My answer to What are the downsides of open immigration?
Answer by Desmond Last:
At its best immigration provides diversity, opportunity and can aid the ability of an economy to multiply the productivity of industry sectors.
At its worst it will reduce the productivity of the fiscal gain. It will act as a barrier to wage productivity gain through technological efficiencies because it utilizes an excess of labour, rather than new technology. The host culture can be submersed causing a growth in the extreme right wing.
Let us take two opposite system of immigration. Australia and the U.K.
I emigrated to Australia and currently am in the U.K . I voted in the E.U referendum.
Australia makes much of its quota system. You have to be in a defined age group, healthy, with no criminal record and you have to be in one of the groups that the Australian Government wants applicants for.
But the system does not work as well as it should. I am a qualified Motor Vehicle Technician. They wanted mechanics. So I was granted a visa as a Motor Vehicle Mechanic. When I arrived I was able to apply for any job I wanted. I could have been a Shop worker. Nobody checked or does check to make sure you have obtained a job in the industry they have a skills shortage in. They had a shortage in hairdressers – they could have trained Australians.
However despite its inability to monitor immigration productivity it is better than the U.K system. Australia is able to plan for its future.
The U.K system, which is the open system encourages low skilled immigration for low tech businesses. Those who come to the U.K take advantage of public services which have been paid for by U.K workers who have paid a life-time of tax.
As soon as a person enters the U.K they cost the U.K. They take up a space and increase the load on transport system. They require government admin, possibly a school, a hospital, a council resource, a home, water, sewage, electricity and even a prison.
But the most costly effect of open immigration is that it is impossible to plan.
How can you plan a country’s infrastructure when you do not know what its capacity has to be? It is a bit like owning a Hotel that does not have a reservation system.
How much water does the U.K have? Will it be able to supply its increasing population?
At some point in time the London Underground will be working to its maximum capacity and its ability to evacuate in the event of an emergency. What then?
There is a limit to the amount to the amount of tunneling you can bore under a City before you compromise structural integrity.
There are other problems that come with open immigration. You squash out the host culture in overcrowded inner cites. Holiday periods become almost unmanageable because you do not have the capacity to cope and racial tensions increase. Rents increase and housing shortages occur. Security becomes a bigger problem as open entry allows terrorists and international crime gangs easy entry.
Open immigration has worked but it is no longer working. No country now has the financial resources to provide for it. At times of high unemployment mobile workers will swamp those countries who can employ them. There is a lag, and then the host country has to move from planned capital cost to unplanned capital cost.
The E.U will one day either reform or collapse for that reason.
The population is now too large to allow open immigration. Economies must be planned and so to their capacities.
What are the downsides of open immigration?
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