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So much is wrong with this I don't know where to begin. First, the addition of productive Americans would be good.
No, it takes more than that. They get to use our capital to do their production. All the physical infrastructure. The social capital. The high-trust, low-corruption society. The physical land that Americans fought and died to secure for our exclusive use. And they don't pay us anything for that.
Moreover, if Americans wanted or needed more Americans, we would make themselves. It's life greatest joy, but we don't have more children because we can't afford to, which is another way of saying that all that joint national capital can't support more laborers without lowering living standards. If American labor could reproduce itself in greater numbers it would do so, but it can't. The economic numbers don't work. The market says we don't need or want more labor.
So, we don't have as many kids as we'd like because our income and the expected income of our kids can't justify it, and then people like the OP insist that we import foreigners to take a share of our wealth and decrease our wages to boot.
As the title suggests I am advocating that we the USA should greatly increase immigration. America should triple its rate of immigration. Why?
1. To secure a better future for Americans
The addition of more American's would open up opportunities on all fronts for a better life. We have the benefit of a massive country. We don't need to give up any federal land to do this. We need to find a way to revitalize the rustbelt and those cities. If we had more immigration to the heartland we could turn back on the lights in Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee etc. We could have more options in great places to live, and an even stronger economy to do everything. We could have an even larger federal budget without having to increase taxes due to a larger population base. Imagine the things we could do in space if NASA had twice the budget? There is a reason that Canada loses its population to the USA. There is a reason that Europe cannot compete with us. It's because we are a larger better united body of people and we should capitalize on it.
2. To protect a better world order
America is a decently strong world power. However in the future age we will be competing against China & India. The Asian countries have a massive advantage considering that half of the world's population lives there. In order to ensure that we can compete in the new age on all fronts we should become an even larger.
Total BS we do not want to become like India......The people there live like rats.
I think we should stop immigration until we acknowledge and correct some real problems we already have. We may get BIGGER but we won't get STRONGER if we go full speed on one end while ignoring the details and problems on the other.
Problem with the merit-based system is that no matter how meritorious, someone will argue you took the job away from a US citizen or that if they paid more, a citizen would show up.
This. Exactly this.
Case in point, my life. I've been in this country for 30 years, came legally, became a citizen, pulled myself by the bootstraps and worked my way through college and grad school driving forklifts, flipping burgers, fixing people's PC and tutoring. I've written academic papers, and increased my salary 10-find since I came here.
Yet, I'm still told I need to learn English (by people w/o a fraction of my education and that weren't even born when I became a citizen.)
I've been told that, somehow, affirmative action made my college experience easier, by someone from a HR department (imagine that.) Never mind I took the same entrance exams and went through the same college grind (and that I'm still paying my student loans.)
Despite all I've achieved, and all that I've given back to society, I've been discriminated, with an actual loss of salary, etc, etc, etc. That I've stolen a job from a real American (because I've been told I will never be a real American).
I believe in a merit-based immigration system.
But I sincerely believe, based of what I've seen and experience, that many people who demand one don't do so with an honest intention and aren't necessarily model citizens themselves. In fact, many of these folks are more like a hindrance to progress.
Everyone feel free to take my words with a grain or salt or whatever it is they put in their kool-aid.
But I sincerely believe, based of what I've seen and experience, that many people who demand one don't do so with an honest intention and aren't necessarily model citizens themselves. In fact, many of these folks are more like a hindrance to progress.
A merit-based immigration system will have fewer people howling about immigrants on the public dole and more people howling about how immigrants took the jobs to which they were entitled little snowflakes.
However, the whiners should not dictate our policy. We should do what is best for all Americans, not just a handful of loudmouth lazy entitled Americans.
Immigrants today aren't inclined to flock to rust belt cities. The last time I checked, Pittsburgh had the lowest percentage of immigrants of any metro area, and West Virginia the lowest of any State.
^As long as it is in the USA, immigrant will flock to it as long as there is job for them.
USA is such a massive country, many countries in the world can just wish to be as big and diverse as the USA. Countries like Netherlands and Singapore that are now relying on reclaiming lands from their coast so they can give more room for improvement. Singapore outranked US for GDP per capita. You can put thousands of Singapore in the US while maintaining good quality of life. Singapore heavily relies on foreign workers from top executive jobs to menial jobs. Same with UAE.
I agree with OP. Re-develop the rustbelt and the entire Great Plains, pour in massive amount of investments in the area. Think about manufacturing, energy, agriculture, tourism, services. But to be able to that, new investors must be assured of competitive operating cost....how? One is immigration.
In general I would say yes (myself being a Naturalized citizen, ergo an immigrant.)
But then the devil is in the details. We import a lot of foreign work in tech, but do little to increase our tech-graduate output. That's one example.
So, there's a point where increasing the number of imported foreign talent will come with negative consequences.
We are not even near that point. Nevertheless, we surely could do a lot better in fostering local talent (mind you, I am of the opinion that many among the local population could do well to develop some agency when it comes to their professional development, but you can't make the horse drink even if you bring it to the pond.)
Also, there's the speed in which a city or town can absorb an influx of immigrants, even if they are of the most talented kind. Immigrants (legal or not, wealthy or not) congregate. School districts might not be able to cater to a population increase.
Educated immigrants with disposable income can come to compete with real estate close to desirable school districts (thus shooting up real estate prices or overwhelm a school.) Heck, we don't even need to consider foreign immigration, but simple mass internal migration from say, northern states to the sunshine states, or rural depopulation towards rapid urbanization in some areas (and vice versa in others.)
Population influx is an stressor no matter who partakes in the influx, on both ends of the flow.
And now the ugly detail no one wants to talk about: resentment. People resent that someone named Patel happens to be the closest doctor (I've seen it.) People resent that Jose from Guatemala is the guy cutting the grass (even if he's here legally), or that a person named Chen happens to be making a quarter million dollar salary (plus benefits) at google.
This is not unique to the US. It happens everywhere. I grew up in a country that f* hated Christian Lebanese immigrants - mind you, these were model immigrants that came to the country *WITH WEALTH* and created jobs and businesses. But the locals, they hated them. They hated they had the money (the money they brought from their countries), they hated they opened jobs (even though they earned their salaries with those jobs), they hated that they spoke Arabic at home, they hated that they had Maronite icons of the Jesus rather than a statue, etc.
Racial resentment is real in all countries, manifested in many ways, and triggered by different, culture-specific catalysts.
Think of all the people whose existential crisis go around "pressing #1 for english" even though that message hasn't been played in automated systems for over 20 years. Their existential crisis now is that they have to wait some extra seconds while the "to continue in spanish press 1" message plays along.
Case in point, David Purinton who killed an Indian engineer in Kansas because he thought the poor guy was "Iranian" (as if that were a justification.) Or El Paso shooter that killed and injured a whole bunch of Americans (including a veteran) and LEGAL shoppers from across the border.
Those are extremes, but are real and are symptomatic of an underlying cultural problem (people using the real problem of illegal immigration to verbally or physically attack other people that fit a profile, even fellow Americans.)
Again, this is not unique to the US. It's human wicked nature.
In summary:
There are socio-economic benefits of increasing legal immigration (even the manual labor type.) But it all depends on the rate of influx and the moral disposition of the local majority to absorb change, a change that happens regardless, even when immigrants integrate (and most do over time, despite the ongoing myths to the contrary.)
Morally and naturally I would support increasing immigration. I see jobs as purely transactional with all things being equal.
Practically, however, I would give it some serious pause for the reasons mentioned above.
This is quite a reasonable post.
Here is the thing I would say. It's very hard to make the born citizens different. If anything, as other countries have shown, natives tend to want large amounts of welfare with little work. Immigrants are typically the ones who come to work and have dreams. America is a country built upon that. I think this is a great tradition that we should keep. Not to mention this benefits the natives anyway. I bet the average American is proud that it is their country that landed on the moon. I bet they are glad to be considered a great country, and not just a nice place to live. I bet Americans are glad that Elon Musk came here and not somewhere else. Small homogeneous countries don't do much, which is why people don't migrate to them much, but to here in the USA.
As to the racial resentment piece. There really isn't a great way to get around this fact. However I think America has gotten better. I'm not saying that we don't have problems with this. But looking at the trajectory of the country it is apparent that racial purity isn't going to win the day. Unfortunately I think there will be flare-ups here and there.
Here is why I'm optimistic about racial relations from the standpoint of immigrants
1. Immigrants over time marry into the population and have children that are American as everyone else.
We did this with the Irish. Sure back in the 1800's people cared about people being Irish. However as the Irish married into the rest of the group Irish became a normal part of the American identity. I think the same would happen with other groups.
2. Immigrants learn to speak English
For good or bad over time everyone in the US becomes monolingual English speakers. We saw this with German, Italian & Polish in the past. In today's time, we see this going on with Spanish speakers from south of the border. The first generation speaks Spanish and crappy English. By the third generation they start forgetting how to speak Spanish and can only speak English. English being such a big marker of America, I think that learning English is great for everyone. Natives tend to feel better when they can understand their neighbors and the immigrants feel better when they can do the same.
3. Immigrants typically adopt American attitudes and accept being American
Latinos are more willing to accept America because they willingly came to America. Unlike us black people (because I'm black) or Native Americans they will view America differently. Native Americans and black people have legitimate reasons to be critical since the founding of America was based in the degradation of us as peoples. Immigrants typically can see the good in America without the same stigma or personal grudge.
4. Racial features will become even less of a sticking point over time due to the influx of different races
I think with more immigration, we will have to pull people probably from India & China since those countries are so populous and are willing to send us so many people. We already get Latinos and I'm fine with having them. But I think an increase in immigration will likely come from Asia. As America gets more people from different places mixing, it will become more obvious that America is a mixed peoples country. It will probably be the first country in the world to have so many different types of people that make up a significant amount of people. With this mixing it could have the effect of pairing down racial resentment since it isn't as obvious that you are a foreigner. I live in LA and here the only way that I know that someone is a foreigner is if they don't speak English. Even then I assume that they are the first generation and they have kids that do speak English. But racial features aren't a big deal because we see them all the time. However I have traveled quite extensively and in other countries I'm usually the only black guy around. So I think as we have more immigration it will actually numb the effect of racial resentment. If America became 18% Asian it wouldn't be so obvious that Patel isn't American.
^As long as it is in the USA, immigrant will flock to it as long as there is job for them.
USA is such a massive country, many countries in the world can just wish to be as big and diverse as the USA. Countries like Netherlands and Singapore that are now relying on reclaiming lands from their coast so they can give more room for improvement. Singapore outranked US for GDP per capita. You can put thousands of Singapore in the US while maintaining good quality of life. Singapore heavily relies on foreign workers from top executive jobs to menial jobs. Same with UAE.
I agree with OP. Re-develop the rustbelt and the entire Great Plains, pour in massive amount of investments in the area. Think about manufacturing, energy, agriculture, tourism, services. But to be able to that, new investors must be assured of competitive operating cost....how? One is immigration.
This is exactly what I mean. Other countries are so tiny that they are doing extremely expensive things to create slight more bits of land. We have a large country with entire underutilized cities.
Quote:
Immigrants today aren't inclined to flock to rust belt cities. The last time I checked, Pittsburgh had the lowest percentage of immigrants of any metro area, and West Virginia the lowest of any State.
We need to move our economy away from just the coasts. This needs to happen regardless of immigration. This causes a massive problem of too many people on the coasts in expensive areas and no one in cheaper areas. Too much Bos-Wash, SoCal-NorCal. I think a major push will the ridiculously high housing costs in these areas. If you have noticed California has had a massive emigration epidemic. People in Texas, Oregon & other places have been complaining about it. I think immigrants will be pushed by the same factor to live in cheaper cities which will be places like the rust belt or south. We could also encourage the government to move agencies to places to the interior. I'm not the only one who thinks of this.
I think there needs to be some broader acknowledgement that the government should explicitly favor the interior over the coasts. The argument why is the same as the NFL or NBA having salary caps. If you don't push for parity then the big coastal markets will dominate the country. If we want the interior locations to have a better chance at life the government should move its agencies and explicitly favor places like St. Louis & Kansas city over LA & NY.
Another and quite easy thing that we could do is create more universities. We are lucky to have this problem of too many people wanting to come study in the US. We could create more universities in the rust-belt or other locations and simply accept more immigrants. For whatever reason we don't just give them automatic residency upon graduation. That needs to change, they should become a resident who has the ability to become citizen over time after graduation. Also if they study in places like the Rust-belt they are more likely to create jobs and opportunities there. Since we will be accepting people from across the ocean, it will be easier to direct where they go. This is unlike the immigration from Latin America which is always going to be a thing about the border.
Nope. There are too many immigrants here already. Also, something needs to be done about the illegals here before letting in more legal immigrants.
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