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Is it racist to oppose illegal immigrants?
(thelemmy.club)
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this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2025
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I am yet to hear a justification for opposing illegal immigration that doesn't tie back into racism or racial prejudice, let alone a justification that actually makes sense if you take it apart.
Someone prove me wrong, and I'll change my mind.
Essentially this. There are no arguments against immigration that arent racist or xenophobic.
If you have a society with robust social welfare systems - education, healthcare, social security, pensions, childcare, housing etc. etc., mass immigration becomes a massive problem.
Everything is taken care of via taxes, and those taxes come from a productive working population. Slow population growth (whether from births or immigration) allows social institutions to expand at a matching rate over the decades.
Rapid population increases from migration can overwhelm the systems in place and put society in a spot where it is no longer able to maintain them.
Furthermore, when it comes to illegal immigrants, it gets doubly bad. They can't hold down a legal job (at least in my country, and thus not pay taxes either), which inevitably pushes them towards crime or illegal jobs which brings a whole host of other issues.
Thanks for a thoughtful response. My thoughts:
Thanks for a well-written reply. Here's some quick responses:
1... as mentioned the primary costs here come from increased crime which is hard to document. In high trust societies (which social welfare countries usually are) this has a disproportionately negative impact on the economy. Also, in several Scandinavian countries everyone has a right to emergency healthcare, regardless of their immigration status.
2... I believe you're correct when it comes to countries with less social welfare such as the US, however, this isn't the case in countries with robust social welfare systems. As recently as 2023 Denmark assessed the net contribution of migrants and their descendants on the public finances and published the results. The sum total effect of migrants was negative (-19B DKK). Per capita the average Dane had an impact of (22k DKK) per year and the average migrant (-21k DKK). Some migrant/migrant descendant subgroups were better or worse than others (best 52k DKK, worst -109k).
3... Sure, I assume this accounts for other societal costs such as law enforcement and crime?
4... See the response to #2. The taxes don't cover the costs.
Thanks for your response. Your argument is convincing and I have no refutation, I appreciate you taking the time.
The only thing I would say is I bet this is still fixable with policy without having to ban or restrict immigration. But alas, that's a different discussion, and your point that there are valid non racist reasons to criticize immigration is correct. Thanks again!
No worries. I think the more interesting discussion that I'd like to have at some point is how a good system for immigration actually looks. It's not a trivial problem to solve and can't be done in isolation either. Societies are systems where everything is interlinked in one way or another.
The thing is, if they are there illegally, they won't be able to benefit from most of these welfare systems. And over straining welfare can also happen for a lot of different reasons (thank you neoliberalism)
I agree that there are legitimate reasons to manage immigration, but criminalizing the act is a complete no-go for me. There are other ways to manage immigration by creating incentives and disincentives that would make the criminalization of migrants unnecessary. I also believe that freedom of movement is a fundamental human right and that borders are nothing more than an authoritarian system of control. "Security" is only made necessary by the problems that nation-states create themselves by existing.
How would you limit immigration without creating laws and stopping people when too many arrive?
Freedom of movement is good in a vacuum but not feasible in our current world. The best would be if developed countries could uplift those that arent and the need for people to move would be reduced.
You've answered your own question, ending imperialism and colonialism so that unequal exchange doesn't create massive wealth disparities between nations and war no longer displaces people en masse, thereby "uplifting" formerly exploited peoples, would remove most of the incentives for mass migration. In a world at peace with itself borders are not necessary. Ask yourself, why is there no need to criminalize immigration between states/provinces within a country such as the US? Because the US, for the time being, is a nation at peace with itself. It doesn't have to be a perfect utopia - the US most certainly is not - to eliminate the need for border security / immigration control. Even a tenuous peace and a dubious justice is enough to eliminate the need for border enforcement.
Edit: This is a good write-up about how the criminalization of migrants does not even serve as an adequate deterrent to migration anyway. It is not only unjust, it's futile.
Ok, so just wishful thinking then. The problem is we live in the present, not some utopian future.
Now you're just copying my comment and changing the timeframe lol.
Can you elaborate on how you think turning the world into a utopia would be achievable?
So clearly you didn't fully read my comment, so why should I expend the effort typing out a response? It would be a waste if you're just going to read part of it and then ask questions I've already given the answer to.
You have given a vague idealistic vision, not an answer.
And how exactly would that happen? Id like you to elaborate if you have any ideas
I've heard a very compelling one actually. It's not about ilegal immigration but against immigration in general. I heard it in a youtube talk maybe like a decade ago.
It starts stating that the thing a migrant person wants the most is not having to emigrate. No one wants go have to leave their country because they cannot safely live a prosper life there. So the best outcome would be that the origin countries would change, so people wouldn't have leave everything behind to start a new life abroad. The problem is that the country have to change from inside. And the people leaving a country is usually the most qualified to make that change happen. So by leaving the country they make the change harder or even impossible.
I'm not arguing in favour or against this argument. But I do not think it has anything to do with race whatsoever. As it doesn't even talk about anything related to migrant presence in a receiving country.
Thanks for your response! You are making an assumption that most or all immigrants wish they didn't have to immigrate. I will answer assuming this is true, though I am not confident it is. But let's go with it.
Changes in material conditions of a country typically occur due to political action. That may be in terms of voting, political movements, or outside forces like war or sanctions. Addressing each of those:
And last, even if what you quoted is true, I bet whoever said it is likely not considering putting the effort of making their country better in the same way they want immigrants to. Maybe that's not one of the worse forms of racism, but it is one.
But it boils down to "go back where they came from" which is the favourite of racists.
simply because somebody who you disagree with says something, doesn't mean that that argument is bad.
it's like if a nazi says that the sky is blue, then you're going to insist that it's actually green or yellow. that's just stupid.
nazis breathe too. does that make breathing bad? no, you need to agree with it and continue to breathe yourself.
Yeah, but if a Nazi says we should send all the immigrants home, I see it for the racist shit it is.
I mean if the axiom is "any negative about immigration is bad = racism" then yes, there's no argument against immigration that could not be racist as those two concepts would be equivalent.
It's just a lot of clever words for hating foreigners. I'm not fooled by it. Apparently you are. The solution to the infrastructure problems is to build more infrastructure. Not elect a bunch of racists and let hate rule your country. Who gives a fuck where people are from? Racists. That's who. People are people.
The solution to the housing crisis is to build a vast amount of council housing, just like we did post war. It makes jobs. It boosts the economy. It removes the upwards pressure on rent and introduces downwards pressure. Who would pay through the nose for a badly maintained private rental property when there's a brand now council house at much lower rent? Landlords would have to fix the house and reduce the rent or sell - reducing upwards pressure on house prices.
So it's the government selling off council houses instead of building more and money-grabbing rich venture capital landlords that cause the housing problem, not some immigrant.
How do you solve the problems of the NHS? Recruit more doctors and nurses. How? Increase the limit on numbers in medical school in the UK (controlled by the government) and for goodness' sake, make sure all the foreign born NHS and healthcare workers feel happy, wanted and at home, because the one think the NHS can't afford is to lose the immigrant workers! Next, bring health and social care and NHS under the same funding roof, either by putting NHS into local authorities or social care under the NHS. Social care is far cheaper than the NHS and a bunch of old people can't get a place in social care because there's not enough funding for it. If it was the same pot of money, it'd be simple - build a bunch of care homes and ease pressure on the NHS. But how would you staff them? I think you're beginning to see where the answers are but you don't want to admit it.
Who gave you money problems? Rich people running corporations to extract as much money as possible from you. Not some poor immigrant.
Immigrants make our country better. Without them it would be worse. Silly racists can sound plausible without using the word "race" or "skin" or "foreigners" as much as they like but their solutions are just about racism and not about making anything better.
Trump is living out the "deport them or lock them up" policy. If you think that's all going well, move to America. Unless your skin isn't pearly white, because they'll lock you up before you can say "ironic" and certainly before you can say "habeas corpus".