Biden imposes strict migration limits at border

[smulder]

… now the whole species is ceasing to exist

[danimagoo]

@Shuck

Immigration isn’t really a border state issue, though - it’s more an issue in non-border states where people think it’s a much bigger issue in border states than it actually is, and think it’s an issue in their state, too.

Well…it’s not just that. New York has been significantly impacted because Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis keep shipping their asylum seekers there. So there are some non-border states that have been impacted, but the impact is due more to the border states’ reaction than to the immigration itself.

[Otherbrother]

@simonize

I’ve been saying that if politicians wanted to fix immigration (or at least the asylum part) instead of bloviating about it, they would hire more immigration judges.

I don’t support this latest move from Biden but it sure seems worth noting that Biden and Democrats in Congress tried really hard to negotiate and pass a bipartisan immigration bill that included funding for more judges, among many other things. The GOP ended up reversing earlier support and voting against the bill that they helped negotiate after Trump made it clear that he’d rather have nothing get done in order to keep it as an election issue.

FACT SHEET: Impact of Bipartisan Border Agreement Funding on Border Operations | The White House.

[Shuck]

@smulder

… are these the same people who say there is a “demographic crisis”

Almost certainly. There’s huge overlap because the motivation for both positions comes down to racism.

@danimagoo

New York has been significantly impacted

There’s a certain amount of disconnection between who’s getting upset about immigration and who’s actually being impacted by it, though. It’s similar to how worked up people are about crime. The people who see it as the biggest issue also admit that it’s not an issue where they live - they’re convinced it’s a huge problem somewhere else, however.

[docosc]

Consider what happens when the population gets steadily older, more retirees, fewer working age folks, more economic pressure on the ones still generating GNP. You can see it starting in Asia. Long way from species extinction, but not so long to societal dysfunction.

[Mindysan33]

@docosc

Long way from species extinction, but not so long to societal dysfunction.

Yes, but there are solutions to that issue that aren’t just “tie women (the right women) down to the home and make them pump out babies” as the far right would push. Immigration can be helpful, but of course, the far right doesn’t like that one, because often those aren’t “the right people” having children… We do have 8 billion of us hanging about, so I think we’re fine and it’s a problem of the nation-state more than it’s a problem of species extinction. But if can’t get our heads around that, then societal dysfunction will (and already is, frankly) happening.

[docosc]

My hypothesis, which I fear is going to be tested in the near term, is that the more xenophobic a society is (looking at you, Japan) the worse this demographic shift is going to hit it. How often has it been pointed out that without immigration the US population would have been shrinking for decades? And immigrants trend much younger than the current population. But, of course, they also trend more melanin-enriched, which is a deal breaker for the fascist caucus.

[Mindysan33]

@docosc

My hypothesis, which I fear is going to be tested in the near term, is that the more xenophobic a society is (looking at you, Japan) the worse this demographic shift is going to hit it.

Yeah, I agree. That makes a lot of sense.

Honestly, it’s a deeper problem with the nation-state system itself. It’s built on the idea of certain people “belonging” to certain places (the whole blood and soil proposition), but that can be used for obviously deeply destructive ends (Germany in the 30s/40s, Israel right now, Japan, the far right whereever it’s found, etc). It glosses over indigenity (sp?) for one, and ignores just how much people have been moving for the past few hundred years or how much ethnic identity is a social construct that doesn’t necessarily connect with whatever our DNA might say about our origins… It also shows the deep contradictions fo neoliberal capitalism, which demands the freeflow of capital, talent, and labor, but depends on the nation-state as its enforcement arm. Yet another contradiction of capitalism, I guess.

[gatto]

@Mindysan33

It also shows the deep contradictions fo neoliberal capitalism, which demands the freeflow of capital, talent, and labor, but depends on the nation-state as its enforcement arm

the advantage there is the creation of a class of people who have limited access to government protection. that’s part of why immigration is so messed up: it’s useful for corporations to have undocumented people living at the margins, trapped inside the country - it being at least as hard to get out as it was to get in

so i don’t think it’s a contradiction necessarily. it’s a tool for the creation of cheap labor

( which also helps, i think, explain why instability in the regions around us never quite get fixed. the instability generates the conditions needed for cheap labor and marginalized workers )

[Mindysan33]

They benefit from undocumented migration, not from those who have legal protections of any kind… that is why they are hammering against legal forms of migration…

@gatto

so i don’t think it’s a contradiction necessarily. it’s a tool for the creation of cheap labor

My point was about Marx’s fundamental insight about capitalism, that it creates contradictions it can’t overcome.

[John_Gold]

And Migrants trend more motivated (they already proved they are motivated enough to change their circumstances) unemployment rates for Migrants are near non existent.