Muslims on refugee boat throw Christians overboard for being non-Muslims

[Famous Mortimer]

Besides, at least in Europe free immigration would lead to massive civil unrest and possibly civil war, which would kill even more. You can not have free immigration into societies where the whole nation is ethnically defined without destabilizing them and most of the non-American world is ethnically defined. Mass migration is not a viable solution to population growth.

Nah. In the long term, societies will adapt. Sure there will be a lot of xenophobia and stupid "culture wars" in the meantime, but eventually even the most backward people will have to accept the fact that they live in a multicultural society, and there's nothing they can do to change that.

Re:politicus 1) There might be riots or even more incidents of terrorism, but I doubt anything that could be called a civil war is even possible in Western Europe at this point. 2) the argument sounds a little bit like "well, racists will try to kill immigrants so I guess we just have to bend to the will of those racists"

The main reason large scale immigration is harmful, besides weird religious views of some immigrants, is because it brings down wages.

re:Antonio V who are the backward people you're talking about? Local xenophobes or fundamentalist immigrants? Given the last decade, I really doubt the ability or will of Europe to clamp down on fundamentalist Islam as an ideology. The most they do is go after specific people after there's already been an attack.

[Famous Mortimer]

Opposing illegal immigration but supporting unlimited legal immigration frankly seems bizarre to me. I get it on some level, one is legal and the other is not. But still, it would be like calling the cops on a neighbor who smokes weed. Who cares about the law that much?

Massive legal immigration is just as harmful, if not more harmful than illegal immigration economically.

We do not have enough jobs in the country to provide a living for the people born here. It's crazy to import a bunch of people who will work for less, who will bring wages down, who generally tend to have a bunch of children and need to go on welfare because of it.

At least with illegal immigration (which I'm still against), the people aren't drawing welfare and they are generally doing "jobs Americans don't want to do" but with legal immigrants, they mostly go into customer service fields that would otherwise be forced to go with American born applicants and pay more.

If you oppose businesses using scab workers, you should really oppose immigration as well. Yes, I am comparing immigrant workers to scabs but I don't think scabs are bad people.  It's the employers who are bad people.

[Famous Mortimer]

Opposing illegal immigration but supporting unlimited legal immigration frankly seems bizarre to me. I get it on some level, one is legal and the other is not. But still, it would be like calling the cops on a neighbor who smokes weed. Who cares about the law that much?

Massive legal immigration is just as harmful, if not more harmful than illegal immigration economically.

We do not have enough jobs in the country to provide a living for the people born here. It's crazy to import a bunch of people who will work for less, who will bring wages down, who generally tend to have a bunch of children and need to go on welfare because of it.

At least with illegal immigration (which I'm still against), the people aren't drawing welfare and they are generally doing "jobs Americans don't want to do" but with legal immigrants, they mostly go into customer service fields that would otherwise be forced to go with American born applicants and pay more.

If you oppose businesses using scab workers, you should really oppose immigration as well. Yes, I am comparing immigrant workers to scabs but I don't think scabs are bad people.  It's the employers who are bad people.

Are you economically illiterate? You're from New York and you're making the claim that immigrants engender economic misery for the average person: the economic basis of New York is provided by immigrants, who create small businesses, provide needed human capital to firms and have children, who often become academic or private sector researchers that allow for economic growth. Immigration has allowed the American economy to be one of the most dynamic economies in the world.

The New York economy is not set up very well and should not be a model for anyone.

Immigrants come here and set up small businesses which can barely afford to stay afloat  and employ their family members and maybe a few other immigrants with sub-minimum wage jobs. All while charging $5 a gallon for milk to everyone else (immigrants and non-immigrants included).

[Famous Mortimer]

If you support unlimited immigration to the US, there are only two realistic options:

1. Either you support a permanent underclass of sub-living wage workers.

2. You support giving a guaranteed income to foreign born workers who can't find a job because a) immigrant owned business can't afford to pay $15 an hour b) Chains aren't going to pay $15 to people who can't speak English

If you support option 2, why wouldn't the vast majority of people in third world seek to move to America. How would we afford to provide a guaranteed income to basically every poor Latin American? What becomes of the few who remain in depopulated Latin America?
 

[Famous Mortimer]

If you support unlimited immigration to the US, there are only two realistic options:

1. Either you support a permanent underclass of sub-living wage workers.

2. You support giving a guaranteed income to foreign born workers who can't find a job because a) immigrant owned business can't afford to pay $15 an hour b) Chains aren't going to pay $15 to people who can't speak English

If you support option 2, why wouldn't the vast majority of people in third world seek to move to America. How would we afford to provide a guaranteed income to basically every poor Latin American? What becomes of the few who remain in depopulated Latin America?
 

Your assumption is utterly wrong. If you don't think immigrants would join labor unions or demand higher wages, you clearly don't understand Latin America. If you think that people in Latin America are a mooching horde, you clearly don't understand Latin America. There's no evidence to suggest that we'd be flooded with immigrants if we allowed for unlimited immigration. Certainly, more immigrants would come to the US than without unlimited immigration but you're reducing the motivations of immigrants to maximizing income, which is not really a priority.

There was a long period in which nearly unlimited numbers of Mexicans could migrate to the US legally. Did they stay in the US? No, the majority of these migrants came back and forth across the border in response to economic changes. Even without economic fluctuations, migrants would oscillate from the US to Mexico because their families remain in Mexico. This changed once we cracked down on migrant flows and militarized the border.

"but you're reducing the motivations of immigrants to maximizing income, which is not really a priority. "

No, it is the main priority.

"the majority of these migrants came back and forth across the border in response to economic changes"

As you admit a paragraph later yourself.

[Famous Mortimer]

and if immigrants under an open immigration system form unions, it doesn't matter.

They can demand higher wages from their immigrant employers but 1) it's usually their family members so they won't 2) their employers can't afford to pay and will just go out of business, as I said before.

and unions will never gain traction with chains like WalMart as long as their is a constant stream of low skilled non-English speakers coming in who are desperate for work, too desperate to risk their tenuous employment on forming a union.

[Famous Mortimer]

You're saying that because people from Europe didn't flock to America before the invention of the airplane, people who share a border with us wouldn't come today? I think anyone can see the flaw in that logic.

Also, yes, the United States did allow massive immigration in the past. That was at the turn of the previous century. The age of robber barons and working conditions as described in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. Again, not an economic model to emulated.

When America became the richest country in the world, when we had the strongest middle class, the strongest unions, that was right after WWII when we basically didn't allow any immigration.

As I said, massive immigration necessitates a permanent sub-living wage underclass. The American history you love to point to proves that.

[Famous Mortimer]

"1. That isn't true and there's no evidence to support this point."

I'm using your beloved New York as an example. Do you really think the bodegas in the New York City that often have the owners underage children working the counter can provide living wage jobs to anyone? Most immigrant businesses here are a subsistence level, despite the fact that they overcharge and pay their workers under the table or,  in the case of family, not at all.

[Famous Mortimer]

You're saying that because people from Europe didn't flock to America before the invention of the airplane, people who share a border with us wouldn't come today? I think anyone can see the flaw in that logic.

Also, yes, the United States did allow massive immigration in the past. That was at the turn of the previous century. The age of robber barons and working conditions as described in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. Again, not an economic model to emulated.

When America became the richest country in the world, when we had the strongest middle class, the strongest unions, that was right after WWII when we basically didn't allow any immigration.

As I said, massive immigration necessitates a permanent sub-living wage underclass. The American history you love to point to proves that.

Are you a WASP? If not, your rhetoric is moronic because you're an example of the benefits of mass immigration. My point isn't that the benefits of mass immigration accrue immediately but rather that they accumulate over time. I don't deny that mass immigration resulted in a deprived working class but it also allowed for tremendous economic growth on a scale that was unmatched by any nation in the world, which created the conditions for American prosperity in the post-war era. Your argument is strange because it supposes that mass immigration is some kind of terrible calamity but it also seems to support the prosperity of immigrants once they're here. Do immigrants reduce living standards or don't they? The Americans who benefited from the compression of the income distribution were not necessarily born here and many of their parents certainly weren't.

This argument is moot because America will never accept "unlimited immigration" but we'll continue to receive substantial numbers of immigrants. Your children or grandchildren will marry immigrants or the children of immigrants and your descendants may very well be part Black or part "brown". It's best to accept these changes rather than cry about it like a petulant granny who has discovered that her grandchild smokes marijuana or whatever.

As I already said, Non-WASP immigrants were only able to improve their social standing because between 1921 and 1965, we didn't allow very much immigration.

If there is a constant, steady flow of desperate, unskilled workers, the desperate unskilled workers already here will never have a chance to seriously organize because they can always be replaced by new people coming in.

Also, I was going to stick to just facts but your tactic of calling people an idiot or stupid in every damn post is childish and not helping you.

[Famous Mortimer]

Bodegas or Chinese restaurants, there's not much difference. Neither provide a living wage and you admit this. How is this different from admitting that massive free immigration necessitates a permanent underclass?

[Famous Mortimer]

"so long as they receive adequate necessities and services from the government."

Also, what does this mean? So now you're advocating for BOTH a permanent underclass AND some form of guaranteed income.

Again, what is to stop 100 million people from coming to claim these benefits, how do we afford this?

[Famous Mortimer]

There's lots of data that suggest immigration is good for the economy because it is good for the rich man's economy, the 1%, the sector of the economy which does studies the most.

That's why during the robber baron era, robber barons wanted free immigration. That's why pro-business leaders still want pretty much unrestricted immigration.

Rich people love immigrants because they are desperate and can get away with paying them less than a living wage/minimum wage.

Good for rich people = "good for the economy" that you see in all your studies.

[Famous Mortimer]

I'm am not a nationalist. I also do not mind if immigrants get a job over a native born American because they are more qualified. That's fair (and there's the additional benefit that the skilled immigrant is probably more assimilated). That's not why most immigrants get jobs in the United States though. Most immigrants are less qualified than native born Americans but they get the jobs because they are willing to work for less. That's unacceptable. They are coming into this country and bringing down wages, they are coming into the country and making the economic situation worse than it was before they got here for everyone.

[Famous Mortimer]

Poorer Americans and people in the service industry are most Americans.

and if minimum wage was raised to $15 an hour (unlikely with unlimited cheap immigrant labor) it would likely cause people making above the current minimum wage but below 15 to get a raise too and that really would be the vast majority of Americans.

and being able to communicate with the customers makes people more qualified.

[Famous Mortimer]

By the way, this didn't get enough attention when you first posted it, direct quote:

"Is it the job of business owners to provide living wage jobs to anyone? No, of course not."

[Famous Mortimer]

Human traffickers kill people by transporting them in small, sinkable boats and cramming far too many people into them.

If you are looking for structural factors reactionaries preventing family planning, wealthy Arabs promoting Jihadism around the world and lobbies preventing free access for African products to Western and Asian markets would be more obvious culprits.

Besides, at least in Europe free immigration would lead to massive civil unrest and possibly civil war, which would kill even more. You can not have free immigration into societies where the whole nation is ethnically defined without destabilizing them and most of the non-American world is ethnically defined. Mass migration is not a viable solution to population growth.

That's a very curious interpetation of what he said

 Funny how it always goes back to, "I obviously don't want them to be killed, but I'd prefer it if there were less brown people in the world. Or people in general."

A lot of African nations could cut their birth rate by half and there still wouldn't be "less Africans" as a result, because they're already having so many more children above the replacement rate.