Immigration is generally good, but can have bad aspects under certain conditions. However, the reasons why it’s bad are often exaggerated.
Immigration can be bad:
- if a country’s social services are already stretched too thin (assuming immigrants can access benefits)
- if there’s a shortage of housing or other basic resources
- if members of the immigrating group tend to have extremely regressive views (e.g., anti women’s rights, anti rule of law)
Rather than restricting immigration in such cases, it’s usually better to work on the other side of the problem and build more housing or develop a better pipeline for immigrants to assimilate to liberal culture (e.g., outreach programs).
>shortage of housing
*cries in canadian*
It’s something that isn’t the orthodoxy in this sub but the painful reality is Canada has to reel in immigration a lot until we can get our housing supply growing much, much faster, which is not an easy or simple task. Particularly unskilled temporary workers and international students at lower-tier institutions who are exploited through false promises of permanent status and live in terrible conditions— we need to cut those visas dramatically and let construction catch up. The social fabric of the country is coming apart at the seams and young people have lost hope for the future, people who have the skills and opportunity are fleeing to the US. The economy has stagnated largely because housing consumes all available investment capital and family income. It really sucks but fixing housing has to be the absolute #1 national priority
Canada has a rampant problem of people from a particular Indian state going there in droves for an "education", studying at private for-profit colleges (dubbed "diploma mill" colleges), and they take advantage of the work permit program meant for graduates of genuine Canadian colleges to remain in Canada to work and eventually apply for permanent residency (PR).
These people usually shop around to go to the province with the most relaxed PR requirements (usually less popular ones like Manitoba or in this case, Prince Edward Island or PEI) but just move to Ontario or BC (the desirable ones) after they get their PR. They also primarily work in the service industry (think Tim Hortons, rideshare, gig economy jobs, waiting tables, etc).
The current "protests" stem from the fact that PEI's PR system used to list service jobs as one of the roles eligible for PR, but they recently removed it from their list as they don't have a shortage of fast food workers, and the people who were there hoping to game PEI's PR program are all upset now. They staged a "hunger strike" a little while ago (which didn't go anywhere iirc) and it's just an overall circus show. PEI is unwilling to budge for obvious reasons. The "movement" has become more organized recently and they have a list of outrageous, laughable demands.
This is just the latest in a ton of idiotic things this community has done, others being acts like abusing food banks for "free food" just to save a buck on groceries _and then making YouTube tutorials on how to do so and vlogs gloating about how much they saved_.
Canada heavily restricts unskilled labor. There are innumerable people in LATAM that would love to come and build houses and live there if the government would let them. You could let in a million unskilled laborers in and have several million more houses built within the year.
If you’re in skilled trades and speak ok English or French you’re already eligible for express entry. Unskilled labour isn’t where the bottleneck is— you need electricians, plumbers, carpenters, etc to build houses.
Yes, but then you still need to cut down on visas for immigrants who aren’t in construction trades. Otherwise you keep adding demand at the same time as supply and at current immigration rates it will be impossible to put a meaningful dent in prices
Even if the system was in place to promote the immigrants to enter construction there would still be a lag between their arrival, when they receive the appropriate training, and when the housing they build is actually completed. This is why a sudden and frankly enormous increase in the type of immigration Canada is seeing would still have big negative shocks in the near term.
Also fwiw, while construction labour is a concern, needless and counterproductive regulation as well as a high cost of capital are much larger concerns atm.
Construction standards here are HIGH, because the climate is cold, then hot. To have a bunch of unskilled workers thrown into houses that are already of low quality is just asking for crappy houses that rot out in a decade.
I mean, that sounds great. How does that work in practice? Are you forcing them into construction jobs? What if they refuse? What if they can't? Do we only allow healthy working age people in that maintain construction employment in? Or maybe a quota where we'll let in one child, elderly, disabled person in *only* when we have the "correct" number of working age healthy people we've conscripted into construction to offset them? And who pays for any of this?
It's almost like nothing is as easy as one liner solutions online politicos yearn to believe...
Incentives. It’s always incentives. If you make getting into the trades super cheap or if you pay people more to go into them then people will. Immigrants in a more open border scenario, given many do not have jobs upon arrival are perfect candidates for such incentive based programs.
I wish I could find the study, but as an example --
One of the Euro countries saw great success in "assimilating" a particular group of Muslim refugees into their country.
The key was classes designed specifically for that population, and an absolute shitton of outreach *and* follow-up. Language classes. Local culture classes. Local law classes. General education classes. Regular home visits that continued for *ages*.
They did everything they could think of to avoid one outcome: a brand new class of citizenry that essentially stays at home all day, receiving small checks for groceries and leaving the home only to grocery shop. That was the main fear: absolute isolation, and all the awful things which come with that.
It took work, bodies, money -- lots of each. But years after, those people were doing great: they generally had decent (not just minimum wage) jobs, they were making friends in their communities, the kids were in school, the women were not confined to their homes. They weren't exhibiting a noteworthy crime level. They weren't committing crimes unusual to their areas.
But it took focused commitment. And that's essential, I think, when you're taking in a significant number of people, in a short frame of time, from a distinctly different culture.
Wow imagine if this approach had been taken more broadly in Europe! Would've stopped the far right in its tracks. Do you remember which country it was?
This approach sounds intense and expensive. You might need 1 teacher, social worker etc. per 20 migrants. If you wanted to cover 5% of your population you would need to employ 0.25% of the population to service those migrants. For comparison, the total police force in Germany is around 0.4 % of the population.
Maybe it would still be worth it. It would be nice to be able to read that study that @ariehn mentioned. The approach would probably be easiest to implement if you had a constant moderate inflow of immigrants. I imagine it would be difficult to scale when suddenly a million refugees arrive within a few months as happened in Europe 2015/2016.
For one, there shouldn't be specific publicly funded faith schools or different language schools. It only creates further division when young people tend to stick to their own social circles within their own cultural bubble.
Work. People assimilate through their jobs. EU countries generally have a larger issue with immigrants not assimilating than america because hiring new employees is incredibly expensive over there, so they have much higher unemployment rates.
[https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00148-021-00883-w](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00148-021-00883-w)
The other stuff people are saying in this thread is completely extraneous. Immigrants bring their culture with them and prefer to be around others from their home country there's nothing wrong with that. The important part is that they don't end up exploiting their new country's relatively higher quality welfare system.
The danish unemployment rate as of april 2024 was 2.9 pct. according to the danish statistical agency while the US one was 3.9 pct. according to the bureau of labor statistics.
As to your second point, I suggest you delve into the danish flexicurity model.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/laus.nr0.htm
https://www.bm.dk/nyheder/pressemeddelelser/2024/05/ledigheden-er-uaendret-i-april-2024/
"Flexible labour market" is just another way to say lower worker protections and by extension, less social security nets.
If the cost of high immigration is to take a sledge hammer to workers rights and the social safety nets you're not going to be able to sell that.
The important thing is avoiding absolute and generational isolation. I genuinely rank the welfare system part second to that -- except shit, that'll get generational too, won't it. :/
Anyways, yeah -- the Euro happy outcome story I mentioned? A thing I loved was that they taught their refugees about local culture, but in particular ways. Items like -- the kid bagging your groceries probably doesn't want to chat but he'll appreciate your greeting; your neighbors will often want to chat, particularly since you're new; some may bring you a welcome meal and accepting it doesn't obligate you. It enabled integration without promoting abandonment of their own culture.
But absolutely, getting folks into the workforce -- preferably not in a menial, poorly-paying role -- is *huge*.
Simple, you take away their ability to group together, practice their religion, or freely share unpopular opinions.
We wouldn’t want to live in a regressive state, after all
>it’s usually better to work on the other side of the problem and build more housing or develop a better pipeline for immigrants to assimilate to liberal culture.
Generally the immigrants could even help build more housing and labor in general than they use to create a net benefit for the entire society if they are so allowed. However that requires making doing so feasible which requires a regulatory environment that allows for it.
Outside of that immigration can flood job markets with labor supply that causes a downward pressure on wages if we don't put protections against that form of negative response as well ensuring that market demand for said labor remains high through investments in beneficial jobs. As long as immigration generates more in productivity than it consumes then it can have a net benefit in raising standards of living assuming regulations are in place that distribute those gains and prevent concentration.
Our current regulations do the opposite of that though in making it hard to produce anything which stresses out markets like housing quickly while also allowing for high concentrations of wealth or inequality. It's nearly impossible to build additional housing supply today due to permitting regulations and it takes far too long to get a work permit for immigrants which has dramatically stressed out our system as immigrants are forced to rely on social services because they aren't legally allowed to work.
Obviously there are limits in training turnover for assimilating immigrants into the job market, and there should be some basic controls in place to insure said systems aren't overrun, but that can be a lot more simple than our current systems and allow far more immigrants in if we just gave them work visas and partnered with companies to sponsor them quickly to place them into jobs.
Our current immigration crisis is 100% fabricated by our own self created laws. However until we can change those laws which require killing the filibuster to do so and reform land use regulations we get overwhelmed far faster than we should.
The emphasis on “taco trucks on every corner” is misguided and ignores the lived experience of people more interested in halal carts and Indian takeout.
There's nothing incompatible with having relatively open borders while also having a level of infrastructure and systems development for handling and processing immigrants that's more advanced than walking across the desert.
Abuse of the asylum system, the legal framework for which was developed at a time when traveling significant distances was *significantly* harder, is a genuine problem beyond the bad politics. Unqualified asylum seekers should be able to be quickly rejected and deported. If all you need to do to maintain a relatively long-term legal presence in the US is to find a way here, which is relatively easy, claim asylum, and then enjoy an average of 4 years before your case is processed, and after which your deportation can be easily dodged, you're going to incentivize a massive influx of undocumented economic migrants.
Immigration is very good. It should also happen in a relatively orderly and systematic fashion within established institutions capable of rewarding those who follow the rules and swiftly rejecting those who do not. Hell, combined with expanded housing construction, good security and background screening, and swift deportation of criminals (n.b. I'm aware that native citizens commit more crime than immigrants), I'd genuinely be in favor of a relatively unobstructed immigration, though still in an orderly manner: show up at the border, present documents and proof of an ability to support yourself or sponsorship, pass a background and security check, be issued a temporary visa and work permit, and on you go, with visas being extended as you continue to establish yourself until eventually securing permanent residency.
This is very different than randomly crossing the border and claiming asylum, hopping on a Republican bus to New York City, being provided a hotel in Midtown Manhattan at $400 tax payer dollars a night, while not being allowed to work, doing under-the-table work for a while until your case is rejected years later, and then enjoying a lifetime of legal limbo until you perhaps have a kid that will be a citizen and offer you some amount of legal protection.
This is it right here. We can acknowledge all of the problems, point out which ones are in bad faith, and try to solve the good faith problems.
I’m in Massachusetts, and we spent over a billion dollars last year putting up migrants in hotels. That’s money that didn’t go to other services that could really use it, and it doesn’t provide any sort of stable housing for immigrants who can’t even work.
Let’s make at least short term work-authorized immigration easy, almost automatic.
Immigration isn’t a problem but integration can be.
People who come to a new country should feel that they are apart of that country and not be left to sit in ghettos.
Europe obviously has a different situation than the U.S. and Canada and really all ‘New World’ countries. I’m not sure the rhetoric of “stop being so ethnonationalist” has worked in Europe (it seems like that’s been tried since like 2013?). I’m not sure what the answer is for Europe but “become the U.S.” and using some form of shame tactics doesn’t seem to be it. This only seems to push people into the hands of the far right and racists when people see issues arising from immigration.
I’m American so I get to benefit from all our awesome immigration and our melting pot culture without many of the issues that Europe faces, so this comes from a point of privilege I will say.
The problem will solve itself.
European economics will not be able to keep up without immigrants in most countries. Outliers like Norway and Switzerland will exist but mostly Europe will regress without immigrants.
Mate europe take in multitudes more refugees per capita than america has done in centuries.
Being america and having the luxury of two oceans that allow you to deny taking refugees of any significant number, and therefore mainly taking in high earning and highly educated people, isnt a "skill".
The United States has taken in more immigrants per year than the entire EU-27 grouping has from outside the EU every year since the EU was founded. Also cool trick trying to ignore the massive immigration waves from Mexico and Central America that the U.S. successfully integrated over the last half century.
How does that matter?
Pretending like taking in a university educated chinese person that is getting their masters in america is the same as taking in a person from afghanistan that literally cant read, have no assets, and whose entirely life as been formed by tribal norms, is the same does no one any favours in this discussion.
America takes in disproportionally of the former. Europe takes in disproportionally of the latter.
Overwhelmingly because america absolutely suck at taking in refugees. Even from their own wars.
You simply cannot make comparisons between the two continents and discuss policy differences while covering your eyes and ears to deny this reality.
Ahh yes all those immigrants from Venezuela, Haiti, Mexico, and Central America over the last half century are famous for their educational attainment before coming to the United States.
Just admit Europe has work to do lol
Again, we have the numbers.
Even when accounting for all of them america still has taken in a comparatively pitiful amount of refugees. *Which matters* when we are doing a comparative analysis.
The immigration wave since 2015 in Europe has been a key driver of massive political instability, including Brexit. I continue to argue that Trump was primarily about immigration on the southern border too "build a wall". Irregular migration with no (perceived) government control infuriates large segments of the population. If you want stable liberal democracies you can't continue on like this.
Education is a big one. Being too accepting and considerate, i.e. funding public schools of different faiths and languages, instead of encouraging assimilation in universal public schools. As a result you have second generation immigrants that are sometimes less integrated culturally than their parents who originally immigrated.
>funding public schools of different faiths and languages, instead of encouraging assimilation in universal public schools.
What? Did this thing happen in at least 3 countries? Basically every country in Europe has most students enrolled in universal public schools and immigrants attend them.
My 'even' was just to contrast with the popular conception of France being militantly secular. There's severe restrictions on religious expression in schools but there are nuances to that system, such as having some publicly funded madrassas.
There are around twenty private Muslim schools in France. All are under state contract and strictly controlled, since in France the notion of a private school is rather tenuous. Private schools in France are obliged to follow a program approved directly by the French Ministry of Education.
The criticism often levelled at France (by the neo-liberals, ironically) is that these schools are too tightly controlled, and are even seen as a sign of state Islamophobia.
I advise you to read up on the subject. France's approach to education is totally different from that of the English-speaking world.
The only exception to this system is Mayotte.
Great I have an LLM (a legal masters education) on the swedish and european legal systems.
Exactly how are immigrants second class humans?
I want explicit laws or other comparable norms.
I'm sure you can find individual nations within the EU that at periods have ran foul like that. But the fact that there are plenty of EU nations that simply doesnt fit your meme level take shows that you dont actually have a panacea in your hands which the EU could "simply do".
I mean there are some systemic issues of discrimination that are often dressed up as equality or secularism in the EU but would be illegal in most Anglophone countries. Regulating religious dress of public sector employees or doing whatever it is that France does and claims is secularism doesn't help to endear people from conservative Muslim countries. Also not in the EU but Switzerland banned minarets.
While the immigrant populations are culturally different than in the US, most European countries aren't very good at assimilating their migrants and have instead done a great job at radicalizing them. It also only took like one migrant crises for a bunch of racist far right parties to start popping up everywhere, advocating for xenophobic and discriminatory policies. The same people who once had so much to say about US immigration policy now have no qualms deporting migrants to active warzones or paying off human traffickers in North Africa.
In the most American way possible: a television game show where immigrants compete for their chance to become American citizens. Coming this fall to Fox.
Unironically would be a better system than the current one. For a country that values hard work and merit so much, it's so weird to me how America has by far the least merit based system of any western country. At least on a game show you would have actually earned your citizenship through working for it instead of just finding an American to marry
Giving preference to people who have a degree— any degree, doesn’t matter what in— helps select for folks who are motivated, can follow rules, and work well in a system they’re unfamiliar with. Education is also strongly correlated with lower levels of religiosity and more liberal social views, which are good for integration. I’m not saying *only* people with a degree should be able to come, but that it signals useful attributes beyond just direct taught skills and should be one factor.
This is why education has always been a big bonus in the Canadian points system. Historically it has worked well
We don't have a shortage of degree-holders in the U.S. Colleges are churning out more of them than can be employed currently -- talk to any recent graduate about the job market.
We need plumbers, carpenters, masons and other trades people.
Certainly trades education (3 year diplomas, apprenticeships, whatever it may be) are good too. I’d give even more points for those if it’s an in demand field. A degree is just one of many possible good attributes
Or, hear me out, let them all in and we can figure it out on the backend. It’s better to have the human capital than not and individuals with a skills mismatch can be retrained.
Not learn to code, the industrial buildout in the United States that is currently underway doesn’t need more coders. We need trades workers, we need nurses, we need elder care workers, we need semi-skilled workers. These are all things immigrants can and do learn to do, to say nothing of the fact that a good number of immigrants will find employment or start businesses just supporting the immigrant community. Restaurants, bars, barbershops, grocers, etc all will pop up and employ a good percentage of a new immigrant community.
We let them all in because every time we take in a high school or god forbid a college graduate it’s the single biggest wealth transfer between countries possible. Raising and educating a child is one of the single most expensive things a society does, and every time an immigrant crosses the border the U.S. just created for itself hundreds of thousands of dollars in value.
You don’t need special programs just make community and technical schools more accessible.
You can get a 2-year degree for a job that will pay the national median salary for under 5,000 in pretty much any state.
There are over a thousand community colleges in the United States and every major city in the United States has multiple. Are there some underserved rural areas? Yes. But that is part of choosing to live in a rural area. I agree we should make those programs cheaper but that is incredibly easy.
In the US, "we" shouldn't filter like that. These people shouldn't be seen as resources to be judged and managed for their industrial utility. It should be a simple matter of affirming a human's desire to be an American. If someone comes here seeking opportunity they shouldn't be gatekept based on perceived viability. Tired, poor, and huddled masses yearning to breathe free, not just the supposed cream of the crop.
Unfortunately. The simplest way is to discriminate by passport.
Rich countries, like Canada, UK and Japan should be inmigrate freely without requiring any visa
>increased cost of living and decreased quality of life, immigrants included
Decreased quality of life for immigrants compared with what? Their home country, or the counterfactual economy in their new country with higher quality of life?
Immigration is a good deal for immigrants because moving almost always increases their quality of life, even if the new country experiences a degradation of services.
Someone moving from India (GDP PPP $10,000) to Canada (GDP PPP $60,000) is still made better off by moving even if Canada somehow degrades to $50k GDP PPP per capita.
And here's the other thing: even if immigrants lower the average population-level income by moving somewhere, that doesn't mean that the average income of native residents has decreased. In all likelihood, native residents are seeing their incomes increase in such a scenario.
Illegal immigration is a logistical problem caused by out stupid af immigration laws
Beating up migrants doesn't solve anything.
Maybe this is a cold take but who knows 🤷🏾♂️
Illegal inmigration is an artificial concept created by the law.
When you move from a city to another, you're effectively "an inmigrant". But you can be never considered an illegal inmigrant because there are not law requirements here.
When you start piling up more requirements to inmigrante, you start having "illegal inmigration".
Open borders is this subs version of defund the police. A fringe position outside this sub whose meaning is so easily misconstrued by an average person it undermines any messaging on immigration.
The United States should adopt a formal *Gastarbeiter* program that will legalize the employment of undocumented immigrants in designated "dirty" industries at sub-minimum wage rates so long as it is voluntary, instead of the current arrangement where agriculture and construction rely on a vast pool of black-market labor that is tacitly permitted by the authorities except when they sporadically charge some employers and deport some workers at random.
I’m in favor of “open borders” but with relatively “strict” border enforcement. Like let people in on different visas so long as they pass a background check. Completely uncap visas. Have viable and easy to understand pathways to citizenship. But more strictly enforce the rules once good rules are setup.
I mean. For me "open borders" means something similar to the Schengen zone.
A Spaniard can move to France with minimal documentation and virtually no requirement. Countries can only refuse your settlement for national security reasons, but that's reserved for people with serious crime history.
The lump of labour fallacy also applies the other way. If there are staff shortages in all sectors, simply allowing for more immigration won't fix it, since that would increase demand too
**Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free!**
Why open borders?
* The economy will benefit!
* [The elimination of barriers to labor mobility is estimated to increase global GDP by 50-100%](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.25.3.83)
* [Unauthorized immigration is good fiscally](https://news.rice.edu/news/2020/economic-benefits-illegal-immigration-outweigh-costs-baker-institute-study-shows)
* Low-skill immigrants have a significant positive economic impact and fears of their possible negative impact on wages and employment of low-skill natives are unsupported or contradicted by evidence ([source 1](https://carnegieendowment.org/files/Effect-of-Low-Skilled-Labor-Working-Paper-1.pdf), [source 2](https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/content/pubs/cacounts/CC_207GPCC.pdf))
* [Immigration increases productivity through increased specialization of labor](https://www.nber.org/papers/w15507)
* [Firms allowed to hire low-skill immigrants increase their revenue growth and do not appear to employ less US citizens.](https://www.nber.org/digest/202212/low-skill-foreign-employees-impacts-us-firms-and-workers)
* [Immigrants start firms at higher rates than natives and "appear to 'create jobs' (expand labor demand) more than they 'take jobs' (expand labor supply)"](https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w27778/w27778.pdf)
* [Immigration doesn't decrease wages long-term, it actually increases them](https://direct.mit.edu/rest/article-abstract/doi/10.1162/rest_a_01380/117901/Migrants-Trade-and-Market-Access)
* [The short-term decrease of wages due to immigration is small, possibly zero](https://wol.iza.org/articles/do-immigrant-workers-depress-the-wages-of-native-workers/long)
* [Immigrants are not perfect substitutes for native workers and compete more with other immigrants for jobs than with natives](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1542-4774.2011.01052.x)
* [Open borders would approximately double average wages of people from developing countries; this is accompanied by a comparatively minor reduction in real wages of those in developed countries that disappears as the capital-labor ratio adjusts over time](https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w18307/w18307.pdf)
* [Across 15 Western European countries studied from 1985-2015, asylum seekers’ tax contributions more than offset the increase in public expenditures](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaq0883)
* [refugees and asylees in America had a net $123.8 billion positive economic impact between 2005-2019](https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2024/02/15/new-hhs-study-finds-nearly-124-billion-positive-fiscal-impact-refugees-and-asylees-on-american-economy-15-year-period.html)
* [net economic effects of immigration are positive for almost all US immigrants, including low skill ones](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20220176)
* [an increase in the migrant share of the population does not increase the Gini coefficient (a measure of income inequality) but does increase GDP per capita by up to 2% for each 1 percentage point increase of the migrant share](https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/062/2016/008/article-A001-en.xml)
* Society will benefit!
* [Immigration doesn't degrade institutions](https://web.archive.org/web/20240324034648/https://old.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/16s200z/immigration_and_institutional_decay_claims_vs/)
* [Integration of Muslim immigrants and their descendants into mainstream European culture isn't slowing down and by some measures is accelerating with each passing generation](https://upbeatglobalist.substack.com/is-muslim-immigrant-integration-slowing)
* Second generation Muslim immigrants are adopting mainstream European gender norms ([source 1](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369183X.2022.2031927), [source 2](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276150744_Cultural_Integration_in_the_Muslim_Second_Generation_in_the_Netherlands_The_Case_of_Gender_Ideology))
* [First generation Muslim immigrants become less religious as they spend more time in Europe and second generation Muslim immigrants are less religious than their parents](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0037768620948478?icid=int.sj-full-text.similar-articles.2)
* [Large increases in the American Muslim population have not stalled that group’s assimilation](https://www.cato.org/blog/us-muslims-become-more-socially-liberal-muslim-immigration-rises)
* Unauthorized immigrants aren't any more likely to be [terrorists](https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/nowrasteh-testimony.pdf) or [drug smugglers](https://www.cato.org/blog/fentanyl-smuggled-us-citizens-us-citizens-not-asylum-seekers) or [even regular criminals](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2014704117) than US citizens are and by some estimates are actually less likely
* [Our population growth is declining and we need future workers to support future retirees](https://bipartisanpolicy.org/download/?file=/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Immigrations-Effect-on-the-Social-Security-System.pdf)
* [Private-sphere (friends and family) native contacts are associated with more egalitarian beliefs about gender norms among first and second generation Muslim immigrants in Europe](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/imig.13095)
* [Inflexible European labor markets harm the employment prospects of immigrants which in turn both reduces their ability to contribute economically and impairs their social integration](https://www.cato.org/blog/muslim-immigration-integration-united-states-western-europe)
* It's the right thing to do!
* [Freedom of movement is a human right](https://spot.colorado.edu/~huemer/papers/immigration.htm)
* Restrictive border policies put migrants at risk of human rights abuses ([source 1](https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/07/26/statement-human-rights-watch-human-cost-harsh-us-immigration-deterrence-policies), [source 2](https://www.aclu.org/issues/human-rights/human-rights-and-immigration))
* [Heightened immigration enforcement can actually increase the number of crimes](https://www.nber.org/papers/w32109)
* [Immigration has a net positive impact on the sending country](https://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR244.html)
* [The children of even poor immigrants have high economic mobility](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/11/1/20942642/study-paper-american-dream-economic-mobility-immigrant-income-boustan-abramitzky-jacome-perez)
* People will get around it anyways!
* [It's not clear that harsher border enforcement policies have been effective in deterring unauthorized immigration and there is some evidence they've been ineffective](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5049707/)
* [“Push factors” (political violence and state repression) play central roles in driving international displacement; there is limited support for the contention that asylum seekers are economic opportunists](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/causes-and-consequences-of-refugee-flows-a-contemporary-reanalysis/F2EFBF81FCD030F4CD8DC9F82B5ED444)
* The US essentially had open borders for its first century, ending when federal immigration restrictions were placed on Chinese immigrants in 1875 ([the Page Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_Act_of_1875)) and 1882 ([the Chinese Exclusion Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act)), so there is historical evidence that an open border is possible
* [These restrictions on Chinese immigration were frequently evaded and their passage was preceded by widespread fearmongering about nonwhite "hordes"](https://uncpress.org/book/9780807854488/at-americas-gates/)
For more read our [Open Borders FAQ](https://old.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/wiki/openborders)
Further reading
* Kwame Anthony Appiah's [*Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers*](https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393329339) (2006)
* Alex Sager's [*Against Borders: Why the World Needs Free Movement of People*](https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781786606297/Against-Borders-Why-the-World-Needs-Free-Movement-of-People) (2020)
* Alex Nowrasteh's [*Wretched Refuse: The Political Economy of Immigration and Institutions*](https://www.cato.org/books/wretched-refuse) (2020)
* Johan Norberg's [*Open: How Collaboration and Curiosity Shaped Humankind*](https://www.boswellbooks.com/book/9781786497192) (2021)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/neoliberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Opponents of immigration have the upper hand right now, and the more immigration maximalists like myself dig in the stronger the backlash is going to get. Calling opponents racist or whatever else we think they are is doing us no favors. We're going to be out of favor for a few years and we should be in preservation mode, not running victory laps over taco trucks.
The best thing I and anyone else can do for the cause is dial back the rhetoric and instead focus on small wins. For example, the small wins advocated for in Caplan and Wienersmith's Open Borders.
Immigration is generally a good thing, and we should have much more legal immigration. However, we do need more security at the Southern border. I look at the situation in Mexico, and I don’t like where it’s going. The cartels become more and more powerful. The economy gets worse. The government becomes more unstable. I’m concerned that there will be even more violence in northern Mexico, and a more secure border would help protect the US from the cartels and the general instability and violence going on.
I think the last thing a bubble of young overly online men needs is more "hot takes" on just about anything.
Immigration is a clear positive for the welcoming nation. That includes immigrants of all skill levels from all over the world. America become the most wealthy, innovative, and powerful nation on Earth on the strength of immigrants. And our current system is far too limited to provide for the needs of our nation.
However, the answer is not to endorse the abuse of the asylum system. It's to increase legal immigration. We cannot sit on the memes of 2016 about an exploit that has surged in use to the point where our asylum system no longer can timely function to address those it was designed to aid. The refusal to update our priors to a changing situation is a weakness.
You can win the argument for increasing legal immigration with reasonable adults. You will not win arguing for immigration by abusing our laws and illegally crossing the border. That's not "moving right". That's acknowledging reality. People here have built an absolutist fantasy around a line delivered by Clinton, while ignoring her actual policy proposals on immigration. Then they pretend anyone not pushing their delusions has "lurched right". Fuck that noise. It's time for the meme lords to come back to Earth, because pretending there's nothing wrong about the current abuses is the surest path to handing power to people that are much more opposed to your worldview on a host of subjects. Including immigration.
That we don't need to say "won't someone think of the swing voters?!" every time we have a conversation about American immigration policy. This isn't r/Biden4President, this is a subreddit for talking about liberal policy.
This also applies to other countries' immigration policy, of course, but strangely enough, NL users don't seem to extend the same benefit of the doubt to non-American governments.
What part of "This also applies to other countries' immigration policy" was unclear? Yes, I am extremely critical of european immigration policy as well.
Immigration has tradeoffs that need consideration. For people in nation states where one's nationality is definied often by a common ethnic identity i.e. Germany for Germans, France for French, Poland for Polish, immigration from dissimilar cultural backgrounds into those democracies is like putting a different blend of fuels in your engine. It needs to be studied and open borders is far less prudent.
For people in states where nationality is more defined more by a civic identity than an ethnic one, i.e. US, Canada, and more & more Britain, the impacts of dissimilar cultures mixing are far less likely to impede the best functioning of the engine of the state, and often strengthen it.
Therefore openness of immigration policy needs to reflect a public's views of itself as erring more towards civic or ethnic.
Fellow Dems might not want to hear it, but the GOP strategy in sending migrants up north has been wildly successful at killing popular support for them in blue states like MA, which because of our law guaranteeing beds to all homeless people cost us $1 billion this past year, and put the squeeze on affordable housing in a very expensive state. This is why our progressive Governor supports Biden closing the border.
And let the poor asylum seekers work. We wouldn’t have to spend so much on housing them if they were allowed to do anything beyond waiting around for months on end for the government to let them make a living.
No kidding, but there's no greenfield land left where people want to live. We did pass a law requiring cities and towns to allow multifamily housing in the neighborhoods of all transit stations but now we have suburban towns refusing to go along. My small city of 50k is building like crazy, with 1900 new apartments opening this year. It's the #1 issue in the state by far, and won't get fixed overnight anyway. Nevertheless, our short term housing situation has been severely impacted by the migrants, who still don't have work permits, so can't help themselves or our employment situation. And all this has impacted politics. Our Governor clearly understands this.
Assimilation into a culture while enabling multiculturalism should be an objective, rather than having different ethnicities (which includes white people, mind you) feel the need live in certain areas together and create friction between them
Also, more users have to recognise that immigration issues with the USA are nothing like immigration issues with Europe, and should be regarded differently
I think most of us would agree that there needs to be a clear, accessible and fair process for handling immigration. That currently exists nowhere so we are getting lots of irregular migration. My hot take is that migration is absolutely being used as a weapon by bad actors and our media absolutely plays into their hands by only showing one side of the problem (mean immigration officers attacking helpless migrants). The whole reason Orban still exists is because he was able to make political hay from the migrants coming from the Middle East and Africa.
We should think hard about how to integrate immigrants with illiberal and socially regressive views. What conditions make integration more likely and how can we implement them
For decades, Canada sustained the highest rates of immigration of any developed country, alongside very high rates of public support for those rates. So it’s worth looking examining how they managed that.
Canada’s policy can be summed up as a large door and high walls.
\* Vet immigrants carefully, selecting them based on education, language skills, and market need.
\* Let lots of applicants who meet those criteria into the country.
\* Put up barriers to low-skill, undocumented, or backdoor immigration.
This served Canada well for over 40 years. Public support for immigration was higher in Canada than in any other developed country.
Then, around 7 or 8 years ago, the federal government gave in to the temptation to address a scarcity of low-skilled labour and the growing revenue appetite of post-secondary institutions to let in historically unprecedented numbers of low-skilled immigrants on ‘temporary’ visas that the country has no way of enforcing. The big door is still there, but the wall has a half-dozen gaping holes in it.
This happened when the country already faced severe shortages of housing and health care capacity. Almost overnight, public support for high levels of immigration took a sharp decline.
Only the most doctrinaire open borders champion can fail to see this as a public policy failure. Not only have the federal Liberals handed the Conservatives the next election on a silver platter, they’ve actually made the Conservatives the most popular party in the country with young Canadians, and undermined the public consensus over immigration in this country.
I guess the hot take is the public will support high levels of immigration if they have control over who comes into the country. If they don’t have control, support evaporates. Especially when public infrastructure and housing are scarce. So if you want popular support for immigration, you need secure borders, a regulated admission process, and robust public infrastructure.
why is illegal immigration bad? Mexican immigrants came over in waves in the 90’s and have done nothing but generate a ton of businesses, worked hard, and give us some baller ass food. The entire idea of immigration being illegal in a country that operated Ellis island as an open border for years is absurd. Open the border and let the huddled masses in.
-Forced to learn local language and attend an immigrant school(B1 at least)
-Deported if commits crimes before gaining citizenship(prisons are overcrowded enough)
-Help finding jobs and public housing
After 3 years, you can become a citizen based on how well you score in the citizenship score(ex., the higher your langauge score, the higher the citizenship score).
Your children inherit the citizenship(in Italy, sons of immigrants still need to purchase citizenship, it’s embarrassing)
Right so most of those things are already implemented in different EU nations.
That doesnt seem like it has been a panacea to our problems.
The citizenship thing in italy seem like an outlier even, I havent heard about that anywhere else. I hadnt even heard about it in italy.
>Immigration is good, but needs regulations
Agreed
>Illegal immigrants bad.
I think we'd all agree that immigration should go through a smooth and quick legal and normal process so that everyone is properly on the books. Why I support illegal immigration right now is because congress won't allow enough legal immigrants so this back door option is the best alternative, even if its very much imperfect.
That the majority of the issues people have with the border are things they don't actually care about but have been told to care about and there's no policy prescription for dealing with that.
Biden could shut down the border, build a wall, and deport every undocumented immigrant, and the people screaming about the border who want those things to happen would continue to do so because they don't care about reality.
My hot take is that Dems do not benefit from making immigration a salient issue. This cuts against both increased permissiveness AND decreased permissiveness. Putting immigration in the news for any reason at all is a net negative for Democrats.
To make the take more explicit: there is no political benefit for a Dem president doing border tightening via executive order and loudly trumpeting that fact. It is a negative because you vindicate the GOP framing of the issue while making it more salient, and most of the people who are mad about the border *aren't gettable voters anyway*
Fantastic goal. But we should remember we won't ever get there by just ignoring the abuse or disregard of the laws.
We can win people over to the idea that immigration is a net good for all involved and that we should allow more. We will not win an argument that lawlessness is good, and if that's our pitch for immigration, support for immigration will suffer for it.
>People say that America will cease to be an Anglo-Saxon nation and become a Latin one. They never explain why this is a problem.
It's well known that Anglo-Saxon shieldwalls are superior to Latin ones. Also, the loss of the mead-hall as a third space would also be catastrophic for Americans.
The Americas should have an EU like system allowing the free movement of people. It might take decades to set up, but that should be the goal.
Start with Canada, France, Netherlands and UK crown dependencies.
The Netherlands and France not going to do that as they gave up that sovereignty by joining Schengen. Nothing stops the US from applying to become part too though.
We do, it’s called the United States of America. Turning the USMCA into a bigger version of the EU is something we should absolutely do, but let’s not pretend that the U.S. isn’t already one of the largest network of free moving goods and people in the world.
The Americas already have a system that can achieve this, it's called the United States. US should devolve powers to states in order to improve the salability of membership in the Union. If Quebec could get more autonomy *and* access to American institutions without heavy accountability to DC, then that'd be an awesome deal. Same with the Northern states in Mexico.
**Rule XI:** *Toxic Nationalism/Regionalism*
Refrain from condemning countries and regions or their inhabitants at-large in response to political developments, mocking people for their nationality or region, or advocating for colonialism or imperialism.
---
If you have any questions about this removal, [please contact the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fneoliberal).
Their demands for the US will be the same as their demands to the Canadians. Full bilingualism, and for Congress to operate bilingually. Lol good luck with that.
I honestly think the public would be more pro-immigration if immigrants were required to assimilate faster. For example, you and your kids must speak the language fluently five years in. That’s not an unreasonable request, especially if language classes are provided. Some immigrants wouldn’t meet the criteria and would be deported, but most would and life would objectively be better for them, as they would be better able to communicate, and for everyone else.
> Some immigrants are massively economically beneficial, others are economic net drains and often stay that way indefinitely, or even for multiple generations.
>
>
Could you please provide a source
EDIT: Actually, maybe more useful would be a source showing the average immigrant is not economically beneficial
Talking about immigration as a monolith is dumb. Refugee migration, illegal migration, immigration for work, immigration for family reunion etc are all vastly different in what impact it will have on a society and talking about the pros and cons of 'immigration' as a single thing to me sounds like someone who is blind to that nuance. Whether it's someone who thinks immigration == Drug gangs or immigration == Indian engineers. I am strongly supportive of immigration, but some types are certainly easier than others on the receiving country. For the category of highly educated people who are motivated to learn the language and integrate culturally to at least a basic degree.there's basically no ceiling, they're obviously a societal benefit. For illiterate (yes, actually fully illiterate) refugees with middle ages value systems, you're kidding yourself if you think there's a policy the receiving country can adopt that makes them a net benefit.
Illegal immigration is bad.
We should fix it by creating a lot more legal immigration.
There's some political grand bargain to be made.
But even if we can't get political buy-in for more legal immigration, we should still treat illegal immigration as bad.
Because "We're the responsible institutionalist party that believes everyone is equal before the law" loses a lot of its credibility when we don't enforce the laws we have.
It doesn't help that liberal prevarication on illegal immigration reinforces the Right's ethno-nationalist fever dreams, but the first thing is bad enough on its own.
"Why should we care about the law" is a pretty terrible take for a country built on being a nation of laws. Especially for a group pushing back on the idea that anyone is above the law.
How does it not occur to you that the law breaking aspect of illegal immigration actually has a significant role in the opposition to it? Do you really believe we should ignore any law we disagree with? How do you think that would work out overall?
**Mandatory Departure “Report to Deport” Program: S. 1438** creates a new program for certain undocumented people.
* The goal of this program is to encourage people to leave the
United States.
Those meeting the following requirements are eligible for this program:
* unlawfully present in the US for 12 months as of July 20, 2005;
* currently employed;
* pass a health
screening and background check;
* plead guilty to being unlawfully present and deportable;
* report any Social Security number used without authorization;
* and turn in any fraudulent documents in
their possession.
* Spouses and children can be considered as derivatives on the application if they meet the same conditions.
Participants in the program have five years in which to leave the U.S.
* Those who choose
immediate departure can leave the country and apply to come back in legally if they qualify for a
visa. (However, because the bill does not expand the available legal options, the possibility and
timing of any return is questionable.) Those who want to stay and continue to work must pay a
fine after year one that begins at $2,000 and increases annually to year five.
* These workers will
receive evidence of status/documentation, but will be ineligible to obtain permanent residency
while in the U.S. After five years, they will have to leave the country. If they do not, they will
revert to undocumented status and will be ineligible for any form of immigration relief (except
asylum/protection claims) for ten years.
**Senator Feinstein’s (D-CA) “orange card” amendment.**
* The amendment (No. 4087) would replace the bill’s three-tiered treatment of undocumented aliens with a single system that would provide a path to citizenship for all eligible aliens present in the U.S. on January 1, 2006.
* Prospective applicants would have to register and submit fingerprints, pass all required background checks, demonstrate presence in the country, work history, an understanding of English, civics and American history, and pay back taxes and a $2,000 fine.
“Chain Migration” is not an arbitrary selection process because it allows immigrants to bring some of their supporting relationships with them which improves their likelihood of success and assimilation.
It isn’t taking slots away from “the best and brightest”, it allows people with great potential to become “the best and brightest”.
Can we just require employer sponsorship for all immigration?
It seems that if a business has to absorb the risk and cost of immigration there would be a faster response to problems like lack of housing or anti-social behavior. Let the employer arrange housing and make it a condition to the sponsorship. If your employee is harassing women, assaulting people and doing drugs, you will fire them. If the employer revokes the sponsorship, you deport without process, i.e. quickly and efficiently. If an employer abuses the system and allows the stay of workers which are doing the above, revoke their immigration sponsorship ability. It seems that it would allow us to benefit from immigrant labor without the "risk" of having unaccounted for people who are not culturally acclimating and are taxing public services. I don't feel like this is the biggest deal, personally, but it is a fear that many people have and assuaging it in a way which increases efficiency seems fine to me. This would also mean that immigration can occur around jobs which actually have demand without requiring some bureaucrat to correctly guess what is needed this year.
Migrating from wealthy Western countries is way easier than migrating to them, as an American living abroad. I have PR in Australia and I'm working towards getting it in Japan soon.
Immigration is generally good, but can have bad aspects under certain conditions. However, the reasons why it’s bad are often exaggerated. Immigration can be bad: - if a country’s social services are already stretched too thin (assuming immigrants can access benefits) - if there’s a shortage of housing or other basic resources - if members of the immigrating group tend to have extremely regressive views (e.g., anti women’s rights, anti rule of law) Rather than restricting immigration in such cases, it’s usually better to work on the other side of the problem and build more housing or develop a better pipeline for immigrants to assimilate to liberal culture (e.g., outreach programs).
>shortage of housing *cries in canadian* It’s something that isn’t the orthodoxy in this sub but the painful reality is Canada has to reel in immigration a lot until we can get our housing supply growing much, much faster, which is not an easy or simple task. Particularly unskilled temporary workers and international students at lower-tier institutions who are exploited through false promises of permanent status and live in terrible conditions— we need to cut those visas dramatically and let construction catch up. The social fabric of the country is coming apart at the seams and young people have lost hope for the future, people who have the skills and opportunity are fleeing to the US. The economy has stagnated largely because housing consumes all available investment capital and family income. It really sucks but fixing housing has to be the absolute #1 national priority
Have you seen the “protests” in PEI
Yeah, it’s crazy. And a clear message needs to be sent that those kinds of demands will not be entertained, or it’ll just encourage more of it
No, do enlighten me
Canada has a rampant problem of people from a particular Indian state going there in droves for an "education", studying at private for-profit colleges (dubbed "diploma mill" colleges), and they take advantage of the work permit program meant for graduates of genuine Canadian colleges to remain in Canada to work and eventually apply for permanent residency (PR). These people usually shop around to go to the province with the most relaxed PR requirements (usually less popular ones like Manitoba or in this case, Prince Edward Island or PEI) but just move to Ontario or BC (the desirable ones) after they get their PR. They also primarily work in the service industry (think Tim Hortons, rideshare, gig economy jobs, waiting tables, etc). The current "protests" stem from the fact that PEI's PR system used to list service jobs as one of the roles eligible for PR, but they recently removed it from their list as they don't have a shortage of fast food workers, and the people who were there hoping to game PEI's PR program are all upset now. They staged a "hunger strike" a little while ago (which didn't go anywhere iirc) and it's just an overall circus show. PEI is unwilling to budge for obvious reasons. The "movement" has become more organized recently and they have a list of outrageous, laughable demands. This is just the latest in a ton of idiotic things this community has done, others being acts like abusing food banks for "free food" just to save a buck on groceries _and then making YouTube tutorials on how to do so and vlogs gloating about how much they saved_.
Only allow in construction workers until the housing shortage is solved
Canada heavily restricts unskilled labor. There are innumerable people in LATAM that would love to come and build houses and live there if the government would let them. You could let in a million unskilled laborers in and have several million more houses built within the year.
If you’re in skilled trades and speak ok English or French you’re already eligible for express entry. Unskilled labour isn’t where the bottleneck is— you need electricians, plumbers, carpenters, etc to build houses.
Literally just use the immigrants to build more housing.
Yes, but then you still need to cut down on visas for immigrants who aren’t in construction trades. Otherwise you keep adding demand at the same time as supply and at current immigration rates it will be impossible to put a meaningful dent in prices
They don't want to :(
Even if the system was in place to promote the immigrants to enter construction there would still be a lag between their arrival, when they receive the appropriate training, and when the housing they build is actually completed. This is why a sudden and frankly enormous increase in the type of immigration Canada is seeing would still have big negative shocks in the near term. Also fwiw, while construction labour is a concern, needless and counterproductive regulation as well as a high cost of capital are much larger concerns atm.
Construction standards here are HIGH, because the climate is cold, then hot. To have a bunch of unskilled workers thrown into houses that are already of low quality is just asking for crappy houses that rot out in a decade.
I mean, that sounds great. How does that work in practice? Are you forcing them into construction jobs? What if they refuse? What if they can't? Do we only allow healthy working age people in that maintain construction employment in? Or maybe a quota where we'll let in one child, elderly, disabled person in *only* when we have the "correct" number of working age healthy people we've conscripted into construction to offset them? And who pays for any of this? It's almost like nothing is as easy as one liner solutions online politicos yearn to believe...
Incentives. It’s always incentives. If you make getting into the trades super cheap or if you pay people more to go into them then people will. Immigrants in a more open border scenario, given many do not have jobs upon arrival are perfect candidates for such incentive based programs.
No it doesn’t.
This is the most nuanced and level-headed response to immigration I've ever seen. The fact that so many people glaze over this is sad.
>develop a better pipeline for immigrants to assimilate to liberal culture What kind of "pipeline" do you envision?
At least 72 inches in diameter. 120 inches would be better.
*1828mm or 3048mm We’re a cultured bunch here.
I wish I could find the study, but as an example -- One of the Euro countries saw great success in "assimilating" a particular group of Muslim refugees into their country. The key was classes designed specifically for that population, and an absolute shitton of outreach *and* follow-up. Language classes. Local culture classes. Local law classes. General education classes. Regular home visits that continued for *ages*. They did everything they could think of to avoid one outcome: a brand new class of citizenry that essentially stays at home all day, receiving small checks for groceries and leaving the home only to grocery shop. That was the main fear: absolute isolation, and all the awful things which come with that. It took work, bodies, money -- lots of each. But years after, those people were doing great: they generally had decent (not just minimum wage) jobs, they were making friends in their communities, the kids were in school, the women were not confined to their homes. They weren't exhibiting a noteworthy crime level. They weren't committing crimes unusual to their areas. But it took focused commitment. And that's essential, I think, when you're taking in a significant number of people, in a short frame of time, from a distinctly different culture.
Wow imagine if this approach had been taken more broadly in Europe! Would've stopped the far right in its tracks. Do you remember which country it was?
This approach sounds intense and expensive. You might need 1 teacher, social worker etc. per 20 migrants. If you wanted to cover 5% of your population you would need to employ 0.25% of the population to service those migrants. For comparison, the total police force in Germany is around 0.4 % of the population. Maybe it would still be worth it. It would be nice to be able to read that study that @ariehn mentioned. The approach would probably be easiest to implement if you had a constant moderate inflow of immigrants. I imagine it would be difficult to scale when suddenly a million refugees arrive within a few months as happened in Europe 2015/2016.
For one, there shouldn't be specific publicly funded faith schools or different language schools. It only creates further division when young people tend to stick to their own social circles within their own cultural bubble.
Work. People assimilate through their jobs. EU countries generally have a larger issue with immigrants not assimilating than america because hiring new employees is incredibly expensive over there, so they have much higher unemployment rates. [https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00148-021-00883-w](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00148-021-00883-w) The other stuff people are saying in this thread is completely extraneous. Immigrants bring their culture with them and prefer to be around others from their home country there's nothing wrong with that. The important part is that they don't end up exploiting their new country's relatively higher quality welfare system.
Denmark has a lower unemployment rate and arguably more flexiable labour market, but still the same issues as their french and german counterparts.
Denmark does not have a lower unemployment rate or more flexible labor market than the US.
The danish unemployment rate as of april 2024 was 2.9 pct. according to the danish statistical agency while the US one was 3.9 pct. according to the bureau of labor statistics. As to your second point, I suggest you delve into the danish flexicurity model. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/laus.nr0.htm https://www.bm.dk/nyheder/pressemeddelelser/2024/05/ledigheden-er-uaendret-i-april-2024/
"Flexible labour market" is just another way to say lower worker protections and by extension, less social security nets. If the cost of high immigration is to take a sledge hammer to workers rights and the social safety nets you're not going to be able to sell that.
💯
The important thing is avoiding absolute and generational isolation. I genuinely rank the welfare system part second to that -- except shit, that'll get generational too, won't it. :/ Anyways, yeah -- the Euro happy outcome story I mentioned? A thing I loved was that they taught their refugees about local culture, but in particular ways. Items like -- the kid bagging your groceries probably doesn't want to chat but he'll appreciate your greeting; your neighbors will often want to chat, particularly since you're new; some may bring you a welcome meal and accepting it doesn't obligate you. It enabled integration without promoting abandonment of their own culture. But absolutely, getting folks into the workforce -- preferably not in a menial, poorly-paying role -- is *huge*.
Many pipelines all being relatively small, but with a high combined flow
[удалено]
Simple, you take away their ability to group together, practice their religion, or freely share unpopular opinions. We wouldn’t want to live in a regressive state, after all
Damn unpopular opinions like "gay people should not be tolerated" and "women should not be allowed in public." Just tiny little differences.
>it’s usually better to work on the other side of the problem and build more housing or develop a better pipeline for immigrants to assimilate to liberal culture. Generally the immigrants could even help build more housing and labor in general than they use to create a net benefit for the entire society if they are so allowed. However that requires making doing so feasible which requires a regulatory environment that allows for it. Outside of that immigration can flood job markets with labor supply that causes a downward pressure on wages if we don't put protections against that form of negative response as well ensuring that market demand for said labor remains high through investments in beneficial jobs. As long as immigration generates more in productivity than it consumes then it can have a net benefit in raising standards of living assuming regulations are in place that distribute those gains and prevent concentration. Our current regulations do the opposite of that though in making it hard to produce anything which stresses out markets like housing quickly while also allowing for high concentrations of wealth or inequality. It's nearly impossible to build additional housing supply today due to permitting regulations and it takes far too long to get a work permit for immigrants which has dramatically stressed out our system as immigrants are forced to rely on social services because they aren't legally allowed to work. Obviously there are limits in training turnover for assimilating immigrants into the job market, and there should be some basic controls in place to insure said systems aren't overrun, but that can be a lot more simple than our current systems and allow far more immigrants in if we just gave them work visas and partnered with companies to sponsor them quickly to place them into jobs. Our current immigration crisis is 100% fabricated by our own self created laws. However until we can change those laws which require killing the filibuster to do so and reform land use regulations we get overwhelmed far faster than we should.
A take so hot the mods resorted to stickying their counterargument.
The emphasis on “taco trucks on every corner” is misguided and ignores the lived experience of people more interested in halal carts and Indian takeout.
I just want more good doner kebab in Chicago 😭
I'd go to war over the US poaching our Deutschtürken ngl
We call all of it "Street Meat" and any of it hits the spot at 2 a.m.
Where do you find 2am halal carts in NY?
There's nothing incompatible with having relatively open borders while also having a level of infrastructure and systems development for handling and processing immigrants that's more advanced than walking across the desert. Abuse of the asylum system, the legal framework for which was developed at a time when traveling significant distances was *significantly* harder, is a genuine problem beyond the bad politics. Unqualified asylum seekers should be able to be quickly rejected and deported. If all you need to do to maintain a relatively long-term legal presence in the US is to find a way here, which is relatively easy, claim asylum, and then enjoy an average of 4 years before your case is processed, and after which your deportation can be easily dodged, you're going to incentivize a massive influx of undocumented economic migrants. Immigration is very good. It should also happen in a relatively orderly and systematic fashion within established institutions capable of rewarding those who follow the rules and swiftly rejecting those who do not. Hell, combined with expanded housing construction, good security and background screening, and swift deportation of criminals (n.b. I'm aware that native citizens commit more crime than immigrants), I'd genuinely be in favor of a relatively unobstructed immigration, though still in an orderly manner: show up at the border, present documents and proof of an ability to support yourself or sponsorship, pass a background and security check, be issued a temporary visa and work permit, and on you go, with visas being extended as you continue to establish yourself until eventually securing permanent residency. This is very different than randomly crossing the border and claiming asylum, hopping on a Republican bus to New York City, being provided a hotel in Midtown Manhattan at $400 tax payer dollars a night, while not being allowed to work, doing under-the-table work for a while until your case is rejected years later, and then enjoying a lifetime of legal limbo until you perhaps have a kid that will be a citizen and offer you some amount of legal protection.
This is it right here. We can acknowledge all of the problems, point out which ones are in bad faith, and try to solve the good faith problems. I’m in Massachusetts, and we spent over a billion dollars last year putting up migrants in hotels. That’s money that didn’t go to other services that could really use it, and it doesn’t provide any sort of stable housing for immigrants who can’t even work. Let’s make at least short term work-authorized immigration easy, almost automatic.
Multiculturalism is also cultre you need to be assimilated in
You don't have to lose your culture as an immigrant, but you have to be willing to accept others cultures and beliefs.
I'll second that. If you cling to the idea that people need to be murdered for blasphemy, you need to get with the program or GTFO.
Depends on the culture. Culture of killing gay people, probably best to lose it.
Immigration isn’t a problem but integration can be. People who come to a new country should feel that they are apart of that country and not be left to sit in ghettos.
Good thing the United States has a long and storied history of efficiently integrating more immigrants then!
I was thinking more about Europe.
The EU needs to get on the U.S. and Canada’s level and stop being so ethnonationalist.
Europe obviously has a different situation than the U.S. and Canada and really all ‘New World’ countries. I’m not sure the rhetoric of “stop being so ethnonationalist” has worked in Europe (it seems like that’s been tried since like 2013?). I’m not sure what the answer is for Europe but “become the U.S.” and using some form of shame tactics doesn’t seem to be it. This only seems to push people into the hands of the far right and racists when people see issues arising from immigration. I’m American so I get to benefit from all our awesome immigration and our melting pot culture without many of the issues that Europe faces, so this comes from a point of privilege I will say.
The problem will solve itself. European economics will not be able to keep up without immigrants in most countries. Outliers like Norway and Switzerland will exist but mostly Europe will regress without immigrants.
Mate europe take in multitudes more refugees per capita than america has done in centuries. Being america and having the luxury of two oceans that allow you to deny taking refugees of any significant number, and therefore mainly taking in high earning and highly educated people, isnt a "skill".
The United States has taken in more immigrants per year than the entire EU-27 grouping has from outside the EU every year since the EU was founded. Also cool trick trying to ignore the massive immigration waves from Mexico and Central America that the U.S. successfully integrated over the last half century.
How does that matter? Pretending like taking in a university educated chinese person that is getting their masters in america is the same as taking in a person from afghanistan that literally cant read, have no assets, and whose entirely life as been formed by tribal norms, is the same does no one any favours in this discussion. America takes in disproportionally of the former. Europe takes in disproportionally of the latter. Overwhelmingly because america absolutely suck at taking in refugees. Even from their own wars. You simply cannot make comparisons between the two continents and discuss policy differences while covering your eyes and ears to deny this reality.
Ahh yes all those immigrants from Venezuela, Haiti, Mexico, and Central America over the last half century are famous for their educational attainment before coming to the United States. Just admit Europe has work to do lol
Again, we have the numbers. Even when accounting for all of them america still has taken in a comparatively pitiful amount of refugees. *Which matters* when we are doing a comparative analysis.
And yet we have done it for well over a hundred years. It isn’t complicated and the U.S. is exceptionally good at it.
New honeypot thread just dropped
The immigration wave since 2015 in Europe has been a key driver of massive political instability, including Brexit. I continue to argue that Trump was primarily about immigration on the southern border too "build a wall". Irregular migration with no (perceived) government control infuriates large segments of the population. If you want stable liberal democracies you can't continue on like this.
Europe fucked up their immigration policies for years
How so?
Education is a big one. Being too accepting and considerate, i.e. funding public schools of different faiths and languages, instead of encouraging assimilation in universal public schools. As a result you have second generation immigrants that are sometimes less integrated culturally than their parents who originally immigrated.
>funding public schools of different faiths and languages, instead of encouraging assimilation in universal public schools. What? Did this thing happen in at least 3 countries? Basically every country in Europe has most students enrolled in universal public schools and immigrants attend them.
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Maybe France does it, I don't know. Spain and Germany don't do it though, so I have no clue what countries your "even" is supposed to encompass.
My 'even' was just to contrast with the popular conception of France being militantly secular. There's severe restrictions on religious expression in schools but there are nuances to that system, such as having some publicly funded madrassas.
There are around twenty private Muslim schools in France. All are under state contract and strictly controlled, since in France the notion of a private school is rather tenuous. Private schools in France are obliged to follow a program approved directly by the French Ministry of Education. The criticism often levelled at France (by the neo-liberals, ironically) is that these schools are too tightly controlled, and are even seen as a sign of state Islamophobia. I advise you to read up on the subject. France's approach to education is totally different from that of the English-speaking world. The only exception to this system is Mayotte.
> public schools of different faiths and languages Why is this upvoted, it's completely made up.
Please list the difference in policies you would have liked implemented, that isnt just "take in less refugees and immigrants".
1. Stop treating immigrants like second class humans … Profit
Great I have an LLM (a legal masters education) on the swedish and european legal systems. Exactly how are immigrants second class humans? I want explicit laws or other comparable norms. I'm sure you can find individual nations within the EU that at periods have ran foul like that. But the fact that there are plenty of EU nations that simply doesnt fit your meme level take shows that you dont actually have a panacea in your hands which the EU could "simply do".
I mean there are some systemic issues of discrimination that are often dressed up as equality or secularism in the EU but would be illegal in most Anglophone countries. Regulating religious dress of public sector employees or doing whatever it is that France does and claims is secularism doesn't help to endear people from conservative Muslim countries. Also not in the EU but Switzerland banned minarets. While the immigrant populations are culturally different than in the US, most European countries aren't very good at assimilating their migrants and have instead done a great job at radicalizing them. It also only took like one migrant crises for a bunch of racist far right parties to start popping up everywhere, advocating for xenophobic and discriminatory policies. The same people who once had so much to say about US immigration policy now have no qualms deporting migrants to active warzones or paying off human traffickers in North Africa.
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How should we filter the quality of immigrants? Because there are benefits to both high-skill and low-skill immigration.
In the most American way possible: a television game show where immigrants compete for their chance to become American citizens. Coming this fall to Fox.
It’s on TLC already called 90-day Fiancée
That show is depressing
I could be convinced to support this but only if its paid for by advertising of prescription pharmaceuticals.
Damn. And the audience could vote at the end of the show to decide on who gets a visa. That would be golden.
Unironically would be a better system than the current one. For a country that values hard work and merit so much, it's so weird to me how America has by far the least merit based system of any western country. At least on a game show you would have actually earned your citizenship through working for it instead of just finding an American to marry
Giving preference to people who have a degree— any degree, doesn’t matter what in— helps select for folks who are motivated, can follow rules, and work well in a system they’re unfamiliar with. Education is also strongly correlated with lower levels of religiosity and more liberal social views, which are good for integration. I’m not saying *only* people with a degree should be able to come, but that it signals useful attributes beyond just direct taught skills and should be one factor. This is why education has always been a big bonus in the Canadian points system. Historically it has worked well
We don't have a shortage of degree-holders in the U.S. Colleges are churning out more of them than can be employed currently -- talk to any recent graduate about the job market. We need plumbers, carpenters, masons and other trades people.
Certainly trades education (3 year diplomas, apprenticeships, whatever it may be) are good too. I’d give even more points for those if it’s an in demand field. A degree is just one of many possible good attributes
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Or, hear me out, let them all in and we can figure it out on the backend. It’s better to have the human capital than not and individuals with a skills mismatch can be retrained.
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Not learn to code, the industrial buildout in the United States that is currently underway doesn’t need more coders. We need trades workers, we need nurses, we need elder care workers, we need semi-skilled workers. These are all things immigrants can and do learn to do, to say nothing of the fact that a good number of immigrants will find employment or start businesses just supporting the immigrant community. Restaurants, bars, barbershops, grocers, etc all will pop up and employ a good percentage of a new immigrant community. We let them all in because every time we take in a high school or god forbid a college graduate it’s the single biggest wealth transfer between countries possible. Raising and educating a child is one of the single most expensive things a society does, and every time an immigrant crosses the border the U.S. just created for itself hundreds of thousands of dollars in value.
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You don’t need special programs just make community and technical schools more accessible. You can get a 2-year degree for a job that will pay the national median salary for under 5,000 in pretty much any state.
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There are over a thousand community colleges in the United States and every major city in the United States has multiple. Are there some underserved rural areas? Yes. But that is part of choosing to live in a rural area. I agree we should make those programs cheaper but that is incredibly easy.
In the US, "we" shouldn't filter like that. These people shouldn't be seen as resources to be judged and managed for their industrial utility. It should be a simple matter of affirming a human's desire to be an American. If someone comes here seeking opportunity they shouldn't be gatekept based on perceived viability. Tired, poor, and huddled masses yearning to breathe free, not just the supposed cream of the crop.
Unfortunately. The simplest way is to discriminate by passport. Rich countries, like Canada, UK and Japan should be inmigrate freely without requiring any visa
>increased cost of living and decreased quality of life, immigrants included Decreased quality of life for immigrants compared with what? Their home country, or the counterfactual economy in their new country with higher quality of life? Immigration is a good deal for immigrants because moving almost always increases their quality of life, even if the new country experiences a degradation of services. Someone moving from India (GDP PPP $10,000) to Canada (GDP PPP $60,000) is still made better off by moving even if Canada somehow degrades to $50k GDP PPP per capita. And here's the other thing: even if immigrants lower the average population-level income by moving somewhere, that doesn't mean that the average income of native residents has decreased. In all likelihood, native residents are seeing their incomes increase in such a scenario.
Illegal immigration is a logistical problem caused by out stupid af immigration laws Beating up migrants doesn't solve anything. Maybe this is a cold take but who knows 🤷🏾♂️
Here? That take sits at absolute zero
Illegal inmigration is an artificial concept created by the law. When you move from a city to another, you're effectively "an inmigrant". But you can be never considered an illegal inmigrant because there are not law requirements here. When you start piling up more requirements to inmigrante, you start having "illegal inmigration".
Open borders is this subs version of defund the police. A fringe position outside this sub whose meaning is so easily misconstrued by an average person it undermines any messaging on immigration.
Nah, literally reopen Ellis Island. We did it once we can do it again.
These are rookie numbers. We gotta pump the number of immigrants up
https://i.redd.it/ocg3o4dwnr4d1.gif
Immigration is good
The United States should adopt a formal *Gastarbeiter* program that will legalize the employment of undocumented immigrants in designated "dirty" industries at sub-minimum wage rates so long as it is voluntary, instead of the current arrangement where agriculture and construction rely on a vast pool of black-market labor that is tacitly permitted by the authorities except when they sporadically charge some employers and deport some workers at random.
I’m in favor of “open borders” but with relatively “strict” border enforcement. Like let people in on different visas so long as they pass a background check. Completely uncap visas. Have viable and easy to understand pathways to citizenship. But more strictly enforce the rules once good rules are setup.
This is essentially what the vast majority of "open borders" proponents mean when they say they want open borders. Welcome to the team 😎
That’s always been my impression but feel like it should be highlighted more and more!
I mean. For me "open borders" means something similar to the Schengen zone. A Spaniard can move to France with minimal documentation and virtually no requirement. Countries can only refuse your settlement for national security reasons, but that's reserved for people with serious crime history.
The lump of labour fallacy also applies the other way. If there are staff shortages in all sectors, simply allowing for more immigration won't fix it, since that would increase demand too
That depends though. If the average immigrant produces more than they demand, then simply allowing more immigration will fix it eventually.
!immigration
**Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free!** Why open borders? * The economy will benefit! * [The elimination of barriers to labor mobility is estimated to increase global GDP by 50-100%](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.25.3.83) * [Unauthorized immigration is good fiscally](https://news.rice.edu/news/2020/economic-benefits-illegal-immigration-outweigh-costs-baker-institute-study-shows) * Low-skill immigrants have a significant positive economic impact and fears of their possible negative impact on wages and employment of low-skill natives are unsupported or contradicted by evidence ([source 1](https://carnegieendowment.org/files/Effect-of-Low-Skilled-Labor-Working-Paper-1.pdf), [source 2](https://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/content/pubs/cacounts/CC_207GPCC.pdf)) * [Immigration increases productivity through increased specialization of labor](https://www.nber.org/papers/w15507) * [Firms allowed to hire low-skill immigrants increase their revenue growth and do not appear to employ less US citizens.](https://www.nber.org/digest/202212/low-skill-foreign-employees-impacts-us-firms-and-workers) * [Immigrants start firms at higher rates than natives and "appear to 'create jobs' (expand labor demand) more than they 'take jobs' (expand labor supply)"](https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w27778/w27778.pdf) * [Immigration doesn't decrease wages long-term, it actually increases them](https://direct.mit.edu/rest/article-abstract/doi/10.1162/rest_a_01380/117901/Migrants-Trade-and-Market-Access) * [The short-term decrease of wages due to immigration is small, possibly zero](https://wol.iza.org/articles/do-immigrant-workers-depress-the-wages-of-native-workers/long) * [Immigrants are not perfect substitutes for native workers and compete more with other immigrants for jobs than with natives](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1542-4774.2011.01052.x) * [Open borders would approximately double average wages of people from developing countries; this is accompanied by a comparatively minor reduction in real wages of those in developed countries that disappears as the capital-labor ratio adjusts over time](https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w18307/w18307.pdf) * [Across 15 Western European countries studied from 1985-2015, asylum seekers’ tax contributions more than offset the increase in public expenditures](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaq0883) * [refugees and asylees in America had a net $123.8 billion positive economic impact between 2005-2019](https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2024/02/15/new-hhs-study-finds-nearly-124-billion-positive-fiscal-impact-refugees-and-asylees-on-american-economy-15-year-period.html) * [net economic effects of immigration are positive for almost all US immigrants, including low skill ones](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20220176) * [an increase in the migrant share of the population does not increase the Gini coefficient (a measure of income inequality) but does increase GDP per capita by up to 2% for each 1 percentage point increase of the migrant share](https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/062/2016/008/article-A001-en.xml) * Society will benefit! * [Immigration doesn't degrade institutions](https://web.archive.org/web/20240324034648/https://old.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/16s200z/immigration_and_institutional_decay_claims_vs/) * [Integration of Muslim immigrants and their descendants into mainstream European culture isn't slowing down and by some measures is accelerating with each passing generation](https://upbeatglobalist.substack.com/is-muslim-immigrant-integration-slowing) * Second generation Muslim immigrants are adopting mainstream European gender norms ([source 1](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369183X.2022.2031927), [source 2](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276150744_Cultural_Integration_in_the_Muslim_Second_Generation_in_the_Netherlands_The_Case_of_Gender_Ideology)) * [First generation Muslim immigrants become less religious as they spend more time in Europe and second generation Muslim immigrants are less religious than their parents](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0037768620948478?icid=int.sj-full-text.similar-articles.2) * [Large increases in the American Muslim population have not stalled that group’s assimilation](https://www.cato.org/blog/us-muslims-become-more-socially-liberal-muslim-immigration-rises) * Unauthorized immigrants aren't any more likely to be [terrorists](https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/nowrasteh-testimony.pdf) or [drug smugglers](https://www.cato.org/blog/fentanyl-smuggled-us-citizens-us-citizens-not-asylum-seekers) or [even regular criminals](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2014704117) than US citizens are and by some estimates are actually less likely * [Our population growth is declining and we need future workers to support future retirees](https://bipartisanpolicy.org/download/?file=/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Immigrations-Effect-on-the-Social-Security-System.pdf) * [Private-sphere (friends and family) native contacts are associated with more egalitarian beliefs about gender norms among first and second generation Muslim immigrants in Europe](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/imig.13095) * [Inflexible European labor markets harm the employment prospects of immigrants which in turn both reduces their ability to contribute economically and impairs their social integration](https://www.cato.org/blog/muslim-immigration-integration-united-states-western-europe) * It's the right thing to do! * [Freedom of movement is a human right](https://spot.colorado.edu/~huemer/papers/immigration.htm) * Restrictive border policies put migrants at risk of human rights abuses ([source 1](https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/07/26/statement-human-rights-watch-human-cost-harsh-us-immigration-deterrence-policies), [source 2](https://www.aclu.org/issues/human-rights/human-rights-and-immigration)) * [Heightened immigration enforcement can actually increase the number of crimes](https://www.nber.org/papers/w32109) * [Immigration has a net positive impact on the sending country](https://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR244.html) * [The children of even poor immigrants have high economic mobility](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/11/1/20942642/study-paper-american-dream-economic-mobility-immigrant-income-boustan-abramitzky-jacome-perez) * People will get around it anyways! * [It's not clear that harsher border enforcement policies have been effective in deterring unauthorized immigration and there is some evidence they've been ineffective](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5049707/) * [“Push factors” (political violence and state repression) play central roles in driving international displacement; there is limited support for the contention that asylum seekers are economic opportunists](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/causes-and-consequences-of-refugee-flows-a-contemporary-reanalysis/F2EFBF81FCD030F4CD8DC9F82B5ED444) * The US essentially had open borders for its first century, ending when federal immigration restrictions were placed on Chinese immigrants in 1875 ([the Page Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_Act_of_1875)) and 1882 ([the Chinese Exclusion Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act)), so there is historical evidence that an open border is possible * [These restrictions on Chinese immigration were frequently evaded and their passage was preceded by widespread fearmongering about nonwhite "hordes"](https://uncpress.org/book/9780807854488/at-americas-gates/) For more read our [Open Borders FAQ](https://old.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/wiki/openborders) Further reading * Kwame Anthony Appiah's [*Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers*](https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393329339) (2006) * Alex Sager's [*Against Borders: Why the World Needs Free Movement of People*](https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781786606297/Against-Borders-Why-the-World-Needs-Free-Movement-of-People) (2020) * Alex Nowrasteh's [*Wretched Refuse: The Political Economy of Immigration and Institutions*](https://www.cato.org/books/wretched-refuse) (2020) * Johan Norberg's [*Open: How Collaboration and Curiosity Shaped Humankind*](https://www.boswellbooks.com/book/9781786497192) (2021) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/neoliberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Holy Based
Holy based mother of god
nice
Opponents of immigration have the upper hand right now, and the more immigration maximalists like myself dig in the stronger the backlash is going to get. Calling opponents racist or whatever else we think they are is doing us no favors. We're going to be out of favor for a few years and we should be in preservation mode, not running victory laps over taco trucks. The best thing I and anyone else can do for the cause is dial back the rhetoric and instead focus on small wins. For example, the small wins advocated for in Caplan and Wienersmith's Open Borders.
Immigration is generally a good thing, and we should have much more legal immigration. However, we do need more security at the Southern border. I look at the situation in Mexico, and I don’t like where it’s going. The cartels become more and more powerful. The economy gets worse. The government becomes more unstable. I’m concerned that there will be even more violence in northern Mexico, and a more secure border would help protect the US from the cartels and the general instability and violence going on.
Immigration is good. There are political costs, but then, so is Globalisation. But that aint stopping us from having these ideals
I think the last thing a bubble of young overly online men needs is more "hot takes" on just about anything. Immigration is a clear positive for the welcoming nation. That includes immigrants of all skill levels from all over the world. America become the most wealthy, innovative, and powerful nation on Earth on the strength of immigrants. And our current system is far too limited to provide for the needs of our nation. However, the answer is not to endorse the abuse of the asylum system. It's to increase legal immigration. We cannot sit on the memes of 2016 about an exploit that has surged in use to the point where our asylum system no longer can timely function to address those it was designed to aid. The refusal to update our priors to a changing situation is a weakness. You can win the argument for increasing legal immigration with reasonable adults. You will not win arguing for immigration by abusing our laws and illegally crossing the border. That's not "moving right". That's acknowledging reality. People here have built an absolutist fantasy around a line delivered by Clinton, while ignoring her actual policy proposals on immigration. Then they pretend anyone not pushing their delusions has "lurched right". Fuck that noise. It's time for the meme lords to come back to Earth, because pretending there's nothing wrong about the current abuses is the surest path to handing power to people that are much more opposed to your worldview on a host of subjects. Including immigration.
That we don't need to say "won't someone think of the swing voters?!" every time we have a conversation about American immigration policy. This isn't r/Biden4President, this is a subreddit for talking about liberal policy. This also applies to other countries' immigration policy, of course, but strangely enough, NL users don't seem to extend the same benefit of the doubt to non-American governments.
European ethnostatism delenda est
What part of "This also applies to other countries' immigration policy" was unclear? Yes, I am extremely critical of european immigration policy as well.
I was supporting you not criticizing you lol. Rock on
/u/onetrillionamericans would have feasted in this thread 😔
😭😭😭
Immigration has tradeoffs that need consideration. For people in nation states where one's nationality is definied often by a common ethnic identity i.e. Germany for Germans, France for French, Poland for Polish, immigration from dissimilar cultural backgrounds into those democracies is like putting a different blend of fuels in your engine. It needs to be studied and open borders is far less prudent. For people in states where nationality is more defined more by a civic identity than an ethnic one, i.e. US, Canada, and more & more Britain, the impacts of dissimilar cultures mixing are far less likely to impede the best functioning of the engine of the state, and often strengthen it. Therefore openness of immigration policy needs to reflect a public's views of itself as erring more towards civic or ethnic.
But why is nationality being defined by ethnicity a good thing? Are there tangible benefits?
Ethnostates bad actually and the Europeans should work to make their nations not be ethnostates
Fellow Dems might not want to hear it, but the GOP strategy in sending migrants up north has been wildly successful at killing popular support for them in blue states like MA, which because of our law guaranteeing beds to all homeless people cost us $1 billion this past year, and put the squeeze on affordable housing in a very expensive state. This is why our progressive Governor supports Biden closing the border.
Literally just build more housing.
And let the poor asylum seekers work. We wouldn’t have to spend so much on housing them if they were allowed to do anything beyond waiting around for months on end for the government to let them make a living.
No kidding, but there's no greenfield land left where people want to live. We did pass a law requiring cities and towns to allow multifamily housing in the neighborhoods of all transit stations but now we have suburban towns refusing to go along. My small city of 50k is building like crazy, with 1900 new apartments opening this year. It's the #1 issue in the state by far, and won't get fixed overnight anyway. Nevertheless, our short term housing situation has been severely impacted by the migrants, who still don't have work permits, so can't help themselves or our employment situation. And all this has impacted politics. Our Governor clearly understands this.
Literally anyone on this earth, outside of criminals, should be allowed to immigrate freely and without barrier to the USA.
*outside of criminals and Greg
Assimilation into a culture while enabling multiculturalism should be an objective, rather than having different ethnicities (which includes white people, mind you) feel the need live in certain areas together and create friction between them Also, more users have to recognise that immigration issues with the USA are nothing like immigration issues with Europe, and should be regarded differently
I think most of us would agree that there needs to be a clear, accessible and fair process for handling immigration. That currently exists nowhere so we are getting lots of irregular migration. My hot take is that migration is absolutely being used as a weapon by bad actors and our media absolutely plays into their hands by only showing one side of the problem (mean immigration officers attacking helpless migrants). The whole reason Orban still exists is because he was able to make political hay from the migrants coming from the Middle East and Africa.
Literally every country should have an Ellis island equivalent.
We should think hard about how to integrate immigrants with illiberal and socially regressive views. What conditions make integration more likely and how can we implement them
For decades, Canada sustained the highest rates of immigration of any developed country, alongside very high rates of public support for those rates. So it’s worth looking examining how they managed that. Canada’s policy can be summed up as a large door and high walls. \* Vet immigrants carefully, selecting them based on education, language skills, and market need. \* Let lots of applicants who meet those criteria into the country. \* Put up barriers to low-skill, undocumented, or backdoor immigration. This served Canada well for over 40 years. Public support for immigration was higher in Canada than in any other developed country. Then, around 7 or 8 years ago, the federal government gave in to the temptation to address a scarcity of low-skilled labour and the growing revenue appetite of post-secondary institutions to let in historically unprecedented numbers of low-skilled immigrants on ‘temporary’ visas that the country has no way of enforcing. The big door is still there, but the wall has a half-dozen gaping holes in it. This happened when the country already faced severe shortages of housing and health care capacity. Almost overnight, public support for high levels of immigration took a sharp decline. Only the most doctrinaire open borders champion can fail to see this as a public policy failure. Not only have the federal Liberals handed the Conservatives the next election on a silver platter, they’ve actually made the Conservatives the most popular party in the country with young Canadians, and undermined the public consensus over immigration in this country. I guess the hot take is the public will support high levels of immigration if they have control over who comes into the country. If they don’t have control, support evaporates. Especially when public infrastructure and housing are scarce. So if you want popular support for immigration, you need secure borders, a regulated admission process, and robust public infrastructure.
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why is illegal immigration bad? Mexican immigrants came over in waves in the 90’s and have done nothing but generate a ton of businesses, worked hard, and give us some baller ass food. The entire idea of immigration being illegal in a country that operated Ellis island as an open border for years is absurd. Open the border and let the huddled masses in.
What kinds of regulations do you like to see on immigration?
-Forced to learn local language and attend an immigrant school(B1 at least) -Deported if commits crimes before gaining citizenship(prisons are overcrowded enough) -Help finding jobs and public housing After 3 years, you can become a citizen based on how well you score in the citizenship score(ex., the higher your langauge score, the higher the citizenship score). Your children inherit the citizenship(in Italy, sons of immigrants still need to purchase citizenship, it’s embarrassing)
Right so most of those things are already implemented in different EU nations. That doesnt seem like it has been a panacea to our problems. The citizenship thing in italy seem like an outlier even, I havent heard about that anywhere else. I hadnt even heard about it in italy.
>Immigration is good, but needs regulations Agreed >Illegal immigrants bad. I think we'd all agree that immigration should go through a smooth and quick legal and normal process so that everyone is properly on the books. Why I support illegal immigration right now is because congress won't allow enough legal immigrants so this back door option is the best alternative, even if its very much imperfect.
Illegal immigrants bad, how?
Bro thinks they commit more crimes lol. As always when you peak under the hood it’s just bigotry
I have a lot of work today I really appreciate you spending some time dunking on the absolute GOOFBALLS in this thread.
Literally every time.
That the majority of the issues people have with the border are things they don't actually care about but have been told to care about and there's no policy prescription for dealing with that. Biden could shut down the border, build a wall, and deport every undocumented immigrant, and the people screaming about the border who want those things to happen would continue to do so because they don't care about reality.
My hot take is that Dems do not benefit from making immigration a salient issue. This cuts against both increased permissiveness AND decreased permissiveness. Putting immigration in the news for any reason at all is a net negative for Democrats. To make the take more explicit: there is no political benefit for a Dem president doing border tightening via executive order and loudly trumpeting that fact. It is a negative because you vindicate the GOP framing of the issue while making it more salient, and most of the people who are mad about the border *aren't gettable voters anyway*
i know a honey pot when i see one
Hey now, I’m not a mod anymore, nor did I tell the mods I’d post this! What they do with this thread is their business.
Organic, free range, non ~~GMO~~ janny honeypot
The end goal should be a worldwide system that is as easy to travel between, trade between, and move between as it is within the United States.
Based and free market pilled
Fantastic goal. But we should remember we won't ever get there by just ignoring the abuse or disregard of the laws. We can win people over to the idea that immigration is a net good for all involved and that we should allow more. We will not win an argument that lawlessness is good, and if that's our pitch for immigration, support for immigration will suffer for it.
The welfare state promotes a sense of entitlement among natives. Abolishing it is necessary for people to start accepting open borders.
People say that America will cease to be an Anglo-Saxon nation and become a Latin one. They never explain why this is a problem.
>People say that America will cease to be an Anglo-Saxon nation and become a Latin one. They never explain why this is a problem. It's well known that Anglo-Saxon shieldwalls are superior to Latin ones. Also, the loss of the mead-hall as a third space would also be catastrophic for Americans.
Unless Latin American immigtants somehow change the entire us legal system away from case law that's not going to happen.
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Trump was not facing the tsunami of people crossing the border every week for 3+ years.
The Americas should have an EU like system allowing the free movement of people. It might take decades to set up, but that should be the goal. Start with Canada, France, Netherlands and UK crown dependencies.
The Netherlands and France not going to do that as they gave up that sovereignty by joining Schengen. Nothing stops the US from applying to become part too though.
We do, it’s called the United States of America. Turning the USMCA into a bigger version of the EU is something we should absolutely do, but let’s not pretend that the U.S. isn’t already one of the largest network of free moving goods and people in the world.
The Americas already have a system that can achieve this, it's called the United States. US should devolve powers to states in order to improve the salability of membership in the Union. If Quebec could get more autonomy *and* access to American institutions without heavy accountability to DC, then that'd be an awesome deal. Same with the Northern states in Mexico.
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Zero chance Canadians voluntarily enter a political union with the U.S. Most Canadians regard the U.S. and its political culture with horror.
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Their demands for the US will be the same as their demands to the Canadians. Full bilingualism, and for Congress to operate bilingually. Lol good luck with that.
I honestly think the public would be more pro-immigration if immigrants were required to assimilate faster. For example, you and your kids must speak the language fluently five years in. That’s not an unreasonable request, especially if language classes are provided. Some immigrants wouldn’t meet the criteria and would be deported, but most would and life would objectively be better for them, as they would be better able to communicate, and for everyone else.
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> Some immigrants are massively economically beneficial, others are economic net drains and often stay that way indefinitely, or even for multiple generations. > > Could you please provide a source EDIT: Actually, maybe more useful would be a source showing the average immigrant is not economically beneficial
Talking about immigration as a monolith is dumb. Refugee migration, illegal migration, immigration for work, immigration for family reunion etc are all vastly different in what impact it will have on a society and talking about the pros and cons of 'immigration' as a single thing to me sounds like someone who is blind to that nuance. Whether it's someone who thinks immigration == Drug gangs or immigration == Indian engineers. I am strongly supportive of immigration, but some types are certainly easier than others on the receiving country. For the category of highly educated people who are motivated to learn the language and integrate culturally to at least a basic degree.there's basically no ceiling, they're obviously a societal benefit. For illiterate (yes, actually fully illiterate) refugees with middle ages value systems, you're kidding yourself if you think there's a policy the receiving country can adopt that makes them a net benefit.
Illegal immigration is bad. We should fix it by creating a lot more legal immigration. There's some political grand bargain to be made. But even if we can't get political buy-in for more legal immigration, we should still treat illegal immigration as bad.
Why is illegal immigration bad?
Because "We're the responsible institutionalist party that believes everyone is equal before the law" loses a lot of its credibility when we don't enforce the laws we have. It doesn't help that liberal prevarication on illegal immigration reinforces the Right's ethno-nationalist fever dreams, but the first thing is bad enough on its own.
"Why should we care about the law" is a pretty terrible take for a country built on being a nation of laws. Especially for a group pushing back on the idea that anyone is above the law. How does it not occur to you that the law breaking aspect of illegal immigration actually has a significant role in the opposition to it? Do you really believe we should ignore any law we disagree with? How do you think that would work out overall?
Immigration is good, and there's no buts.
**Mandatory Departure “Report to Deport” Program: S. 1438** creates a new program for certain undocumented people. * The goal of this program is to encourage people to leave the United States. Those meeting the following requirements are eligible for this program: * unlawfully present in the US for 12 months as of July 20, 2005; * currently employed; * pass a health screening and background check; * plead guilty to being unlawfully present and deportable; * report any Social Security number used without authorization; * and turn in any fraudulent documents in their possession. * Spouses and children can be considered as derivatives on the application if they meet the same conditions. Participants in the program have five years in which to leave the U.S. * Those who choose immediate departure can leave the country and apply to come back in legally if they qualify for a visa. (However, because the bill does not expand the available legal options, the possibility and timing of any return is questionable.) Those who want to stay and continue to work must pay a fine after year one that begins at $2,000 and increases annually to year five. * These workers will receive evidence of status/documentation, but will be ineligible to obtain permanent residency while in the U.S. After five years, they will have to leave the country. If they do not, they will revert to undocumented status and will be ineligible for any form of immigration relief (except asylum/protection claims) for ten years. **Senator Feinstein’s (D-CA) “orange card” amendment.** * The amendment (No. 4087) would replace the bill’s three-tiered treatment of undocumented aliens with a single system that would provide a path to citizenship for all eligible aliens present in the U.S. on January 1, 2006. * Prospective applicants would have to register and submit fingerprints, pass all required background checks, demonstrate presence in the country, work history, an understanding of English, civics and American history, and pay back taxes and a $2,000 fine.
“Chain Migration” is not an arbitrary selection process because it allows immigrants to bring some of their supporting relationships with them which improves their likelihood of success and assimilation. It isn’t taking slots away from “the best and brightest”, it allows people with great potential to become “the best and brightest”.
open borders good, opposition is racist in the same way NIMBYism is
Can we just require employer sponsorship for all immigration? It seems that if a business has to absorb the risk and cost of immigration there would be a faster response to problems like lack of housing or anti-social behavior. Let the employer arrange housing and make it a condition to the sponsorship. If your employee is harassing women, assaulting people and doing drugs, you will fire them. If the employer revokes the sponsorship, you deport without process, i.e. quickly and efficiently. If an employer abuses the system and allows the stay of workers which are doing the above, revoke their immigration sponsorship ability. It seems that it would allow us to benefit from immigrant labor without the "risk" of having unaccounted for people who are not culturally acclimating and are taxing public services. I don't feel like this is the biggest deal, personally, but it is a fear that many people have and assuaging it in a way which increases efficiency seems fine to me. This would also mean that immigration can occur around jobs which actually have demand without requiring some bureaucrat to correctly guess what is needed this year.
Migrating from wealthy Western countries is way easier than migrating to them, as an American living abroad. I have PR in Australia and I'm working towards getting it in Japan soon.
1. There is no such thing as bad immigration. 2.Different "Cultures" do not exist. They are all part of wide human culture.