timemachineyeah:

erikadprice:

douglasmurphy:

That “Immigrants don’t steal your jobs, they get jobs while you’re sitting around thinking you’re too good for them!” thing annoys me.

Because that’s – not what’s really going on?

What it actually is is “Immigrants are victims of a system set up to take advantage of them, in which employers and businesses use the fact that immigrants are more often than not in difficult, dangerous positions to strong-arm them into working long hours in often unhygienic or dangerous jobs for less than minimum wage.

“And the organisations that do that are often either the same as or in bed with the organisations that push the ‘Immigrants steal your jobs / immigrants want to push their values on the entire country / immigrants don’t deserve benefits’ narrative, because it allows them to not only socially isolate immigrants and make them more susceptible to being taken advantage of, but also to do things like refuse immigrants benefits that would allow them to viably consider not working for less than minimum wage in sub-par conditions, and to frame any attempt by immigrants to politically organise themselves and push for fair treatment as them being dangerously subversive.

“While the ‘immigrants steal your jobs’ thing is bullshit, it’s calculated bullshit pushed by politicians and businesses at a working class population in conjunction with an equally calculated strategy of enacting laws that endanger that population’s livelihoods and labour rights, at a time when the shenanigans of politicians and businesses have caused an employment crisis and a recession, because it’s easy to turn people who are terrified into bigots, and it’s politically advantageous to do so.”

…

I mean, I realise that that’s less pithy.

But it also doesn’t glorify the horrible conditions and sub-par wages that immigrants are subjected to, so there’s that.

Yes! It’s not that “immigrants are getting your jobs because they are willing to work harder for less money”; it’s “immigrants are used as a cheap and exploitable workforce because they often have no other choice” 

Corporations and large businesses are limiting your access to jobs by exploiting a population in a more vulnerable and easily controlled position than yours.