The disingenuousness and failure of mass migration

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The world has always had migration of people from one area to others - people deciding on their own that they would like to try living elsewhere, and then usually following the established protocols for doing so. It is expected that people who migrate will fully immerse themselves in their adoptive countries - gain employment and contribute positively to their new society. People who don't follow protocols and laws end up with a more difficult time as they can be deported from their new home, thus a need to stay hidden from authorities, leading to an inability to fully immerse in the society.

Countries generally support some small level of migration through various processes and laws. They want people to migrate to fully immerse in their existing societies, to find work and be able to pay for themselves and their family, and become functioning members of their populace. Countries don't want people migrating who will become burdens on society either financially or legally, i.e. people who won't work or who become criminals.

While much migration stems from self determination, there are also scenarios where large numbers of people emigrate from one country to another, so called "mass migration". Reasons for mass migration include escaping famine, as happened in the 1840's in Ireland due to the Great Irish Famine, or escaping war, gang violence or oppression; such migrants are usually dubbed asylum seekers, as they are seeking asylum from their original homes. In such scenarios, recipient countries need to have policies in place on how to accommodate the migrants - where they will live initially and how will they be fed, what process will allow them to legally live and work, thus becoming full members of society.

This has escalated in the past few decades to supporting open border policies, allowing anyone and any number of people to migrate at any time. Ireland, for example, used to have certain limits in place for the total number of asylum seekers they would house, but in the past few years this was expanded to become a defacto open border policy, meaning that the government officially supported the premise of allowing millions of people to migrate into the country.

Countries that receive large volumes of immigrants need to be able to properly support the new people so that they can make the new country their home, i.e. there needs to be work for them otherwise they will end up being burdens on society.

When governments support mass migration they usually don't get into the implementation details, they don't explain how the large numbers of migrants will be adopted into the country. With the government supporting the migration it is their responsibility to pay for the housing, food, etc for the migrants. An obvious question arises of where the migrants will live, where they will be housed. In Ireland many towns have used their community centers - facilities built for the people in that community to hold events, etc, with the initial statement that it would be a short term issue. When such facilities are not available, it is common that the government will house the migrants at hotels - the government pays the hotels to house the migrants at rates agreed to by the hotels. In some cities in the US such immigrants are being housed at airports, or in tent encampments.

Good intentions

As activist Kim Crayton famously states: intention without strategy is chaos.

A common political policy amongst progressive governments is support for mass migration; with all of the problems of the world, between ongoing wars & genocides, and famines, voters feel that they can help by supporting migration policies. People have the intention of doing well by supporting mass migration policies, which is laudable. However, most countries don't have any solid short-term strategies behind migration, never mind long-term strategies to cope when the number of migrants continue to escallate. This has lead to major problems in every western country that adopted such policies.

Failed strategies

People who support mass migration talk of using up unused space in their communities - hotels that have unused rooms, community centers that aren't being used 24x7, maybe even homes that might have a spare room. This is always a shortsighted view. If the community center already is already overloaded, where are you going to house the next batch of migrants?

If your town of 25,000 people has been told they're taking in 1,000 people this year, what will they do when they're told they have to keep taking in more each year?

What does the town do if they're told they need to take in 5,000? 10,000? And that the numbers will continue every year indefinitely.

To the people advocating for mass migration - how many migrants have you taken into your home? Or, like the inhabitants of Martha's Vineyard who freaked out and promptly evicted migrants who were dropped off on their island, are your policies just for someone else?

The policy failures can be seen in the plight of Oluwaseun Ola, who became an asylum seeker in Ireland. For years she attempted to get work, get her own housing instead of the very limited housing and funding provided by the government under its "Direct Provisioning" policy. Year after year the Irish government's policies failed her, failed to follow through on their promises to make her and her children full members of society. Ireland's current housing crises has made the situation even worse, with the responsible organizations either refusing to respond to calls & communications, or denying responsibility:

With new laws due to take effect on July 5th, thousands face eviction because they can't find suitable housing:

Ms Ola has been in Ireland for years, existing policies have failed her and her children, yet people continue supporting more and more migration.

When thousands fled the (cough proxy) war in Ukraine in 2022, Irish news reporters were happy to interview families who had sought asylum in Ireland, to show how righteous the government's policies were. There was one report of a family who had immigrated to Ireland prior to the war and had their own home. When the war broke out they provided asylum for extended family members, so their home had twice as many living there. The interview indicated that the family was having a difficult time with the home being so crowded, they didn't know how long it would be able to reasonably continue, and they were expecting additional family members to arrive soon. That was in 2022. The war continued after peace talks in the summer of 2022 were abandoned at the behest of Boris Johnson, and so the migration continued.

In Ireland, as of April 2023 there were 3/4m non-citizens, with a net increase in migration of ~77,000 from the year previously. These numbers increase each year, with little being done to support the people already here who are already strugging, like Ms Ola.

Utter chaos.

That said, Ireland does have a law they added in 2022 whereby the government can take over your home if they decide you aren't using it well enough, so I guess they do have a plan for this after all. I'm not aware of this law being used against anyone yet, but it is in place, so it's likely only a matter of time.

Sanctuary cities

In the US the effects of mass migration is normally felt in states at the Southern border. Coastal cities don't tend to have to deal with thousands of people people arriving each day, so the people in these cities don't feel the effects of the policies they champion. Any time the southern US governments bussed people inland to other states, to help share the burden, the recipient states and cities called foul - they supported the policies so long as it didn't affect them.

Many US cities have had policies where they would provide shelter to all unhoused, so-called "sanctuary" cities. The intention is to ensure that nobody in their city was left to sleep on the streets, that the unhoused could have a roof over their heads, to live another day and possibly find a chance to turn their lives around. Many of these cities have also promoted this fact, saying that they would welcome migrants to their cities where they would be given a fresh start. Again, the intention is laudible.

Unfortunately sanctuary cities have found themselves unable to pay for the costs of the migration. When local taxes and other sources of funding are unable to cover the cities' costs, the only choice left is to reduce expenditure. When these cities' policies mandate that all who seek housing will be given it, there's no way of reducing the expenses for their policy of mass migration without overturning the policy, thus the only way of continuing to cover their costs is to cut existing services. In New York City they're cutting funding of the library system and other social services, and sanctuary city after sanctuary city is running into the same problem.

Bad situations made worse, on purpose

It should also be noted that in the past several years it has become official policy of both the US and UN to financially support mass migration. The US funds people to migrate to the US, including flying over 460,000 people into the country. In addition to the millions who walk or drive in, where three countries pay billions of US$ to have people smugged in.

It is also worth noting that mass migration is a policy of the UN. In 1999 the UN produce a document recommending 760,000 immigrants into the US and 376,000 into Europe per year through 2050 as part of a plan for "replacement migration", i.e. enough migration to keep the population of the respective region growing rather than stagnating. Towards this goal they've been allocated $1.6bn to pay people to migrate (alternative source) from Southern and Central American countries into the US, using prepaid debit cards or just cash in envelopes. There's funding for temporary housing, but nothing about how the US will handle this additional surge of immigrants, given that their current systems haven't been able to keep up for years.

And it's worth remembering that the US is one of the UN's largest funders, thus the US is ultimately paying for this mess.

Ad hominem attacks

Any time discussions around migration are had it is almost always turned into ad hominem against anyone who ask questions - if you don't support mass migration you're just a racist.

If you want to know what work the immigrants will have, and how they will adapt into the existing culture, you're just a racist.

If you want to know why the community center your town spent years fundraising to build for the town's people to use, will now be used to indefinitely house people who aren't being allowed to integrate into the town, and making it unavailable to the community for use, you're just a racist.

If you want to know why the people in the community center aren't being given enough food to eat, and can't work to pay for their own food, you're just a racist.

If want to know why hotels are being paid thousands of dollars or Euros per person month ($5,000+ in Boston) to house migrants, and why they're canceling existing reservations to make more rooms available for migrants, you're a racist.

If you want to know why the people in charge of processing immigrants haven't completed the processing, thus the immigrants can't work and can't move out of the community center to stand on their own two feet, you're just a racist.

If you want to know why more people are being brought in when the last group of immigrants are still living in squaller conditions and the promises made for them haven't been fulfilled, you're just a racist.

If you want to know why mass migration is still the policy of a country that has for years created chaos through its lack of strategy, you're just a racist.

Let's talk

Enough with the ad hominem attacks.

Mass migration has been forced upon countries without open discussion, open debate, and a significant lack of strategy. Much has been pushed by the US and UN without communication to the recipient countries.

This hushed campaign of mass migration has led to chaos and backlash, which could have been avoided had discussions been open in the first place and agreements made with long-term strategies on how to handle the immigrants. Decisions should not be decreed in a top-down manner, instead each location should be able to make the decision for themselves on whether they're able or willing to take in, on the premise that they can afford it without closing existing services.

IMHO mass migration policies need to be halted worldwide. The chaos needs to be tamed before any further migration happens, before worse things happen.

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