Around the world, progressive parties have come to see tight immigration restrictions as unnecessary, even cruel. What if they’re actually the only way for progressivism to flourish?
That the era of low immigration was also the era of progressive triumph is no coincidence. […] The United States felt more like a cohesive nation to many voters, with higher levels of social trust and national pride, and politicians were able to enact higher taxes on the rich and new benefits like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
It’s always been immigration, people. I’ve been saying it for years. Everyone, even the most liberal, has a breaking point when it comes to how much immigration they can tolerate before they feel like they are losing their way of life. And the amount of people who would migrate to the developed world if they could is basically unlimited, which ensures that every non-restrictive immigration program will eventually be overwhelmed.
I don’t hate immigrants, I love and respect them and I reject the racist narratives of the right. But every country needs to have reasonable restrictions on immigration-especially illegal immigration- or eventually the people will radicalize against immigrants. You can say that’s unfair but it’s just the facts. Source: every nation that has ever experienced immigration waves.
As a socialist from Denmark, what convinced me to stop supporting immigration was the realization that we’re going to see an overwhelming increase in immigration due to climate change, because enormous parts of northern Africa and the Middle East will become uninhabitable. The increase in climate refugees coupled with our absolutely appaling integration policies, made by right-wing parties over the last 30 years, has convinced me we will absolutely fail misserably if we don’t stop.
My politicians are simply too inept to be able to handle it, and it will destroy my country in the process.
It is hard to read someone acknowledge that some of the reasons people seek refuge is directly result from the wealthiest nations fucking up the planet for profit while the firsts to take the effects are the poor nations that very little contributed to said catastrophe and goes:
“sorry, there is no space for you. It is true that we are ripping the fruit of centuries of imperialism and unchecked destruction of nature and sorry that it affects you guys the most, but we cannot make space and give up the way of life that we killed the planet for”
Yeah, same thing in America too, conservatives would rather run on “immigration is broken” as an issue than actually take productive steps to make immigration work. Ultimately, they know that positioning themselves as the anti-immigration party during an immigration crisis is a winning play.
Sure, but I think it’s also true that the high demand for immigration means we should consider increasing quotas on immigration. Make it easier to immigrate legally, while at the same time cracking down on illegal immigration. So a little from both extremes of the issue.
Every liberal party that went stricter on immigration lost votes to the fascists in the last election in germany last week.
sauce? Conservative CDU went hard and won, the center-right–liberal FDP did far worse things and lost, while the Left Party is having record soaring membership.
The CDU had the second worst result since the unification of Germany. And FDP also talked bullshit about immigration. I am confused what you want a source for?
IMO “second worst result” for the winning party is more an indication of Germany’s growing plurality. And the FDP has way bigger problems with their “d-day” exit fiasco.
I am confused what you want a source for?
A broad correlation that parties who went hard on immigration performed worse (especially when compared to those that went loose, like the Greens).
? The Greens did also go stricter on immigration.
Because the Danes are well educated.
“How do progressives win? By being less progressive!”
Am i really reading this? Is it onion-adjacent? Is there a hidden camera somewhere?
No, progressives win by not allowing the breakdown of social cohesion to the point that everyday people are wondering what happened to their culture. Places with leftist politicians who acknowledge that their culture has value (like Denmark and Québec) are doing just fine.
Hahahahahaha hot damn are you in for it son! Nah who am i kiddin, you’ll be be standing with them when they start knockin on doors won’t ya?
I’m a union executive and activist for multiple causes like Right to Repair and accessibility-first design of public services. I’m not worried about people questioning my creds.
My culture values speech, equal rights, good public services, and secularism. This is the bare minimum I expect of any newcomer: I do not want people who do not value those things in my culture.
Only reading the headline, I wonder if a political party could survive just by gesturing at various current situations incredulously and asking “is this really what you want?!”
That image looks like it would make a badass isometric game.
Hello, my friend. Stay awhile and listen.
Kinda reminds me of Dorf Romantik
Just look at the current Danish government, it’s a coalition “across the middle”, but in reality it just means that the social democrats (Socialdemokratiet of which Mette Frederiksen is party leader), has turned more and more right wing.
Sounds like theyre winning by giving voters what they want. Voters want social benefits, they do not want immigration, simple as. Concerns over immigration have got to the point in some countries where people are voting for conservative parties because they promise less immigration, or just to not let criminals walk the streets, even though they like other left policies.
The thing is, the criminals are not walking the streets. Crime rates are actually much lower than ever before in western nations and no, the remaining crime is not done by immigrants to a higher degree than one would expect compared to similar groups in the native population either (e.g. young native men vs. young immigrant men).
Unfortunately, as the article says, for some reason that is not true in Europe.
It actually is true here in Europe. Crime rates are much lower in e.g. Germany before 2015 when we took in a big wave of immigrants.
Likely a greater degree of difficulty blending into the society in question.
The new deal era welfare programs were dismantled during the civil rights era using racism as an excuse, and now that same progress has been pointed to by right-wingers as the cause of all our woes. They got rid of our social safety net because they didn’t want “undesirables” to have access. By retreating on the immigration issue for the sake of rebuilding the social safety net those countries are giving the racists what they wanted all along, and they won’t stop at immigrants.
How come it’s always nazi apologists with these takes…
Ok big brain - who’s gonna provide those social benefits in a country with an aging population and no immigration?
This sounds like the whole Brexit thing where folk voted to keep immigrants out and were then shocked when social services went even more to shit when they realized half of NHS staff were foreigners…
If you were arguing to solve global inequality and climate change by dismantling western imperialism and by radically reducing their material consumption so that people didn’t need to emigrate - then we would agree - but your current stance just sounds like social security for me but not for thee…
Ah yes, let’s outnazis the nazis. That will teach them.
Nazi is when less immigration
easy. the danish “liberals” adopted nationalist policies.
you’re looking for liberalism in social democracy?
Social democracy is literally a branch of liberalism
third way maybe, but that’s 80s new labour BS while denmark’s is very well-rooted in the old left and standard version of social democracy
The last Danish PM from the Social democrats is married to the son of a UK labour leader (who is also a current labour minister) and she is a member of the UK Labour party. The two parties are very close.
i’ll start looking for jesus in such cursed times.
European here. My wife lost her residency after the cop took six months to validate her moving to the next city. She is still an illegal. Even if I married her, she still cannot work. She have a freaking PhD.
And these “liberals” from a nazi country want to explain me that the “progressive” giving it to the nazis are the only way for the “left” to win?
THAT’S LITERALLY NATIONAL-SOCIALISM YOU DUMB IDIOTS.
Fuck off if you support that inhumane appartheid-like policy. Frontex is blocking lifesavers and letting people drown in the mediteranea and that’s what you supporting.
No, it is not literally national-socialism. That one shared nothing but the name with any left wing parties and policies.
Nazis were always hard right wing and the greatest success the neo-Nazis ever had was convince people that Nazis were somehow left-wing.
I know history, obviously the nazis were not “left wing”. Guess what else isn’t socialist? “Left-wing” parties giving in to the far-right and whining about immigration.
She’s your wife but you aren’t married?
We are. It still takes at least 6 months to get a visa, and that visa doesn’t allow her to leave the country.
See? That’s what I’m talking about. Idiots like you don’t know shit about immigration process and how inhumane the whole thing is. You just want less brown people.
Yep NYT, what if for progressivism to flourish it needs to be less progressive and more reactionary and fascist?
Deep thoughts with The Deep.
It does, actually. Democracies should bend to the will of the people, after all. The only way to remain sort of progressive when the public demands that you compromise your principles is obvious: You simply have to compromise.
I know you disagree with that, when the people are wrong you think the progressives should make the decisions while the people should be lectured.
Edit: Yeah go ahead and keep not listening to the public YOU FUCKING IDIOTS. Stay a minority, keep losing, lose it all. Gay rights, women’s rights, worker’s rights and more.
You’d rather leave the reins in the hands of literal Nazis than turn immigrants away. The amount of pro immigration pressure from certain progressives is fucking ridiculous, it’s absolutely wild how much of a death grip you have on the gate, keeping it as open as you can, and with the other hand holding back the boot that tries to kick some out, you hold it back for dear fucking life.
I feel so fucking betrayed by the absolute incompetence and denial that seems to be defining the left right now.
The “will of the people” is a highly questionable concept in the era of widespread propaganda that selectively highlights some issues and some instances of some issues and ignores others completely. And I am not even talking about social media, just the behavior of the regular old media.
Democrayies should bend to the will of the people
Yep, if one has an understanding of democracy pre-WW II
The new understanding the west came to agree upon also contained
Democracies should bend to the will of the people, but there are some unnegotiable core principles, which are to be upheld, even if the will of the people dictates differently. We call them human rights
Funnily enough those human rights basically are the extension of core Christian values, which are usually not considered progressive.
And among them are the right to asylum and the right not to be deported somewhere, where murder and torture are to be expected.
Immigration to Denmark is not a human right.
Additionally, the vast majority of immigrants are under no specific risk of murder and torture, besides the part where the country they come from is just generally dangerous.
besides the part where the country they come from is just generally dangerous.
That’s exactly what asylum is about and why asylum is a human right. (That said, asylum approval in Denmark is higher than the EU average and doesn’t seem like a problem.)
I’m an Atheist who is very acutely aware of where most of the danger in most of these countries comes from. It’s not left behind at the border. It’s also most of what makes conservatives in general dangerous, not just foreign conservatives.
Could you explain?
Sufficiently religious people always make everything bad, in big and small ways.
As we do not share values, let’s disuss technicalities instead:
- what to do with immigrants, of whom we do not know the state of origin?
- what to do with immigrants where the state of origin does not want to take them back?
Then everybody is like “Muh, but Dublin rules”. Yeah right, because those will work out perfectly for Europe, when all the southern states are left alone with all the immigrants.
In consequence, every “we want immigration to go down” comes down to using brutal violence against those immigrants. And now we’re back to square one: questions about human rights ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yes, it does come down to that.
Now either accept it, or lose the voters and lose elections and fight to overthrow the “unethical” democracy that refuses to share their country sufficiently.
Or, you know, as we talk democracy, talk to and convince other people?
And failing that, as the US and several European countries have recently experienced? Stand proud as a principled failure? Refusing to budge to the people’s will on important issues?
