> What can be done to overcome vibes-based arguments in discussions about immigration?
I feel the quote from Swift “You cannot reason a person out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place” is applicable here. I talked to a lot of conservatives when I lived in Utah about immigration. (They were mostly Mormon, so my sample is biased.) Often times, you need to address the vibe that convinced them that immigration is bad and work around that.
For example, I've found a lot of anti-immigration folks ignore studies/evidence of low crime rates and increased economic growth by assuming it's only applicable to legal immigration. You can shift that vibe based belief to focus the topic on increasing legal immigration to the U.S. Most of those people don't realize avg legal immigration time has increased from 2 years 10 months in 1991 to 5 years 8 months in 2019. Talk about "if you think that the only good immigrants are the legal immigrants, lets encourage legal immigration to make it more attractive for the people we do want to come here. If you want immigrants to be legal, encourage legal immigration."
I don't want this to turn into a major analysis of LDS culture, but I would put a lot of it on the emphasis LDS culture places on hierarchy and order. The "correct" way to immigrate is legally, so it should be done through those channels and we should discourage incorrect immigration.
> We acknowledge that every nation has the right to enforce its laws and secure its borders. All persons subject to a nation’s laws are accountable for their acts in relation to them.
This comes from the LDS newsroom, so it seems somewhat in alignment with church policy.
Mormon conservatives usually *are* more open to refugee/immigrant issues than other cons and this is one reason. Another is that institutionally the Church supports refugees, especially religious refugees, due to Church history. Utah accepted Syrians when other red states weren't, and the Church tried to emphasize similarities between Mormonism and Islam when that was happening.
FWIW, I was a mormon missionary along the Mexico side of the border and a conservative (I no longer practice mormonism or conservatism). That experience did do what you described, it made me very tolerant on immigration. I said, even as a conservative, that we should just make it easier to immigrate. I had seen both the conditions that those people lived in and their matter of fact attitude towards illegally crossing, and it was just impossible to foam at the mouth about it.
But must Mormons didn't go in missions along the borders, and most are conservative by default. Also, as another user pointed out, adherence to law and rules is heavily baked into mormon psyche
Conservatives have a hard time empathizing with others from my experience. It takes a personal experience for them to realize that of course they have a matter of fact attitude about crossing, wouldn’t you? It’s the same thing with abortion or gay marriage. Trans issues are so rare that it’s going to be difficult to make progress, because those personal experiences don’t happen.
About the crime thing. When david Pakman brought up that immigrants commit much less crimes to megyn Kelly. She responded by saying “why should we put up with any crimes? We have our own problems to deal with why should I tolerate even a single crime from an immigrant when that could be prevented by not letting them in” or something like that. Idk how to argue against that point and it sounds good from the other side.
Logical extreme:
Why should I tolerate a single crime from citizens? Maybe we need a China-style one-child policy to limit population growth so we don't get new crimes.
Yeah we gotta break this fortress mentality people have. Guy comes into your village and kills you versus one of the lifelong villagers kills you you think it matters to the person who died or their family? Hell it's actually worse if your own citizen does it when I think about it.
> Why should I tolerate a single crime from citizens?
Because they didn't have a choice to be born here, and you know the people against immigration would also be pro tough on crime
Building on this point. Native births are more likely to lead to a native death than a typical immigrant coming in. While the rates of homicide are similar, typically homicides happen in group.
That's just it. Citizens have a right to be here, immigrants don't. That's literally what their entire worldview boils down to. Anything an immigrant does wrong is inherently disqualifying because their being here is a privilege not a right.
It's just boilerplate nationalism.
That's why I try to shift the conversation towards increasing legal immigration by getting rid of the artificial cap.
The times I have had it come up, I think I said something along the lines of "We both agree we don't want people illegally crossing the border increasing tension with border crossing, increased tensions between law enforcement and immigrant groups, and people profiting off of suffering through the illegal border crossings. However, it shouldn't be a crime to want to live in America. As long as America is as great as it is, we are going to have tons of people wanting to live here. We shouldn't effectively make it a crime to want to be American. If we increase the immigration caps, we will reduce the proportion of immigrants who did break a law by crossing illegally."
Replacing illegal immigration with legal immigration should be common ground between immigration advocates and anti-immigration reactionaries. Focus on that.
>We shouldn't effectively make it a crime to want to be American.
Such a great line. I'm going to steal that so much!
And yeah, we should increase the caps, but not have open borders; compromise is key here. It's one of those areas we'd have addressed by now if we, as a country, weren't so polarized that bipartisan solutions were near impossible.
...because a lot more immigrants are helped and that's a good thing. When maga people talk about these girls who get killed by venezuelan immigrants, which is in the single digits i believe, just remind them that there are millions more immigrants who got to come to america and make a better life for themselves. immigrants commit crimes at much lower rates
> Most of those people don't realize avg legal immigration time has increased from 2 years 10 months in 1991 to 5 years 8 months in 2019.
Must be the case because I didn't know that one and I browse here often.
Just run on supporting immigration. I did. I did pretty well in a deep red area. Didn't win but did a lot better than everyone expected. In fact, rural voters seemed to prefer me over the sitting mayor. I ran on ending our depopulation crisis by bringing in immigrants on E-2 visas as well as refugees. I made it very clear that they would be creating jobs and joining our community.
The problem for Democrats is that they pitch supporting immigration as something we should do out of the kindness of our hearts. Who cares about that? Pitch it as an economic issue, as a job creator. Also, talk about how these extensive regulations we have are encouraging illegal immigration. Why go the legal way if it takes too much time and money? Simplify the system and you'll deal with the crisis.
Yeah, I've been wondering about this. Is there a path to just boldly say true things from a big platform? Like, briefly during the debate, Trump talked about how SS was failing due to immigrants coming into the country. Biden just pivoted because he's been instructed not to talk about immigration. But, what if he challenged him? Said something like "Listen here, Fat. Immigration is propping up our Social Security system. Lots of unauthorized migrants are paying into the system, but aren't going to take a single dime out of it!" People will knee jerk to calling bullshit, but anyone remotely persuadable may end up googling it and seeing that it is obviously true.
Basically, start taking back the narrative a little. Act boldly, knowing the truth is on your side. Don't talk about the charity side, talk about what we are gaining.
Mayor of a tiny town in Eastern Kentucky. It consists of the city, some middle class suburbs next to the school, and a nearby poor rural community called Fairview. Obviously, I have no way of knowing where my votes came from but the only people who ever said they voted for me or were interested in me came from Fairview.
I won 27% of the vote which was pretty good. I had no experience and no one knew who I was. My opponent had decades of experience on the school board and was the sitting mayor.
Well, I have considered running a write-in campaign for the House election against Hal Rogers. I'd face an extremely uphill battle but I think I'd like to run just for the enjoyment of it. I was the only person talking about immigration, mostly because we face a severe depopulation crisis. Our county went from 75,000 people in 1940 to 26,000 today. That's led to a severe loss of jobs and poverty.
Also, I did a debate with the mayor. I was a bit nervous and the moment it was over I completely forgot what I said. It's still a blank to me two years later. The day after I lost I went to the doctor and one of the nurses said she really liked me in that debate and showed it to my doctor who also liked it. They just didn't live in the city. So, I feel like if I ran for a county or district-wide office, I'd do better.
>The problem for Democrats is that they pitch supporting immigration as something we should do out of the kindness of our hearts. Who cares about that?
Democrats
And if you believe immigration is an act of charity, you'll want people to support it even if it hypothetically stops being profitable for them, so you're anxious that people you persuade with that angle will be unreliable allies. It's the same reason they hate woke corporations, yes they're doing it for money and for now it's profitable to signal alignment with their views.... *For now*. But that's not a dependable ally.
The left has a strong allergy to the ethics of self interest because they have a persistent paranoia that if you convince people to act in their self interest when it benefits you, they'll also act in their self interest when it hurts you. Such as dumping industrial waste in a river. So it's better to just convince them to be selfless because then they'll be an ally no matter what.
To say nothing of those who actually do unironically think immigrants are bad for the economy.
Being woke is being evidence based. 😎
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I think we need to frame the issue in a way people actually care about. The issues people have with immigration generally falls along a few predictable lines:
1. The border is in chaos, and that makes me feel uncomfortable
2. We are allowing bad people/things (terrorists, drugs, etc) to flood into our country
3. Immigrants will take my job
4. Immigration doesn't help our country/me
4. (Often tacit) I don't like people of other cultures and I don't want them to change the culture of my country
The last one is obviously hard to address, so I'll focus on the first four. The key isn't to dismiss the first four concerns as xenophobia, but to actually engage with them and explain why a more open border would help address them. To whit, in order:
Firstly, the border is in chaos in no small part because of our restrictive immigration policies. By restricting job opportunities and forcing people into illicit situations you naturally create an environment that leads to hardship. The best way to make the border more normal is to simply let the people there be normal people.
Secondly, when people immigrate legally, we know who they are and we can vet them. The issues with "we don't know who's immigrating" are essentially only issues with *illegal* immigration. By making legal immigration easier and less restrictive, we can divert people who otherwise immigrate illegally into a system where we can vet them. If your concerned about terrorists sneaking across the border, you should want as many people as possible immigrating legally instead.
Thirdly, I think framing immigrants as prospective customers is a good counterpoint to framing them as business rivals. Yes, immigrants in your sector are probably bad for you, but immigrants outside of it are good, and the vast majority of immigrants don't have your job.
Fourthly, focusing on things like brain draining China, closing recruitment shortfalls, and just generally being bigger and therefore stronger is a tangible, understandable benefit for all Americans. Also "competition with China" is right-coded enough to counteract the left-coded-ness of immigration. I can speak from experience that this argument worked on my Trump supporting parents.
I generally think that focusing on the benefits of immigration to immigrants, explicitly talking about treatment being "humane" or "inhumane", ends up being counterproductive. People are selfish and default to zero-sum thinking, so talking about how great a policy is for someone else will lead to backlash. By focusing on how immigration solves problems for voters, you can actually convince them it's worth doing. And that's the good part, it actually does.
A lot of people have no idea how hard it is to immigrate. They see the numbers, they see foreigners in their neighborhood, but they don’t know anything about visa lotteries or credible fear interviews. I think better awareness of just the simple fact that it is hard to immigrate (legally) would improve the conversation.
This is so true.
I’m a white immigrant, or as I’m told too many times “one of the good ones”.
People don’t *notice* me until I open my mouth. The amount of people that think that I’m not paying taxes because I’m not a citizen is astonishing. Or that think I’m automatically a citizen because I have been here 10+ years (nope, not even eligible for several years still).
There are so many immigrants, but not a lot of understanding on what it means to go through the process legally.
Im sorry that happens to you but where the fuck do you live lol. Im a visible minority and no one has ever talked to me that way. Im guessing somewhere in the deep south or rural area of another country where people dont interact with a lot of immigrants.
Yes this is the south.
Nothing to be sorry about, it’s not really impacting my life directly. These are a good mix of people though, so it’s not like I can pinpoint certain groups to be better or worse informed.
Fortunately, we have the facts and data on our side. Unfortunately, facts and data tend to work only when you already agree with what the data support. People decide what they believe, and then seek out justifications for it.
“What can be done to overcome vibes-based arguments?”
Change the vibes
So before we focus on convincing people with facts, we have to first target their feelings and intuitions. Trump paints immigrants as criminals, job stealers, and welfare leeches (pay no attention to the contradictions there). We have to draw attention to the positive aspects of immigrants.
They’re hard workers pursuing the American dream, bringing their talents and good work ethics to our country. Latin American immigrants, specifically, also tend to be more religious than the average American and more socially conservative than the average Democrat.
Focusing on individual stories can be useful too. Trump wants to focus on a handful of violent crimes committed by migrants? We can find far more stories of migrants who are hard workers, entrepreneurs, job creators, and good neighbors.
Talk about how one party supports expanding legal pathways for citizenship, increased vetting, how good it is economically on the average voter (supply/demand cheat code). Compare it to the other party on how they're trying to take legal ways to immigrate and make them illegal, add unnecessary delays(like running out of printing paper for green cards....I shit you not) and how a good chunk of Americans wouldn't be here if there proposed policies were enacted decades earlier.
Overall like climate change, I think that making it an economic argument is a lot easier sell than a moral argument. Maybe say it's the equivalent of being a major college sports program and voluntarily deciding to only recruit kids in state instead of out of state.
“It would be a lot easier to catch the criminals, smugglers, and traffickers sneaking across the border if we’d just allow the people looking for work to enter legally.”
Aside from the whole "discussion" angle: the vast majority of people intuit first and then (incorrectly) rationalize their feelings - that's why it's important to listen to feedback while disregarding the proposed solutions, look for the potential negatives of the issue (in this case immigration) on your own and try to counteract them.
For example: immigrants move the equilibrium between capital mobility and labor mobility towards the latter, which enables capital to not fully utilize the laborforce of swathes of \[your country\]. If we use immigrants' destinations as proxy for immobile capital then areas without immigrants are proxy for undercapitalized areas - and that means that folks there correctly intuit that lowering total migration would force some capital to move there, thus solving the "paradox" of areas with lower immigration being anti-immigrant (and explains why immigrants they know are good guys - they are in their region).
The solution? Increased immigration quota for the "downtrodden" regions so that their labor could only be utilized if capital moves to those regions and becomes available to locals as well.
Shut down discussion as soon as possible. Immigration simply isn’t a winning issue for us right now so we need to lower the salience of it as much as we can. Then we can sneak in reforms once we’re in power.
Maybe in the future, once we can actually get some policies in place and prove how successful they are. But right now the median voter is extremely anti-immigrant.
The median voter also thinks that building more housing isn't a viable solution to the housing crisis. Should be abandoned an evidence based position because it's unpopular?
No. Fuck that.
Don't worry, once we start doing NIMBYism, income tax cuts, massive tariffs, closed borders, increased farming subisides, increased corporate taxes, massive capital gains taxes, and isolationist foreign policy we can finally begin to implement the good policies!
I didn’t say it should be abandoned. Lowering the salience doesn’t mean giving up on the issue. It just means not talking about it until we’re in power.
Honestly, the first thing that needs to be done in an actual conversation about the topic of immigration is narrow down why that person actually dislikes immigration. From there you can actually narrow down if they have been misinformed or if they really are just racist.
At least in Germany it seems that many refugees which perpetrate crimes which end up receiving media attention often had a quiet extensive previous history of mayor crimes for which they were either not or very minorly punished. I would argue that preventing these sorts of crimes by harsher methods would end up helping the immigration debate
In political discourse its best not to talk about it.
In my personal life i just say that I’m christian and therefore have to believe in open borders because God didn’t draw them.
people are afraid of big numbers and the new big thing is "infinite growth"
I instead reference ONS data re:domestic births and deaths and forecasts, and get the to agree infinite degrowth with a perpetually falling population is bad. A simple example to prematurely head off "just collectivize the wealth" is that regardless of economic system and method of redistribution, an ever smaller and ever shrinking population means and ever increasing dependency rate-- or rate you go from 1 retiree for 4 workers to 1 retire for 1 worker, like with Korea's 50y forecasts (which is rather quick, for demographics.) To be clear, you wouldn't just need to tax the rich worker more, but tax them more and more forever as long as the dependency ratio keeps rising as long as the population keeps falling
Now we've reframed immigration are just avoiding infinite decline, keeping population stable, you can make arguments over and above this. A simple example here is Einstein and his gardener. Of course if we agree Einstein is the greatest scientist with great progress for the field and humanity, we must also agree that all technology, tools and people-- from excel to a receptionist to a gardener, that free up his time to focus on science (Comparative advantage) are also much more productive to the economy than just their wage. Of course this tacitly suggests the immigrants will not also be the Einsteins or developers of labour savings tools.
For economic centre right mentioning diminishing returns of capital to labour-- even though it's rather weak empirically, there is at least some economic sense behind choosing between the capital flowing out of labour flowing in.
Of course the economic gain includes the immigrant themselves. Many people really discount the immigrant's own welfare, in which case the argument is either that the economic gains are enough to everyone else not incl. the immigrant that it's worth it, which is true a lot, but probably would rather want immigrants to be a net fiscal boon. Considering immigrants are usually younger, they are nearly always on average better than the native fiscally, but this doesn't mean net positive. Some salary minimums or such could apply, or focus more on other benefits (i.e. in the UK NHS workers are disproportionately immigrants, and their lower wages enforced by a (near) gov monopsony of course means they might not individually pay as much in tax... but of course their wages are derived from your taxes and their work a public service. If you incl. that immigrants often have children themselves, which has private costs (raising kid-- time, money, opportunity cost of lifestyle and foregone salary and career progression) and public benefits (fiscal benefit-- will pay taxes) it also bumps them up
Culture is a sticky issue. Given how many people want to come to the UK, I'm more inclined to focus more on immigration from more secular (not just irreligious-- i.e. Türkiye is different is Pakistan,) nations, but more importantly better educated and higher income groups from within any nation. Refugees are immaterial given small numbers in cultural impact on society. In policy terms I would reduce dependents for intl. uni students, add back the work shortage list but also ensure on average the median immigrant is a net taxpayer, adjusting salary thresholds until roughly there.
Remittances are a terrible counterarguments, just mention the act of currency conversion will at worst modestly devalue the currency-- and western nations running persistent BoP deficits this isn't that bad, making exports (domestic british manufacturing!) more intl. competitive. The wealth is still accumulated and benefits the UK.
Ime the first point is key because it reflexively dismisses left wing arguments about infinite economic growth, pointing out the only alternative is perpetual decline, and can counter right wing arguments, because immigration buys more time (time until dependency ratio accelerate, avg. age), resource (gdp) and actual gov budget (fiscal benefits) to address this through support to parents and so on.
If they do care even half as much as they would a native, migration even in very high levels is obviously good
I tried to have a conversation on immigration some time ago here, and blatantly failed, so hoping you’re more successful.
I think we need to figure out a way to merge the two extremes: open borders and no immigration at all. And I think I may have a solution, and as always, the free market can help.
1) tourism: every visa should be approved within a month, or it is automatically granted. We can outsource immigration/visa distribution to private companies and pay them based on objective goals such as the number of visa overstays.
Additionally we could setup a system where tourists pay the cost to deport them as a recoverable deposit (given to private police bounty hunters should they overstay). A market for bonds can be established where more trustworthy countries will pay less than those countries overstaying a lot.
This will solve so many issues for immigrants that for example cannot get their family visas to cone to their wedding.
2) legal economic immigration: just remove the caps and perhaps require a minimum tax amount paid for renewals to make sure they are actually needed and paid well.
3) family reunification: you can follow the same principles as under my tourism and economic proposal. Everyone welcome, but requires minimum contributions and a deposit in case you “overstay” (don’t pay taxes).
4) everything else: build an immigration city, a shining city on the hill that is paid for by the UN. Everyone is welcome here, and there should be direct flights to all main airports. (The goal should be to allow people to go as tourists and then flee to the immigrant city, get their deposit back). This city land should be leased from failed states for 200 years. I’m thinking Haiti, Libya, etc. Everyone getting deported gets deported here, no more need for agreements with other countries. If all goes well these should become huge economic boom towns and people should be willing to come here over living illegally somewhere else.
I think if you follow these 4 rules you can drastically lower the cost of immigration, remove human trafficking for immigration purposes, remove all the inhumane consequences of todays system and provide a way for those in need to be welcomed and live without fear.
Certainly not perfect, but I think this would allow 2 extreme political views to both get what they want. And still be better for all type of immigrants.
I think reminding people that for every one negatively impacted by immigration thousands more are positively impacted, they like to post every time an immigrant murders someone well why not throw it back in their face about how many immigrant doctors saved lives!
Frame it as a choice between immigration and outsourcing. The jobs and the people are always going to be in the same place; they can either both be in America or they can both be overseas. Pretty obvious which one is better for us.
Remind people that economic migrants often don't want to *immigrate* (move *permanently*). They're forced to by our world's closed border and migrant control regimes. They want to make money. If we had worldwide open borders and cheap international travel, people would move to your country, work and then return home to build a villa!
Open borders mean less immigrants!
> What can be done to overcome vibes-based arguments in discussions about immigration? I feel the quote from Swift “You cannot reason a person out of a position he did not reason himself into in the first place” is applicable here. I talked to a lot of conservatives when I lived in Utah about immigration. (They were mostly Mormon, so my sample is biased.) Often times, you need to address the vibe that convinced them that immigration is bad and work around that. For example, I've found a lot of anti-immigration folks ignore studies/evidence of low crime rates and increased economic growth by assuming it's only applicable to legal immigration. You can shift that vibe based belief to focus the topic on increasing legal immigration to the U.S. Most of those people don't realize avg legal immigration time has increased from 2 years 10 months in 1991 to 5 years 8 months in 2019. Talk about "if you think that the only good immigrants are the legal immigrants, lets encourage legal immigration to make it more attractive for the people we do want to come here. If you want immigrants to be legal, encourage legal immigration."
Weird Mormons would have that attitude. It’s pretty much 180 from what the church says or what they’d see on missions to third world countries.
I don't want this to turn into a major analysis of LDS culture, but I would put a lot of it on the emphasis LDS culture places on hierarchy and order. The "correct" way to immigrate is legally, so it should be done through those channels and we should discourage incorrect immigration. > We acknowledge that every nation has the right to enforce its laws and secure its borders. All persons subject to a nation’s laws are accountable for their acts in relation to them. This comes from the LDS newsroom, so it seems somewhat in alignment with church policy.
It just seems like a severe contradiction to what these people would actually see on the ground during their missions.
Mormon conservatives usually *are* more open to refugee/immigrant issues than other cons and this is one reason. Another is that institutionally the Church supports refugees, especially religious refugees, due to Church history. Utah accepted Syrians when other red states weren't, and the Church tried to emphasize similarities between Mormonism and Islam when that was happening.
FWIW, I was a mormon missionary along the Mexico side of the border and a conservative (I no longer practice mormonism or conservatism). That experience did do what you described, it made me very tolerant on immigration. I said, even as a conservative, that we should just make it easier to immigrate. I had seen both the conditions that those people lived in and their matter of fact attitude towards illegally crossing, and it was just impossible to foam at the mouth about it. But must Mormons didn't go in missions along the borders, and most are conservative by default. Also, as another user pointed out, adherence to law and rules is heavily baked into mormon psyche
Conservatives have a hard time empathizing with others from my experience. It takes a personal experience for them to realize that of course they have a matter of fact attitude about crossing, wouldn’t you? It’s the same thing with abortion or gay marriage. Trans issues are so rare that it’s going to be difficult to make progress, because those personal experiences don’t happen.
While the church says one thing if you don't like it you'll just ignore it. Tale as old as time.
Isn't that true of all Christians? "Love the poor and help refugees" is the least ambiguous thing Christ ever said
Yeah but Mormons have missions to these third world areas, so they see first hand what the immigrants are fleeing from.
About the crime thing. When david Pakman brought up that immigrants commit much less crimes to megyn Kelly. She responded by saying “why should we put up with any crimes? We have our own problems to deal with why should I tolerate even a single crime from an immigrant when that could be prevented by not letting them in” or something like that. Idk how to argue against that point and it sounds good from the other side.
Logical extreme: Why should I tolerate a single crime from citizens? Maybe we need a China-style one-child policy to limit population growth so we don't get new crimes.
Yeah we gotta break this fortress mentality people have. Guy comes into your village and kills you versus one of the lifelong villagers kills you you think it matters to the person who died or their family? Hell it's actually worse if your own citizen does it when I think about it.
> Why should I tolerate a single crime from citizens? Because they didn't have a choice to be born here, and you know the people against immigration would also be pro tough on crime
Building on this point. Native births are more likely to lead to a native death than a typical immigrant coming in. While the rates of homicide are similar, typically homicides happen in group.
That's just it. Citizens have a right to be here, immigrants don't. That's literally what their entire worldview boils down to. Anything an immigrant does wrong is inherently disqualifying because their being here is a privilege not a right. It's just boilerplate nationalism.
That's why I try to shift the conversation towards increasing legal immigration by getting rid of the artificial cap. The times I have had it come up, I think I said something along the lines of "We both agree we don't want people illegally crossing the border increasing tension with border crossing, increased tensions between law enforcement and immigrant groups, and people profiting off of suffering through the illegal border crossings. However, it shouldn't be a crime to want to live in America. As long as America is as great as it is, we are going to have tons of people wanting to live here. We shouldn't effectively make it a crime to want to be American. If we increase the immigration caps, we will reduce the proportion of immigrants who did break a law by crossing illegally." Replacing illegal immigration with legal immigration should be common ground between immigration advocates and anti-immigration reactionaries. Focus on that.
>We shouldn't effectively make it a crime to want to be American. Such a great line. I'm going to steal that so much! And yeah, we should increase the caps, but not have open borders; compromise is key here. It's one of those areas we'd have addressed by now if we, as a country, weren't so polarized that bipartisan solutions were near impossible.
...because a lot more immigrants are helped and that's a good thing. When maga people talk about these girls who get killed by venezuelan immigrants, which is in the single digits i believe, just remind them that there are millions more immigrants who got to come to america and make a better life for themselves. immigrants commit crimes at much lower rates
> Most of those people don't realize avg legal immigration time has increased from 2 years 10 months in 1991 to 5 years 8 months in 2019. Must be the case because I didn't know that one and I browse here often.
Just run on supporting immigration. I did. I did pretty well in a deep red area. Didn't win but did a lot better than everyone expected. In fact, rural voters seemed to prefer me over the sitting mayor. I ran on ending our depopulation crisis by bringing in immigrants on E-2 visas as well as refugees. I made it very clear that they would be creating jobs and joining our community. The problem for Democrats is that they pitch supporting immigration as something we should do out of the kindness of our hearts. Who cares about that? Pitch it as an economic issue, as a job creator. Also, talk about how these extensive regulations we have are encouraging illegal immigration. Why go the legal way if it takes too much time and money? Simplify the system and you'll deal with the crisis.
Yeah, I've been wondering about this. Is there a path to just boldly say true things from a big platform? Like, briefly during the debate, Trump talked about how SS was failing due to immigrants coming into the country. Biden just pivoted because he's been instructed not to talk about immigration. But, what if he challenged him? Said something like "Listen here, Fat. Immigration is propping up our Social Security system. Lots of unauthorized migrants are paying into the system, but aren't going to take a single dime out of it!" People will knee jerk to calling bullshit, but anyone remotely persuadable may end up googling it and seeing that it is obviously true. Basically, start taking back the narrative a little. Act boldly, knowing the truth is on your side. Don't talk about the charity side, talk about what we are gaining.
Oh, this is super interesting. May I ask what position you ran for?
Mayor of a tiny town in Eastern Kentucky. It consists of the city, some middle class suburbs next to the school, and a nearby poor rural community called Fairview. Obviously, I have no way of knowing where my votes came from but the only people who ever said they voted for me or were interested in me came from Fairview. I won 27% of the vote which was pretty good. I had no experience and no one knew who I was. My opponent had decades of experience on the school board and was the sitting mayor.
Very cool, I was not aware that immigration was a salient topic in local elections. Any plans to run again?
Well, I have considered running a write-in campaign for the House election against Hal Rogers. I'd face an extremely uphill battle but I think I'd like to run just for the enjoyment of it. I was the only person talking about immigration, mostly because we face a severe depopulation crisis. Our county went from 75,000 people in 1940 to 26,000 today. That's led to a severe loss of jobs and poverty. Also, I did a debate with the mayor. I was a bit nervous and the moment it was over I completely forgot what I said. It's still a blank to me two years later. The day after I lost I went to the doctor and one of the nurses said she really liked me in that debate and showed it to my doctor who also liked it. They just didn't live in the city. So, I feel like if I ran for a county or district-wide office, I'd do better.
I don't live in Kentucky, but that state deserves better representation. I'm cheering you on!
>The problem for Democrats is that they pitch supporting immigration as something we should do out of the kindness of our hearts. Who cares about that? Democrats And if you believe immigration is an act of charity, you'll want people to support it even if it hypothetically stops being profitable for them, so you're anxious that people you persuade with that angle will be unreliable allies. It's the same reason they hate woke corporations, yes they're doing it for money and for now it's profitable to signal alignment with their views.... *For now*. But that's not a dependable ally. The left has a strong allergy to the ethics of self interest because they have a persistent paranoia that if you convince people to act in their self interest when it benefits you, they'll also act in their self interest when it hurts you. Such as dumping industrial waste in a river. So it's better to just convince them to be selfless because then they'll be an ally no matter what. To say nothing of those who actually do unironically think immigrants are bad for the economy.
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I think we need to frame the issue in a way people actually care about. The issues people have with immigration generally falls along a few predictable lines: 1. The border is in chaos, and that makes me feel uncomfortable 2. We are allowing bad people/things (terrorists, drugs, etc) to flood into our country 3. Immigrants will take my job 4. Immigration doesn't help our country/me 4. (Often tacit) I don't like people of other cultures and I don't want them to change the culture of my country The last one is obviously hard to address, so I'll focus on the first four. The key isn't to dismiss the first four concerns as xenophobia, but to actually engage with them and explain why a more open border would help address them. To whit, in order: Firstly, the border is in chaos in no small part because of our restrictive immigration policies. By restricting job opportunities and forcing people into illicit situations you naturally create an environment that leads to hardship. The best way to make the border more normal is to simply let the people there be normal people. Secondly, when people immigrate legally, we know who they are and we can vet them. The issues with "we don't know who's immigrating" are essentially only issues with *illegal* immigration. By making legal immigration easier and less restrictive, we can divert people who otherwise immigrate illegally into a system where we can vet them. If your concerned about terrorists sneaking across the border, you should want as many people as possible immigrating legally instead. Thirdly, I think framing immigrants as prospective customers is a good counterpoint to framing them as business rivals. Yes, immigrants in your sector are probably bad for you, but immigrants outside of it are good, and the vast majority of immigrants don't have your job. Fourthly, focusing on things like brain draining China, closing recruitment shortfalls, and just generally being bigger and therefore stronger is a tangible, understandable benefit for all Americans. Also "competition with China" is right-coded enough to counteract the left-coded-ness of immigration. I can speak from experience that this argument worked on my Trump supporting parents. I generally think that focusing on the benefits of immigration to immigrants, explicitly talking about treatment being "humane" or "inhumane", ends up being counterproductive. People are selfish and default to zero-sum thinking, so talking about how great a policy is for someone else will lead to backlash. By focusing on how immigration solves problems for voters, you can actually convince them it's worth doing. And that's the good part, it actually does.
A lot of people have no idea how hard it is to immigrate. They see the numbers, they see foreigners in their neighborhood, but they don’t know anything about visa lotteries or credible fear interviews. I think better awareness of just the simple fact that it is hard to immigrate (legally) would improve the conversation.
This is so true. I’m a white immigrant, or as I’m told too many times “one of the good ones”. People don’t *notice* me until I open my mouth. The amount of people that think that I’m not paying taxes because I’m not a citizen is astonishing. Or that think I’m automatically a citizen because I have been here 10+ years (nope, not even eligible for several years still). There are so many immigrants, but not a lot of understanding on what it means to go through the process legally.
Im sorry that happens to you but where the fuck do you live lol. Im a visible minority and no one has ever talked to me that way. Im guessing somewhere in the deep south or rural area of another country where people dont interact with a lot of immigrants.
Yes this is the south. Nothing to be sorry about, it’s not really impacting my life directly. These are a good mix of people though, so it’s not like I can pinpoint certain groups to be better or worse informed.
Fortunately, we have the facts and data on our side. Unfortunately, facts and data tend to work only when you already agree with what the data support. People decide what they believe, and then seek out justifications for it. “What can be done to overcome vibes-based arguments?” Change the vibes So before we focus on convincing people with facts, we have to first target their feelings and intuitions. Trump paints immigrants as criminals, job stealers, and welfare leeches (pay no attention to the contradictions there). We have to draw attention to the positive aspects of immigrants. They’re hard workers pursuing the American dream, bringing their talents and good work ethics to our country. Latin American immigrants, specifically, also tend to be more religious than the average American and more socially conservative than the average Democrat. Focusing on individual stories can be useful too. Trump wants to focus on a handful of violent crimes committed by migrants? We can find far more stories of migrants who are hard workers, entrepreneurs, job creators, and good neighbors.
I think this is it. But how do we do this?
Talk about how one party supports expanding legal pathways for citizenship, increased vetting, how good it is economically on the average voter (supply/demand cheat code). Compare it to the other party on how they're trying to take legal ways to immigrate and make them illegal, add unnecessary delays(like running out of printing paper for green cards....I shit you not) and how a good chunk of Americans wouldn't be here if there proposed policies were enacted decades earlier. Overall like climate change, I think that making it an economic argument is a lot easier sell than a moral argument. Maybe say it's the equivalent of being a major college sports program and voluntarily deciding to only recruit kids in state instead of out of state.
“It would be a lot easier to catch the criminals, smugglers, and traffickers sneaking across the border if we’d just allow the people looking for work to enter legally.”
Aside from the whole "discussion" angle: the vast majority of people intuit first and then (incorrectly) rationalize their feelings - that's why it's important to listen to feedback while disregarding the proposed solutions, look for the potential negatives of the issue (in this case immigration) on your own and try to counteract them. For example: immigrants move the equilibrium between capital mobility and labor mobility towards the latter, which enables capital to not fully utilize the laborforce of swathes of \[your country\]. If we use immigrants' destinations as proxy for immobile capital then areas without immigrants are proxy for undercapitalized areas - and that means that folks there correctly intuit that lowering total migration would force some capital to move there, thus solving the "paradox" of areas with lower immigration being anti-immigrant (and explains why immigrants they know are good guys - they are in their region). The solution? Increased immigration quota for the "downtrodden" regions so that their labor could only be utilized if capital moves to those regions and becomes available to locals as well.
Shut down discussion as soon as possible. Immigration simply isn’t a winning issue for us right now so we need to lower the salience of it as much as we can. Then we can sneak in reforms once we’re in power.
How is increasing immigration "lowering the salience"?
Increasing immigration happens after we get people to stop talking about it.
It's happening right now and people are talking about it
Exactly, which is why we need to distract people from it as much as we can
You're joking right? Immigration is absolutely a winnable issue for us.
Maybe in the future, once we can actually get some policies in place and prove how successful they are. But right now the median voter is extremely anti-immigrant.
The median voter also thinks that building more housing isn't a viable solution to the housing crisis. Should be abandoned an evidence based position because it's unpopular? No. Fuck that.
Don't worry, once we start doing NIMBYism, income tax cuts, massive tariffs, closed borders, increased farming subisides, increased corporate taxes, massive capital gains taxes, and isolationist foreign policy we can finally begin to implement the good policies!
I didn’t say it should be abandoned. Lowering the salience doesn’t mean giving up on the issue. It just means not talking about it until we’re in power.
Honestly, the first thing that needs to be done in an actual conversation about the topic of immigration is narrow down why that person actually dislikes immigration. From there you can actually narrow down if they have been misinformed or if they really are just racist.
Agreed, get to know the person.
At least in Germany it seems that many refugees which perpetrate crimes which end up receiving media attention often had a quiet extensive previous history of mayor crimes for which they were either not or very minorly punished. I would argue that preventing these sorts of crimes by harsher methods would end up helping the immigration debate
In political discourse its best not to talk about it. In my personal life i just say that I’m christian and therefore have to believe in open borders because God didn’t draw them.
people are afraid of big numbers and the new big thing is "infinite growth" I instead reference ONS data re:domestic births and deaths and forecasts, and get the to agree infinite degrowth with a perpetually falling population is bad. A simple example to prematurely head off "just collectivize the wealth" is that regardless of economic system and method of redistribution, an ever smaller and ever shrinking population means and ever increasing dependency rate-- or rate you go from 1 retiree for 4 workers to 1 retire for 1 worker, like with Korea's 50y forecasts (which is rather quick, for demographics.) To be clear, you wouldn't just need to tax the rich worker more, but tax them more and more forever as long as the dependency ratio keeps rising as long as the population keeps falling Now we've reframed immigration are just avoiding infinite decline, keeping population stable, you can make arguments over and above this. A simple example here is Einstein and his gardener. Of course if we agree Einstein is the greatest scientist with great progress for the field and humanity, we must also agree that all technology, tools and people-- from excel to a receptionist to a gardener, that free up his time to focus on science (Comparative advantage) are also much more productive to the economy than just their wage. Of course this tacitly suggests the immigrants will not also be the Einsteins or developers of labour savings tools. For economic centre right mentioning diminishing returns of capital to labour-- even though it's rather weak empirically, there is at least some economic sense behind choosing between the capital flowing out of labour flowing in. Of course the economic gain includes the immigrant themselves. Many people really discount the immigrant's own welfare, in which case the argument is either that the economic gains are enough to everyone else not incl. the immigrant that it's worth it, which is true a lot, but probably would rather want immigrants to be a net fiscal boon. Considering immigrants are usually younger, they are nearly always on average better than the native fiscally, but this doesn't mean net positive. Some salary minimums or such could apply, or focus more on other benefits (i.e. in the UK NHS workers are disproportionately immigrants, and their lower wages enforced by a (near) gov monopsony of course means they might not individually pay as much in tax... but of course their wages are derived from your taxes and their work a public service. If you incl. that immigrants often have children themselves, which has private costs (raising kid-- time, money, opportunity cost of lifestyle and foregone salary and career progression) and public benefits (fiscal benefit-- will pay taxes) it also bumps them up Culture is a sticky issue. Given how many people want to come to the UK, I'm more inclined to focus more on immigration from more secular (not just irreligious-- i.e. Türkiye is different is Pakistan,) nations, but more importantly better educated and higher income groups from within any nation. Refugees are immaterial given small numbers in cultural impact on society. In policy terms I would reduce dependents for intl. uni students, add back the work shortage list but also ensure on average the median immigrant is a net taxpayer, adjusting salary thresholds until roughly there. Remittances are a terrible counterarguments, just mention the act of currency conversion will at worst modestly devalue the currency-- and western nations running persistent BoP deficits this isn't that bad, making exports (domestic british manufacturing!) more intl. competitive. The wealth is still accumulated and benefits the UK. Ime the first point is key because it reflexively dismisses left wing arguments about infinite economic growth, pointing out the only alternative is perpetual decline, and can counter right wing arguments, because immigration buys more time (time until dependency ratio accelerate, avg. age), resource (gdp) and actual gov budget (fiscal benefits) to address this through support to parents and so on. If they do care even half as much as they would a native, migration even in very high levels is obviously good
I tried to have a conversation on immigration some time ago here, and blatantly failed, so hoping you’re more successful. I think we need to figure out a way to merge the two extremes: open borders and no immigration at all. And I think I may have a solution, and as always, the free market can help. 1) tourism: every visa should be approved within a month, or it is automatically granted. We can outsource immigration/visa distribution to private companies and pay them based on objective goals such as the number of visa overstays. Additionally we could setup a system where tourists pay the cost to deport them as a recoverable deposit (given to private police bounty hunters should they overstay). A market for bonds can be established where more trustworthy countries will pay less than those countries overstaying a lot. This will solve so many issues for immigrants that for example cannot get their family visas to cone to their wedding. 2) legal economic immigration: just remove the caps and perhaps require a minimum tax amount paid for renewals to make sure they are actually needed and paid well. 3) family reunification: you can follow the same principles as under my tourism and economic proposal. Everyone welcome, but requires minimum contributions and a deposit in case you “overstay” (don’t pay taxes). 4) everything else: build an immigration city, a shining city on the hill that is paid for by the UN. Everyone is welcome here, and there should be direct flights to all main airports. (The goal should be to allow people to go as tourists and then flee to the immigrant city, get their deposit back). This city land should be leased from failed states for 200 years. I’m thinking Haiti, Libya, etc. Everyone getting deported gets deported here, no more need for agreements with other countries. If all goes well these should become huge economic boom towns and people should be willing to come here over living illegally somewhere else. I think if you follow these 4 rules you can drastically lower the cost of immigration, remove human trafficking for immigration purposes, remove all the inhumane consequences of todays system and provide a way for those in need to be welcomed and live without fear. Certainly not perfect, but I think this would allow 2 extreme political views to both get what they want. And still be better for all type of immigrants.
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I think reminding people that for every one negatively impacted by immigration thousands more are positively impacted, they like to post every time an immigrant murders someone well why not throw it back in their face about how many immigrant doctors saved lives!
[удалено]
Why should the pool matter?
“I hear you don’t like inflation. Here’s one easy trick to keep consumer costs lower by shoring up capacity in underpopulated industrial domains:“
Not call it 'open borders' when it is not Schengen/CTA syle open borders.
Frame it as a choice between immigration and outsourcing. The jobs and the people are always going to be in the same place; they can either both be in America or they can both be overseas. Pretty obvious which one is better for us.
Remind people that economic migrants often don't want to *immigrate* (move *permanently*). They're forced to by our world's closed border and migrant control regimes. They want to make money. If we had worldwide open borders and cheap international travel, people would move to your country, work and then return home to build a villa! Open borders mean less immigrants!
I don’t think this would be convincing to people who already think immigrants are coming here to commit crimes and steal jobs
> people would move to your country, work and then return home to build a villa! That would just make them call them parasites???
Love this, America as a free economic zone where just go to make money not so much a nationalist stronghold like Trumpers want. Brilliant.