Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
This is abhorrent:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/26/dozens-of-bodies-believed-to-be-refugees-found-on-beach-in-southern-italy
We opened our doors to Ukrainian refugees, as we should have. We should just as well open our doors to refugees from Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.
People don't choose to be refugees. They are forced to.
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Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
And don't get me started on "economic migrants" BS!
"Economic migrant" is the correct term for an "expat". I am an economic migrant, born in Poland, living in Iceland, and proud of it.
I hate the term "expat" with a passion of a thousand suns. I find it racist, used to artificially differentiate between rich, predominantly white, Northern-born people moving freely and comfortably wherever they want; and destitute, predominantly BIPOC people forced to risk their lives to secure livelihood.
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Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
People washing up on Italian and Spanish beaches and dying in cold, dark Białowieża forests in Poland are not members of some barbaric horde trying to take down "Western civilization", steal your job, or hog the welfare system.
They are fellow human beings, with hopes and dreams, making the desperate decision to flee their homes, risk their lives, travel thousands of kilometers in hope of finding a chance to *survive*.
https://oko.press/people-are-already-dying-and-freezing-temperatures-are-coming
They are visible victims of a class war.
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Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
"Look at those refugees! Businesses are hiring them because they are cheap, they are cheap because they don't have labor protections, ergo labor protections hurt your ability to get hired, my working class friend!" 👀
That's the narrative.
The problem isn't refugees "stealing jobs", the problem is capitalists being able to skirt labor protections.
The solution is not to block refugees from coming, it's to afford them the same labor protections, and access to welfare and healthcare!
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Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
Simple: labor force with access to a strong social safety net (including good welfare system) is expensive to the moneyed classes. It's cheaper to hire people who have no labor protections, no access to welfare, and ideally also no local support network.
It's not about making refugees not come. It's about making sure they never get the protections the local labor force already has.
Why? Because then they become super cheap labor. And a way to dismantle labor protections for everyone!
How?
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Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
And then there's this other myth, of a "Schrödinger's migrant": a person who moves in to a country, and at the same time "steals jobs" and "abuses the welfare system."
Which one is it? Are the refugees coming in and hanging on on state welfare? Or are they "stealing jobs"?
It's neither. Because it's not a zero-sum game. More people means more economic activity, means more jobs. Yes, on some basic level it's that simple.
So what's the deal with the "Schrödinger's migrant", then?
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Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
There is this myth that if borders are opened, suddenly a deluge of people will come and somehow flood the local community.
Iceland is tiny, 350k people. It's in the EEA. Everyone in the EU can just move here and start a new life, no work visa required — including from countries that rightwingers used to love scaring people in the North and West with: Poland, Bulgaria, Romania.
Guess what? No deluge. No flood of economic migrants. People don't want to uproot their lives willy-nilly!
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Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
Krista, Darth Moose Shark
Esther Payne :bisexual_flag:
@grrrr_shark @rysiek yeah, I'm an immigrant to France (still working on the citizenship part.)
But when my husband had to do the UK immigration stuff pre Brexit, every part of the process someone would apologise to him saying he shouldn't have had to do it.
Like we knew what they really meant given the fact my hubby is Australian. 😒
Krista, Darth Moose Shark
@rysiek This.
In Germany, one of my good friends is from Tanzania, and we find it darkly amusing that in conversations, she refers to herself as an expat, and I call myself an immigrant. For exactly the same reason. Watching people choke as their expectations are messed with can be amusing, when not infuriating.
"I didn't mean *your* kind of immigrant"
"Yes you fucking did."
Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
@grrrr_shark and vastly overestimate the appeal uprooting one's life, leaving behind friends and family, and throwing oneself into an unfamiliar people and culture has to basically everyone.
Krista, Darth Moose Shark
@rysiek I think what folks vastly underestimate is what a bloody challenge it is to be foreign somewhere. Even with money and privilege.
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