Straight Answer Why would a politician advocate for non-citizens over citizens? Follow the incentives: - Non-citizens (and the industries/organizations that benefit from them) provide cheap labor, new consumers, and expanded client bases for certain programs and NGOs. - Advocacy creates dependent voting blocs over time and delivers campaign support, donor money, and media praise from the groups that profit. - It signals virtue to the donor class and institutional networks that reward that signal. - Actual citizens already “belong” to the system... their loyalty is assumed. New or temporary populations can be cultivated as future political capital. In short: the politician is not optimizing for citizens. They are optimizing for power, money, and status inside the current incentive structure. When those incentives reward prioritizing non-citizens, that is what gets prioritized. Why would any citizen vote for them? Several reasons, none of them flattering to the system: - Many voters never see the trade-off clearly. Media and institutions frame the issue as compassion versus bigotry, not as resource competition, wage pressure, and sovereignty. - Some voters genuinely believe the policy is moral or economically net-positive and discount the costs. - Others vote purely on party, tribe, or single issues and ignore the rest. - A portion benefit directly or indirectly (cheap services, housing demand, institutional funding) and vote accordingly. - Habit, low information, and the belief that “both sides are the same” keep the pattern alive. The uncomfortable truth is that the system is designed so that a politician can serve non-citizen interests and still win enough citizen votes to stay in power. Until that incentive structure changes, the behavior continues. This system is designed so it is working exactly as the incentives dictate. What’s your take, which incentive do you think is strongest right now? @ChiefEngineerCE