Immigration: Taboo or not

[Larry of the Lawn]

@Heartofice

I haven't heard many convincing arguments on why we need more strict immigration, well, pretty much anywhere.  Change my mind.

[Martell Spy]

1 hour ago, larrytheimp said:

@Heartofice

I haven't heard many convincing arguments on why we need more strict immigration, well, pretty much anywhere.  Change my mind.

North Korea. It'd be really bad if people started rushing the border and we'd never see them again.

[Ormond]

14 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

@Heartofice

I haven't heard many convincing arguments on why we need more strict immigration, well, pretty much anywhere.  Change my mind.

I assume you mean "more strict controls on immigration" as "more strict immigration" makes no sense.

I also think this is probably the wrong place to expect there to be many posters who believe that there are any good arguments for more strict controls on immigration. 

[Kalbear]

I think there are certainly places that shouldn't have high immigration. And there are plenty of reasons for it, as well as having different policies depending on what you want to encourage.

• For instance, it might make sense to limit immigration if unemployment is high. Especially in certain sectors.
• If you're in the middle of a war, probably not a good thing to have immigration going on in general, and you probably want to make it easier to emigrate.
• If your country needs workers but only certain kinds, chances are good you should limit immigration to just those kinds (largely). If your country, for instance, has all the manual labor it needs and then some, but has needs for nurses, encouraging immigration by allowing nurses to come in makes sense.
• You can also limit immigration as 'you can live here but not be a citizen', which is another factor. 

What you should not be doing is limiting immigration based on religious or ethnic backgrounds or (largely) on country of origin. And if your country has fucked up its immigration story for 40 years, you should not retroactively punish people who have been doing what your legal and grey market system has allowed it to do. 

 

[sologdin]

i posted this cato article in the other thread; it attempts to refute what it regards as the common rationales for restrictions on the movement of persons. another cato bit here, in a list.

[Kalbear]

10 minutes ago, sologdin said:

i posted this cato article in the other thread; it attempts to refute what it regards as the common rationales for restrictions on the movement of persons. another cato bit here, in a list.

I'm happy to note that none of the reasons I listed were any of these. Though the idea that encouraging smart people to move here hurts their parent country is an interesting one and one that seems like an imperialist tactic of exploiting another market for your own gain and their loss.

[maarsen]

On this subject my contribution is that for the last 40 or so years I have been a proponent of open borders. I have seen no evidence to change my mind in the time since. 

[Week]

This honey pot thread needs more honey.

[Darth Richard II]

Well I imagine countries don;t want Americans immigrating in right now.

[sologdin]

 happy to note that none of the reasons I listed were any of these

kal, yeah--your proposals are limited in scope and have a rational, practicable basis. the rationales considered by the cato writers are by contrast nativist apocalypses. 

[Larry of the Lawn]

8 hours ago, Ormond said:

I assume you mean "more strict controls on immigration" as "more strict immigration" makes no sense.

I also think this is probably the wrong place to expect there to be many posters who believe that there are any good arguments for more strict controls on immigration. 

Yes, that certainly makes more sense and is what I was going for.  The point of this thread was to not derail the cancel culture thread, where one person claimed that discussing immigration was taboo and likely to get you 'cancelled', especially if the only people who shared your views were terrible people.  So I'm trying to prove that we can actually have a discussion on an allegedly taboo topic. 

[Martell Spy]

5 hours ago, maarsen said:

On this subject my contribution is that for the last 40 or so years I have been a proponent of open borders. I have seen no evidence to change my mind in the time since. 

Well I'm fairly open borders myself. I don't think many people are truly open borders though. For example, if I wanted to run 3 million people in to Canada in an hour you might back down a little from an open borders stance. It's a logistics problem. Also, the legal processing, etc. You might counter say by insisting on rational quotas. 

I was hoping the world would adopt the the easy travel practices of UE member states, but it does not look like it will happen in my lifetime.

Also, do you believe in nation states? I still do, although I'm starting to sour on the idea.

[Free Northman Reborn]

Well, basically, think of the countries of the world as a series of dams with widely different water levels, separated by sluices. Open the sluice gates and the water will flow from the dams at higher elevations to the lower ones, until all of them have the same uniform water level.

The water levels inversely represent the standards of living of the countries of the world. Now, if I live in a country with a high standard of living, why would I not want my government to do everything possible to maintain that for as long as possible?

In this respect there is a massive difference between strictly vetted, skilled migration and free migration for all. The former is good. The latter is bad.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

3 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Well, basically, think of the countries of the world as a series of dams with widely different water levels, separated by sluices. Open the sluice gates and the water will flow from the dams at higher elevations to the lower ones, until all of them have the same uniform water level.

The water levels inversely represent the standards of living of the countries of the world. Now, if I live in a country with a high standard of living, why would I not want my government to do everything possible to maintain that for as long as possible?

In this respect there is a massive difference between strictly vetted, skilled migration and free migration for all. The former is good. The latter is bad.

Please enjoy never standing on the moral high ground ever again. 

Conservatives and laughable hypocrisy, though 

[The Mance]

10 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Now, if I live in a country with a high standard of living, why would I not want my government to do everything possible to maintain that for as long as possible?

Because of course you deserve your just rewards for having the incredible foresight in choosing to be born in a wealthy country.

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

Well, basically, think of the countries of the world as a series of dams with widely different water levels, separated by sluices. Open the sluice gates and the water will flow from the dams at higher elevations to the lower ones, until all of them have the same uniform water level.

The water levels inversely represent the standards of living of the countries of the world. Now, if I live in a country with a high standard of living, why would I not want my government to do everything possible to maintain that for as long as possible?

In this respect there is a massive difference between strictly vetted, skilled migration and free migration for all. The former is good. The latter is bad.

This assumes that immigrants are a net drain on the economy, which has been shown to be wrong over and over again and have been shown to be a positive at any level of immigration. 

[S John]

10 hours ago, Kalbear said:

I think there are certainly places that shouldn't have high immigration. And there are plenty of reasons for it, as well as having different policies depending on what you want to encourage.

• For instance, it might make sense to limit immigration if unemployment is high. Especially in certain sectors.
• If you're in the middle of a war, probably not a good thing to have immigration going on in general, and you probably want to make it easier to emigrate.
• If your country needs workers but only certain kinds, chances are good you should limit immigration to just those kinds (largely). If your country, for instance, has all the manual labor it needs and then some, but has needs for nurses, encouraging immigration by allowing nurses to come in makes sense.
• You can also limit immigration as 'you can live here but not be a citizen', which is another factor. 

What you should not be doing is limiting immigration based on religious or ethnic backgrounds or (largely) on country of origin. And if your country has fucked up its immigration story for 40 years, you should not retroactively punish people who have been doing what your legal and grey market system has allowed it to do. 

 

I agree with this completely.

I think that in light of the numerous truly global challenges that face humanity, from environmental degradation and climate change to nuclear disarmament to responsible use of AI, etc, if the species is going to survive for millennia (or more) into the future we will need continue to move toward a more global society, recent setbacks notwithstanding.  Not necessarily in a single world government kinda way, but in an everyone is expected to meet certain standards kinda way. And I think that if one day we got to the point where the whole world had EU-style freedom movement that would be a great thing and likely would be an indicator that humans are trending positively in all kinds of metrics.

BUT. Since that’s not where we are right now, sensible immigration policies like what you described above are A-OK with me.  I have absolutely no problem with the US changing immigration policy based on the situation.  I have no problem if we decide to let a lot of people in sometimes and other times let only a few people in and still other times favor certain skills over other skills - as long as all of that is done thoughtfully using sound reasoning by people who understand immigration policy and the current needs of the country.  

[Free Northman Reborn]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

This assumes that immigrants are a net drain on the economy, which has been shown to be wrong over and over again and have been shown to be a positive at any level of immigration. 

So you’re telling me Switzerland’s standard of living would be higher if they let 10 million refugees from an impoverished third world country settle there tomorrow?

Yeah, tell me another one.

[BigFatCoward]

2 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

So you’re telling me Switzerland’s standard of living would be higher if they let 10 million refugees from an impoverished third world country settle there tomorrow?

Yeah, tell me another one.

Their standard of living will be higher in 20-30 years when they all want to retire and they need workers to pay tax. 

[Martell Spy]

26 minutes ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

So you’re telling me Switzerland’s standard of living would be higher if they let 10 million refugees from an impoverished third world country settle there tomorrow?

Yeah, tell me another one.

That's just the problem of logistics I brought up above. If you make the numbers large enough and the time period short enough anyone will flinch. Doesn't prove much about how one feels about liberal or restrictive immigration policies. 

I'd like to just hand out a ton of limited time period work and travel visas to the U.S. The great thing is we'd actually see the effects.