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nicboutoday at 12:22 PM1 replyview on HN

I work with immigrants for a living. It's a wonderfully complex issue, but one that I rarely enjoy discussing because it either makes racist people go mask-off, or makes progressive people think you're a racist person going mask-off.

I think that the issue is less cultural and more socioeconomic. Being "other"ed your entire life sucks. Making it in another country with far more limited resources sucks. It's hard to ignore the toll it takes on the people I interact with.


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weatherlitetoday at 12:57 PM

> I think that the issue is less cultural and more socioeconomic. Being "other"ed your entire life sucks. Making it in another country with far more limited resources sucks. It's hard to ignore the toll it takes on the people I interact with.

You can look at it like that. Another way to look at it is those accepting countries possibly saved your life (if you're claiming you're a refugee) or in the very least gave you a much much safer existence and better healthcare and standard of living. And it's really quite a big expense on the hosting countries who aren't doing that great themselves lately.

The socioeconomics explanation irks me - when you accept a refugee / low skilled worker they are almost by definition going to be poorer than the locals. There's absolutely no way you could equate their wealth to the locals. This is no one's fault, just the reality of taking in people from poorer countries and/or with low skills. I'm also not sure it's fair to say poorer immigrants are always more violent (you didn't say this but it was implied); immigrants from Thailand, India, Philipines into Europe are actually underrepresented in crime. So yeah , this is complex I agree.

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