The expat-immigrant distinction is a simple one; an expat lives abroad, an immigrant intends to gain citizenship and stay. This isn’t actually necessarily reflective of how illegals view the country anymore; a lot of them intend to leave after working a few years so that they can retire in their country of origin. The reason Latinos get so upset by this distinction is quite simple: Very many of them move to developed countries and want to stay there. By contrast, hardly anyone moves to to Latin countries, and virtually none of those that do will ever attempt to become citizens. An Australian who moves to Peru and becomes a citizen is still an immigrant, not an expat; this just basically never happens, so a subset of Latinos wrongly assume it’s a race thing.

> This one i can also understand - I know American “expats” who lived in my country 15+ years but never bothered to learn the language, not even a little tiny bit.

It is obnoxious. My point was that the objection these people have to tourists is not rooted in their actual economic impact, but cultural anxiety that they are being left behind or disrespected. These anxieties are warranted, the issue I take with it is that cosmopolitans will chastise Cletus for not wanting to be replaced by Mexicans who refuse to learn English but celebrate Jose for saying the same thing but in Spanish.

>> RUINED by the (mostly Anglo-Saxon)

I've heard that Norman invasion dealt with them long before Santorini became a tourist hotspot. You probably should decrease consumption of content created by russia today.

No idea what’s that is supposed to mean but I got this story from some older Greek people who knew the place before tourist hordes arrived

> These used to be really beautiful and chill places in the 70/80s, now they are horrid

Isn’t this a bit of gatekeeping? What do you propose the solution is? Ban tourists? Take it another incremental step and now you’re banning immigrants too. “Don’t visit! Stay in your country!” “Go home tourists/immigrants”, it’s the same song and dance. It’s the same sentiment.

There is a solution to the tourist “problem” though, which is to just charge a shitload of money to visit. But then you’ll be accused of being inequitable or hating poor people or something.

Lottery system solves this issue but then people start thinking of reasons that they deserve to visit more than someone else and try to implement quotas affording priority access to their group (e.g. local residents, ethnic minority, etc.)

It’s an intractable problem encountered when dealing with scarce resources; the key is navigating to a point that the functional number of people consider to be fair.

Yea lottery works too though it can be a huge pain for coordinating plans. I think making everything much more expensive at least gives people flexibility in their arrangements. Like say you want to go to Paris and visit Musee de Orsay and also Versailles. You get lottery ticket to one and not the other - bummer.

If you take the current $20 prices and make them, say, $200 that would alleviate a lot of extra visitors. I guess some people say it’s not fair, but based on my visits I don’t think most people really go to these sites to do much more than check a box, which is unfortunate. A higher price at least allows those with interest to have a better experience instead of fighting crowds of selfie-takers, which is the current experience.

On the other hand, maybe some of these artworks should be more spread out to be enjoyed by more people instead of concentrated in a select few prestigious museums.

There is no absolute solution of course and I don’t really have great ideas.

Mostly it’s rich people exploiting a place until nothing is left - I’ve seen it in my hometown; the lovely neighbourhood i grew up in has been transformed into something entirely different by investors and other leeches until the very thing that made it great is gone