this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2024
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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.

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[–] sxan@midwest.social 93 points 4 months ago (3 children)

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.

[–] hperrin@lemmy.world 12 points 4 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] sxan@midwest.social 11 points 4 months ago

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.

[–] Oisteink@feddit.nl 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Its very hard to add more of something else and not have dilution.

Take 1 litre of vodka and add 1 decilitre of water - there will be more fluid but the vodka will be?

[–] ValenThyme@reddthat.com 18 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

framing is important though. Nobody considers a cocktail 'diluted' even if that's technically applicable, the resultant mixture usually improves the beverage.

But the fear isn't so rational. It's like a fear that the cocktail in your example will replace the original vodka whether they want the cocktail or not, or that the vodka will be so diluted by seltzer that it will functionally cease to exist.

It's like a fear of gentrification of the country as a whole.

It's also important to remember that the US is a huge exception in this regard as well. Most other countries are like 90%+ native population, and immigrant populations tend to be sort of isolated from the wider national culture due to things like language barriers, and they often set up little "bastions" of their native culture locally wherever they live. We even see plenty of that in the US as well. While there are many distinctly US cultures across the country that are derived from a variety of backgrounds, there are tons of "enclaves" of European culture that make it blatantly clear where immigrants from certain countries settled. In Boston, the culture of Chinatown is distinctly unique and separate from the wider culture of the city, which largely has ties back to Ireland (and is very proud of it). And both of those are distinctly different from where the Italian immigrants settled, who effectively have their own districts of cultures descended from Italy regardless of where they immigrated to.

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[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

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

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[–] hark@lemmy.world 60 points 4 months ago (5 children)

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.

[–] atro_city@fedia.io 11 points 4 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] hark@lemmy.world 8 points 4 months ago

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.

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[–] jeena@piefed.jeena.net 44 points 4 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] june@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 4 months ago (7 children)

A lot of eastern Asian countries are extremely xenophobic in other words.

[–] jeena@piefed.jeena.net 2 points 4 months ago

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.

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[–] olafurp@lemmy.world 42 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

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. 🙃

[–] ThePrivacyPolicy@lemmy.ca 6 points 4 months ago (7 children)

Add Canada to that list. 1 million immigrants a year and everything is collapsing - our housing, healthcare, education, nothing can keep up.

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[–] lorty@lemmy.ml 36 points 4 months ago

Xenophobia propped up by political groups. Many official immigration programs existed in the 19th century that, when allowed to, had immigrants integrated into society.

[–] fubarx@lemmy.ml 34 points 4 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Alexstarfire@lemmy.world 19 points 4 months ago (1 children)

So, indirect xenophobia. That's much better.

[–] cucumber_sandwich@lemmy.world 15 points 4 months ago

Call it cultural inertia if you prefer.

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 31 points 4 months ago

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.

[–] 31337@sh.itjust.works 28 points 4 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago

Good write up! My version was much snarkier.

But other factors include

  • not every country can encourage significant immigration
  • even developing countries have a rapidly dropping birth rate

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.

[–] callouscomic@lemm.ee 16 points 4 months ago

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.

[–] scytale@lemm.ee 15 points 4 months ago (3 children)

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.

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[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 11 points 4 months ago (1 children)

This is a gigantic can of worms that will cause arguments.

[–] listless@lemmy.cringecollective.io 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

So basically the perfect question for the internet?

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[–] bifurtyper@programming.dev 11 points 4 months ago

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

[–] snooggums@midwest.social 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Fear of being outnumbered by immigrants ("they shall not replace us" bullshit) is a big one.

[–] atro_city@fedia.io 9 points 4 months ago

"We cannot be outnumbered by immigrants!" *die out because their own population won't make babies*

[–] afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 9 points 4 months ago (11 children)

Why don't fat people hit the gym and eat salad?

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[–] Phegan@lemmy.world 9 points 4 months ago
[–] card797@champserver.net 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] bradorsomething@ttrpg.network 2 points 4 months ago

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.

[–] Vivendi@lemmy.zip 8 points 4 months ago

Just add a "... Are they stupid?" To the end of the title, and repost in a shit posting community

[–] Siegfried@lemmy.world 6 points 4 months ago

Oh boy, you need so much stellaris /s

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago

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.

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