I think we can be more precise here: they don’t like massive, uncontrolled immigration of low-skilled workers. The most vulnerable part of the population fears that they might lose wages, because the low-skilled immigrants would do their same job for a lower salary.
Nobody is against to highly trained, well-educated, rich immigrants (or nobody I’ve spoken to apparently).
Because due to abuses in the system a lot of them are neither highly trained, nor well educated, nor rich.
Put a proper highly selective, blind, state department administered brutal exam before issuing the visa and you will see how in decade how will the opinion of them will change.
But that would undermine what may be a larger political strategy. Many perceive unchecked immigration as merely one political party attempting to swell its ranks.
I think people are highly influenced by what they see in the media. When they see large numbers of people seemingly being let into the door without restrictions, without vetting, they become afraid. Then when they raise concerns about it, and are being told they are racist etc for even asking such a question, it now goes from a news event to a personal threat and attack.
Ever heard of brain waste? That's the paradoxical situation that rises up when skilled workers can not get the qualifications necessary to practice their job in their new country of residence. That's how you get doctors and nuclear engineers driving taxis.
I think you’re right, but let me add another point of view to your statement: how would you compare any degree you’d get in two completely different countries? Also how can a university/state know what they actually teach in all the universities?
Some degree of standardization or accelerated programs with faster tests in a quicker roadmap would greatly help in this regard anyway.
What if the lower presence of field workers pushed for more technological advancements in agriculture? Maybe it doesn’t make sense economically today because people can force low wages to immigrants to work in the fields. (Mine is just an hypothesis, not against immigration but still it should be an open point of discussion)
And then when you point out to them that the US, for example, hasn't had massive, uncontrolled immigration of low-skilled workers in well over a century[1], and remind them of the history of rich people using racism as a way to align the interest of poor whites with rich whites, rather than with poor immigrants, they call you an anti-American DEI-loving Marxist.
“If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.” - LBJ
You seem to have overlooked the anti-tourist, anti-"expat"[2], and anti-digital nomads protests in the last few years?
There are stories of Trump voters regretting their vote because it affected immigrants in their lives that they didn't consider one of "those ones". Whether that immigrant was highly skilled or not is besides the point. If a bigot has to deal with an Indian doctor, politician, maid, or Uber driver, they're not going to like them because they're a bigot. Their skills aren't relevant. They think immigrants are bad and shouldn't be here at all, or than the ones they've met in person and consider "alright".
The elephant in the room that this doesn't address is racism. In the West expressions of racism are illegal or at least strongly condemned, so we are left guessing as to how it factors in far-right vote.
We can't rely on "what voters say" like the OP suggests, because for some of them what they want to say is forbidden so they say other things instead.
I grew up in a very right wing environment as a left leaning person and I had many discussions during that time. Even clear racists would come up with some post-hoc rationalization why what they believe is important and true and should be enforced (typically by the mob, not by the law).
I noticed that these arguments were rationalizations, because they do not survive close scrutiny and get adjusted during the course of a discussion. There basically is a hole in their argumentation in the spot where they can't admit that the basis stems from their feelings.
Imagine discussing with someone who wants to really eat icecream why they want it without them being able to talk about their feelings. That is gonna be a nonsense argument of the highest order, because the ultimate basis for everything cannot be discussed. So they come up with explainations why everybody should eat icecream, why eating it is good for you actually and so on. In reality it boils down to them
>The elephant in the room that this doesn't address is racism
Here is a brain teaser for you - I live in Europe. I don't mind immigration from ADOS US Citizens but am against the immigration of Subsaharan africans. Am I racist?
How is he racist if he would have no problem with educated black people from US, but would have problem with black people from certain African countries?
Btw. racism is against the race, if he is against some specific nation/culture regardless of race it's called xenophobia (I'm experiencing it in Czechia despite being white like majority of population and I feel China where I stood out was less racist towards me than Czechia is xenophobic, while I am indistinguishable from average Czech, if I won't open my mouth).
As a fellow European I just call his opinion common sense and empirical knowledge, some cultures are just incompatible and cause issues to functioning society as seen in France, Germany, Sweden or UK.
Love that you added a "educated" in there. You almost make it sound as if you would still have a problem with a educated black person from an African country.
Yup - taking a look at how tidy, ordered, well functioning and maintained their country is is fundamentally racist.
If this is achievable by all societies - it is ok to judge their members. If it is not achievable - then why do we need members of them here?
Anyway immigration opposition is intersectional. If you put people to draw on a map where they don't want people from they will rarely exclude all members of a trait. Just the majority.
But the combination of social class, age, sex, religion, culture and place of origin really create good proxy what could be expected of a person and the odds of them being troublemakers. And when taking the lower classes you need to be really selective to avoid toxic combos. The uppers and middle classes often don't have trouble with integration and assimilation.
> what they want to say is forbidden so they say other things instead.
This is exactly what the original comment meant: you are using 'social class' and 'country order' as proxies to say what is socially forbidden.
> Yup - taking a look at how tidy, ordered, well functioning and maintained their country is is fundamentally racist.
You’ve admitted that your criteria are based on generalizations about entire regions, which is the definition of racism. You are just trying to prove that your type of racism is logical and justified.
> Sorry but it is ok to generalize Haiti and Barbados. Same genes. Different outcomes.
First of all, we all share the same human genes. To argue that any group is favored due to genetic traits is antiquated and scientifically and historically illiterate. How does that argument hold up if you go back a few centuries to when the Arab world was far more advanced while Europeans were throwing waste into the streets? Or look at China a century ago versus today. It's European hegemony that crippled Chinese society through the opium trade. And Haiti was also crippled by European hegemony. There is absolutely nothing to do with 'genes' here.
Your attempt to invalidate a pattern of racism by claiming you would welcome a US ADOS citizen (which, given this exchange, I find highly doubtful) just means your bias is more specific.
And shifting this to a semantic argument about the word 'racism' is a distraction. Race has no basis in human biology (unless you were educated over a hundred years ago). Racism as a social construct, judging and excluding people based on perceived racial or geographic categories, is exactly what you are doing.
Not really sure what the point of the article is as it seems pretty dumb. The answer is simple; it’s the economy, stupid.
People who are prospering don’t have much negative feelings about immigration or the homeless or drug addicts or any “them” in the “us vs them” dichotomy. People who are not are more anxious and stressed and feel uncertain about their own place. People in such condition have no capacity to welcome others they feel are competing with them on whatever little resources there is to share. It wasn’t long ago that people in cities villainized and hated rural migration into the cities within the same country. As wealth and prosperity increased in the cities those feelings dissipated.
I spent a good minute or so trying to think of how to point that out without breaking the HN posting guidelines, and I could have thought for another hundred years without coming up with a reply as perfect as this.
> Some people took that as proof that the voters’ real grievances lay elsewhere. The economist Tony Annett even put the AfD’s gains down to rising inequality, austerity and the loss of cheap Russian energy.
I guess Texans are suddenly in favor of immigration, when 2 years ago they hated immigration.
I grew up in a rural Austrian village, where people overwhelmingly voted for 5he anti-immigration party. The only person with a darker skin many of these people ever got to know was the local pizza baker, a black man, who was loved by everybody for both his character and what he did for the community. There were other migrants but they weren't valued less.
So when I asked people who voted for right wing candidates how they square the love for their migrant neighbors with their vote, the explaination typically was to point to foreigners somewhere in the bigger cities, but the ones living here are okay. When asked to specify which foreigners and what specific experiences they had made it always turned out that it was just a very vague thing and they haven't made any experience, but read/seen a thing or two in the media. They often couldn't even point to one specific article.
I live in a city now and to this day I will sometimes see (clearly fascist) rural tourists in the subway, that are shocked and scared because they see slightly more people with darker skin tones than they are used to, despite no tangible bad behavior happening.
A lot what motivates anti-immigrant people happens in their heads. And if you're rich that is good. Keep the people divided by skin color, otherwise they may start to think about the other divide.
There was a study done here (UK) that I can't find now that showed the smaller an immigrant population was in an area, the more xenophobic the people in that area. It essentially comes down to the old horror movie adage, that nothing you can put on the screen can scare someone as much as their own imagination can. The people with very little exposure to immigration are the most scared of it. They read propaganda on Facebook and believe it because they lack the experience to tell them it's nonsense.
I think we can be more precise here: they don’t like massive, uncontrolled immigration of low-skilled workers. The most vulnerable part of the population fears that they might lose wages, because the low-skilled immigrants would do their same job for a lower salary.
Nobody is against to highly trained, well-educated, rich immigrants (or nobody I’ve spoken to apparently).
> Nobody is against to highly trained, well-educated, rich immigrants (or nobody I’ve spoken to apparently).
The same economic fear can apply for educated/high-income immigrants. Plus concern that housing prices will go up.
Wanting cultural homogeneity isn’t just about economics, either.
I'm pretty sure I've seen negative comments about H1-Bs on HN.
Because due to abuses in the system a lot of them are neither highly trained, nor well educated, nor rich.
Put a proper highly selective, blind, state department administered brutal exam before issuing the visa and you will see how in decade how will the opinion of them will change.
But that would undermine what may be a larger political strategy. Many perceive unchecked immigration as merely one political party attempting to swell its ranks.
I think people are highly influenced by what they see in the media. When they see large numbers of people seemingly being let into the door without restrictions, without vetting, they become afraid. Then when they raise concerns about it, and are being told they are racist etc for even asking such a question, it now goes from a news event to a personal threat and attack.
Ever heard of brain waste? That's the paradoxical situation that rises up when skilled workers can not get the qualifications necessary to practice their job in their new country of residence. That's how you get doctors and nuclear engineers driving taxis.
I think you’re right, but let me add another point of view to your statement: how would you compare any degree you’d get in two completely different countries? Also how can a university/state know what they actually teach in all the universities?
Some degree of standardization or accelerated programs with faster tests in a quicker roadmap would greatly help in this regard anyway.
Ironically, we are in dire need of wo-called low-skilled workers, since the population often will not work the fields even if the wage was higher.
What if the lower presence of field workers pushed for more technological advancements in agriculture? Maybe it doesn’t make sense economically today because people can force low wages to immigrants to work in the fields. (Mine is just an hypothesis, not against immigration but still it should be an open point of discussion)
And then when you point out to them that the US, for example, hasn't had massive, uncontrolled immigration of low-skilled workers in well over a century[1], and remind them of the history of rich people using racism as a way to align the interest of poor whites with rich whites, rather than with poor immigrants, they call you an anti-American DEI-loving Marxist.
“If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.” - LBJ
You seem to have overlooked the anti-tourist, anti-"expat"[2], and anti-digital nomads protests in the last few years?
As one example, '‘Gringo go home.’ Mexico City protests target Americans, gentrification' - https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2025-07-07/mexica...
[1] For example, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was immigration control, even as massive numbers of Europeans immigrated to the US.
[2] "Expat" is what rich immigrants call themselves when they don't want to be confused with poor immigrants.
There are stories of Trump voters regretting their vote because it affected immigrants in their lives that they didn't consider one of "those ones". Whether that immigrant was highly skilled or not is besides the point. If a bigot has to deal with an Indian doctor, politician, maid, or Uber driver, they're not going to like them because they're a bigot. Their skills aren't relevant. They think immigrants are bad and shouldn't be here at all, or than the ones they've met in person and consider "alright".
Immigration implies change.
Of course people don't like change.
Consider though that we are all descendants of immigrants.
How would you want your descendant immigrants to be treated?
> Of course people don't like change.
I'd say that depends on whether people are happy with their circumstances.
The elephant in the room that this doesn't address is racism. In the West expressions of racism are illegal or at least strongly condemned, so we are left guessing as to how it factors in far-right vote.
We can't rely on "what voters say" like the OP suggests, because for some of them what they want to say is forbidden so they say other things instead.
I grew up in a very right wing environment as a left leaning person and I had many discussions during that time. Even clear racists would come up with some post-hoc rationalization why what they believe is important and true and should be enforced (typically by the mob, not by the law).
I noticed that these arguments were rationalizations, because they do not survive close scrutiny and get adjusted during the course of a discussion. There basically is a hole in their argumentation in the spot where they can't admit that the basis stems from their feelings.
Imagine discussing with someone who wants to really eat icecream why they want it without them being able to talk about their feelings. That is gonna be a nonsense argument of the highest order, because the ultimate basis for everything cannot be discussed. So they come up with explainations why everybody should eat icecream, why eating it is good for you actually and so on. In reality it boils down to them
>The elephant in the room that this doesn't address is racism
Here is a brain teaser for you - I live in Europe. I don't mind immigration from ADOS US Citizens but am against the immigration of Subsaharan africans. Am I racist?
Yes. Judging who is welcome based on their geographic origin or provenance is fundamentally racist.
How is he racist if he would have no problem with educated black people from US, but would have problem with black people from certain African countries?
Btw. racism is against the race, if he is against some specific nation/culture regardless of race it's called xenophobia (I'm experiencing it in Czechia despite being white like majority of population and I feel China where I stood out was less racist towards me than Czechia is xenophobic, while I am indistinguishable from average Czech, if I won't open my mouth).
As a fellow European I just call his opinion common sense and empirical knowledge, some cultures are just incompatible and cause issues to functioning society as seen in France, Germany, Sweden or UK.
And there is only one human race so the term racism has no strict meaning whatsoever, yet we all know what is meant when we use the word racist.
Love that you added a "educated" in there. You almost make it sound as if you would still have a problem with a educated black person from an African country.
Yup - taking a look at how tidy, ordered, well functioning and maintained their country is is fundamentally racist.
If this is achievable by all societies - it is ok to judge their members. If it is not achievable - then why do we need members of them here?
Anyway immigration opposition is intersectional. If you put people to draw on a map where they don't want people from they will rarely exclude all members of a trait. Just the majority.
But the combination of social class, age, sex, religion, culture and place of origin really create good proxy what could be expected of a person and the odds of them being troublemakers. And when taking the lower classes you need to be really selective to avoid toxic combos. The uppers and middle classes often don't have trouble with integration and assimilation.
> what they want to say is forbidden so they say other things instead.
This is exactly what the original comment meant: you are using 'social class' and 'country order' as proxies to say what is socially forbidden.
> Yup - taking a look at how tidy, ordered, well functioning and maintained their country is is fundamentally racist.
You’ve admitted that your criteria are based on generalizations about entire regions, which is the definition of racism. You are just trying to prove that your type of racism is logical and justified.
Sorry but it is ok to generalize Haiti and Barbados. Same genes. Different outcomes. Ones are more welcome. How is that racism?
If you say I discriminate - sure I do it, but English language is rich. There are other words than racism.
> Sorry but it is ok to generalize Haiti and Barbados. Same genes. Different outcomes.
First of all, we all share the same human genes. To argue that any group is favored due to genetic traits is antiquated and scientifically and historically illiterate. How does that argument hold up if you go back a few centuries to when the Arab world was far more advanced while Europeans were throwing waste into the streets? Or look at China a century ago versus today. It's European hegemony that crippled Chinese society through the opium trade. And Haiti was also crippled by European hegemony. There is absolutely nothing to do with 'genes' here.
Your attempt to invalidate a pattern of racism by claiming you would welcome a US ADOS citizen (which, given this exchange, I find highly doubtful) just means your bias is more specific.
And shifting this to a semantic argument about the word 'racism' is a distraction. Race has no basis in human biology (unless you were educated over a hundred years ago). Racism as a social construct, judging and excluding people based on perceived racial or geographic categories, is exactly what you are doing.
Not really a brain teaser is it.
Not really sure what the point of the article is as it seems pretty dumb. The answer is simple; it’s the economy, stupid.
People who are prospering don’t have much negative feelings about immigration or the homeless or drug addicts or any “them” in the “us vs them” dichotomy. People who are not are more anxious and stressed and feel uncertain about their own place. People in such condition have no capacity to welcome others they feel are competing with them on whatever little resources there is to share. It wasn’t long ago that people in cities villainized and hated rural migration into the cities within the same country. As wealth and prosperity increased in the cities those feelings dissipated.
The whole point of the article is that it’s not the economy, stupid.
Yeah, and my point is the article is doing a bad job at saying why it’s not the economy, stupid
On the playground of world religions, there is one bully.
I spent a good minute or so trying to think of how to point that out without breaking the HN posting guidelines, and I could have thought for another hundred years without coming up with a reply as perfect as this.
> Some people took that as proof that the voters’ real grievances lay elsewhere. The economist Tony Annett even put the AfD’s gains down to rising inequality, austerity and the loss of cheap Russian energy.
I guess Texans are suddenly in favor of immigration, when 2 years ago they hated immigration.
I grew up in a rural Austrian village, where people overwhelmingly voted for 5he anti-immigration party. The only person with a darker skin many of these people ever got to know was the local pizza baker, a black man, who was loved by everybody for both his character and what he did for the community. There were other migrants but they weren't valued less.
So when I asked people who voted for right wing candidates how they square the love for their migrant neighbors with their vote, the explaination typically was to point to foreigners somewhere in the bigger cities, but the ones living here are okay. When asked to specify which foreigners and what specific experiences they had made it always turned out that it was just a very vague thing and they haven't made any experience, but read/seen a thing or two in the media. They often couldn't even point to one specific article.
I live in a city now and to this day I will sometimes see (clearly fascist) rural tourists in the subway, that are shocked and scared because they see slightly more people with darker skin tones than they are used to, despite no tangible bad behavior happening.
A lot what motivates anti-immigrant people happens in their heads. And if you're rich that is good. Keep the people divided by skin color, otherwise they may start to think about the other divide.
There was a study done here (UK) that I can't find now that showed the smaller an immigrant population was in an area, the more xenophobic the people in that area. It essentially comes down to the old horror movie adage, that nothing you can put on the screen can scare someone as much as their own imagination can. The people with very little exposure to immigration are the most scared of it. They read propaganda on Facebook and believe it because they lack the experience to tell them it's nonsense.