I also think that the main fear - at least where I live - is not job loss but national identity and crime. At least that's what the anti-immigration political messaging is about. I haven't seen the job loss argument in the decade I've lived here.

Facts are much lesd helpful here because half of the perceived problem is emotional.

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weatherlite 27 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> Facts are much lesd helpful here because half of the perceived problem is emotional.

Well in countries like Denmark and Sweden the facts do show over representation of MENA immigrants (and their descendants) in violent crime. I don't think it's something that could or should be wished away. But I also don't think it's the main issue , it's for sure also a cultural/religious clash.

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watwut an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I mean, people worry about crime even in places where study after study shown that immigrants have lower crime rates. People see immigrant and assume crime. And I intentionally put "in places" in there, immigrant crime rates do differ between places.

And as similar data point, you see certain Americans scared of going to UK assuming some super high crime levels there ... while it has overall smaller crime levels then where they like. And you see rural people feeling super afraid the moment they step into a low crime city, because they are predisposed to think city = immoral crime.

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kakacik 39 minutes ago | parent [-]

You got it reverse - people look at prison populations and deduce criminality rate from there. Switzerland almost 3/4 are foreigners, Germany its 50% and so on.

Unless given country has similar % of foreigners (and of course they don't), you get where they come from and where the emotion 'foreigners bad' stems from. Even if one ignores flashy news about high profile attacks/criminality, which of course are impossible to ignore. Right or not, this statistics is primary level math that anybody can do in their head and even folks following populists will do.

Now what would you say to these people in such case? Bear in mind the topic is in western Europe, ie Germany so toxic that even saying above got high ranking people like police chiefs fired on spot. Exactly kind of dumb over-corrected setup that makes things like ADF thrive quietly, till election come and then folks are 'shocked' that they don't understand their own population at all.

	▲	weatherlite 22 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> Now what would you say to these people in such case? The honest thing would have been to tell them - you're right, yes there's an overrepresenation in crime - but we're working on it , it will get better in the 2nd and 3rd generation (it does but very slowly), etc. But lots of the establishment doesn't seem able to even do that - they have to completely deny the problem, by for example pulling tricks like counting immigrants from India, Thailand and MENA together, or by not allowing the collection of data at all. This is really bad policy imo.