Many Trump and brexit voters were not poor. Brexit was not mainly about poverty but fear of immigrants (esp Muslim) and antipathy to the eu.
While it is comforting to come up with a narrative which explains complex events in one neat moral parable about neglecting your own poor or extremism shutting down debate (insert personal bugbear here), it’s not helpful. Perhaps that’s what your erstwhile friend objected to.
The white working class in both the UK and US are those who have been hit hardest by working class wages going down due to immigration and outsourcing. Conservative parties always attract the rich vote.
Once again, if you ignore the root causes, you'll always get results like Brexit. Exiting the EU won't curb immigration from Pakistan, India, etc..., but it will stop workers coming from poorer EU countries (Poland, Romania, etc...
BTW these countries aren't Muslim. Brexit does nothing to limit Muslim immigrants).
Immigration does not lower wages, and is not a net drain on economies in general and certainly not on the uk economy. Outsourcing certainly has had an impact, along with globalisation, the internet, and as will robotics in the decades to come (a lot of jobs will melt into air in the coming decades, not stolen by foreigners but simply cease to exist).
We are certainly seeing the results of upheaval and change leading to widespread malaise, unrest, rising nationalism and xenophobia, and I fear leading to another world war, for war is the logical endpoint of blaming foreigners, competitive devaluation and beggar thy neighbor economics.
I would urge you to study the demographics of voters in the referendum though, they were very mixed, the only clear split was urban (lots of immigration) pro-eu vs suburban/rural pro-exit. I’d strongly dispute that Brexit was some sort of rational revolt of the working class (who mostly live in cities) against an invasion of polish plumbers as you describe.
Like America First it will not end well, and certainly won’t help structural problems in the economy or dying industries. That’s a matter of National govs disgracefully neglecting their population, and as we’ll see, nothing to do with immigration.
Keep in mind I did a degree in economics, so I studied things like this for thousands of hours...
That being said, it's a pretty basic concept that increasing the labour pool will contract wages, especially in the short run. Long term effects are generally positive, but it can take a generation or two, and for those people who are affected by the negative consequences, it's not always of much solace.
First off an increase in the labor pool inherently depresses wages only if demand remains the same which would only be true if the new members of the labor pool didn't you know buy things. This fallacy is so common its called the single lump of labor fallacy. It may be true that they increase the pool of low wage workers and displace people that are only marginally worth employing but I digress.
You yourself admit that long term effects of immigration are positive just that it takes a while. This is a failure of analysis. Its a failure to consider the whole system in motion instead of at a single point in time.
By your own argument we are constantly both paying the dues to integrate new citizens and reaping the benefits of past waves of immigration. It seems at best short sighted to stop paying current dues and thereby forfeit future benefits.
When you suggest you consider the people that are negatively effected by immigration let us be clear. Minimum wage doesn't let you depress wages beyond a clear line so what we are actually arguing for is to forgo future leaders, future doctors, future engineers so that fewer McDonalds workers will be unemployed new instead of in 5 to 10 years when machines replace them.
While it is comforting to come up with a narrative which explains complex events in one neat moral parable about neglecting your own poor or extremism shutting down debate (insert personal bugbear here), it’s not helpful. Perhaps that’s what your erstwhile friend objected to.