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Pop wrote

didn't mean to appear to put words in your mouth or to call you a reactionary (I don't know you) - not sure why you think I did since I was expressed confusion and also just having the sense of your words meaning a thing just so you could unconfuse me

deliberately small intentional communities sound good I think, but presumably you need to tackle bigger picture things in order to make that a reality

So, to clarify, you can sympathise with controlled migration because of reasons like them driving down wages, lack of housing, and later you say integration would be achieved by stuff like provided language education and neighbour-meeting?

Do they actually drive down wages? Isn't it also a function of capitalist society to create marginalised groups who are seen as 'driving down wages' - and if they did not exist, it would be some other group who would be slapped with that label? it's capitalists who drive down wages, imo, and it's not unusual for immigrants to be educated/skilled for work and overall to help a society economically at that level

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Bells_On_Sunday wrote

Alright, I see you just wanted clarification...Yes, I should certainly say that it's capitalists that drive down wages, and a vulnerable migrant workforce that gives them the opportunity. They are much less able to do that when faced with well-established self-organising communities of workers who have been fighting for their rights for centuries. By no means should one group of workers turn on the other, you're right in saying both groups should know the real enemy.

In many cases highly educated migrant workers with in-demand skills are the privileged ones taking advantage of globalisation -- they can choose where to go to optimise their living conditions and go somewhere else if things change. Some people certainly do well out of globalisation. But I think that's normally if they come deliberately from a stable country - there are also many such people arriving without the means to re-establish their privileged position and end up driving a taxi when they were doctors at home or whatnot, so these two groups of migrants aren't mutually exclusive.

In explaining what I was trying to say, it sounds like I have a more fixed position on it than I do. The above is the more or less traditional argument that I said I can sympathise with, one of the objections the left of the UK Labour party used to have against the EU for instance. It's not that I think we should therefore limit immigration. I also sympathise with your position that borders only divide us and workers can have solidarity wherever they come from. Either way, the current situation seems to be that the genie is out of the bottle and the right are exploiting people's fears successfully in every Western country. Sorry to be on the fence, I started by saying I'm not sure what I think and I'm still not.

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Pop wrote

No worries, it has been an interesting exchange :)

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