Good, clear, concise "immigrants are not the problem" links
June 2, 2024 3:34 AM Subscribe
I'm trying to do my small part in rebutting the increasingly common right-wing screeds (in Canada) that immigrants have ruined housing/jobs. What are the clearest, simplest, most fact-driven articles I can link to?
Bonus points for "landlords / capitalism / billionaires are the issue" facts, but my key concern is driving a counter-narrative to "immigrants ruin everything." I know I'm not going to fix the broken brains, but hopefully can sway some not-yet-broken brains into critical thinking and a bigger view of the issues.
Bonus points for "landlords / capitalism / billionaires are the issue" facts, but my key concern is driving a counter-narrative to "immigrants ruin everything." I know I'm not going to fix the broken brains, but hopefully can sway some not-yet-broken brains into critical thinking and a bigger view of the issues.
Immigrants Raise Wages And Boost Employment Of U.S.-Born Workers (Forbes)
posted by HearHere at 5:04 AM on June 2
posted by HearHere at 5:04 AM on June 2
Best answer: This is from 2019, but I think lays out an easily understandable case for immigration, using Canadian demographic statistics.
I'm not sure if the people you want to sway would accept the government as a reliable source on this, but the Government of Canada website also lays out the case for the benefits of immigration in very clear terms.
I also think boosting stories about immigrants doing good things in your community is a slow but effective way to encourage people to think differently about these issues. Unfortunately a lot of us react more strongly to anecdotes than to data, and, because immigrants are actually awesome, there's frequently a ton of good stories out there we should be engaging with to counter the scaremongery media coverage of every goddamn time any immigrant is involved in a crime.
posted by the primroses were over at 6:51 AM on June 2
I'm not sure if the people you want to sway would accept the government as a reliable source on this, but the Government of Canada website also lays out the case for the benefits of immigration in very clear terms.
I also think boosting stories about immigrants doing good things in your community is a slow but effective way to encourage people to think differently about these issues. Unfortunately a lot of us react more strongly to anecdotes than to data, and, because immigrants are actually awesome, there's frequently a ton of good stories out there we should be engaging with to counter the scaremongery media coverage of every goddamn time any immigrant is involved in a crime.
posted by the primroses were over at 6:51 AM on June 2
Let me preface this by saying that i am a leftist and an immigrant in Canada who thinks we should have way more immigration.
But under capitalism and in our particular housing and labor markets, immigration can make housing more expensive and labor cheaper. We really do have a housing shortage and haven’t been building enough housing for a very long time, so ramping up immigration creates more competition for scarce housing, especially at the low end, and landlords are very happy to exploit that. And things like the TFW program are almost exclusively about preventing labor organizing in the working class. More people bring more economic productivity but who benefits from that is *not* equally distributed in our current system and working class people especially can lose out as employers don’t have to work so hard to attract or retain employees.
The answer of course is to build a lot more housing, especially Vienna style social housing, have strong tenants rights and rent control and etc and to give labor a lot more rights and protections - make it easier to organize, to build coops, give workers a say on the board, make the minimum wage a living wage, etc etc.
You’re right that immigrants and immigration aren’t the problem, but we can be used as a tool to transfer more wealth and power to the rich and powerful.
posted by congen at 7:05 AM on June 2 [8 favorites]
But under capitalism and in our particular housing and labor markets, immigration can make housing more expensive and labor cheaper. We really do have a housing shortage and haven’t been building enough housing for a very long time, so ramping up immigration creates more competition for scarce housing, especially at the low end, and landlords are very happy to exploit that. And things like the TFW program are almost exclusively about preventing labor organizing in the working class. More people bring more economic productivity but who benefits from that is *not* equally distributed in our current system and working class people especially can lose out as employers don’t have to work so hard to attract or retain employees.
The answer of course is to build a lot more housing, especially Vienna style social housing, have strong tenants rights and rent control and etc and to give labor a lot more rights and protections - make it easier to organize, to build coops, give workers a say on the board, make the minimum wage a living wage, etc etc.
You’re right that immigrants and immigration aren’t the problem, but we can be used as a tool to transfer more wealth and power to the rich and powerful.
posted by congen at 7:05 AM on June 2 [8 favorites]
Making a worker's ability to stay in the country contingent upon maintaining their employment with a particular employer (i.e. employer sponsored work visas) is one tool capitalists use to steal power and money for themselves.
When a worker knows they will get deported for losing their job, they are not going to risk forming or joining unions. They will not report their employer for safety violations. They will not risk making a fuss over wage theft. In short, this creates a permanent underclass of reliable workers who are firmly under the thumb of capitalists and employers, workers who will accept lost wages and illegal working conditions due to the precarity of their visa status.
This has ripple effects on the rights of citizen workers as well: on the baseline expectations they can have from employers, on citizen workers' ability to unionize, on their bargaining power. The existence of an easily exploitable underclass is always bad for labor rights.
An extreme proof of this was seen in Arizona's 2010 Republican-led e-verify program. Anti immigrant sentiment (i.e. racism) among Republicans has reached such a fever pitch at the time, that they actually took the most straightforward and logical step towards ending undocumented immigrants "stealing people's jobs". Which is, instead of amping up border security and trying to catch undocumented immigrants using traffic stops, Arizona started from the EMPLOYER end of the equation, and simply began to require employers to verify the SSNs of all employees. Easy peasy, completely straightforward, and thousands of times less expensive than catching undocumented immigrants.
Undocumented labor disappeared overnight all across Arizona. Citizens and documented immigrants were the only available workforce, and suddenly employers needed to pay legal minimum wage (out higher) and comply with OSHA and all kinds of regulations. It was DEVASTATING to the Arizona economy.
Produce rotted on the vine in farms. Restaurants and nail salons and all kinds of small businesses shut down. Livestock went unslaughtered and eventually unfed, dying haphazardly and contaminating water sources, resulting in ruinous fines to farm owners.
Meanwhile wages for regular workers went way up and employers stopped hiring. There was an influx of workers from neighboring states, it wasn't a lack of supply. It was simply an unwillingness to pay market rates for legal workers.
Within one year the same Republicans hastily reversed their laws and went back to "normal". No more mandatory e-verify in Arizona.
There could not have been a starker demonstration of how necessary it is for the Arizona economy to not only have a supply of migrant labor but also specifically UNDOCUMENTED EASILY-EXPLOITABLE migrant labor. Republicans realized en masse that they needed their workers to be undocumented so that they can be exploited. All hate towards undocumented workers these days is purely performative, a way to ensure they remain hated and thus denied rights. If the populace were to stay seeing them as human and worthy of legal protection, they might become unexploitable. That's disaster for capitalists.
posted by MiraK at 10:31 AM on June 2 [9 favorites]
When a worker knows they will get deported for losing their job, they are not going to risk forming or joining unions. They will not report their employer for safety violations. They will not risk making a fuss over wage theft. In short, this creates a permanent underclass of reliable workers who are firmly under the thumb of capitalists and employers, workers who will accept lost wages and illegal working conditions due to the precarity of their visa status.
This has ripple effects on the rights of citizen workers as well: on the baseline expectations they can have from employers, on citizen workers' ability to unionize, on their bargaining power. The existence of an easily exploitable underclass is always bad for labor rights.
An extreme proof of this was seen in Arizona's 2010 Republican-led e-verify program. Anti immigrant sentiment (i.e. racism) among Republicans has reached such a fever pitch at the time, that they actually took the most straightforward and logical step towards ending undocumented immigrants "stealing people's jobs". Which is, instead of amping up border security and trying to catch undocumented immigrants using traffic stops, Arizona started from the EMPLOYER end of the equation, and simply began to require employers to verify the SSNs of all employees. Easy peasy, completely straightforward, and thousands of times less expensive than catching undocumented immigrants.
Undocumented labor disappeared overnight all across Arizona. Citizens and documented immigrants were the only available workforce, and suddenly employers needed to pay legal minimum wage (out higher) and comply with OSHA and all kinds of regulations. It was DEVASTATING to the Arizona economy.
Produce rotted on the vine in farms. Restaurants and nail salons and all kinds of small businesses shut down. Livestock went unslaughtered and eventually unfed, dying haphazardly and contaminating water sources, resulting in ruinous fines to farm owners.
Meanwhile wages for regular workers went way up and employers stopped hiring. There was an influx of workers from neighboring states, it wasn't a lack of supply. It was simply an unwillingness to pay market rates for legal workers.
Within one year the same Republicans hastily reversed their laws and went back to "normal". No more mandatory e-verify in Arizona.
There could not have been a starker demonstration of how necessary it is for the Arizona economy to not only have a supply of migrant labor but also specifically UNDOCUMENTED EASILY-EXPLOITABLE migrant labor. Republicans realized en masse that they needed their workers to be undocumented so that they can be exploited. All hate towards undocumented workers these days is purely performative, a way to ensure they remain hated and thus denied rights. If the populace were to stay seeing them as human and worthy of legal protection, they might become unexploitable. That's disaster for capitalists.
posted by MiraK at 10:31 AM on June 2 [9 favorites]
Response by poster: As much as these ruminations on immigration and its effects are interesting and valuable, I'm wondering if anyone has any clear, simple, fact-driven articles or research papers that refute "immigrants are what is wrong with housing / labour" ideas that I can link to.
There's no shortage of discussion of these issues on the Internet, and I can also speak cogently on most of these topics, but I'm looking for authoritative, third-party sources I can link to.
posted by Shepherd at 11:53 AM on June 2 [2 favorites]
There's no shortage of discussion of these issues on the Internet, and I can also speak cogently on most of these topics, but I'm looking for authoritative, third-party sources I can link to.
posted by Shepherd at 11:53 AM on June 2 [2 favorites]
Best answer: Scapegoating Immigrants Distracts From the Root of Our Problems - Chronic Underinvestment by Canadian Business
The Dirty Secret of the Housing Crisis? Homeowners Like High Prices
posted by the primroses were over at 1:31 PM on June 2 [1 favorite]
The Dirty Secret of the Housing Crisis? Homeowners Like High Prices
posted by the primroses were over at 1:31 PM on June 2 [1 favorite]
Best answer: Pretty much every business association WANTS immigrants, especially those in the construction trades--trades that are otherwise as right-wing/blue collar/conservative as possible. Here is one for example.
Even the Fraser Institute isn't against immigrants (providing they're the right kind of immigrants) and has suggestions for how the government can "improve the prospects of permanent immigrants and their contributions to the Canadian economy."
What that means is the people shouting those "common right-wing screeds" doing so for conservative economic reasons, they're doing it for racist, anti-immigrant reasons. Pointing that out to them, however is a challenge that I wouldn't necessarily want to take on.
posted by sardonyx at 2:02 PM on June 2
Even the Fraser Institute isn't against immigrants (providing they're the right kind of immigrants) and has suggestions for how the government can "improve the prospects of permanent immigrants and their contributions to the Canadian economy."
What that means is the people shouting those "common right-wing screeds" doing so for conservative economic reasons, they're doing it for racist, anti-immigrant reasons. Pointing that out to them, however is a challenge that I wouldn't necessarily want to take on.
posted by sardonyx at 2:02 PM on June 2
Missed the edit window. It should be What that means is the people shouting those "common right-wing screeds" aren't doing so for conservative economic reasons....
posted by sardonyx at 2:04 PM on June 2
posted by sardonyx at 2:04 PM on June 2
Best answer: The media is blaming immigrants for the housing crisis. They’re wrong
Stopping immigration won’t fix Canada’s housing crisis.
Why the housing crisis is not an immigration problem
Investors, not immigrants responsible for fewer homes and higher rent
posted by Freelance Demiurge at 10:29 PM on June 2
Stopping immigration won’t fix Canada’s housing crisis.
Why the housing crisis is not an immigration problem
Investors, not immigrants responsible for fewer homes and higher rent
posted by Freelance Demiurge at 10:29 PM on June 2
Response by poster: Best answers don't mean only answers, keep 'em comin if you find more, folks
posted by Shepherd at 1:19 PM on June 3 [2 favorites]
posted by Shepherd at 1:19 PM on June 3 [2 favorites]
Best answer: The Truth About Immigration: Why Successful Societies Welcome Newcomers is a book by Zeke Hernandez that just released. So I haven't read the book yet. However, Zeke is a colleague of mine whose academic research is about immigration, and I know that this book is a summary of decades of research of his (and many others).
posted by bove at 9:17 AM on June 5
posted by bove at 9:17 AM on June 5
Response by poster: (I'm just popping back in to say I bought the book bove recommends above and it is really good!)
posted by Shepherd at 2:22 PM on August 29
posted by Shepherd at 2:22 PM on August 29
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Even fact-based articles can yield different spins, though. This article (a bit outdated now, from 2014), courtesy of the Migration Observatory, gives a good example of how two separate studies which offer similar economic conclusions -- that higher levels of net migration lead to higher GDP per capita and lower net debt as a share of GDP ie. greater wealth -- can nonetheless be yoked to entirely different political agendas (ie. migrants ruin everything, vs. migrants are good for growth): Hard Evidence: are migrants good for the economy?
This one is more outrightly argumentative, and points the finger at immigration rhetoric, rather than immigrants: Immigration rhetoric is a threat to Britain’s long-term growth
Struggling to think of more recent, "layperson-friendly" op-ed type essays, however. I'll be watching this thread with interest.
posted by idlethink at 4:59 AM on June 2 [1 favorite]