Why limit immigration?

Cryophilia@lemmy.world to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 130 points –

Aside from racism. I mean economically/socially, what issues does too much immigration cause?

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Immigration in excess and esspecially in combination with exploititive or unenforced labour laws and mismanagement of other resources and infrastructure, can decrease wages, and cause shortage of key resources. For example, if there is no new housing being built, but there is very high immigration levels, housing prices will rise, and availability will be limited.

Well sure, but then why not build more houses?

Usually because those responsible for regulating housing are heavily invested in it, and like the fact that high immigration is pushing prices up. In the case of more blatantly malicious governments, it can also be used to encourage divisionism, or to weaken the power of the working class. At best, its just because building housing (esspecially in more extreme climates) is slow and expensive. As usual, most things lead back to corrupt governments and capitalism.

Fair point. I say "why not just build houses" as if it's easy, but it's really not. If I were King of America I could force simultaneous policy changes (more immigration + more housing) but that's unlikely to happen in reality.

Typically these quickly built housing is of such crappy quality that only immigrants will want to live there (because they can't afford anything else anyway). This leads to the development of ghettos, with leads to the typical problems from crappy schools (that traps the kids in the lowest social class) to no cultural assimilation.

So have and enforce building codes. Sounds like a simple problem with a simple solution.

You mean building codes that would hike the price to levels immigrants can't afford? You could of course build social housing like a developed country but good luck doing that while republicans hold any kind of power. And even if you manage to get that done the amount of housing you can build is limited by the amount of money you are willing to invest into social housing.

Building codes bring price up, more supply brings prices down, sounds like a wash.

Sounds like you have no idea what you are talking about. No amount of supply will bring down raw material and labour costs.

It's cute you think scarcity has no effect on prices.

What the fuck are you talking about? No one in here said scarcity has no effect.

But no amount of abundance will bring the price below whatever material + labour cost. But arguing with you is pointless, you seem to be intent on missing the point.

But no amount of abundance will bring the price below whatever material + labour cost.

Ok, so? Prices still have a long way to go before hitting that floor.