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Notes -
Does starting a small fire in a dry forest always and everywhere lead to a forest fire? No - sometimes it rains, sometimes the fire brigade comes and puts it out, sometimes the wind just forcefully extinguishes it before it can get started. But there's no denying that starting an uncontrolled fire in a dry forest full of tinder is almost definitely going to start a forest fire.
It is more accurate to say that mass migration always creates the conditions required for a populist backlash - you can head that backlash off in a variety of different ways, but the consequences of mass migration are the dry tinder required for a populist backlash. Mass migration depresses wages(and eventually salaries) and drives up the costs of housing and other essentials of life. Simultaneously, it has a negative effect on social trust and cohesion (ever read Bowling Alone?), makes people less charitable and less likely to support their community. Of course, it isn't all bad - it makes things better for the wealthy and upper classes, at least for a while. Employers can treat their workers like shit and exploit them to a greater degree than before, and that might lead to some economic benefits (somebody is very clearly making a lot of money off replacing workers with H1B visa holders or illegal immigrants after all).
But ultimately, all of those negative consequences are baked into the cake of mass migration, and all of these negative consequences directly lead to populist backlashes. This doesn't mean that you'll get a populist backlash every time - if you're a globe-spanning empire with the ability to print as much money as you want, you can paper over those consequences with material goods and benefits. At the same time, you can employ a lot of social and cultural messaging to blunt the visible impact of those negative consequences or make participating in/feeding that populist backlash an incredibly bad career move. All of those approaches work, for a time. The only answers to quelling that backlash permanently are rather brutal - there wasn't a populist backlash from the muslim communities after the mass migrations of the reconquista because there weren't any muslim communities left to object.
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