I admire your willingness to be open minded and ask the question, but I've asked the question in the past, and I've never gotten a straight answer. Instead I get some pat pre-package talking points, and if I dig deeper I get a confusion of ideas. And that's because the people opposed to immigration tend to be motivated by racism, but they don't want to say that, so they every other imaginable thing. It's simply impossible to have an honest conversation with someone, if they aren't willing to be honest about why they favor a particular policy.
Isn't self-interest enough of an explanation? Mass-immigration is unlikely to be a short term benefit to the host country, particularly to low skill workers in that country. Why should they oppose their own self interest?
(I'm personally a very pro-immigration American, so I'm talking about this to understand the debate not to advance any particular objective.)
Self-interest is a valid explanation. And the question you pose is a very valid statement. I am sure that immigration poses problems when it is at the scale of modern society. Not everyone shares the same values and beliefs but the optimist in me is the of the thinking that humanity is no longer the tribal, "us vs them", neanderthal who only sticks to persons who visually look like them. The United States of America was built on this idea and it thrives today.
What I've noticed is that this issue of different-ness, seems only to surface when money or resources are scarce. The global rich are getting richer and richer, but counter-intuitively, this resource hoarding is not visible to the masses, who see a huge influx of new "different" people. These people will "potentially" take their jobs and their benefits, and then they "potentially" will bomb their buildings and rape their daughters and wives, because they are the boogeyman.
What they don't see is that they are competing with those people not because those people are different, but because the people on top have figured out how to take everything and not share.
> What they don't see is that they are competing with those people not because those people are different, but because the people on top have figured out how to take everything and not share.
It is not either or. Why are there all of the sudden a lot of "different" people around, hmm strange? Is that correlated with wealth redistribution? Is there a causal relationship, or are they completely orthogonal phenomena that those who are wealthy just use to distract the masses?
I agree with wealth disparity, but I am hesitant to buy the "racism" slant here (which I think I detect. i.e. people who don't want immigrant just hate people with a different skin).
Countries and cultures still exist. Scots are different than Englishmen. They almost voted to leave as well. We don't and probably will never live as a one universal, global, happy country, all citizens of the earth, singing peace songs together, dreaming of exploring space and so on. Now, I wish it was that. Sort of a world wide cataclim or aliens invading, I don't see that happening. People have been and will be tribal. It is a pretty well ingrained instict. And people will want to preserve their tribe's identity, culture, language and so on. Perhaps many see immigrants eroding that. That doesn't have to be tied to skin color. Painting it as racism discredits and that make your argument a bit too superficial.
Even if we are to fix ethnic crime, which I doubt we would:
Why should I like the large influx of people of different culture into my country? After all, they take my voting power in the country.
Maybe I would be content with 0,1% per year influx, but 1% per year is far into the pain zone. That's the amount of people who will try to influence culture, influence decisions and policies. And I was content with whatever we already have, thank you. I would much prefer to live in Russia than in Uzbekistan. Why let people in who would reproduce culture and politics and policy of Uzbekistan here? It's less viable, otherwise they won't desire to leave their homes for better life abroad.
When you let significant minorities in the country, of course they would want to have their say. Who won't? But this means that my voting power dwindles.
Now to the specific. The country in question is Russia and mass immigrants mostly come from Ukraine, Caucasus and Central Asia.
People from Ukraine, and fellow Russians coming home, I have no reservations against. They're as good cultural fit as anybody already in the country. I'll make the process smoother if I could.
People from Caucasus, they're often poor cultural fit. They're first to bend laws, they're sometimes violent, they form diasporas faciliating ethnic crime and corruption. Will definitely have at least visa regime introduced with their countries, to only let people in either as tourists or on definite work/enterpreneur visas.
People from Central Asia. Those are poor countries, and less than 25 years ago they participated in ethnic cleansings against any non-title nations in their own newly-born nationalistic republics. Drove millions of Russians, Ukrainians, Germans, Tatars, Koreans etc as refugees out. Why should we turn blind eye on this? Never forget I'd say. But instead policy makers can't even implement visa regime with those countries.
Many of them are also islamic, poor cultural fit, not speaking Russian, praising "traditional values". Who would like neighbours like that? What do they have to offset that?
They also avoid paying taxes, and business employing them also avoids paying taxes by never reporting people they employ. They siphon tens of billions dollars from our economy to their countries. What's there to love?
Have to repeat again that I have no obligations whatsoever to let them in. "Default Deny" sounds just right. After all, that's exactly what I'm getting WRT entering US or EU or UK.
Rather than talking about "culture fit" it's more helpful to be specific about what behaviors are causing problems. The complaints you made sound like a good reason to improve enforcement of various laws and tax collection. If a person commits a crime, the criminal should be punished; the criminal's neighbor need not be exiled.
Regarding culture fit: They group on ethnic and clan basis.
Makes easy for them to have unofficial unemployment and avoid paying taxes; makes easy for them to avoid speaking Russian, avoid blending in country's culture, even avoiding punishment for crimes. They "boil in their own pot" - as if they're still a solid fragment of country they're from. In any conflict their back their own on clan basis, you can see how this skewed against native Russians who don't have crowd to back them up.
It's not in Russian culture already. Russians are pretty atomized, families and official organization units (bureaucracy) is our thing.
Unfortunately, we have this flawed law enforcement system and are stuck with it.
It can more or less deal with Russian criminals (atomized and marginal) but immigrants' diasporas poke holes in it.
I'm afraid it's easier to fix immigration than law enforcement. Unfortunately, I have zero effect on either.
First of all, they're (Bashkirs, Tatars) mostly "culturally muslim" - as in, while having preference for mosques and green color, they, en masse, drink wine; have no objections against drawings; equal rights, education and employment for women. Not trying to stone people dead. Good culture fit. People from Central Asia - another kind of muslim. Much less desired if you ask me.
Second, if we have something, doesn't imply we want more of it. I'm quite content with muslim staying minority.
First of all, nobody asked me. I feel excluded from decisions on this policy and you can see how this amplifies my hostility to it.
Because even if we have a debate on mass immigration and I lose every argument, I'm still entitled to have my vote weighted. Is it my country or whose it is?
By default I don't owe people of other countries anything. It's our common right to let them in; but it's also our common right to kindly ask them to stay outside.
That's the basic outline, and I'll try and explain my unique reservations in another comment.
UPD to the sibling comment:
It's not that I have any obligations to not be a racist.
Maybe I am. Maybe I am not. Maybe I'm racist on even days and not racist on odd.
I my country I have rights to be whatever pleases me.
On other hand, if you want me to not be a racist, or at least not act as racist, you have to tell me what's in it for me.
