I hadn't really thought before about how left-wing folks typically want higher wages as well as more mass immigration which inherently suppresses wages. In their defense, they want raises waged by law rather than by market (an elevated minimum wage would raise wages irrespective of immigration), but considering how unlikely a minimum federal wage hike is, it seems like they're pursuing two contradictory goals.
EDIT: I was really (naively) hoping this would be discussed maturely. Some clarifying points:
1. "mass immigration" is just intended in opposition to highly selective immigration policies (e.g., policies which allow highly educated or wealthy people to immigrate). This isn't a criticism or a value judgment, and indeed there's something noble and egalitarian about this.
2. observing that these two goals are contradictory doesn't imply ignobility or foolishness, but rather difficulty of task.
3. I'm not a "right-winger" nor do I have a political tribe. I'm not slinging anything at left-wing people.
The left wants to help people, no matter who they are, and that means supporting both immigration and livable wages; the right only cares about the rich and themselves.
It's zero sum. You're hurting your fellow citizens by diluting their labor. You may think this is a righteous position, but from the perspective of a nationalist, you are strictly harming not helping your fellow countrymen, and therefore you set yourself up as their enemy.
>only cares about
And the prosperity of their own country. It is "selfish" yes. But a selfishness that extends out to their kin and their neighbors. They recognize the world is an arena of competition for scarce resources and power, and so they fight for their community and country to be as prosperous and powerful as possible, because they know foreign nations will do the same for their own people.
See: "Ideological differences in the expanse of the moral circle" [0],
specifically Figure 5: Heatmaps indicating highest moral allocation by ideology [1] for a nice visualization of the difference between the moral allocation of right vs left.
> "You're hurting your fellow citizens by diluting their labor"
No more so than having children and growing the population that way, which is a concept the right generally supports ("family values", "pro life").
> "you are strictly harming not helping your fellow countrymen"
It's not like the right do things to help fellow countrymen; taking away rights ("pro choice"), scorning single mothers instead of helping them and their children, demonizing social welfare users as 'welfare queens', opposing 'free' healthcare, oppising livable wages, remove unions and removing the bargaining power workers would need to have good wages otherwise, worsening education and making it less accessible and more expensive. The society their actions move towards is one where wealthy people live off the back of a working class who grind for money and die when they aren't productive anymore, along with a militarised police force acting to keeps the poors in line, and a 'justice' system which lets the rich away without punishment. And you can see it in action when Texas power fails and Ted Cruz takes his family on holiday, or the needlessly cruel treatment the UK Conservative Party's Department for Work and Pensions does to disabled people.
Nationalism isn't "help fellow citizens", it's "given a region drawn on a map, inside good, outside bad".
How many pro immigration leftists live their life as if its no more valuable than anyone else's? .001% maybe.If you wanted to help the global poor sending them American dollars would go a lot further in their own country
Being pro immigration doesn't mean you think all the global poor should move 'here' immediately (wherever 'here' is). leftists are more that people who have moved here should be treated as human, not subhuman.
It's normal to think your life is more important than other people's. It's weird to live in Texas and think people born 50 miles away in Mexico are inferior but people born 1,000 miles away in New York are the same, and people born 1,100 miles away in Canada are inferior. In some sense thinking "I just happened to be born here and this doesn't give me any special status over people who weren't" is one way of living life as if it's no more valuable than anyone elses.
> "their own country"
Why nationalism though? Why should someone born in a "shithole country" be obliged to try and make it better instead of moving away? What should compel them to care about the lines on a map? What should compel me in the UK to feel more connected to someone in Norther Ireland (part of the UK) than someone in the Republic of Ireland a few miles away (part of Europe)? Or less connected to people in Spain, but more connected to people in Gibraltar (part of the UK, on the far side of Spain), or people in the Falkland Islands (part of the UK, South Argentina)?
I dont know who you think you are responding to. The person i was responding too does think anyone and everyone should have carte blanche to immigrate to america. Also please post the part of my comment where i said hispanics should be treated as less than. Third wold Immigrants in america get treated much better than their own country. As they should! Thats why they come here!
The person you were responding to was me. And thinking anyone should be able to immigrate (which I kinda do think) is not the same as thinking everyone ought to immigrate (which I don't think).
> "please post the part of my comment where i said hispanics should be treated as less than"
This bit: "If you wanted to help the global poor sending them American dollars would go a lot further in their own country". You think they are treated better in America than in their home country. You don't think they deserve to go to America and should stay in their home country. How is that not treating them as lesser people, less deserving?
Take a 20 year old America and a 20 year old from imaginary Elbonia. Everyone agrees America is greater than Elbonia. OK, but at age 20 the American contributed literally nothing to the greatness of America, and the Elbonian contributed literally nothing to the corruption and mess of Elbonia. The Elbonian might even live closer to the American border than to the capital of Elbonia. But because lines on a map, the American thinks they deserve the greatness of America and the Elbonian doesn't. The American thinks the Elbonian should take responsibility for fixing Elbonia and the American shouldn't. See the world as one blob of land with only ocean boundaries and people as equals with equal rights, and none of this makes sense.
> The left wants to help people, no matter who they are, and that means supporting both immigration and livable wages
I'm not saying otherwise, I'm observing that in this particular case, mass immigration has a wage suppressing effect which contradicts the "livable wages" goal. Noting the challenge doesn't imply ignobility.
> the right only cares about the rich and themselves
I really don't know what this has to do with the subject.
Counterpoint: right wants free market so that wages rises organically through businesses competing for workers, while the left wants open borders and endless government spending that leads of inflation and lower standard of living which we are experiencing now.
I see you get the entirety of your understanding of history and poltics from an actor with alzheimer's. Maybe you could expand your sources a bit to see that this is a lot less true than you imply.
Well Jeff Bezos wants to help people by supporting mass immigration as his father benefited from “grit, determination, and the support and kindness of people here in the U.S.,” but perhaps there is somebody more opportunistic and less altruistic than Jeff Bezos who might try to take advantage of such policies? Such a person may even lie about their motives.
I'm just a supporter of equity. If your country have a FTA with another country, people from either country should be able to emigrate/immigrate between the two at will. If your country has a quota trade agreement with another country, you can do quotas as long as those respect a relationship with production quota.
I find France, UK and US comportements towards their colonies ('trade partners') unjust.
I'm not trying to malign anyone here. I'm pretty sure more mass immigration is a left-wing opinion, and I thought that much was uncontroversial. I don't understand the distinction you're making between "any immigration" and "mass immigration". The US already allows a lot of immigration.
Sure, but what's the argument? "The left wants some immigration, but not a lot"? Because we already have "some" immigration, so presumably they want more immigration, and presumably they oppose constraining that immigration by education level or wealth or etc, hence "mass".
In other words, "mass" doesn't refer to an amount, but a lack of filtration/selection/etc. Note also that this isn't even an inherently bad thing--there's something noble about wanting America's doors open to everyone: "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...".
I don't know what you mean by "what's the argument"?
Policies and the impact (something that should hopefully inform a policy) are more nuanced than just "mass migration" "more migration" and so on. Your understanding seems entirely disconnected from actual policy.
I can't possibly explain something that is going to be different from person to person or politician to politician, even more so if for you it only ends up being categorized in weird generalities that read like they're someone else's rhetoric skewed talking points / loaded phrases. I don't think you can expect to understand something if you just generalize in that way.
> I don't know what you mean by "what's the argument"?
I'm asking "what is your argument?" What argument are you making?
> Policies and the impact (something that should hopefully inform a policy) are more nuanced than just "mass migration" "more migration" and so on.
Of course, and still we speak in shorthand all the time because regurgitating the complete nuance in every single Internet comment is untenable. If "left-wing folks generally support mass immigration" is inaccurate or incomplete, let's talk about that--what nuance am I overlooking?
Likewise, I’ve always found it amusing that right wing business guys pay lip service to being against illegal immigration, yet they move their meat packing plants to nowhere-ville.
"use illegal immigration for meat packing" isn't a broadly-held right-wing position, it's something certain unprincipled business owners do (and I'm not even sure that they're universally right-wing). In contrast, "increasing wages" and "increasing mass immigration" are broadly-held left-wing positions. Again, this doesn't suggest incoherence on the left.
I think your use of the word "mass" is causing a lot of confusion, but I'm not sure who's "fault" it is. According to your edit on your original post, you say you're using it to mean "less selective" immigration, which, to me, is a way different sentence - but it's completely possible this is a domain-specific use of the word "mass" that I am just not familiar with.
Fair enough. The idea was that the left wants to lower the barrier for "asylum seeking" or perhaps just admit more asylum seekers irrespective of their educational value or their ability to support themselves (i.e., minimal selection criteria). This isn't a criticism or value judgment.
Please. It’s deeply embedded in GOP power brokering. Principles are for the mass of idiots.
The only difference today is that after years of taking the votes of reactionaries and doing little, the populist blocs of reactionary voters are the tail wagging the dog.
So what's the idea? Republicans secretly favor the cheap labor that immigration provides, but they obstruct themselves at every turn by opposing said immigration? Anyway, we're talking about "right wing" people generally rather than GOP politicians specifically--these two groups often have somewhat different agendas (yes, even in a representative democracy).
Maybe, but that doesn't support the generalization that this is a broadly-held right-wing position, which is what we were debating. Note also that plenty of ostensibly left-wing companies want cheap labor as well.
> Note also that plenty of ostensibly left-wing companies want cheap labor as well.
There are (outside of small local cooperative enterprises) approximately zero left-wing companies in the US.
The things painted as “left-wing” companies by the far right are center-right neoliberal corporate capitalist enterprises that do some mix of opposing far-right culture war efforts as a drag on corporate capitalist exploitation and making PR gestures to the left side of culture war fights while remaining locked in the economic center-right.
Yeah, in the GOP’s current view of the world, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is considered radical leftists, but, that's not reflective of reality.
I think you and I have debated this before, and I think your definition for "left-wing" is pretty different from the general population (and you may think the same about my definition, all good, agree to disagree, etc). Anyway, I said "ostensibly left-wing companies" deliberately because I don't think any company actually adheres to an ideology irrespective of what their PR/marketing departments say or do, but rather they all comport themselves according to their individual profit motives.
> I said "ostensibly left-wing companies" deliberately because I don't think any company actually adheres to an ideology irrespective of what their PR/marketing departments say or do, but rather they all comport themselves according to their individual profit motives.
Where do you think ideologies come from? One of the most common places is some identifiable group's economic self-interest; neoliberalism is that for the owner class in capitalist society, which is why institutions controlled by that class (especially when they are controlled broadly by that class rather than by an individual member who may have personal quirks) tend to pursue it.
How is it not broadly held? What business is saying “we really wish we could spend more on labor, that would be great!” Politicians on the right have been playing lip service to “illegal immigration” for years. But they all knew just what would happen if they actually did it. Business interest and farmers would crucify them.
Even Trump supporting farmers were complaining about not being able to find anyone.
Just like they were all for the wall until the government started using eminent domain to take their land to build it.
> Politicians on the right have been playing lip service to “illegal immigration” for years. But they all knew just what would happen if they actually did it. Business interest and farmers would crucify them.
It's the same thing with climate change on the left (Democrat politicians never manage to pass any kind of carbon pricing because they know they'd get crucified by business interests), but I wouldn't say that the left-wing broadly opposes carbon pricing.
I don't see that as tribalistic/negative language at all. However, I do see it in the unqualified assertion that left-wing people want "more mass immigration", which seems misleading and tangential to their actual desires (which seem to be more about treating immigrants better and allowing more cases of legitimate asylum seeking, rather than actively seeking "more" and "massive" immigration in the general case). Even just the more innocuous version of that statement - "make immigration easier" - is not even a popular opinion of leftwingers, as far as I can tell.
Edit: Where "popular" means a strong majority. However, I'm speaking totally intuitively. I'm not sure what the reality of the numbers are, and there are so many subtly different opinions one can poll for just be tweaking the wording.
Eh, labels are useful. I don't believe that saying "left/right wingers tend to X" means "the world is black and white" or "everybody is left/right wing and that's all you need to know about them". It's how you use labels that matters. And yeah, a label can get misused so bad that it loses its usefulness in honest discussion, but I think "left/right-wing" is far from that death. It carries too much useful meaning when thoughtfully applied.
Even accepting that "left wing is a tribe", summarizing the views of a tribe (especially in relatively objective terms) isn't the same as engaging in tribalism.
I don't have a political tribe, I'm not a partisan, etc. I was hoping HN would be the one place on the Internet where we could discuss things maturely. Notably, I'm not attacking left-wing people or viewpoints here, but observing that there are two goals that are in apparent conflict (which isn't to say they contradict each other or that they're ignoble or anything else).
You said "left-wing folks typically want ... more mass immigration", which I disagree with, though not with any real authority or conviction (I wrote a separate comment about it). The rub is - coming from most people on the internet at large, I would assume that statement was purposefully uncharitable, but I think on HN, the chances that a person (you, in this case) is being honest are higher (i.e. that your opinion that left-wing people want more mass immigration is derived honestly and holistically to the best of your ability, regardless of whether there is a reasonable argument against it out there somewhere).
Yes, my honest impression is that left-wing people generally (i.e., it's a very popular position on the left) wanted to lower the barrier for "asylum seekers" which implies admitting lots of people without respect to their educational background or skill (hence "mass immigration"). I didn't realize this was controversial (I thought everyone agreed that this is a popular position on the left). This also isn't a value judgment--a conservative might look at that and see unintended consequences (a burden on social services, wage suppression, etc) but a progressive might look at that and see nobility ("Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses" etc).
Ah, yeah, I agree. But I don't agree that that position is tantamount to "supporting mass immigration", by the normal colloquial meaning of that phrase. I think that wording, unqualified as in your original usage, implies antagonism toward the position you're describing (though, as I mentioned in another reply, "mass immigration" might have a domain-specific definition I'm not aware of? Sort of like how "obese" technically refers to a much lower weight than the way we use the word colloquially, and how "mass shooting" can technically mean a victim count as low as three, depending on other circumstances, again contrary to what the typical colloquial threshold probably is in most cases).
"Asylum seeker" is a specific term, for example see this UN glossary: https://www.unhcr.org/449267670.pdf. In particular it's not about huddled masses, it's about people escaping violent situations and active persecution. Putting "asylum seeker" in scare quotes and conflating it with general immigration is a right-wing thing to do. If you don't want people to mistake you for a right-wing partisan then consider just saying "immigration" of whatever type you mean.
I'm sure I'm somewhat imprecise with my terms (I didn't realize I was speaking to a group of immigration lawyers). I've been as clear as I can be, and I can't force anyone to understand against their will. Good day.
Some parts of the right have advocated for more skilled immigration, which would tend to equalize wages across the board (mitigating a non-trivial cause of inequality) while raising fewer social concerns compared to the unregulated immigration of lower-skill workers. Unfortunately, many left-wing folks tend to oppose such proposals, with the usual 'they tuk er jerbs!!1' arguments. Just look at the reactions here at HN anytime the subject of H1B visas is brought up.
I'm not sure that H1B visas are a particularly politically polarized position. I could easily see people on the right arguing against H1B visas on the basis that we should keep American jobs for Americans. I don't think there's broad agreement on H1Bs on the right?
Both the left and the ring wing voters despise work visa programs. There are a few in the US, only H1B's get the hate since it is the most used of all work visa programs, and highly publicized as well.
You should be forthright and acknowledge that H1Bs fill white collar jobs at below market rates. This obviously doesn't apply to agriculture (and other) work visas.
They probably do in crappy places. I am an H1B, work in HFT and can say that in big tech and HFT's, H1B's are paid fairly well, probably in the top tier.
BTW, the L1 visa is even worse. The people bought in via that visa are also paid below market rates, and they are not even allowed to change companies on that visa.
My issue is that people love to shit talk about us, and forget there are other visas, like the L1, that are crappier. Worse is, when some lump all of us "H1B? They are probably low paid", and then I and many of my friends chuckle when we look at we are paid.
Left wingers overwhelmingly support immigration of poor people, from poor nations. They think these people would benefit the most out of immigrating to the US. They too, like the right wingers, despise white collar workers immigrating here, since that'd mean more competition for high paying jobs.
They know that recent immigrants from poorer countries, do not have the education and English language skills to break into white collar jobs, and will mostly work in low paying jobs for their whole career. The white collar immigrants can break into all these jobs, and that is something that they see as a danger.
EDIT: I was really (naively) hoping this would be discussed maturely. Some clarifying points:
1. "mass immigration" is just intended in opposition to highly selective immigration policies (e.g., policies which allow highly educated or wealthy people to immigrate). This isn't a criticism or a value judgment, and indeed there's something noble and egalitarian about this.
2. observing that these two goals are contradictory doesn't imply ignobility or foolishness, but rather difficulty of task.
3. I'm not a "right-winger" nor do I have a political tribe. I'm not slinging anything at left-wing people.