Oligarchs, Not Immigrants, Are Taking Job Opportunities

One salient geopolitical fact I've learnt over the years is that the loudest villains in politics are often not the real ones, they are merely the easiest to point at. Matter-of-factly, the ones with less attention are often the untold villains. Pay attention to history, whenever economies stagger, wages falter, or uncertainty settles over ordinary households, there is a familiar targets have always been summoned into the public square. Sometimes, religious minorities; other times , ethnic or colour minorities. Today, in much of Europe, parts of North America, and certain countries in Africa like South Africa, immigrants have been marched before that very court of public opinion.

Placards have been raised and borders have been demanded, innocent victims have been attacked, and politicians have taken advantage of this by building election campaigns upon promises of deportation. Because streets have echoed with chants insisting that foreigners are stealing jobs, draining welfare systems and threatening national identity. Across several European countries in recent years, anti-immigration demonstrations have drawn tens of thousands of participants, while immigration has remained among the defining political issues shaping elections and public debate. Yet, beneath the noise lies a quieter story that is less theatrical, less convenient and even considerably more uncomfortable. You see, the greatest threat to employment in advanced economies is not the nurse who crossed a border, the engineer seeking refuge from war, or the farm worker harvesting food; it is rather the relentless concentration of economic power in the hands of an increasingly small corporate and financial elite, aided by accelerating automation, artificial intelligence, weakened competition and political influence.

But, you know, immigrants are visible, while Oligarchic power is not. That distinction matters because it is easier to blame the newcomer than to challenge the boardroom. It's quite easier to protest outside a refugee centre than outside the headquarters of a multinational corporation replacing thousands of employees with algorithms. In fact, it is easier to denounce the family arriving with two suitcases than to confront monopolies whose market power quietly shapes wages, competition and opportunity. Reminds me of the word of the ancient Roman poet Juvenal that the masses could be pacified with "bread and circuses". Two millennia later, spectacle still distracts from substance, while public anger is too often directed towards those with the least power, while those wielding immense economic influence remain comfortably beyond the spotlight.

Talking of artificial intelligence, for instance, it has become one of the clearest examples. Across 2025 alone, tens of thousands of jobs in technology, finance, customer service, publishing and administrative sectors were eliminated or restructured as companies accelerated AI adoption alongside cost-cutting programmes. Many chief executives openly described AI as a productivity revolution capable of replacing significant portions of routine human work. The consequence has not been merely technological progress. It has also been profound labour displacement. And none of those redundancies were caused by immigrants. They were corporate decisions. Imperatively, the distinction deserves to be remembered whenever another political speech claims that employment insecurity begins at the border.

Funnily enough, the mechanics of modern oligarchy are rarely dramatic. They arrive quietly, wrapped in annual reports, shareholder meetings and polished corporate slogans. A factory does not always close because demand has vanished. A newsroom is not always reduced because readers disappeared. A call centre is not always emptied because customers stopped calling. Increasingly, jobs are being erased because executives have calculated that software, algorithms or cheaper overseas labour can produce higher returns for investors. The language employed is usually "efficiency", "optimisation" or "transformation". The outcome, however, is painfully familiar: a livelihood disappears, a family budget contracts, and a community grows poorer.

Europe has witnessed this transformation in real time. Major firms across technology, manufacturing, retail and finance announced substantial workforce reductions throughout 2025 as artificial intelligence and automation were woven into business operations. According to several industry trackers, well over 100,000 technology jobs were cut globally during the year, with Europe accounting for a significant share as companies restructured to prioritise AI investment. Those redundancies were authorised in executive suites, not at immigration checkpoints. And this is what a country like South Africans should know and thereby put a halt to their xenophobic attacks on innocent foreigners, some of whom, like Nigerians, even contributed hugely towards their liberation from the apartheid era.

Thence, the story grows deeper because employment is not merely lost through automation. It is also diminished when markets become concentrated in too few hands. When dominant corporations swallow competitors, duplicate departments are dissolved. Human resources teams are merged. Regional offices are closed. Engineers, accountants, designers and technicians are quietly informed that their roles have become "redundant". The celebrated merger that delights investors frequently becomes the redundancy letter that devastates workers. This phenomenon has long been recognised by economists. As Joseph Stiglitz wrote in Of the 1%, By the 1%, For the 1%, modern economies can become systems in which wealth and political influence accumulate around a narrow elite rather than being broadly shared. That observation was not written as a slogan. It was presented as a warning. When excessive economic power becomes concentrated, opportunity itself begins to narrow.

The consequences ripple beyond the workplace. Small businesses, once regarded as the beating heart of innovation and local employment, often struggle to survive against corporations capable of absorbing temporary losses, negotiating exclusive supply agreements or influencing regulation through extensive lobbying. Every independent shop that closes, every family enterprise that collapses and every local manufacturer forced out of the market represents not merely a commercial failure but the disappearance of future jobs that might otherwise have been created. Political influence compounds the problem. Vast financial resources have increasingly been channelled into lobbying, campaign financing and policy advocacy. The objective is seldom stated openly. Yet regulations favourable to dominant firms, tax advantages unavailable to smaller competitors and barriers that discourage new entrants have all been documented across numerous advanced economies. The result is an economy where competition weakens while economic power hardens.

Meanwhile, public frustration seeks a simpler explanation. Immigrants become the convenient answer. That narrative, however, collapses beneath evidence. Across Europe, immigrants have become indispensable to healthcare, agriculture, construction, transport, hospitality, scientific research and information technology. In the United Kingdom, the National Health Service has long depended upon internationally trained doctors, nurses and care workers. Across Germany, Italy and several Nordic countries, labour shortages created by ageing populations have been alleviated by migrant workers filling vacancies that domestic labour markets could not fully supply. In the United States, immigrant entrepreneurs have founded or co-founded many of the country's most valuable companies, generating employment for millions rather than depriving citizens of work. An economy flourishes not when fear governs policy, but when productive capacity, innovation and enterprise are allowed to expand. Workers who produce, consume, establish businesses and pay taxes contribute to that expansion, irrespective of where they were born. For, a society cannot preserve employment by attacking visible outsiders while ignoring the deeper economic structures that steadily erode opportunity itself.

Hashim Yussuf Amao is a geopolitical analyst from Ibadan Nigeria; and an advocate for a sane and peaceful world.

hashimlegalbard@gmail.com

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