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PJ Poscimur's avatar

Thanks for this article; this is also something with which I have trouble contending. We are called to care for our neighbors, and every human is made in the imago dei, and worthy of our consideration. This means that we must also consider the literal neighbor next door, and not merely the next country over, and the effects of robbing Peter to pay Paul.

If you’ll remember as late as the mid 2000s, we can find democrats decrying illegal immigration for its wage suppressing effects and how it harms working class people who must now compete with people willing to undercut the legal wage limits by working under the table. General rules of supply and demand were understood, increasing the supply of labour would make it cheaper, benefiting those who employ labour at the expense of those who depended on scarcity of labour to demand higher wages for themselves.

High immigration at that time was seen as a “Koch brothers scheme” of sorts, a very right-wing, anti-labour, anti-working class thing. Famous left-leaning heroes like Cesar Chavez and Bernie Sanders were against immigration for this reason.

The political polarities have since switched, as the right has increasingly become seen as the party of the working class and the left as the party of the elites (There is room for argument, of course).

The left tends to rely on pathos more than anything, and if you’ll remember believe in Jonathan Haidt’s theories about moral foundations, arguments about care and fairness are the most impactful to a left leaning person. Therefore, democrats had to repackage the phenomenon in those terms, which is why caring and fairness are now the main arguments in favour of something they once argued was damaging, or unfair, to the working class.

As Christian’s, we are to eh gentle as doves and wise as serpents, so we must be wise enough to recognize when language is being used to push something that masks the harms it causes.

This type of immigration primarily benefits the wealthy who can abuse the cheap labour and suppress wages, be it legal or illegal. Employers will sometimes prefer legal immigrants with certain visas, because their residency is tied to their employment. This allows the employer to exploit the employee to a degree that’s far greater than a resident who could quite their job without the fear of being deported. They’ll sometimes prefer illegal immigrants because they do not have to pay for things like benefits or insurance, or even the minimum wage.

In addition, one advantage the US has currently is that it is essentially importing all the world’s smart people. It’s to America’s benefit, but arguably those countries from which they’ve been poached likely need their smart people more than a hegemonic superpower.

Allowing exploitation under the guise of “helping” people is duplicitous at best. Forcing poor and middle class people to compete with the entire world for their wages is also not kind.

Allowing the wealthy to import serfs, whether legally or illegally, serves mammon, not God.

Humanitarian arguments still hold weight, however. Many are coming from truly heinous conditions. The difficulty comes in asking how many people can fit on a lifeboat before the whole thing sinks? The answer isn’t zero, but it’s not an infinite number either, and good intentions don’t keep the realities of a finite world from imposing themselves.

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Vetry's avatar

You are full of crap & half truth & Hypocracies, because ancient India is a successful multi racial society where race or skin colour was never a problem unlike in Europre where Roma gypsies, Jews, Muslims etc were historically persecuted.

Ancient India is a mixture of indigenous harrapans, Aryans, Europeans, Turky & middle eastern and then Dravidians who are closer to Africans etc.

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