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pietillidie 



Joined: 07 Jan 2005


PostPosted: Sun Aug 19, 2018 7:30 pm
Post subject: Reply with quote

David wrote:
Mugwump wrote:
^ when the evidence is practically impossible to deny, fall back on the “well, there is nothing to do be done, can’t be changed, it’s the ‘physics’, you see”.

Interestingly, those who make this argument would be speechless with indignation if it were made about, say, economic inequality or corporate or high-wealth taxation - both far harder problems to solve than border control.

So the question is : why ? Why this blind desire to obliterate the precious uniqueness of nations and their fascinating historic cultures, to make everywhere a pluralist blancmange, like an airport hall with architecture and more poor people ?

What can be the real motive for such a terrible policy ? If it were being done to a forest ecosystem there would be outrage, but because it is being done to a social ecosystem, it’s just “physics” and can’t be helped.


I think you’ve missed my point. It’s not that we can’t take an isolationist or racist immigration policy and legislate accordingly. The argument is that, in an ever more integrated world, the countries that do so will ultimately be left behind economically and socially, and be much less equipped in the long term to cope peacefully with mass (uncontrollable) people movements that may be caused by catastrophic climate change, etc. Under that understanding, a policy of multiculturalism is like a kind of insurance, basically.

It's not just climate change; catastrophic earthquakes in China, South and Southeast Asia, or Indonesia, in the wrong political climate or combined with other ill fortune, could all trigger mass people movement to Australia.

And don't forget the magnitude of the people movement EU leaders confront due to human-made disaster (in no small part thanks to the original regional destabilisation caused by Anglo-American folly).

But I think global trade has a physics all of its own. British immigration was built on Commonwealth expansion, which ultimately saw pressure for immigration. The fact is, when you open the trade conduit things flow both ways. People marry and want family near them; loyal locals want favours and successful expatriates want to provide them; minorities in new lands want their numbers bolstered; companies need culturally-expert employees; and the wealthy wave their money about to get what they want. Australia, of course, both inherited these Commonwealth dynamics and needed workers, so immigration was even more inevitable.

To rue these dynamics generally is to rue not only historical empire gone, with all its attendant benefits to which we are heirs, but also to rue the contemporary trade, growth, global status and global access which has enabled us to build societies of the highest wealth, quality and opportunity. Downsides and valid criticism from left and right notwithstanding, these are not advantages most people would willingly abandon even if they could.

Meanwhile, investors such as treasury holders want population growth because it is seen to guarantee economic momentum and to insure against future obligations. Business wants a growing domestic market, a dynamic human resource pool, and leverage over wage inflation. And no one half ambitious wants to live in a retreating, isolated rump of a country, so withdrawal from the world also has extremely costly brain drain effects. These are powerful forces the far left has railed against for many decades to absolutely no avail. Zilch. Zip. Not a dent.

And this before we even start on the obvious benefits of immigration. To reiterate: the willingness to take on jobs no one else wants; the incentive to work harder and save more; the low salaries which keep prices down; the children who study hard; the skilled who fill STEM positions; the skilled who keep national health systems afloat; the workers who generate value, pay tax and fund future obligations; the workers whose cultural knowledge lubricates trade and investment, and enables companies to compete globally; the cultural knowledge and networks that facilitate international relations; the cultural knowledge that facilitates specific industries, such as education and tourism, and which make multicultural countries preferable long-stay destinations; the repatriation of monies and knowledge which create new markets overseas, thereby sustaining economic growth; and more.

The examples given in the thread above don't change this; rather, they serve to highlight it: Scandinavia is having difficulty because it lacks historical experience with immigration yet needs to integrate more effectively with the world; Japan cannot keep using its central bank to defend itself from decline indefinitely; Korea is broaching the immigration issue as we speak because its economic growth is flattening and its monoculture is running out of ideas; East Asia is a tinderbox due to a racist 'one blood' fixation of a sort untenable in multicultural societies; Eastern Europe is mired in a similar macho racism that makes it vulnerable to tyrants and war, and which will frustrate creativity and growth once it tries to move into the services sector.

In contrast, consider Australia's relationship with China, and the role the vibrant Chinese-Australian community plays in it. What came first in this relationship, immigration or trade? Mostly, it's a chicken-egg problem because the two go hand-in-hand. And what a successful synergy this has produced since the earliest years of the gold rush. Pitfalls there are many, but efforts to halt or slow Chinese immigration will do nothing to improve the way Australia engages the inherent power of China. Not a single thing.

Even so, migration to the Anglosphere is still pretty modest given the pressure concerned, so the issue itself is ridiculously overblown. However, immigration pressure is only likely to intensify as the global population increases, and increasingly powerful international players seek closer engagement and fairer exchange. So, good luck brooding over the ills of immigration and trying shut the gate on something which is fundamental to everyday life in the contemporary world, and so beneficial in so many ways, with so much natural physics behind it, that those who master it will have an enormous advantage over those who drop the ball and lag behind.

Far better to focus on making the process and experience of immigration more successful, and host countries more resilient, while taking advantage of its great list of benefits. Engaging and adapting are far more productive behaviours than scapegoating and pissing in the wind.

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Mugwump 



Joined: 28 Jul 2007
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 19, 2018 10:42 pm
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^ A steady rate of immigration from China, especially of skilled Chinese, always made sense. Ditto, to a lesser extent, India. Steadily and systematically building human links to the two potential growing economies in our region would be a truly strategic, managed immigration policy. Sadly, it is exactly what we have not done.

The “insurance policy” argument is proof of religious thinking. There is no field of life in which we take action against an uncertain future event with unquantifiable and unknowable effects. It’s like a Hungarian business paying for insurance against the First World War and the dissolution of Austria-Hungary. If global warming causes massive population instability, it’ll make Australia’s fragile ecosystem an odd choice for massive numbers of people.

The arguments for immigration to rebalance age demography make some sense, as long as the rate is kept at a level that causes no significant stress on the host population. The trouble is we have long gone well past that level and we have no strategy - as crime, terrorism, property prices, stretched public services and the rise of the far-right shows.

A massive policy failure justified by the fact that earthquakes and drought might one day happen far away. That’s not a bad summary of where we are.

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pietillidie 



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PostPosted: Sun Aug 19, 2018 11:13 pm
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^The answer is to channel our energies towards making it work better. The upsides and inevitabilities, as explained at length above, are too many to get sidetracked in utopian rememberings of society past. Better Sweden and Japan deal with reality now than twenty years from now, with established multicultural countries moving even further ahead.
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Mugwump 



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PostPosted: Sun Aug 19, 2018 11:42 pm
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^ two quick things. There was no utopia in the past. But the past is the closest thing to a control group that history offers, for your own society. So you are wise to learn from it, and consider its good and bad features without being nostalgic. Only that way can you choose the best future.

In that regard, it is no great nostalgia to say that the world inherited by my generation was far better than the world inherited by my children. We could afford a house, maintain steady employment in a relatively predictable setting, we had no great burden of debt for our training, and violent crime and drugs were far less common.

The benefits of today’s generation have come from technological progress, but social progress has been negative. The two are related, of course, but not wholly determinative. We chose a grubby future, principally because we lost the habit of genuinely representative government, and ceded it to unaccountable technocratic politicians and a managerial class who live insulated from their decisions.

The Us was the first seriously multicultural country. That anybody should have regarded it as a model for the future seems odd to me.

Like most things in life, the issue is rate and pace. Immigration is fine. Like red wine, a little is almost certainly good for you, while alcoholism is enormously destructive.

It was officiallly predicted, in 2000, that we would have today’s population by 2040. Does that suggest a controlled process to you ? An unholy alliance of big business, governments desperate for spurious growth, and those who dislike the culture of seculo-Christian western capitalism have conspired to drink gallons of the stuff. The symptoms are found everywhere among the less advantaged, who are now rightly revolting against it.

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David Libra

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Joined: 27 Jul 2003
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 19, 2018 11:48 pm
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pietillidie wrote:
David wrote:
Mugwump wrote:
^ when the evidence is practically impossible to deny, fall back on the “well, there is nothing to do be done, can’t be changed, it’s the ‘physics’, you see”.

Interestingly, those who make this argument would be speechless with indignation if it were made about, say, economic inequality or corporate or high-wealth taxation - both far harder problems to solve than border control.

So the question is : why ? Why this blind desire to obliterate the precious uniqueness of nations and their fascinating historic cultures, to make everywhere a pluralist blancmange, like an airport hall with architecture and more poor people ?

What can be the real motive for such a terrible policy ? If it were being done to a forest ecosystem there would be outrage, but because it is being done to a social ecosystem, it’s just “physics” and can’t be helped.


I think you’ve missed my point. It’s not that we can’t take an isolationist or racist immigration policy and legislate accordingly. The argument is that, in an ever more integrated world, the countries that do so will ultimately be left behind economically and socially, and be much less equipped in the long term to cope peacefully with mass (uncontrollable) people movements that may be caused by catastrophic climate change, etc. Under that understanding, a policy of multiculturalism is like a kind of insurance, basically.

It's not just climate change; catastrophic earthquakes in China, South and Southeast Asia, or Indonesia, in the wrong political climate or combined with other ill fortune, could all trigger mass people movement to Australia.

And don't forget the magnitude of the people movement EU leaders confront due to human-made disaster (in no small part thanks to the original regional destabilisation caused by Anglo-American folly).

But I think global trade has a physics all of its own. British immigration was built on Commonwealth expansion, which ultimately saw pressure for immigration. The fact is, when you open the trade conduit things flow both ways. People marry and want family near them; loyal locals want favours and successful expatriates want to provide them; minorities in new lands want their numbers bolstered; companies need culturally-expert employees; and the wealthy wave their money about to get what they want. Australia, of course, both inherited these Commonwealth dynamics and needed workers, so immigration was even more inevitable.

To rue these dynamics generally is to rue not only historical empire gone, with all its attendant benefits to which we are heirs, but also to rue the contemporary trade, growth, global status and global access which has enabled us to build societies of the highest wealth, quality and opportunity. Downsides and valid criticism from left and right notwithstanding, these are not advantages most people would willingly abandon even if they could.

Meanwhile, investors such as treasury holders want population growth because it is seen to guarantee economic momentum and to insure against future obligations. Business wants a growing domestic market, a dynamic human resource pool, and leverage over wage inflation. And no one half ambitious wants to live in a retreating, isolated rump of a country, so withdrawal from the world also has extremely costly brain drain effects. These are powerful forces the far left has railed against for many decades to absolutely no avail. Zilch. Zip. Not a dent.

And this before we even start on the obvious benefits of immigration. To reiterate: the willingness to take on jobs no one else wants; the incentive to work harder and save more; the low salaries which keep prices down; the children who study hard; the skilled who fill STEM positions; the skilled who keep national health systems afloat; the workers who generate value, pay tax and fund future obligations; the workers whose cultural knowledge lubricates trade and investment, and enables companies to compete globally; the cultural knowledge and networks that facilitate international relations; the cultural knowledge that facilitates specific industries, such as education and tourism, and which make multicultural countries preferable long-stay destinations; the repatriation of monies and knowledge which create new markets overseas, thereby sustaining economic growth; and more.

The examples given in the thread above don't change this; rather, they serve to highlight it: Scandinavia is having difficulty because it lacks historical experience with immigration yet needs to integrate more effectively with the world; Japan cannot keep using its central bank to defend itself from decline indefinitely; Korea is broaching the immigration issue as we speak because its economic growth is flattening and its monoculture is running out of ideas; East Asia is a tinderbox due to a racist 'one blood' fixation of a sort untenable in multicultural societies; Eastern Europe is mired in a similar macho racism that makes it vulnerable to tyrants and war, and which will frustrate creativity and growth once it tries to move into the services sector.

In contrast, consider Australia's relationship with China, and the role the vibrant Chinese-Australian community plays in it. What came first in this relationship, immigration or trade? Mostly, it's a chicken-egg problem because the two go hand-in-hand. And what a successful synergy this has produced since the earliest years of the gold rush. Pitfalls there are many, but efforts to halt or slow Chinese immigration will do nothing to improve the way Australia engages the inherent power of China. Not a single thing.

Even so, migration to the Anglosphere is still pretty modest given the pressure concerned, so the issue itself is ridiculously overblown. However, immigration pressure is only likely to intensify as the global population increases, and increasingly powerful international players seek closer engagement and fairer exchange. So, good luck brooding over the ills of immigration and trying shut the gate on something which is fundamental to everyday life in the contemporary world, and so beneficial in so many ways, with so much natural physics behind it, that those who master it will have an enormous advantage over those who drop the ball and lag behind.

Far better to focus on making the process and experience of immigration more successful, and host countries more resilient, while taking advantage of its great list of benefits. Engaging and adapting are far more productive behaviours than scapegoating and pissing in the wind.


Excelent post, PTID.

Mugwump, why isn’t the US a good example to follow in this regard? It’s a country with many challenges, unquestionably, but its immigration policy seems to have been pretty successful on the most part.

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Mugwump 



Joined: 28 Jul 2007
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 20, 2018 12:04 am
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Um, because it is one of the most divided and fractious societies on the planet, with a massive underclass, which has just elected one of the most patently unfit people ever to be president ?

There may be many reasons for this, from a too-libertarian capitalism, to the rise of offshoring in employment, but surely no one would hold it up as a highly united, happy society. It just seems odd to me that everyone in every other western society criticizes the US mercilessly, then wants to emulate their key social theory.

US mass low-skilled immigration worked well when it was industrializing a resource-rich continent with many more resources than required workers between 1850-1941, and then later managing a post-war boom. It has been far less obviously successful since the stagflation, high-tech era of the 1970s and beyond.

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Mugwump 



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PostPosted: Mon Aug 20, 2018 1:48 am
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David wrote:

Excelent post, PTID.



Analysis leaves when prejudice knocks at the door. It is a busy post, with a few good points to make. But it’s mostly demonstrably false. Let’s take all of the big points :

“When you open the trade conduit things flow both ways.” Clearly untrue, Australia’s largest trading partner in the 1970s was Japan. The immigration from .china has little to do with our trade, or the forces Prid described.

“It’s a result of the British empire”. Clearly it is not, as immigration is rampant across the West. Australia was a colony. The migration from Australia to Britain was very modest. It was larger the other way because there was a subsidized “populate or perish” policy. But empire does not cause mass migration. It’s a choice we made, especially since 2000.

It brings STEM skills. In a few cases,this is true - well and good, let it happen. Let’s have that then. Funnily enough, though, we managed to staff our hospitals and police forces and technical professions by developing our own human capital for many years. But why do that when you can take the lazy social route of not bothering to plan and invest in your young, and just buy it in ? Oh, and “there are jobs no one wants to do.” Really ? And if so, oh well, that’s all right then.

Business wants it because it keeps wages down and “growth” underpinning borrowing. Well, yes. That would normally be an argument with just how much credibility, in your mind ?

Japan needs it because its central bank cannot stave off decline forever. Unlike, er, the US Fed and the ECB. And if you mean the JPY government debt, well it is high, but largely owned by domestic savers, not foreigners. It’s an allocation problem, not a solvency problem. Still, by this logic, immigration is better than actually managing your economy properly. Is that why Sweden was doing so well in 2000 and is doing so much better (ahem) now ?

It seems clear that evidence and logic is not going to move much here, but even if you have agreed with the conclusion in advance, your “hang on a minute” light still deserves to be switched on.

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pietillidie 



Joined: 07 Jan 2005


PostPosted: Mon Aug 20, 2018 4:50 am
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Mugwump wrote:
David wrote:

Excelent post, PTID.



Analysis leaves when prejudice knocks at the door. It is a busy post, with a few good points to make. But it’s mostly demonstrably false. Let’s take all of the big points :

“When you open the trade conduit things flow both ways.” Clearly untrue, Australia’s largest trading partner in the 1970s was Japan. The immigration from .china has little to do with our trade, or the forces Prid described.

Still, it regularly does. See e.g., Britain, France, Netherlands, the US, Canada, and countries like Australia, Germany and Sweden ultimately. Sure, there can be resistance from either party within a relationship (so the White Australia Policy, or perhaps a Sweden has its own peculiarities, etc.), or variation in incentives (e.g., there may be little incentive for Americans to migrate to Australia, or Australians to the UK, regardless of trade), but it's a pretty safe observation overall.

“It’s a result of the British empire”. Clearly it is not, as immigration is rampant across the West. Australia was a colony. The migration from Australia to Britain was very modest. It was larger the other way because there was a subsidized “populate or perish” policy. But empire does not cause migration. It’s a choice we made, especially since 2000.

I think you'll find that quote doesn't exist! My interest wasn't the British Empire per se; even so, see my previous comment.

It brings STEM skills. In a few cases,this is true - well and good, let it happen. Let’s have that then. Funnily enough, though, we managed to staff our hospitals and police forces and technical professions by developing our own human capital for many years. But why do that when you can take the lazy social route of not bothering to plan and invest in your young, and just buy it in ? Oh, and “there are jobs no one wants to do.” Really ? And if so, oh well, that’s all right then.

It's an observation about the benefits of immigration, not a complete national plan. I would definitely also invest in human capital, although this never seems to succeed politically. So, you're scoffing at political reality, not my own views. This is why I say we need comprehensive political platforms which both work with business and achieve social ends at once, but they seem all but extinct. In any case, immigration would be one plank of such a platform; no one is saying it's a panacea.

Business wants it because it keeps wages down and “growth” underpinning borrowing. Well, yes. That would normally be an argument with just how much credibility, in your mind ?

Reality 10, fanciful leftist arguments for decades, nil. The challenge is to work with the given forces and incentives. Importantly, in this case, you're not opposing an ill, you're opposing something with a list of upsides that outweigh its challenges. Aligned with major forces and a positive? That usually makes something a no-brainer.

Japan needs it because its central bank cannot stave off decline forever. Unlike, er, the US Fed and the ECB. And if you mean the JPY government debt, well it is high, but largely owned by domestic savers, not foreigners. It’s an allocation problem, not a solvency problem. Still, by this logic, immigration is better than actually managing your economy properly. Is that why Sweden was doing so well in 2000 and is doing so much better (ahem) now ?

Japan's productivity and growth are floundering as we know, and its ability to service its debt, albeit sold to local citizens, is worsening over time. Can you honestly see it ever resolving this problem before a serious reckoning?

Abenomics and central bank intervention can't do this, especially with the relative heft of the Japanese economy in decline. New skills, incentives and the ideas are needed, and this implies a major cultural shift. Any serious plan to encourage such a shift will eventually reach for immigration.

Above are some quick comments on your quick comments.

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Mugwump 



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PostPosted: Mon Aug 20, 2018 10:46 am
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^ thanks. I really don’t think the problem in Japan is what you think it is. It has long been a powerfully innovative economy. It’s pretty widely accepted that Japan’s problem was a real estate led speculative debt bubble which led to enormous write downs in the banking system and a large contraction in capital investment and R&D as companies became net savers, rather than investing. The resulting low demand led to low inflation which meant that the debt work-off had to be achieved by reducing consumption, rather than inflation. The practice of funding zombie companies which were technically insolvent made the problem that much worse.

Immigration is really not very relevant to any of that. Japan is a highly innovative and highly educated economy. It’s just grown for about six years straight despite a tricky world economy, as it has worked out much of the debt overhang.

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David Libra

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PostPosted: Tue Aug 21, 2018 6:45 pm
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You won’t read this on Breitbart:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-21/sweden-s-economy-is-getting-a-lift-from-migrants

Quote:
Sweden’s rapid intake of huge numbers of refugees and migrants, about 600,000 in total over the past five years, has produced some of the highest growth rates in Europe and will also help it address the challenges of an otherwise aging population.

“These refugees and immigrants came at precisely the right time,” says Lars Christensen, an economist and founder of Markets & Money Advisory, a consulting firm. “I’m worried about the lack of incentives [to work] in the Swedish welfare state, but I’m not worried about the 250,000 refugees that have arrived.”

Gross domestic product increased more than 3 percent in the first two quarters of the year, which is considerably faster than the euro zone’s roughly 2 percent growth. In recent years, Sweden has granted thousands of work permits to information technology developers, berry pickers, and cooks. Foreign-born workers accounted for all the job growth in the industrial sector last year and for 90 percent of the new jobs in the welfare sector, in particular health care and elderly care.

Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson on Aug. 16 said the new arrivals are now getting jobs twice as fast as immigrants who arrived late in the last decade. Immigrants in Sweden have a labor force participation rate of about 82 percent, some 4 percentage points higher than the EU average.

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stui magpie Gemini

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PostPosted: Tue Aug 21, 2018 7:27 pm
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David wrote:
You won’t read this on Breitbart:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-21/sweden-s-economy-is-getting-a-lift-from-migrants

Quote:
Sweden’s rapid intake of huge numbers of refugees and migrants, about 600,000 in total over the past five years, has produced some of the highest growth rates in Europe and will also help it address the challenges of an otherwise aging population.

“These refugees and immigrants came at precisely the right time,” says Lars Christensen, an economist and founder of Markets & Money Advisory, a consulting firm. “I’m worried about the lack of incentives [to work] in the Swedish welfare state, but I’m not worried about the 250,000 refugees that have arrived.”

Gross domestic product increased more than 3 percent in the first two quarters of the year, which is considerably faster than the euro zone’s roughly 2 percent growth. In recent years, Sweden has granted thousands of work permits to information technology developers, berry pickers, and cooks. Foreign-born workers accounted for all the job growth in the industrial sector last year and for 90 percent of the new jobs in the welfare sector, in particular health care and elderly care.

Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson on Aug. 16 said the new arrivals are now getting jobs twice as fast as immigrants who arrived late in the last decade. Immigrants in Sweden have a labor force participation rate of about 82 percent, some 4 percentage points higher than the EU average.


So, a triumph of immigration over socialism. Razz

Bring in the immigrants to do the jobs no one else wants to do.

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David Libra

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PostPosted: Tue Aug 21, 2018 7:43 pm
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^ Yeah, this definitely isn’t a left-wing argument for immigration (much as Bloomberg isn’t a left-wing publication). But I think neoliberal capitalists are basically right about this: taking in refugees generally has economic benefits (although it may also, in the absence of strong labour laws, have a negative impact on workers’ wages).

The rest of the argument over the pros/cons of immigration is really less about economics (which few on the far right or left really understand or care about) than it is about culture wars and identity politics (both of the right and left).

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stui magpie Gemini

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PostPosted: Tue Aug 21, 2018 8:03 pm
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^

Good response.

All the European migration to Australia post WWII did the same thing. It provided unskilled labour to work in manufacturing, on the Snowy Mountains project, in agriculture up bush as well as hospitality. They worked hard, copped the taunts on the chin, and raised kids who are indistinguishable largely from other kids of their generation.

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Jezza Taurus

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PostPosted: Sat Aug 25, 2018 4:48 pm
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stui magpie wrote:
^

Good response.

All the European migration to Australia post WWII did the same thing. It provided unskilled labour to work in manufacturing, on the Snowy Mountains project, in agriculture up bush as well as hospitality. They worked hard, copped the taunts on the chin, and raised kids who are indistinguishable largely from other kids of their generation.

That's pretty much my family in a canter.

My grandparents migrated to Australia in the 1950s and 1960s under the Menzies government.

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stui magpie Gemini

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PostPosted: Sun Aug 26, 2018 7:31 pm
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I'll take Manus Island thanks.

Quote:
MORE than two dozen illegal immigrants are believed to be on the run from authorities, after a suspected asylum seeker vessel made it into Australian waters.

It’s understood a fishing boat carrying 27 people ran aground in a river mouth in the Daintree Rainforest on Sunday afternoon.

It appears to be the first asylum seeker boat to make it to Australia in four years.

It is understood that one of the men identified himself to authorities as a taxi driver.


As asylum seeker vessel has run aground in a river mouth off the Daintree Rainforest in Far North Queensland.
Two men made their way to a local boat ramp and have since been detained, police told The Courier-Mail.

The rest of the crew are understood to be on the run from authorities, with some believed to be hiding in mangroves.

Australian Border Force has been contacted for comment.


https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/asylum-seekers-on-the-run-in-the-daintree/news-story/44a88f241a17c9959c2c6b9c188782a9

Hiding in the mangroves near the mouth of The Daintree means they're croc food.

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