> We destroy that at our own peril.

Already largely done, and will take a generation or three to rebuild, if it ever happens.

Of course immigrants raise the rent, just like anyone else who enters an auction, and the US was built by slaves.

What you’re saying is that population increase raises the rent, whether the new people are immigrants is not relevant.

But wealth accumulation means that on the auction for housing you are competing with someone who has 1000x more resources than you.

You sound like a reasonable and good faith person. I want to ask you in particular to consider engaging with the people you disagree with (in this case the Right). Try to understand what exactly it is they’re trying to do when they oppose unlimited open borders immigration. It’s true that 100+ years ago they were trying to bring in warm bodies, there was plenty of opportunity then and it was a great thing to bring in 1,000,000 people to start new farms and work in factories. The immigrants learned the language and customs and followed the rules, and everybody benefited. That isn’t the way it’s working now though. The “asylum” process that was created to help a small number of political dissidents who would be killed or persecuted for unjust reasons, is being abused by shoving a million people into it whose main reason for coming here is “my country’s economy sucks due to gross incompetence of our government.”

We can’t accept every single person who would rather live in the US or UK than El Salvador or Lesotho, unless we want our country to be like those countries, and according to the people who constantly try to come here, those countries are much worse than ours. That’s what the people who disagree with you are trying to say.

None of this has anything to do with disliking immigrants themselves. I know people of many different races and national origins and I like and respect them all. But just as I don’t think France deserves to have 10,000,000 Americans show up, not learn any French, and just import American culture and customs, I also think immigrants here should be expected to assimilate. That basically worked well for hundreds of years.

Do you think immigrants now have different rates of assimilation than they did 100 years ago? What do you base that on? Because they don't. Immigrants have always formed ethnic groupings because that's how you stay safe. You build Chinatown or little Havana or whatever. At first these places are for 'undesirables' outside the proper good mainstream, but over generations they become a part of the fabric of society and ideas and culture percolate out. It's literally how it's always worked. For some reason there is a new wave of pampered jackboot hopefuls that think this wave of immigrants is somehow uniquely outrageously different from mainstream white culture and so must be prevented from modifying our precious sacred culture.

Pro tip: we are a culture of mutts. We draw strength from constant change. That's why we've been successful. And it's been dragging the right wing kicking and screaming the whole time. The things your great grandfather cried outrage about are now your treasured culture that must be protected.

It would be a little comical how little perspective the right wing has, if it wasn't a bit sad.