While yes, I don’t doubt that people do care about immigration and that’s why they vote far-right, the point of my original comment was that a lot of this “anti-immigration” sentiment is just an easy scapegoat by the right. It’s something they puff up, blame most issues on then try to get votes by promising to deal with that said issue they pretty much manufactured, while leaving actual issues that they’re going to make worse unaddressed (like low minimum wages, tax cuts for the rich, weakening of workers rights, mass privatization, etc).
Liberals (left doesn’t exist in most of EU still) rarely ever vow to do anything about immigration precisely of how overblown it is, and yeah they do lose votes because of it from people who do end up believing the far-right, the “easy” answer if you will.
And here’s a fun tidbit - most of the voters who vote far-right in European countries (checked Poland and French but undoubtedly there are many more examples) come from rural regions, which are the least affected by immigration.
Of course a lot of people that talk about reducing immigration, and not do anything about it. Usually the liberals and the right. They wont actually fix it because it is good for business.
The hope if by voting for something like the far right it shows the left parties. “Hey if you don’t do something about immigration you won’t get our vote”. It’s now a standoff. If we have to get a far right government in to stop immigration, well that’s personally something I’m happy to vote for. But I would much much rather a left government that wants to drastically reduce immigration.
While yes, I don’t doubt that people do care about immigration and that’s why they vote far-right, the point of my original comment was that a lot of this “anti-immigration” sentiment is just an easy scapegoat by the right. It’s something they puff up, blame most issues on then try to get votes by promising to deal with that said issue they pretty much manufactured, while leaving actual issues that they’re going to make worse unaddressed (like low minimum wages, tax cuts for the rich, weakening of workers rights, mass privatization, etc).
Liberals (left doesn’t exist in most of EU still) rarely ever vow to do anything about immigration precisely of how overblown it is, and yeah they do lose votes because of it from people who do end up believing the far-right, the “easy” answer if you will.
And here’s a fun tidbit - most of the voters who vote far-right in European countries (checked Poland and French but undoubtedly there are many more examples) come from rural regions, which are the least affected by immigration.
Of course a lot of people that talk about reducing immigration, and not do anything about it. Usually the liberals and the right. They wont actually fix it because it is good for business.
The hope if by voting for something like the far right it shows the left parties. “Hey if you don’t do something about immigration you won’t get our vote”. It’s now a standoff. If we have to get a far right government in to stop immigration, well that’s personally something I’m happy to vote for. But I would much much rather a left government that wants to drastically reduce immigration.