I acknowledge and sympathize with the pain this will cause, but in regards to Japan itself: Good for them. Not because it is a rightward shift, but because it is a shift toward pragmatism in the face of the inherent tension between respect for all people and respect for one's own people and culture.
In my humble opinion, an ideal world is a liberal one with cherry-picked, tightly controlled, practical conservative elements that boldly take on the intimidating job of maintaining the balance between love and reason.
> I mean, sure, so long as they're willing to deal with the consequences of an aging population and a shrinking workforce.
They're pretty clearly aware of the dire fear-mongering, and chose their path accordingly. They decided to sidestep the pyramid scheme of perpetual growth.
Here in Canada we've been pitched this same scary argument for decades, leading to outrageous levels of immigration, coupled with a growing entitlement among the class (which leads to a complete refusal to integrate in any meaningful way, often while incanting the laughable pablum about mosaic versus melting pot while dragging regressive, destructive habits and cultural norms to Canada, tragedy of the commons behaviour, etc).
Somehow this mass immigration has made us older, and less competitive, moving in exactly the opposite direction of the magical solution it promised while giving away the country. It has led to massive lines for every job, downward pressure on wages, and oversubscribed services at every level.
---
Every now and then there is a discussion about the difference between an "expat" and an "immigrant", but it really is important that people are honest about the difference, because it is very real, and it is informative to why the myth of immigration as a solution doesn't track with the reality that immigration is often massively destructive.
An expat is usually some Westerner that moved to some random country for adventure, a change, whatever. Occasionally they send a postcard home and share videos from the beach. Whatever.
An immigrant, on the other hand, is someone that moves to a country as a beachhead to drag their entire extended family there, often then expanding out from there. Which is precisely what many Western countries have seen where they bring in the "skilled worker", and then the skilled worker drags over their elderly parents, and also their "auntie" as a purported childcare giver, and then registers a business and sponsors their village through every loophole and circumvention, and then... This has destroyed the acceptance of immigration and completely obliterated the "oh you're getting older, something something labour shortage" nonsense.
We need to move on from the mass immigration is the solution horseshit, because all it has done is led every developed country to lurch perilously to the right, giving an easy open for charlatans to take advantage of a real problem to push a lot of ancillary things as well.
>Somehow this mass immigration has made us older, and less competitive, moving in exactly the opposite direction of the magical solution it promised while giving away the country. It has led to massive lines for every job, downward pressure on wages, and oversubscribed services at every level.
Context for others: Already much wealthier on a real GDP per-capita basis, the US increased its lead over Canada from 2000 to 2025 <<a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1YbGu" rel="nofollow">https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1YbGu>. The US began the period 28.2% higher, and finished 49.5% higher. Note the lack of growth in the Canadian line that began c. 2015.
Put another way, 100% of Canadian GDP growth since 2015 has been from population growth. Now that the latter has been significantly (not completely) cut back, the country is in a recession (which the bien-pensant media never fails to adding the word "technical" before saying so).
>Here in Canada we've been pitched this same scary argument for decades, leading to outrageous levels of immigration, coupled with a growing entitlement among the class (which leads to a complete refusal to integrate in any meaningful way, often while incanting the laughable pablum about mosaic versus melting pot while dragging regressive, destructive habits and cultural norms to Canada, tragedy of the commons behaviour, etc).
If Trump announced that after annexation the US would deport every TFW/"student" that has arrived since 2015, public opinion would massively swing toward joining the US ASAP.
I'm not following your argument at all, if they had taken no immigrants, the GDP would just be even worse then, and Canada would be even further behind.
It seems no Canadian-born has managed to produce efficiencies or innovations, and only increased labor workforce through immigration has allowed higher production of goods/services (to increase GDP). So wouldn't that mean Canada would have been way worse off without those immigrants?
None of this happens in isolation. If you flood a country with a torrent of migrants, everything else just doesn't continue as is with that one thing happening on the side.
For instance in Canada there was, and remains, a housing shortage. Suddenly a ridiculous amount of our economy turned to speculation on and leveraging of housing. Housing is multi-factorial and there are certainly other issues at play, but it was incredible during the height of outrageous migration when apologists would pretend this adding millions of new people that need to be housed in a short period of time was somehow not a factor (suddenly the demand in S&D didn't matter, because it was a protected topic).
I know even in my neighbourhood migrant families that bought houses they could not possibly afford -- the space was endemic with astonishing levels of fraud, and you could just make up whatever imaginary income you want -- at grossly inflated prices, and the only way they could swing it is to then move a number of international "students" in their basement, the "students" then working full time at minimum wage and often below, etc. A race to the bottom. This sort of knock-on effect happened everywhere. Brampton is basically a giant tinderbox now because it was a city built on this sort of pyramid scheme/fraud nonsense.
Investments all flooded to the same spaces[1]. Who wants to build a business or make a product when you can just make an international "college" or start another exploitative low value human trafficking operation to give points to desperate migrants looking to game the system.
Every business in Canada was competing with race to the bottom "who can hire the most migrants, many who'll actually pay for the right to work" alternatives. Increasing efficiency, automation, etc -- none of it mattered at all, because it can't possibly compete with the place flooding with migrants who'll tolerate anything and accept close to nothing in return. While similar countries were increasing efficiencies, automating, and so on, we were moving to a human trafficking economy. This is true in Canada's agricultural industry where it's like the 1940s because farmers just got accustomed to massive numbers of migrants coming and doing manual labour.
Now add that as the best of the best graduated from Canadian colleges and university, they could take a grossly underpaid job with a Canadian employer, where almost all of their coworkers will be "accept anything" migrants, and fight to pay a million dollars for some shoebox condo....or they could move elsewhere. A shocking number just decided to move elsewhere, primarily the US.
This was hugely destructive to Canada. It was a massive mistake, and we have a lost decade to show for it.
[1] So did government spending. Why do major projects, seek new export markets, etc, when you can announce GDP growth regardless, even if the GDP per capita was flat to declining. A decade when we did nothing but celebrate how wonderfully diverse and tolerant we are.
>A shocking number just decided to move elsewhere, primarily the US.
85% of University of Waterloo software engineering graduates move to the US. <<a href="https://x.com/danluu/status/1351785083598893062" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/danluu/status/1351785083598893062>
This is a longstanding trend, of course. One million people born in Canada <<a href="https://ourworldindata.org/where-do-migrants-live-and-where-were-they-born?migrationCountry=Canada" rel="nofollow">https://ourworldindata.org/where-do-migrants-live-and-where-...> live in the US, or about 2.4% of the 41.5 million total Canadians, while 260,000 people born in the United States <<a href="https://ourworldindata.org/where-do-migrants-live-and-where-were-they-born?migrationCountry=United+States" rel="nofollow">https://ourworldindata.org/where-do-migrants-live-and-where-...> live in Canada. The US's population of 338 million is eight times that of Canada's, so a Canadian is about 30 times more likely to move to the US, than an American is to move to Canada.
1.3 million Canadian-born live outside Canada, or about 3% of the Canadian population. 3.2 million American-born live outside the US, 1% of the US population.
If I understand, GDP didn't grow nearly as fast as the population. The economy technically got bigger, but once you divided it across millions more people, GDP per capita shrank while living costs, especially housing, surged. Bigger pie, but even more people splitting it, so a smaller average slice.
That seems to show in the data. Canada screwed this up and brought in way too many people, way too quickly, without anything close to the housing, infrastructure or investment needed to support it. Since the cuts started in 2024 and were pushed further by the new government, GDP per capita has started growing again and rents are cooling, which seems partially explained by those immigration cut backs.
What I can't find in the data is evidence that this explains why Canada lagged behind countries like the US. Most of that gap seems to come from high-tech industries. Meaning Canada just doesn't invest in itself enough, and cheap migrant labour doesn't explain why it failed to build the industries that actually drove growth elsewhere.
Per capita. GDP is not meaningful for the average person most of the time. Norway has a very high GDP per capita, but a lower GDP than Canada. Would it make life better for them if they suddenly had double the GDP and double the population? Probably not really, might be more crowded.
Canadians might be able to produce more innovation if there wasn't so much inflation and tax burden due to high immigration.
> the skilled worker drags over their elderly parents, and also their "auntie" as a purported childcare giver, and then registers a business and sponsors their village through every loophole and circumvention
It's a balancing at the regional/global level. People desire to move from worse situation to better, which leads to an averaging tendency of the source and destination. You don't like it because average means there's a little less per person where you are, since it's a destination. People at the source like the emigration because there's a little more per person (which hopefully isn't mostly absorbed by some "protective" group, like mafia, bad govt, etc). Let the balance happen; it leads to a better world overall.
Yes, physically that's a good description of the natural flow of things. No, it makes no sense for successful nations to suffer for the benefit of unsuccessful nations, generally speaking. What they should provide is aid, with varying specifics on what that means (e.g. it could be as simple as favorable trade).
To move everybody into the successful nations, rather than engage in the slow work of making all nations somewhat successful, is cruel and insane.
How are those nations suffering, when the reason that they're destinations is because they have a surplus of resources (I won't touch on the history that usually led to that surplus in the first place)? As long as a significant number of the immigrants aren't committing crimes and play by the rules the citizens go by to the best of their abilities, why is there an issue? Isn't the - ideal of the - "free market" supposed to be a thing all should aspire to?
> I won't touch on the history that usually led to that surplus in the first place
You literally just did, only in that comedically vapid hand-wavy, bullshit way that's so common.
Germany got obliterated during two world wars and is a power house, again. Japan got nuked twice and is a powerhouse. China is now an absolute powerhouse. South Korea a powerhouse.
It turns out that when you stop doing the "woe am I! white man stole all the good stuff...somehow" horseshit, you can actually improve your lot.
Like if your country is a hyper-corrupt open-air garbage dump, maybe stop pointing at other countries as the cause and fix your own shit. And when enough people from that sort of culture -- and it is a culture, and culture can be judged, and some are simply garbage -- move to infinitely better countries, invariably they start dragging their busted, tragedy of the commons behaviours. They should be on the first mode of transport back.
> why is there an issue?
Because the myth of the advantage of immigration -- the thing that gets a population to tolerate it as a wonderful solution for everyone -- in no universe matches the reality. It's a lie, and it's why so many countries have taken a super-hard turn to the right. What should be a worthwhile program to bring skills and perspective instead turns into a flood where you end up with ghettos of the source country, with all the same problems. No thanks.
Canada almost took a turn to the right, but the leading party actually made significant changes. Not nearly enough (the entire TFW program is just an enormous fraud, top to bottom, zero elderly relatives should ever come here, every non-citizen that commits even a minor crime should be ejected at first cause, the refugee program needs to have a 95%+ rejection rate, and so on). Canadians were done with the lie, so changes were made.
Turns out we still have millions of people who need to leave the country.
> Isn't the - ideal of the - "free market" supposed to be a thing all should aspire to?
A free market is that there are a few countries that are extremely desirable, and a lot of, sorry to say, shitholes with garbage cultures. You should be extraordinary to have the privilege of moving to one of the better countries, and your behaviour when you get there had better be exemplary. Somehow we got in the situation where millions of dregs are flooding every Western country and recreating the shithole they left. In that case, shut it down, which again is happening everywhere.
That is the free market. People were sold a lie, and they're turning against it.
You're conveniently omitting the fact that they relied on massive external aid, security alliances, education expansion and more. China in particular rose up thanks to state-led industrial policies and having a heck of a lot of people to do stuff for cheap. And none of those countries were poached of their resources and their populations oppressed for decades/centuries.
Also funny you say people should improve their lot, when that's exactly what they're trying to do... somewhere where there's actually decent opportunity to improve said lot since that's generally absent in a "hyper-corrupt open-air garbage dump" (shaped by a history of colonial poaching, proxy conflicts, etc; these are relevant facts that people like you try to sweep under the rug). The majority not looking for handouts; they looking to make a life for themselves and their family.
> You should be extraordinary [...]
Sorry to tell you that a genuinely free labour market means more mobility, not less. What you're describing is a highly regulated labour market with strong border controls. Get your definitions straight.
And yes, if some individual/group commits crimes, then sure they should be sent back or jailed like any citizen. But if they're making a honest living and paying their social dues then leave them the hell alone, regardless of how they arrived in the first place.
Yeah there are people out there who think only they have the right to be in a particular space, because birth or skin colour or whatever other attributes they use to set themselves apart and above. Virtually indistinguishable from the Nazis, slavers and every other group that considered themselves superior to another group that doesn't meet their criteria for inclusion; only difference is there are now laws and the world is watching closely for gas chambers and the like nowadays, so they find loopholes in said laws to continue dehumanizing and excluding others. You sound very much like one belonging to the former group.
ROFL. Again, this nonsense is so hilariously played out. Pathetic.
Anyway, good luck with noise like that. It's good for a laugh. Like I have to confess that I'm not sure if you're having a laugh and this is a parody, and I hope it is.
Nations demonstrably are suffering, though. You may make arguments about what you think is/isn't the core issue (economic, cultural, crime, xenophobia, whatever), but the result is simply observable in hundreds of millions of voices.
I am not a free market absolutist - I don't think I implied that anywhere.
That's a vibe, not an argument. And the data doesn’t line up with your catastrophe story. Migration tends to raise global output and, on average, has positive effects on destination GDP per capita over time[0]. It turns out that immigrant effects on native jobs is near net zero, as there are small losses or gains depending on skill mix in the various local labour markets. Actually new immigrants have a greater effect on the jobs of old immigrants[1] (news to me, but makes sense). Similarly in welfare, there's pretty much negligible impact in more advanced economies, leaning positive over time especially when immigrants arrive as working-age adults, which is the norm[2].
I could go on, but I think that's enough research out of me. You don't have to be a "free market absolutist" to see that the reality is far more mixed than “nations are suffering.” Yes, poorly designed immigration policies can lead to problems. No, there's nothing authoritative to backup claims that immigration is broadly destructive, which makes those voices uninformed. Or prejudiced.
It's OK if they choose to seek other avenues for dealing with that problem. The easiest solution is often not the best, and sometimes there is no net-positive path forward.
Sure, so long as they're willing to deal with the consequences.
Though I would debate the idea that immigration is an "easy" solution. Perhaps the way it's frequently being done, with a lack of social integration, etc. But that's just bad policy.
You’re fear mongering. The sky is falling if they don’t take in a foreign population to exploit for cheap labor.
Your claim that it’s just a demographic shift is like the argument for the founding of the US. It was just a demographic shift. You might have your opinions guided by colonialism and capitalism more than you think.
You continue to claim calamity and seem to think one possible path is the only one or even preferred. Perhaps a natural reduction in the population would be a good thing for easing climate change.
My above comment just quoted you and included a link to an article about irony - bit hard to see where you're seeing continued claims of anything in that.
It's baffling to me how we come up with economic justifications for forced mass immigration. Mass immigration of mainly non-western low skill / low education people is causing a catastrophic economic burden on western Europe. Unemployment rates of those are much higher than natives, even when you look at 2nd or 3rd generation.
Not to mention that most European capitals have become poverty ghettos where the original inhabitants don't recognize their own country any longer. Non-EU foreign origins are overrepresented in crime and prison stats.
There are not enough low skilled jobs. There is not enough housing. There is not enough infrastructure.
Mass immigration is the most disruptive disaster that was ever forced upon western Europe (forced, because there has been a large democratic majority AGAINST this type of immigration since decades).
Very sad state of affairs. Good on Japan that they see the danger and try to do something about it before it's too late.
This is all... just nonsense? Like what is your source for any of this, some rightwing boomer facebook group?
Nothing has been forced upon Western Europe - we have aging populations and shrinking demographics, so a need for people to plug the holes in the workforce.
There is no illuminati-type conspiracy here. Japan has lost 5 mil people or so since 2010, and the median age is like 50. At some point there will be nobody to work and pay tax, no doctors or nurses to take care of the elderly What's the plan exactly to deal with this, what's the magic solution that doesn't somehow involve immigration?
Having the population shrink and just letting the wheels fall off is vastly superior to ethnically cleansing your own country by importing a bunch of foreigners. At least you can rebuild from the first scenario.
It's not a theory, let alone a conspiracy one. It's a plain and simple fact. It's why we're having this conversation in the first place. Britain went from 88% native British in 2000 to 73% in 2025. They will become a minority in their own country in the next 50 years. Similar has happened in Sweden, Germany, France, many others.
What are you even trying to imply by posting that link?
I'm straight up saying that linking demographic shifts to some grand plan has already been recognised as a racist conspiracy theory.
Britain is a good for example: they (and France) spent the 20th century doing anything and everything to prevent their empires crumbling. One such thing was easing movement of people with their old colonies to maintain influence.
Turns out things can happen without little green men being involved.
Okay, so you acknowledge that orchestrated or not, the native populations of European countries are going extinct and ultimately are going to be replaced. Japan doesn't want that, as it's an existential issue for their nation. I would argue possibly THE most existential issue a nation can face.
I would personally argue that it IS orchestrated, as this massive change happened in 50 years after 1000+ years of no change, but it's not relevant to the actual outcome. Call it a racist conspiracy theory all you want, people are becoming immune to that strategy.
I do not acknowledge that, how do you get to "extinction" from "demographic shifts"? That is quite the impressive leap.
The reason for Japan's (brief) attempt at immigration is they recognised their demographic decline as an actual existential risk. They've chickened out because it proved sufficiently politically unpopular - this is not the same thing. Good luck to them dealing with their demographics in some other as-yet-unknown way.
Yes it's clear you've been drinking the koolaid. And no, people have migrated around for thousands of years, that's simply not grounded in reality. How do you think humans got from Africa to the rest of the planet? Or does that not count as migration because it's somehow too far in the past?
I don't know how else to refer to a conspiracy theory that's primarily driven by fears/hatred of others based not on their merits and values but their ethnicity/race. If you have another preferred term that accurately depicts this I'd be happy to use it instead.
White population of London fell from 97,7% in 1961 to 53,8% in 2021, probably below 50% now. What's happening to Britain is the same thing that British did to indigenous populations during colonial times.
Whether this is orchestrated or not is debatable, but denying simple statistics from governmental agencies in democratic countries is... well... very close to a conspiracy-theory
You're missing the forest for the trees. I don't care if it's some kind of evil orchestration. That's the least of my worries. What I want is for it to be stopped. And that desire has an overwhelming democratic majority in most European countries AFAIK. Or is democratic decision making only important when it's an outcome you agree with?
If "an overwhelming democratic majority" want it stopped and it presumably hasn't, then that implies there's must be a conspiracy acting against said majority. Or how do you square this circle?
In any case, there is no country in Europe in which anti-immigration parties have an absolute majority (> 50%), let alone an "overwhelming" one [0]. So to answer your question: yes, democratic decision making is important to me, especially such that it actually reflects the will of the electorate and not some wish a minority within it has.
> then that implies there's must be a conspiracy acting against said majority.
Or that immigration simply isn't their most important policy, even though they support stricter measures.
Imagine you have a choice between two parties: party A wants to detonate an atomic bomb in the capital but also create well-funded animal shelters. Party B opposes the destruction of the capital city, but they want to turn all puppies in the country into kebabs. What do you vote? You don't want to eat ground puppies, do you?
If these are the only party choices an electorate has, it seems to me they have bigger problems. And so option C, the people don't vote, hence giving neither party a mandate to do what they want?
I really struggle to see how an example this obtuse has any analogy to reality.
There is nothing pragmatic about kicking out the workforce you imported because of a shortage of native labour. The pragmatist stance would be to accept those differences, and focus on addressing/alleviating them. Cutting your nose to spite your face is more idealism than pragmatism.
This is a shift away from pragmatism; pragmatism would be acknowledging Japan's economic need for immigration.
Whether Europe or North America have a problem with too much immigration and not enough integration is debatable, maybe - and I suspect that's where your perspective comes from - but Japan decidedly does not (maybe too much tourism, and I feel at least some of the antagonism towards foreigners comes from that, but no matter). Immigrants still make up a very small percentage of the population, mostly in Tokyo; given the existing challenges with immigration, they tend to be extremely diligent, respectful, appreciative of Japanese culture, and hard-working.
This is just a populist conservative government pandering to the some of the worst aspects in society to distract from their failures.
Pragmatism could just as easily be a decision by the public collectively to have more babies. There’s nothing about immigration that makes it inherently pragmatic. It could be, with the agreement of the electorate, away to compensate for the electorates decisions to have fewer babies. But it’s not up for us outside of Japan to lecture them on whether or not they are being consistent on this.
Technically you're probably right, since most people are not terribly rational. Most people believe their values are the only correct ones, in which case there is exactly one "pragmatic" path.
This is a government that needs anything to distract from its failures indeed. But that's not changing unfortunately - given there seems to be no real direction to fix the economy that is currently in a gutter, I think it's pragmatic to restrict immigration. Crime is skyrocketing, both Japanese and immigrants - even the Yakuza are getting into scam operations on Katagi, i.e. normal people. This basically never happened before and is a turning point. It's what happens in a bad economy and will just continue to get worse.
Low wage immigrants will not be able to fix the economy (demographics related decline is still decades away, yes it is important long term but not if the fundamentals don't improve). They will increase crime though since that's just what happens when you are poor in a bad economy. There won't be culling of poor locals but restricting inpu where possible, immigration, seems ok given the overall picture.
Not sure where you got the idea that crime is skyrocketing in Japan, but government crime rate statistics show a plummeting trend since the already-low 2000s, with a very minor uptick in the past 2-3 years.
I doubt that. The population is aging, and there are serious shortage of blue collar workers
Japan is facing a significant shortage of long-term care workers. The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare estimates that the country will need approximately 2.4 million care workers by FY2026 and 2.72 million by FY2040 (about 250,000 and 570,000 more, respectively, than the 2.15 million employed in FY2022)[1]
happytoexplain · · focus · HN ↗
In my humble opinion, an ideal world is a liberal one with cherry-picked, tightly controlled, practical conservative elements that boldly take on the intimidating job of maintaining the balance between love and reason.
greggoB · · focus · HN ↗
jfewhfuehg · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
anigbrowl · · focus · HN ↗
llm_nerd · · focus · HN ↗
They're pretty clearly aware of the dire fear-mongering, and chose their path accordingly. They decided to sidestep the pyramid scheme of perpetual growth.
Here in Canada we've been pitched this same scary argument for decades, leading to outrageous levels of immigration, coupled with a growing entitlement among the class (which leads to a complete refusal to integrate in any meaningful way, often while incanting the laughable pablum about mosaic versus melting pot while dragging regressive, destructive habits and cultural norms to Canada, tragedy of the commons behaviour, etc).
Somehow this mass immigration has made us older, and less competitive, moving in exactly the opposite direction of the magical solution it promised while giving away the country. It has led to massive lines for every job, downward pressure on wages, and oversubscribed services at every level.
---
Every now and then there is a discussion about the difference between an "expat" and an "immigrant", but it really is important that people are honest about the difference, because it is very real, and it is informative to why the myth of immigration as a solution doesn't track with the reality that immigration is often massively destructive.
An expat is usually some Westerner that moved to some random country for adventure, a change, whatever. Occasionally they send a postcard home and share videos from the beach. Whatever.
An immigrant, on the other hand, is someone that moves to a country as a beachhead to drag their entire extended family there, often then expanding out from there. Which is precisely what many Western countries have seen where they bring in the "skilled worker", and then the skilled worker drags over their elderly parents, and also their "auntie" as a purported childcare giver, and then registers a business and sponsors their village through every loophole and circumvention, and then... This has destroyed the acceptance of immigration and completely obliterated the "oh you're getting older, something something labour shortage" nonsense.
We need to move on from the mass immigration is the solution horseshit, because all it has done is led every developed country to lurch perilously to the right, giving an easy open for charlatans to take advantage of a real problem to push a lot of ancillary things as well.
TMWNN · · focus · HN ↗
Context for others: Already much wealthier on a real GDP per-capita basis, the US increased its lead over Canada from 2000 to 2025 <<a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1YbGu" rel="nofollow">https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1YbGu>. The US began the period 28.2% higher, and finished 49.5% higher. Note the lack of growth in the Canadian line that began c. 2015.
Put another way, 100% of Canadian GDP growth since 2015 has been from population growth. Now that the latter has been significantly (not completely) cut back, the country is in a recession (which the bien-pensant media never fails to adding the word "technical" before saying so).
>Here in Canada we've been pitched this same scary argument for decades, leading to outrageous levels of immigration, coupled with a growing entitlement among the class (which leads to a complete refusal to integrate in any meaningful way, often while incanting the laughable pablum about mosaic versus melting pot while dragging regressive, destructive habits and cultural norms to Canada, tragedy of the commons behaviour, etc).
If Trump announced that after annexation the US would deport every TFW/"student" that has arrived since 2015, public opinion would massively swing toward joining the US ASAP.
didibus · · focus · HN ↗
It seems no Canadian-born has managed to produce efficiencies or innovations, and only increased labor workforce through immigration has allowed higher production of goods/services (to increase GDP). So wouldn't that mean Canada would have been way worse off without those immigrants?
llm_nerd · · focus · HN ↗
For instance in Canada there was, and remains, a housing shortage. Suddenly a ridiculous amount of our economy turned to speculation on and leveraging of housing. Housing is multi-factorial and there are certainly other issues at play, but it was incredible during the height of outrageous migration when apologists would pretend this adding millions of new people that need to be housed in a short period of time was somehow not a factor (suddenly the demand in S&D didn't matter, because it was a protected topic).
I know even in my neighbourhood migrant families that bought houses they could not possibly afford -- the space was endemic with astonishing levels of fraud, and you could just make up whatever imaginary income you want -- at grossly inflated prices, and the only way they could swing it is to then move a number of international "students" in their basement, the "students" then working full time at minimum wage and often below, etc. A race to the bottom. This sort of knock-on effect happened everywhere. Brampton is basically a giant tinderbox now because it was a city built on this sort of pyramid scheme/fraud nonsense.
Investments all flooded to the same spaces[1]. Who wants to build a business or make a product when you can just make an international "college" or start another exploitative low value human trafficking operation to give points to desperate migrants looking to game the system.
Every business in Canada was competing with race to the bottom "who can hire the most migrants, many who'll actually pay for the right to work" alternatives. Increasing efficiency, automation, etc -- none of it mattered at all, because it can't possibly compete with the place flooding with migrants who'll tolerate anything and accept close to nothing in return. While similar countries were increasing efficiencies, automating, and so on, we were moving to a human trafficking economy. This is true in Canada's agricultural industry where it's like the 1940s because farmers just got accustomed to massive numbers of migrants coming and doing manual labour.
Now add that as the best of the best graduated from Canadian colleges and university, they could take a grossly underpaid job with a Canadian employer, where almost all of their coworkers will be "accept anything" migrants, and fight to pay a million dollars for some shoebox condo....or they could move elsewhere. A shocking number just decided to move elsewhere, primarily the US.
This was hugely destructive to Canada. It was a massive mistake, and we have a lost decade to show for it.
[1] So did government spending. Why do major projects, seek new export markets, etc, when you can announce GDP growth regardless, even if the GDP per capita was flat to declining. A decade when we did nothing but celebrate how wonderfully diverse and tolerant we are.
TMWNN · · focus · HN ↗
85% of University of Waterloo software engineering graduates move to the US. <<a href="https://x.com/danluu/status/1351785083598893062" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/danluu/status/1351785083598893062>
This is a longstanding trend, of course. One million people born in Canada <<a href="https://ourworldindata.org/where-do-migrants-live-and-where-were-they-born?migrationCountry=Canada" rel="nofollow">https://ourworldindata.org/where-do-migrants-live-and-where-...> live in the US, or about 2.4% of the 41.5 million total Canadians, while 260,000 people born in the United States <<a href="https://ourworldindata.org/where-do-migrants-live-and-where-were-they-born?migrationCountry=United+States" rel="nofollow">https://ourworldindata.org/where-do-migrants-live-and-where-...> live in Canada. The US's population of 338 million is eight times that of Canada's, so a Canadian is about 30 times more likely to move to the US, than an American is to move to Canada.
1.3 million Canadian-born live outside Canada, or about 3% of the Canadian population. 3.2 million American-born live outside the US, 1% of the US population.
DavCreator · · focus · HN ↗
didibus · · focus · HN ↗
That seems to show in the data. Canada screwed this up and brought in way too many people, way too quickly, without anything close to the housing, infrastructure or investment needed to support it. Since the cuts started in 2024 and were pushed further by the new government, GDP per capita has started growing again and rents are cooling, which seems partially explained by those immigration cut backs.
What I can't find in the data is evidence that this explains why Canada lagged behind countries like the US. Most of that gap seems to come from high-tech industries. Meaning Canada just doesn't invest in itself enough, and cheap migrant labour doesn't explain why it failed to build the industries that actually drove growth elsewhere.
atom_arranger · · focus · HN ↗
Canadians might be able to produce more innovation if there wasn't so much inflation and tax burden due to high immigration.
skeledrew · · focus · HN ↗
It's a balancing at the regional/global level. People desire to move from worse situation to better, which leads to an averaging tendency of the source and destination. You don't like it because average means there's a little less per person where you are, since it's a destination. People at the source like the emigration because there's a little more per person (which hopefully isn't mostly absorbed by some "protective" group, like mafia, bad govt, etc). Let the balance happen; it leads to a better world overall.
happytoexplain · · focus · HN ↗
To move everybody into the successful nations, rather than engage in the slow work of making all nations somewhat successful, is cruel and insane.
skeledrew · · focus · HN ↗
llm_nerd · · focus · HN ↗
You literally just did, only in that comedically vapid hand-wavy, bullshit way that's so common.
Germany got obliterated during two world wars and is a power house, again. Japan got nuked twice and is a powerhouse. China is now an absolute powerhouse. South Korea a powerhouse.
It turns out that when you stop doing the "woe am I! white man stole all the good stuff...somehow" horseshit, you can actually improve your lot.
Like if your country is a hyper-corrupt open-air garbage dump, maybe stop pointing at other countries as the cause and fix your own shit. And when enough people from that sort of culture -- and it is a culture, and culture can be judged, and some are simply garbage -- move to infinitely better countries, invariably they start dragging their busted, tragedy of the commons behaviours. They should be on the first mode of transport back.
> why is there an issue?
Because the myth of the advantage of immigration -- the thing that gets a population to tolerate it as a wonderful solution for everyone -- in no universe matches the reality. It's a lie, and it's why so many countries have taken a super-hard turn to the right. What should be a worthwhile program to bring skills and perspective instead turns into a flood where you end up with ghettos of the source country, with all the same problems. No thanks.
Canada almost took a turn to the right, but the leading party actually made significant changes. Not nearly enough (the entire TFW program is just an enormous fraud, top to bottom, zero elderly relatives should ever come here, every non-citizen that commits even a minor crime should be ejected at first cause, the refugee program needs to have a 95%+ rejection rate, and so on). Canadians were done with the lie, so changes were made.
Turns out we still have millions of people who need to leave the country.
> Isn't the - ideal of the - "free market" supposed to be a thing all should aspire to?
A free market is that there are a few countries that are extremely desirable, and a lot of, sorry to say, shitholes with garbage cultures. You should be extraordinary to have the privilege of moving to one of the better countries, and your behaviour when you get there had better be exemplary. Somehow we got in the situation where millions of dregs are flooding every Western country and recreating the shithole they left. In that case, shut it down, which again is happening everywhere.
That is the free market. People were sold a lie, and they're turning against it.
skeledrew · · focus · HN ↗
> Germany got obliterated [...]
You're conveniently omitting the fact that they relied on massive external aid, security alliances, education expansion and more. China in particular rose up thanks to state-led industrial policies and having a heck of a lot of people to do stuff for cheap. And none of those countries were poached of their resources and their populations oppressed for decades/centuries.
Also funny you say people should improve their lot, when that's exactly what they're trying to do... somewhere where there's actually decent opportunity to improve said lot since that's generally absent in a "hyper-corrupt open-air garbage dump" (shaped by a history of colonial poaching, proxy conflicts, etc; these are relevant facts that people like you try to sweep under the rug). The majority not looking for handouts; they looking to make a life for themselves and their family.
> You should be extraordinary [...]
Sorry to tell you that a genuinely free labour market means more mobility, not less. What you're describing is a highly regulated labour market with strong border controls. Get your definitions straight.
And yes, if some individual/group commits crimes, then sure they should be sent back or jailed like any citizen. But if they're making a honest living and paying their social dues then leave them the hell alone, regardless of how they arrived in the first place.
llm_nerd · · focus · HN ↗
Basically none. You know this rhetoric doesn't work any more, right? Like you know it is played out, surely?
> Get your definitions straight.
Bizarre.
skeledrew · · focus · HN ↗
Yeah there are people out there who think only they have the right to be in a particular space, because birth or skin colour or whatever other attributes they use to set themselves apart and above. Virtually indistinguishable from the Nazis, slavers and every other group that considered themselves superior to another group that doesn't meet their criteria for inclusion; only difference is there are now laws and the world is watching closely for gas chambers and the like nowadays, so they find loopholes in said laws to continue dehumanizing and excluding others. You sound very much like one belonging to the former group.
llm_nerd · · focus · HN ↗
Anyway, good luck with noise like that. It's good for a laugh. Like I have to confess that I'm not sure if you're having a laugh and this is a parody, and I hope it is.
skeledrew · · focus · HN ↗
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happytoexplain · · focus · HN ↗
I am not a free market absolutist - I don't think I implied that anywhere.
skeledrew · · focus · HN ↗
> hundreds of millions of voices
That's a vibe, not an argument. And the data doesn’t line up with your catastrophe story. Migration tends to raise global output and, on average, has positive effects on destination GDP per capita over time[0]. It turns out that immigrant effects on native jobs is near net zero, as there are small losses or gains depending on skill mix in the various local labour markets. Actually new immigrants have a greater effect on the jobs of old immigrants[1] (news to me, but makes sense). Similarly in welfare, there's pretty much negligible impact in more advanced economies, leaning positive over time especially when immigrants arrive as working-age adults, which is the norm[2].
I could go on, but I think that's enough research out of me. You don't have to be a "free market absolutist" to see that the reality is far more mixed than “nations are suffering.” Yes, poorly designed immigration policies can lead to problems. No, there's nothing authoritative to backup claims that immigration is broadly destructive, which makes those voices uninformed. Or prejudiced.
[0] <a href="https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/001/2021/088/article-A001-en.xml" rel="nofollow">https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/001/2021/088/arti...
[1] <a href="https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/87518/1/11-103.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/87518/1/11-103.pdf
[2] <a href="https://www.imf.org/external/np/g20/pdf/2015/111515background.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.imf.org/external/np/g20/pdf/2015/111515backgroun...
happytoexplain · · focus · HN ↗
greggoB · · focus · HN ↗
Though I would debate the idea that immigration is an "easy" solution. Perhaps the way it's frequently being done, with a lack of social integration, etc. But that's just bad policy.
mangodrunk · · focus · HN ↗
Your claim that it’s just a demographic shift is like the argument for the founding of the US. It was just a demographic shift. You might have your opinions guided by colonialism and capitalism more than you think.
greggoB · · focus · HN ↗
> Your claim that it’s just a demographic shift is like the argument for the founding of the US.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-referential_humor" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-referential_humor
mangodrunk · · focus · HN ↗
greggoB · · focus · HN ↗
jgb1984 · · focus · HN ↗
Very sad state of affairs. Good on Japan that they see the danger and try to do something about it before it's too late.
greggoB · · focus · HN ↗
Nothing has been forced upon Western Europe - we have aging populations and shrinking demographics, so a need for people to plug the holes in the workforce.
There is no illuminati-type conspiracy here. Japan has lost 5 mil people or so since 2010, and the median age is like 50. At some point there will be nobody to work and pay tax, no doctors or nurses to take care of the elderly What's the plan exactly to deal with this, what's the magic solution that doesn't somehow involve immigration?
superdisk · · focus · HN ↗
greggoB · · focus · HN ↗
Aha, OK.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Replacement_conspiracy_theory" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Replacement_conspiracy_t...
superdisk · · focus · HN ↗
What are you even trying to imply by posting that link?
greggoB · · focus · HN ↗
Britain is a good for example: they (and France) spent the 20th century doing anything and everything to prevent their empires crumbling. One such thing was easing movement of people with their old colonies to maintain influence.
Turns out things can happen without little green men being involved.
superdisk · · focus · HN ↗
I would personally argue that it IS orchestrated, as this massive change happened in 50 years after 1000+ years of no change, but it's not relevant to the actual outcome. Call it a racist conspiracy theory all you want, people are becoming immune to that strategy.
greggoB · · focus · HN ↗
The reason for Japan's (brief) attempt at immigration is they recognised their demographic decline as an actual existential risk. They've chickened out because it proved sufficiently politically unpopular - this is not the same thing. Good luck to them dealing with their demographics in some other as-yet-unknown way.
Yes it's clear you've been drinking the koolaid. And no, people have migrated around for thousands of years, that's simply not grounded in reality. How do you think humans got from Africa to the rest of the planet? Or does that not count as migration because it's somehow too far in the past?
I don't know how else to refer to a conspiracy theory that's primarily driven by fears/hatred of others based not on their merits and values but their ethnicity/race. If you have another preferred term that accurately depicts this I'd be happy to use it instead.
anal_reactor · · focus · HN ↗
White population of London fell from 97,7% in 1961 to 53,8% in 2021, probably below 50% now. What's happening to Britain is the same thing that British did to indigenous populations during colonial times.
Whether this is orchestrated or not is debatable, but denying simple statistics from governmental agencies in democratic countries is... well... very close to a conspiracy-theory
greggoB · · focus · HN ↗
For sure, the actual colonisation and enslavement of peoples around the world is totally equivalent to a demographic shift.
> Whether this is orchestrated or not is debatable
It's not, it's very widely recognised as a racist conspiracy theory.
jgb1984 · · focus · HN ↗
greggoB · · focus · HN ↗
In any case, there is no country in Europe in which anti-immigration parties have an absolute majority (> 50%), let alone an "overwhelming" one [0]. So to answer your question: yes, democratic decision making is important to me, especially such that it actually reflects the will of the electorate and not some wish a minority within it has.
[0] <a href="https://popu-list.org/" rel="nofollow">https://popu-list.org/
anal_reactor · · focus · HN ↗
Or that immigration simply isn't their most important policy, even though they support stricter measures.
Imagine you have a choice between two parties: party A wants to detonate an atomic bomb in the capital but also create well-funded animal shelters. Party B opposes the destruction of the capital city, but they want to turn all puppies in the country into kebabs. What do you vote? You don't want to eat ground puppies, do you?
greggoB · · focus · HN ↗
If these are the only party choices an electorate has, it seems to me they have bigger problems. And so option C, the people don't vote, hence giving neither party a mandate to do what they want?
I really struggle to see how an example this obtuse has any analogy to reality.
anal_reactor · · focus · HN ↗
greggoB · · focus · HN ↗
cafebabbe · · focus · HN ↗
happytoexplain · · focus · HN ↗
tremon · · focus · HN ↗
wk_end · · focus · HN ↗
Whether Europe or North America have a problem with too much immigration and not enough integration is debatable, maybe - and I suspect that's where your perspective comes from - but Japan decidedly does not (maybe too much tourism, and I feel at least some of the antagonism towards foreigners comes from that, but no matter). Immigrants still make up a very small percentage of the population, mostly in Tokyo; given the existing challenges with immigration, they tend to be extremely diligent, respectful, appreciative of Japanese culture, and hard-working.
This is just a populist conservative government pandering to the some of the worst aspects in society to distract from their failures.
appreciatorBus · · focus · HN ↗
flamethrower123 · · focus · HN ↗
happytoexplain · · focus · HN ↗
wk_end · · focus · HN ↗
happytoexplain · · focus · HN ↗
pjjpo · · focus · HN ↗
Low wage immigrants will not be able to fix the economy (demographics related decline is still decades away, yes it is important long term but not if the fundamentals don't improve). They will increase crime though since that's just what happens when you are poor in a bad economy. There won't be culling of poor locals but restricting inpu where possible, immigration, seems ok given the overall picture.
thedailymail · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://opengov.jp/en/society/crime/" rel="nofollow">https://opengov.jp/en/society/crime/
knlam · · focus · HN ↗
Japan is facing a significant shortage of long-term care workers. The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare estimates that the country will need approximately 2.4 million care workers by FY2026 and 2.72 million by FY2040 (about 250,000 and 570,000 more, respectively, than the 2.15 million employed in FY2022)[1]
[1] <a href="https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/newpage_41379.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/newpage_41379.html