I'm reading this chapter about detterence, and I guess pull and push factors on immigration, and it makes me think about Europe's race to the bottom on detterence and trying to change the pull factors on immigration without doing anything about the push factors.

As someone who lives in a country where the 3 biggest political parties talk about detterence (harder to reunite family, easier to kick migrants out of the country and so on) it's maddening to see the same politicans refuse to do anything that might change the push factors.

I come from a country that makes a crap ton of money on oil and gas (both on our own coast and abroad) this leads to climate change and that again leads to people migrating from the global south to the global north. Norwegian companies that operate in the global south behave in a way that makes the areas they operate worse places to live for the local population. Some of these companies are state owned (or the state own more than 50 %), but the politicians who are talking about the dangers of immigration and the importance of detterence refuse to do anything about these companies.

And our overcomsumtion leads to worse working conditions and so on in the global south. We are making these push factors worse by making choices on a national level and personal level that make people's living conditions worse (in the global south). Social democracy depends on 1. being able to export out the worse consequences of capitalism and 2 make sure that people are stuck in the global south so there are people we can exploit so we have access to cheap clothes, tech, chocolate etc.

Detterence won't work because we make the living conditions worse and sometimes so bad that people are forced to move. So we are just punishing people because of the consequences of capitalism and rascism.

Notably, the unions representing ICE and Custom and Border Protection (CBP) officers have become formidable promoters of anti-immigrant policies

This is one of those things that make sense in a very fucked up way. It's like the people who run private prisons lobby for harsher sentences (and Norwegian police working against any reform to laws around drug use).