No, we don't. This is a mantra that keeps being repeated without much substance.
Housing affordability, job quality, public finance sustainability won't get any better with immigration. Maybe salaries keep being depressed, consumer demand increases, and that's good for profits. But I can't think of much more!
Amazing.
That's right up there - identical premise - with the ever popular HN refrain: but who will pick the strawberries if not for the immigrants. Inevitably stated in most every thread on immigration.
Philosophically it's perfectly aligned with the big business types that also want cheap labor for exactly the same reasons: more people to take advantage of, more people to cast into cheap labor roles of servitude to the aging/dying/lazy/entitled affluent classes.
But how will we prop up our collapsing entitlement systems, which were poorly managed and poorly funded and poorly thought out, if we don't import massive volumes of labor to pay taxes so the entitled classes can pretend their system isn't failing and so those immigrants themselves can get screwed later on when the entitlement systems they're brought in to prop up are bled dry.
In my experience people making that argument are more often than not the type that think manual labor is "beneath" them. The type that would rather collect unemployment for months at a time than take a job they don't like. It says much more about them than they think it does.
Any source for that? Is that what this is all about - cos I'm sure we can pay more for caregivers and more people will want these jobs. The problem is it doesn't pay well.
That increases the problem and puts more load on the systems that are strained to begin with. That would look totally different if it was a different group of immigrants, but we have to look at reality, not a theoretical ideal.
Don't you think this is the real problem that needs to be addressed? If your society cannot sustain itself, it will be replaced.
Pensions are very high in Europe, salaries stagnant, the elderly are property owners while the young are not.
Enough of cheap fallacies!
In Japan 40% of population is over 65. It's extreme case of aging.
Yet they are doing perfectly fine with virtually zero immigration.
They've been in a recession for 30 years.