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OkayPhysicistyesterday at 11:41 PM3 repliesview on HN

There is a very, very, very large gap between "open borders" and "keep all those disgusting foreigners out". I guarantee if you ask the average "immigration control activist" in most countries what the acceptable number of brown people to let into their country is, the answer is zero. Because the most active members of these movements are motivated by racism.


Replies

constantiustoday at 10:47 AM

You seem to have decided that people who are against immigration are stupid, racist, authoritarian, and evil: by all.means, that's an understandable bias, as the most noticeable part of most countries' populations who hold this view indeed appear to be what you think. However, it is still a bias, that leads to you engaging in the kind of self-righteous, irrational rage that might make you feel like you're standing up for the oppressed when you're actually not.

Most people seem to conflate immigrants with refugees, which is false (refugees are a small minority of all immigrants), to see immigrants as poor, hard-working people who just need one chance, which is also false (most immigrants are skilled workers, generally not the poor of their country, and most immigrants you see are probably family members of other skilled workers), and to view immigration as a leftist cause (again not true, immigration is something that's mostly lobbied for by corporate interests).

But many more people feel opposed to migration for entirely different reasons: personal hardships directly due to immigration (loss of job or house), political leanings (pro-working class can mean anti-immigration), social cohesion/sustainability/community considerations, etc.

Not empathising with those people and having a reductionist view of immigration, which often stems from simply being shielded from any negative effects of it, as most on this forum are, lets people take a position like yours, which further polarises society and plays into the cards of the powerful you seem to oppose.

We probably agree on almost every political view apart from this.

rixedtoday at 12:12 AM

It must feel great to feel so vastly superior...

But everyone being crass and stupid was not even the question. The question was: how many more battles are going to be lost on that hill?

viccistoday at 4:37 PM

You're inventing a person to get mad at. I don't see any evidence that this founder holds those kind of views.