RE: The Issue of Migration
June 22, 2025 at 7:56 am
(June 20, 2025 at 10:33 am)Leonardo17 Wrote: Even in my country (Turkey) there are now jobs that local ethnic groups are simply not willing to do. In the 2000’s or even in the first half of the 2010’s it was possible to get domestic aid at affordable prices. You would just ask your friend and/or neighbor and would know someone who knows someone who would come and work in your house some 7-8 hours and be happy to do so (at least in this neighborhood).
In my limited experience, employment has a lot to do with how immigration works out. Immigrants who come for employment and seriously keep their jobs aren't the ones causing problems. People who immigrate without a job waiting, or who are denied the opportunity to keep working, are more likely to end up as an issue.
I visited Dodge City, Kansas, several times, because I knew a guy who lived there. The main employers in Dodge City are still slaughterhouses, which employ a lot of people at exactly the kind of job that white locals would rather not do. Bloody, dangerous, unpleasant work. This means that a large percentage of the population is new to the country -- mostly from Mexico and Vietnam. But after the dad establishes himself and does the unpleasant work, the second generation tends to do well. If the problems associated with immigrants (like gang activity) are particularly bad there I never heard about it.
This is in contrast to my old hometown in Kansas, which has no major employer like this. It attracts very few immigrants. This means it is still nearly all white, and has no issues with immigrants, but is slowly dying. The downtown is mostly empty, and everything looks much more shabby than when I was a kid. People drive to Wichita for shopping or movies or anything.
So Dodge is better off economically and is more fun to hang out in, and it's thanks to the immigration.
(There was a funny case where the big popular steak house went out of business for a while, but a guy from Vietnam had saved up enough from the slaughterhouse to buy it and put it back in business. When he redecorated he wanted to play up the cowboy associations, so he ordered what he thought were big sheriff's badges and put them up on the outside. This caused some confusion, as they were actually large Stars of David.)
Here in Japan immigration is an ongoing debate. The aging population means that the country needs more workers if it wants to maintain its current economy, but there is resistance. People will say things that come across as racist, though it is less about hating brown people and more about a fear of losing community harmony. As you know, keeping "wa" among neighbors is extremely important here, and there is a lot of concern that new people won't know the rules, which are often unwritten or unofficial, but are nevertheless taken extremely seriously.
I can't oppose it when people move to Japan to have a better life, because that's what I did. Of course I had an advantage, being a white American and therefore more acceptable and employable. But I have experienced discrimination -- minor compared to many others, but when it happens to you it's VERY angry-making. When you can't rent a house and the owner says "we feel you'd be more comfortable with people of your own kind," it's no fun. But it's an education for someone as privileged as I am, since darker-skinned people face that kind of thing every day.
