Resident Crisis
Without the migrants the West would be facing a Resident Crisis
The popular narrative in the west is that those of limited means are struggling because immigrants take their jobs. The truth is that they probably have any semblance of a quality of life because of those migrants.
The west has a fertility problem.
The cost of child rearing is so high, that most people in the west are abstaining from having children.
Source: Wikipedia
The replacement rate of fertility is 2.1, anything lower than that indicates a declining population. Europe and US are well below 2.
If you want to play around with models having different fertility rates, you can go to this site and knock yourself out.
Now, if you have listened to stock market news for even a minute, the only thing they care about is growth. If you have fewer people to sell to, your economy will eventually decline no matter how good your marketing is. There is only so much that you can make people consume. They are not going buy a dozen refrigerators.
Migrants, no matter how poor need to consume. They need to eat, they need shelter and they need other things like clothing, etc. The presence of immigrants only increases consumption and hence causes the economy to grow. Outsourcing does not create consumption in the local economy.
The real reason is outsourcing and not immigration. Outsourcing meant to preserve the environment has taken jobs to other countries. The rich get to make money irrespective of where the products are produced, whereas the poor are often just robbed of their jobs.
When they cite the unfairness of it all, the only boogeyman that the politicians are able to find are the immigrants.
“The Immigrants are taking your jobs away!”
Hence the shift towards the right. The recently concluded elections in the EU show a strong shift towards the right in countries like Germany and France.
You cannot keep blaming the immigrants and expect people not to vote into power, those who promise to remove them.
In the meantime…
Exhibit C: The Giving Pledge is a promise to give the majority of your wealth away by the time you die. The Pledge receives a lot of press. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet introduced it in an effort to spur billionaire giving above the anemic 10% that’s been the norm. The good it has done, however, is dwarfed by its promise and PR. “Giving” excludes political donations, but that’s about it, and notably permits the same private foundations that billionaires have long used to avoid actually giving anyone else a dime. There’s an organization behind the Pledge that coordinates events and conversations between members, but I believe this has (mostly) been window dressing, obscuring an obscene level of income inequality that runs unfettered. Gates and Buffet are richer than when they started giving; the 73 members of the Pledge, who were all billionaires in 2010, have tripled their collective wealth in the past decade. Wouldn’t a more apt name be “the Hoarding Pledge”?
Source: No Mercy No Malice
Elon Musk was just awarded a pay day of $46 billion by Tesla shareholders. Why? He may not be in a position to do any good for Tesla but he can certainly do a lot of harm. He can quit the company, badmouth it on Twitter and destroy shareholder value in an unprecedented manner.
This hoarding and inequality is the problem, not the immigrants.
Once the right rises and the immigrants are shown the door, the fun will really begin then. Then the West will be left with a Resident Crisis also known as a Revolution!