We are afraid of immigration because there is so few housing that bringing people will just add to the pressure and make rents even more ridiculously expensive . Also, in my country (Portugal), these workers accept working for less and live in miserable conditions (overcrowded homes, tents outside of Lisbon, etc), making it worse for everyone else, causing an exodus of qualified people and a flood of “tourism workers” because salaries just not increase when there are people accepting to work for less.
Meanwhile our public services are collapsing left and right because qualified people just leave and there are so many new people trying to access public healthcare etc.
This is not the black and white immigration is good/bad you are making it out to be .
I’m from Portugal also and it’s not immigration that is driving high rent prices. That’s a disingenuous position. Golden visas and Airbnb have contributed MUCH more to this as well as the liberalization of rents coupled with low new housing projects.
The workers that accept low salaries are mostly seasonal workers and they don’t compete with locals for decent housing and if you were honest you would mention that most of the time you have plenty of them living in the same space. Again, not occupying a lot of the housing destined for locals. I don’t see locals eager to go live in Odemira in the houses occupied by seasonal workers or in Martim Moniz in degraded housing.
Also from Portugal and did you really just say that the problem with immigration is that they get exploited and then everyone ELSE suffers?
I mean i think you see what’s wrong with that.
Also without immigrants Portugal would be completely fucked because all the young people are leaving the country for better jobs in Europe. Someone needs to pick up the slack otherwise it’s just old people and a couple of children.
Also Portugal has a ton of houses. We are above average in houses per capita iirc. We have a problem with salaries and an over dependence on tourism.
Imagine claiming your issue isn’t with immigrants then immediately listing all the reasons immigrants are to blame for the actions of the capitalists that exploit them, and you, and the government that allows it… 🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️
This is not the black and white immigration is good/bad you are making it out to be .
no, it’s just you who is wilfully ignorant. And afraid. Because of your wilful ignorance.
Just to be clear, you’re arguing that if capitalism didn’t exist in Europe, we would be building twice as many buildings per year? This is the dumbest take I’ve read today, and I accidentally landed on r/Politics this morning.
Dunno about twice as much but the problem isn’t housing (Portugal has a shit ton of houses). The problem is affordable housing and yes capitalism is very much to blame here.
Not in a “free market = bad” that I’m very much for in many situations but simply because it’s not profitable to build affordable housing. A vast percentage of the housing built in Portugal is for upper middle class, so everyone below that (which in Portugal is a shit ton of people) you are fucked. And even if you lived in a decent house prices have skyrocketed so much that you get kicked out if they can do that.
Capitalism by design is very much against public housing and you don’t even need to imagine how the situation would be if you had that. You can just look at Vienna and see how they are doing in that regard (spoiler: pretty fucking well compared to the rest of Europe/world).
I’m not against immigration but it’s no solution. You’re in Europe. You’re trying to replace a workforce that has free education, in a place with high quality education infrastructure, therefore most of them have bachelors and probably at least one or more masters degrees, with essentially illiterate (and i mean this with all due respect) people from a completely different culture who are not prepared to do anything remotely useful for at least 10 years, probably more.
I’ve literally had migrant refugees from Lebanon, Somalia, Eritrea, Morocco and such as flatmates in Brussels. Some of them are my close friends. They are not remotely prepared to take over 90% of European jobs. You either need social skills, labor skills, language skills or technical skills which they simply do not have. If i was in their shoes, it would take me decades to catch up to how Europeans work.
The migrants come here for what ? Uber eats ? How are they supposed to support themselves ? With government integration money we don’t have available ? But say we figure it out and they live and then they will have kids one day. Those kids will behave exactly like the local population. They will go to University, they will be highly qualified, they will be socially adapted to the place, culture and language and, they will also not have kids, just like the locals. So which problem did these migrants solve then ?
So the issue here isn’t that we lack people in Europe. It’s that our economic doctrine is deficient. We need to change the doctrine, not the people. Immigration will not solve this problem, it will perpetuate it. Young people not having kids is an economic issue that will still happen whether you have a European young person there or a Iraqi young person there. You can’t simply transplant a young couple from a country with very high birth rates in a totally different part of the world, subjected to an entirely different set of circumstances and expect them to be the same in Europe. That’s not how this works.
with essentially illiterate (and i mean this with all due respect) people from a completely different culture who are not prepared to do anything remotely useful for at least 10 years, probably more.
You’re talking shit. Immigrants make up 20% of the NHS in the UK, and loads also work in the care sector, those are vital jobs and you have to be literate. Most immigrants I’ve met speak better English than the local toe rags.
Those kids will behave exactly like the local population. They will go to University, they will be highly qualified, they will be socially adapted to the place, culture and language and, they will also not have kids, just like the local. So which problem did these migrants solve then ?
You are deliberately talking over them. They’re clearly not claiming that all migrants are illiterate or uneducated or ill-prepared for work in Europe. They’re arguing that many are, and those migrants exacerbate our problems. They certainly don’t solve them.
It depends on the nation. The UN collects data. Afghanistan is 62.7% illiterate, for example. Further, Almost all refugees to Denmark have zero Danish language reading and writing skills. They must learn all of these. Slightly more (but shockingly few) have any English reading and writing skills.
Surely it isn’t surprising to you that refugees have limited European language skills?
Aren’t western countries have strict education requirements before they would even consider permanent residency applications? Or are you talking about refugees, which imo shouldn’t be counted as a way to replenish aging workforce because the governments let them in for humanitarian reason?
essentially illiterate (and i mean this with all due respect) people from a completely different culture who are not prepared to do anything remotely useful for at least 10 years, probably more.
saying with all due respect doesn’t make your bullshit racist essay any less racist, racist.
How is this racist? If I move to, say, Azerbaijan, I’m just as lost as them. I know fuck all about the language, can’t even read the alphabet they have and don’t know shit about the culture. And we share skincolours.
I have a PhD, but I’m basically useless in Azerbaijan for anything but menial labour, explained slowly with lots of gestures.
Culture isn’t nearly that important, and learning the language, or just speaking English, is a minor obstacle all things considered. If you move somewhere, you will get a language teacher.
What the hell are you talking about? Culture is hugely important, if you move somewhere that fundamentally has issue with you… might might be outright killed.
Countries don’t all necessarily speak English. I’m visiting Mexico right now… it’s actually quite hard at times to find English speakers. The police I’ve interacted with here… no English. Border crossing… very limited English. Acting like English is something special is very short sighted.
Assuming that all immigrants or refugees will just have access to language tutoring is absurd. That’s typically an expensive cost. One that many people simply cannot afford.
If you won’t even acknowledge that some people need help to learn to read, does that mean you want to eliminate literacy support for refugees? Isn’t that far more racist than just accepting reality? I believe this is what we call horseshoe politics at work. The tendency for the loudest “anti-racists” in the room to be the absolute worst racists.
So what I hear you’re saying is that education is the solution.
We could educate immigrants, which will take some time.
We could also educate the Europeans so they don’t take the jobs that requires shorter educations.
Either way we will need the immigrants to solve the current demand.
The problem is that the same thing was tried in the 1970s and it didn’t turn out well when the demand for low skill workers decreased again.
We already know that the demand will drop again in 20-30 years, so we should already now focus on educating the immigrants, so they can function in society after the low skill jobs are gone.
Another thing is that it’s not like we can stop immigration. The climate changes will result in massive immigration whether we “allow” it or not.
They’re not going to sit and die outside imaginary lines on the ground.
IMO, the only realistic option is to accept and start educating immigrants.
Only 30% of people in Europe have bachelors degrees, about the same as the u.s. Thats higher than in developing countries, say India at 8%, but a majority of people in both countries don’t have degrees.
It’s a common misconception by those with tertiary education in the first world that everyone else has tertiary education because they only talk to people in their social class with tertiary education.
Many comments below (->above?) about housing. But it seems to me, the problem in much of Europe is that many old people hang on to large half-empty family houses, so over 65s are occupying a lot more space than under 15s (although the latter have more energy, need space to play …). It’s a pity they blame immigrants for this.
And everyone is afraid of immigration. It’s bizarre.
and investing in the young
Fuck you I got mine
We are afraid of immigration because there is so few housing that bringing people will just add to the pressure and make rents even more ridiculously expensive . Also, in my country (Portugal), these workers accept working for less and live in miserable conditions (overcrowded homes, tents outside of Lisbon, etc), making it worse for everyone else, causing an exodus of qualified people and a flood of “tourism workers” because salaries just not increase when there are people accepting to work for less.
Meanwhile our public services are collapsing left and right because qualified people just leave and there are so many new people trying to access public healthcare etc.
This is not the black and white immigration is good/bad you are making it out to be .
I’m from Portugal also and it’s not immigration that is driving high rent prices. That’s a disingenuous position. Golden visas and Airbnb have contributed MUCH more to this as well as the liberalization of rents coupled with low new housing projects.
The workers that accept low salaries are mostly seasonal workers and they don’t compete with locals for decent housing and if you were honest you would mention that most of the time you have plenty of them living in the same space. Again, not occupying a lot of the housing destined for locals. I don’t see locals eager to go live in Odemira in the houses occupied by seasonal workers or in Martim Moniz in degraded housing.
Also from Portugal and did you really just say that the problem with immigration is that they get exploited and then everyone ELSE suffers?
I mean i think you see what’s wrong with that.
Also without immigrants Portugal would be completely fucked because all the young people are leaving the country for better jobs in Europe. Someone needs to pick up the slack otherwise it’s just old people and a couple of children.
Also Portugal has a ton of houses. We are above average in houses per capita iirc. We have a problem with salaries and an over dependence on tourism.
He’s just someone trying to provide a false narrative to justify his racism.
Imagine claiming your issue isn’t with immigrants then immediately listing all the reasons immigrants are to blame for the actions of the capitalists that exploit them, and you, and the government that allows it… 🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️
no, it’s just you who is wilfully ignorant. And afraid. Because of your wilful ignorance.
Imagine not addressing any of the points, and instead just accusing someone of being wilfully ignorant.
How ignorant
Just to be clear, you’re arguing that if capitalism didn’t exist in Europe, we would be building twice as many buildings per year? This is the dumbest take I’ve read today, and I accidentally landed on r/Politics this morning.
Dunno about twice as much but the problem isn’t housing (Portugal has a shit ton of houses). The problem is affordable housing and yes capitalism is very much to blame here.
Not in a “free market = bad” that I’m very much for in many situations but simply because it’s not profitable to build affordable housing. A vast percentage of the housing built in Portugal is for upper middle class, so everyone below that (which in Portugal is a shit ton of people) you are fucked. And even if you lived in a decent house prices have skyrocketed so much that you get kicked out if they can do that.
Capitalism by design is very much against public housing and you don’t even need to imagine how the situation would be if you had that. You can just look at Vienna and see how they are doing in that regard (spoiler: pretty fucking well compared to the rest of Europe/world).
I’m not against immigration but it’s no solution. You’re in Europe. You’re trying to replace a workforce that has free education, in a place with high quality education infrastructure, therefore most of them have bachelors and probably at least one or more masters degrees, with essentially illiterate (and i mean this with all due respect) people from a completely different culture who are not prepared to do anything remotely useful for at least 10 years, probably more.
I’ve literally had migrant refugees from Lebanon, Somalia, Eritrea, Morocco and such as flatmates in Brussels. Some of them are my close friends. They are not remotely prepared to take over 90% of European jobs. You either need social skills, labor skills, language skills or technical skills which they simply do not have. If i was in their shoes, it would take me decades to catch up to how Europeans work.
The migrants come here for what ? Uber eats ? How are they supposed to support themselves ? With government integration money we don’t have available ? But say we figure it out and they live and then they will have kids one day. Those kids will behave exactly like the local population. They will go to University, they will be highly qualified, they will be socially adapted to the place, culture and language and, they will also not have kids, just like the locals. So which problem did these migrants solve then ?
So the issue here isn’t that we lack people in Europe. It’s that our economic doctrine is deficient. We need to change the doctrine, not the people. Immigration will not solve this problem, it will perpetuate it. Young people not having kids is an economic issue that will still happen whether you have a European young person there or a Iraqi young person there. You can’t simply transplant a young couple from a country with very high birth rates in a totally different part of the world, subjected to an entirely different set of circumstances and expect them to be the same in Europe. That’s not how this works.
You’re talking shit. Immigrants make up 20% of the NHS in the UK, and loads also work in the care sector, those are vital jobs and you have to be literate. Most immigrants I’ve met speak better English than the local toe rags.
The lack of young workers?
You are deliberately talking over them. They’re clearly not claiming that all migrants are illiterate or uneducated or ill-prepared for work in Europe. They’re arguing that many are, and those migrants exacerbate our problems. They certainly don’t solve them.
Define many. What percentage are illiterate?
It depends on the nation. The UN collects data. Afghanistan is 62.7% illiterate, for example. Further, Almost all refugees to Denmark have zero Danish language reading and writing skills. They must learn all of these. Slightly more (but shockingly few) have any English reading and writing skills.
Surely it isn’t surprising to you that refugees have limited European language skills?
Refugees != immigrants
Refugees are indeed immigrants.
refugee /ˌrɛfjʊˈdʒiː/ noun
Emigrating is a choice. Fleeing because you helped translate is not.
Aren’t western countries have strict education requirements before they would even consider permanent residency applications? Or are you talking about refugees, which imo shouldn’t be counted as a way to replenish aging workforce because the governments let them in for humanitarian reason?
saying with all due respect doesn’t make your bullshit racist essay any less racist, racist.
How is this racist? If I move to, say, Azerbaijan, I’m just as lost as them. I know fuck all about the language, can’t even read the alphabet they have and don’t know shit about the culture. And we share skincolours.
I have a PhD, but I’m basically useless in Azerbaijan for anything but menial labour, explained slowly with lots of gestures.
Culture isn’t nearly that important, and learning the language, or just speaking English, is a minor obstacle all things considered. If you move somewhere, you will get a language teacher.
What the hell are you talking about? Culture is hugely important, if you move somewhere that fundamentally has issue with you… might might be outright killed.
Countries don’t all necessarily speak English. I’m visiting Mexico right now… it’s actually quite hard at times to find English speakers. The police I’ve interacted with here… no English. Border crossing… very limited English. Acting like English is something special is very short sighted.
Assuming that all immigrants or refugees will just have access to language tutoring is absurd. That’s typically an expensive cost. One that many people simply cannot afford.
Well, then maybe it’s different In the Americas, I don’t know, but you mentioned an European country.
I live in Europe, been around various places in Europe. I’m an immigrant myself. It’s not nearly as bad as you might think.
And yes, obviously racism and xenophobia is a problem, but integrating into the culture won’t fix that.
If you won’t even acknowledge that some people need help to learn to read, does that mean you want to eliminate literacy support for refugees? Isn’t that far more racist than just accepting reality? I believe this is what we call horseshoe politics at work. The tendency for the loudest “anti-racists” in the room to be the absolute worst racists.
So what I hear you’re saying is that education is the solution.
We could educate immigrants, which will take some time. We could also educate the Europeans so they don’t take the jobs that requires shorter educations. Either way we will need the immigrants to solve the current demand.
The problem is that the same thing was tried in the 1970s and it didn’t turn out well when the demand for low skill workers decreased again. We already know that the demand will drop again in 20-30 years, so we should already now focus on educating the immigrants, so they can function in society after the low skill jobs are gone.
Another thing is that it’s not like we can stop immigration. The climate changes will result in massive immigration whether we “allow” it or not. They’re not going to sit and die outside imaginary lines on the ground.
IMO, the only realistic option is to accept and start educating immigrants.
Only 30% of people in Europe have bachelors degrees, about the same as the u.s. Thats higher than in developing countries, say India at 8%, but a majority of people in both countries don’t have degrees.
It’s a common misconception by those with tertiary education in the first world that everyone else has tertiary education because they only talk to people in their social class with tertiary education.
Not when you consider that so many are rather old and afraid of change (something which correlates with age).
Many comments below (->above?) about housing. But it seems to me, the problem in much of Europe is that many old people hang on to large half-empty family houses, so over 65s are occupying a lot more space than under 15s (although the latter have more energy, need space to play …). It’s a pity they blame immigrants for this.
Just wait until central/north africa becomes unlivable… at least it will probably solve our age distribution issue…