Ask Lemmy

There's various reasons why people oppose immigration. I want to present two of them:

• Economic reasons. Having more people in the country does NOT mean that there will be more jobs. Because immigrants are typically poor, they take jobs but don't spend much money back to stimulate the economy. That takes jobs away from the people who were already in the country, which is very unpopular. This is mostly a concern if there's a lot of people immigrating, since the number of jobs taken by the immigrants is directly proportional to the number of immigrants. You can actually see this phenomenon in real time in agriculture and healthcare. These are typically low-paid professions who are largely done by immigrants. If there were no immigrants, wages would have to rise because otherwise, nobody would do these jobs. Then the people who were already in the country could take these jobs, because they would pay a living wage.
  Note that this is NOT a racist argument since it has nothing to do with what kind of people immigrates. Even if they were clones of yourself, this argument would still hold true. It is not about race or culture.
• Then there's cultural reasons. (which is what's commonly referred to as "racism"). Some people have a hard time adapting to anything new, and immigrants typically bring new ideas and new ways of doing things, which is a learning experience for everyone involved, and some people just don't like to learn new things. That leads to racism.