13 Comments

Humans have a tribal fear of The Other, but this is reptile-brain stuff. I am a very old hermit and do not know any of these encouraging younsters personally. I wish I did. I started out radical and got more so with advancing age. One of the fastest shifts in public opinion in my lifetime happened when more and more gays felt free to come out of the closet and people realized, hey, that's my neighbor... or my cousin...not so scary. And we went from even Obama being against same-sex marriage to Obergefell being the law of the land very quickly. Maybe young people just not having it with being afraid of immigrants will produce a similar change.

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Without strong domestic demand there is no growing economy, and domestic demand is impossible to maintain without growing population. The problem is not in what seniors think and say, the problem is in explaining how many new Americans of certain age you guys need and what you can do to assimilate them into your own culture. Higher demand in high end products domestically means more citizens with higher income but urbanizing economy is all about shrinking population, so you probably should be solving a multi faceted problem of a) reforming immigration policy towards bringing in more educated/skilled ones - it is where I totally agree with you , and b) assimilating them into domestic culture/norms - because xenophobia is a real thing, you know, and c) tell your fellow Americans about your plans in simple way.

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I am very wary of polls as I think they are very biased. One thing that doesn’t seem to be acknowledged is the fact that more immigrants into our country equals more jobs filled. Money paid into our system reduces our debt and increases money into our government.

The problem with the drug hustlers is almost all of the drugs coming in are from whites going into Mexico and bringing them back.

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Stop the third world immigration and refugee invasion!

Support a complete moratorium on all third world immigration and refugees!

Prosecute the Cheap Labor Lobby wanting to flood the USA with third world legal immigration to drive down wages!

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I am a conservative - might as well get that out up front. This article intentionally blurs the distinction between legal and illegal immigration, and as such, is severely wanting.

There is no one in my circle of friends, acquaintances, "pen pals", etc. who is anti-immigrant. None. To state that this is a widespread attitude among conservatives, in my view, is completely wrong. All of us, however, are VERY anti the current situation where the Asylum system is being abused, human and drug smugglers are becoming Billionaires, unscrupulous employers can treat illegal immigrant worker horribly with no repercussions, and venal political operatives work at enticing illegals to the US as their ticket to permanent power.

The fact that the dipshits in Washington - including all 535 in Congress - have zero interest in creating a regulated guest worker program (to include putting the CEOs of companies hiring illegals in jail) and therefore being able to target the human and drug smugglers with incredibly harsh law enforcement focus tells me all that I need to know. There is huge money in the current system. Congress is 100% bought and paid for, and will not bite the hands of their owners.

I am never going to agree that anything resembling the current system is acceptable, so it appears that the only way to change it is to get rid of the current Congress. Term Limits for all. At least it would raise the cost to the owners of Congressmen, in that they'd have to buy a whole new bunch regularly.

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They conflate legal and illegal.immigration purposefully, to make " other side" seem xenophobic, etc

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Invest in our future workforce. Immigrants want to learn, work and pay taxes. Require qualified arrivals to call in n complete a monthly survey, work, earn or educate and pay taxes. In 3 years, if successful compliance they can apply for citizenship. Problem people are deported. Open registration offices in every country and 5 Mexican cities 100 miles south of the us boarder.

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I keep reading people saying we need more workers because we have a labor shortage that should be filled with immigrants. But if we have a labor shortage why haven't real wages continued to rise? This figure shows real wage trneds for HS dropouts and grads since 2000. There was a declining trend in the late 2000's and early 2010's because of a weakening economy. After 2014 a rising trend began that was associated with falling unemployment as unemplyment fell to 3-4% levels in the late teens we started to hear about labor shortage. Workers at the bottom finally began to see wages rise above where they had been in the 1970's. It is now five years later, we still are talking about labor shortages, employers have increased their sales and profits in real terms, yet wages are the same as they were at the end of the last decade. Had the trend continued wages would be a couple dollars higher than the are now. Low unemployment means workers can pick and choose where to work. I note the local Chik filA is fully staffed and has excellent service, but they are paying $2-3 over what most fast food places offer, so it's no surprise they can hire and keep good people.

Yes there are help wanted signs all over the place, yet employers are still expecting people to work for peanuts as they did for forty years before the pandemic. The pandemic showed workers at the bottom that they had been getting ripped off by employers for decades. Because so many older workers were staying home to avoid infection. those still working saw huge pay increases. Workers were quitting one place for another to get higher wages and then getting hired back by their old employer for still more. So, after making $14 in fast food as a marginal worker in 2021, are you going to be eager to make $12 now? Of course, employers would like to bring in immigrants willing to work for peanuts. But why should Americans who would be competing with them support this?

https://mikebert.neocities.org/Wages%202000-24.gif

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Give immigrants who enter the USA legally working papers as soon as they arrive. Why should taxpayers foot the bill for their lodging and food when all they want to do is get a job and begin working on the American Dream. Where is our National Job Relocation Service listing website with all the opening labor needs in this country for immigrants. Most of these people are very smart. Have them select a job and bus them to the areas that need the labor. To get access they need to register themselves and their skills in their home country. Let's let in the most qualified honest decent people into our country. Kamala Harris has totally failed on figuring this out and generating the support necessary to solve the immigration problem. No better than Pence and Covid management.

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I think that a lot of folks feel that the US is, to a large degree, as extension of European culture and feel that that culture is being diluted by recent immigration trends. Also, in my opinion, no " thinking person " wants to allow in " just anyone" to allevjate demographic pressures. I was born in Portugal, for what it's worth!

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Nobody likes chaos. The border is chaos. Labeling it "anti-immigrant" reveals your agenda.

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Folks in the US might be interested that Australia too has marked demographic trends that make grim reading for conservatives. Amongst under 43s support from the Greens is greater than for conservatives. More tellingly there is no sign that Generation X (43-58) are growing more conservative as they age. If this holds true in the US attitudes towards immigration may change quicker than expected.

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Is it possible to redo the graph by age cohort/Generation?

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