'Heartbreaking' conditions in US migrant child camp

[Bofferbrauer2]

Pemalite said:

Bofferbrauer2 said:

I can provide you with a counter-example: When the Schengen-area was created, Luxembourg got easy access both to the Netherlands (for people to go buy weed when it was still highly illegal) and to the sea (for dealers to ship in the drugs they want to sell). With the open borders and no checks whatsoever, you would think drug use went up, but it actually went down for years after the creation of the Schengen area despite the access got much easier, both for clients and dealers.

What other influences were at play? Was there an increase in wages, job availability, education and general standard of living?

People living in poor conditions tend to be more prone to drug use as a recreational tool.

However, drugs aren't the only issue that illegal immigrants bring in, this is just nitpicking at an aspect... But I will absolutely look into the case-scenario you mentioned.

Wage increase rate didn't change much, it actually slowed down a bit but that came from lower inflation (Everyone in Luxembourg gets an automatic 2.5% wage increase if inflation rises 2.5% over the last wage increase).

Job availability was also mostly unchanged, both in volume or by sector. Banking was already huge and only a decade later this diminished a bit.

As for education, no major reforms had been done around that time. It took another dozen years or so for any substantial changes to happen here.

And by the general standard of living, it's hard to say. It went mostly up, but since the mid-80's there's been a massive house price boom (for reference, my parents built their house through an architect's firm and a special construction company, and with the lot, they paid around 125k Euro for it. By now, the lot alone is worth about 400k, and if the house would be in great shape, then the whole would sell for about 1M, so 8 times more they paid for 25 years ago all while inflation and wage increase only grew by ~65% during that period.), so fewer and fewer people can afford housing since the mid 80's.

This boom btw is not so much fueled by speculation, but rather by a galloping population increase: Since the mid-80's, population grew by ~80% from 370k to 640k, with the expectation to hit 1M around 2050. Might not sound like much, but that's still an increase in population density from 143 persons per square kilometers to 247 persons by square kilometers, and with 1M we would hit 387 persons per square kilometers. By comparison, Australia has a paltry 3/km² and the US 33/km².