires a new paradigm to "herd the sheep" as it were, while still trying to maintain a standard that the base species has become accustomed to.
If it not carefully controlled, it can potentially lead to a fracturing of opinion and thoughts which is a lot harder to manage and "guide" as one runs the risk of isolating one group and in doing so opening up the potential cascade of problems if the ignored minorities builds up steam which then forces leaders to contend with trying to figure out a way to maintain control over the many species bases while still doing it in a way that causes the least amount of disruption to their control.
Why would you voluntarily create a job scarcity in your own population? Immigration reduces wages, increases prices, strains public services and causes overall decrease in Quality of Life.
Just look at the state of the USA with 28% immigrant population.
techically the US is like 99% immigrants
Same for most other American countries
Just look at the state of the USA with 28% immigrant population.
Which STILL has the 6th highest GDP per capita (10th if you count tax-haven microstates and overseas territories).
Centuries of mass immigration built the US economy. Y'all are acting like economics is all zero-sum and more people = everyone is poorer, but the amount of jobs doesn't stay constant as the amount of people increases. The US always had an influx of immigrants to fuel the ever-growing economic machine.
There's plenty of reasons why a lot of people in the US can't afford to live in cities, etc. None of it is because of immigration, it's mostly corporate greed and stupid zoning laws.
This still won't apply to most low birth-rate countries like Korea and Japan, where the population densite and job scarcity is already too high.
The immigrants were not the problem to get the US to the shit state it is in.
That is like saying there is an inverse correlation between the decline in sea-faring pirates and the rising global temperature. Duh.
Immigration reduces wages, increases prices, strains public services and causes overall decrease in Quality of Life.
So, you're telling me that immigration is super profitable? Because that's a recipe for profits
Yes. It is profitable for big corporations. Is this news to you?