This is true. New complaints about “immigration” is rarely about the presence of other identities and cultures within our countries, but a feeling of “the government can’t even take care of all of us, why is it now trying to take care of others?”
Regardless of the inherent conflict between individualist liberalism and communitarian paternalism this presents, it’s still a fact that our governments are enabling rent-seekers to parasitize off of our societies while failing to uphold the post-war European social contract. This naturally angers people when they are perceived as coddling people they don’t know or feel we should be caring about.
Of course, once people are inside the anti-immigration echo chamber, they are bombarded with actual racist views about said immigrants and slowly become racist themselves, but anti-immigration views do not come *from* being racist, being racist comes from having anti-immigration views.
The solution, however, is not to bend to this knee-jerk nativist reaction and crack down on migration between states. That solves nothing (immigrants are *not* the reason our governments can’t take care of our people the way they used to) and only legitimizes the views of the anti-immigration camp, pushing them toward more extremist views like “remigration” (read: ethnic cleansing) as we have seen recently when these policies inevitably fail to fix our societies. The solution is to tackle the underlying problems causing people to feel like we *can’t* take care of these people, in particular by taxing economic rent and cutting unnecessary red tape, so that the tide of anti-immigration sentiment can be stemmed and slowly reversed in the near-future.
an_idiot007 on
I personally think the grooming gangs of roterham scandal has made it impossible to return to a normal around immigration in britain, eventhough it is quite easier to assimiliate into britain than rest of europe
Haffrung on
Aren’t pretty much all developed countries suffering from declining trust? Social media is a frothing acid that corrodes social cohesion and public trust.
3 Comments
This is true. New complaints about “immigration” is rarely about the presence of other identities and cultures within our countries, but a feeling of “the government can’t even take care of all of us, why is it now trying to take care of others?”
Regardless of the inherent conflict between individualist liberalism and communitarian paternalism this presents, it’s still a fact that our governments are enabling rent-seekers to parasitize off of our societies while failing to uphold the post-war European social contract. This naturally angers people when they are perceived as coddling people they don’t know or feel we should be caring about.
Of course, once people are inside the anti-immigration echo chamber, they are bombarded with actual racist views about said immigrants and slowly become racist themselves, but anti-immigration views do not come *from* being racist, being racist comes from having anti-immigration views.
The solution, however, is not to bend to this knee-jerk nativist reaction and crack down on migration between states. That solves nothing (immigrants are *not* the reason our governments can’t take care of our people the way they used to) and only legitimizes the views of the anti-immigration camp, pushing them toward more extremist views like “remigration” (read: ethnic cleansing) as we have seen recently when these policies inevitably fail to fix our societies. The solution is to tackle the underlying problems causing people to feel like we *can’t* take care of these people, in particular by taxing economic rent and cutting unnecessary red tape, so that the tide of anti-immigration sentiment can be stemmed and slowly reversed in the near-future.
I personally think the grooming gangs of roterham scandal has made it impossible to return to a normal around immigration in britain, eventhough it is quite easier to assimiliate into britain than rest of europe
Aren’t pretty much all developed countries suffering from declining trust? Social media is a frothing acid that corrodes social cohesion and public trust.