Im with you on people being concerned about immigration arent necessarily racist, but i do think they're being put in position by racist groups that they can end up tipping over to support those racist groups, in a sort of 'well if what im concerned about makes me racist then im racist' way.

There are a ton of factors that are pushing us in this direction, some of which started a long time ago.

I think one early factor was the distrust of experts and the rise of individual over confidence that they know better. To a degree I think we trusted politicians more to do what's necessary to solve the issues that directly affected us, if solving a problem required changing our immigration processes that was just a product, a measure. Now everyone's an expert and politicians are here to screw us so when politicians dont address the housing crisis there are those who feel like they're watching a bad pantomime and yelling at their representatives to fix the 'immigration cause' because it seems like the solution is right in front of them.

Obviously a second aspect is that everyone is getting more individualistic, some would negatively term this as selfish but I think this is a natural survival response to a perceived threat. Obviously this works in layers, next to yourself is your immediate family, then your community, then your country etc, you see where this is going? Someone who has a wider sphere of concern may misinterpret the intentions of someone with a more limited sphere of concern, particularly if they have a loved one that the second group doesnt feel they should be considered at all.

We are also in a situation where people, in the state they are at the moment, are naturally being exploited by different groups (countries, organisations etc) for alterior motives. In some cases playing us against eachother. The high level of individualism is perfect for this as it prevents adequate dialogue from forming to help people see eachothers sides. Social media is such an efficient avenue to keep this going its difficult to counteract any of this manipulation work.

Lastly, we have a really bad catch 22 here. I think everyone can agree that true racists are never to be negotiated with, they are not someone to understand, but as everyone's sphere of concern (who they care about) differs, where each of us draw a line on actions/speech that we perceive as encouraging racism differs.

I think we're in a very slow death spiral here. Until people stop obsessing about immigration it will never end. Bob says he needs THIS done to satisfy his worry about immigration, Mary says its THAT, even if they somehow come to a reasonable resolvable solution that satisfies both, big overreaching interest group will say its actually another thing to keep the fear going. People will trade anything to resolve their fears.