US Immigration Policy Megathread

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > US Immigration Policy Megathread

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Instant Sunrise posted:

Go to a consulate, pay $30 for an permanent entry permit, come to America, stay for 2 years and become a citizen.

This isn't exactly compatible with a strong and generous welfare state though. E: Or strong labor protections. Also, we definitely need a way to screen out violent criminals.

Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 06:51 on Feb 6, 2018

# ¿ Feb 6, 2018 06:22

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 13:23

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

A bunch of problems with that. If we accept the premise that the proper purpose of immigration policy is to replace falling fertility rates, it either requires accepting indefinite population growth, aka gently caress The Environment, or for the government to set a population target, which is going to sell like a snow cone in winter on both the left and the right.

The other issues I can see are that a reasonable population target would, due to contracting labor needs, probably be fewer people than we have now, and despite sub replacement fertility, our population continues to grow due to inertia. Also, the best way to manage an immigration policy meant to shore up the tax base would be a merit based system and elimination of jus soli citizenship, which is not what most advocates of more lax immigration policies want. This would kind of gently caress with the narrative that immigrants are only taking jobs that Americans don't want to do (which really means jobs that owners aren't willing to pay Americans enough to do.)

# ¿ Feb 11, 2018 20:27

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

what? Other than birth and immigration where are you saying people are coming from?

Basically, our fertility rate is barely below replacement, and people keep living longer, so even not counting immigration, births exceed deaths every year and the population continues to grow. Incidentally, this is why focusing on raising the standard of living in developing countries in order to curb fertility as a means to address global warming won't work.

Now, this can cause a demographic problem where the young, healthy population is too small to effectively take care of the older population. Immigration can help with this, but if that is the concern, it makes the most sense to switch to a merit based system that tries to let in young medical professionals and immigrants who are most likely to contribute the greatest amount to the tax base, in order to provide sufficient government revenue to pay for expensive social services for the elderly, sick, and retired before they join that cohort themselves.

Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 00:13 on Feb 12, 2018

# ¿ Feb 12, 2018 00:11

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

Peven Stan posted:

The only moral immigration policy is to let in as many nonwhite people as possible so people like you end up fleeing to a remote hamlet in Idaho etc. so you can live out your white american bastion fantasies somewhere else.

IDK why you can't figure out that this isn't a race thing for me.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2018 02:40

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

I am not in fact a Nazi.

Lightning Knight posted:

But conceptualizing immigration policy like this is deeply unethical to me, because it accepts the framing that immigrants should only be accepted insofar as they are useful to us, and if they stopped being useful to us, it would be acceptable to shut out immigrants and support closed borders policies.

This is the entire problem with capitalism, and dehumanizing people to simplify them to their value to the economic system. People should be valued as people, not relative to how they fit into the economic system.

That's exactly how an immigration policy should be conceptualized though, and it isn't a capitalist phenomenon. Legitimate governments exist to serve the interests of their citizens, and rightfully should prioritize those interests above the interests of foreigners. Immigration policy should be no different, we ought to enact the policies that are best for our society and citizens, whatever those may be, not those that are best for everyone else in the world.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2018 03:13

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# ¿ May 16, 2024 13:23

Dead Reckoning: Sep 13, 2011

LLSix posted:

I found two ways to get this number while bored at work. The simplest and dumbest is to point out that House Dems passed what was a Republican bill before the election and offered about 2.5 billion for border security but Trump turned it down and insisted on more than 5 billion for the wall. So the wall costs at least twice as much as the next most stupid approach.

The second way to get is that it costs about $80,000 over 5 years to resettle a refugee according to http://fairus.org/issue/legal-immigration/fiscal-cost-resettling-refugees-united-states. No honest agency has reported more than 5,000 refugees but even if you take Trump's (obviously lying) number of 10,000 refugees you still got a total cost of under a billion dollars, or less than a fifth of the cost of the wall. But the wall cost is for this year while the resettlement cost is for 5 years, so resettling them would cost something more like 2-4% what building the wall would. Wall costs also do not include losses to citizens from having their property seized to build the wall on or the ongoing costs of Trump having deployed the army to the border.

All of this is neglecting that at some point immigrants become productive citizens and become a net benefit to the economy. Here's an article from the Bush (as in former republican president Bush) institute on how immigrants improve the economy: https://www.bushcenter.org/catalyst/north-american-century/benefits-of-immigration-outweigh-costs.html

The problem here is that you're conflating refugees, illegal immigrants, and legal immigrants. Which everyone else on both sides of the issue does as well, mind you.

As you noted, the population of people who successfully pursue legitimate asylum claims is low, but I'm not sure what the 5,000 number is in reference to. (E: I see you were talking about the migrant caravan.) ~~The FAIR website you linked cites 96,900 in 2016, and this site from the American Immigration Council puts the number at a bit less than 85,000 in 2016.~~ The current disagreement is over how high our ceiling for refugee admissions should be, and whether the government should use a definition of refugee that includes people fleeing gang violence, rather than persecution for membership of a protected class.

Legal immigration is undeniably a net benefit to the US economy, but legal immigration includes both highly skilled and unskilled labor. Scientists coming over to do research at universities or programmers coming to work at Apple aren't crossing the southern desert on foot.

Illegal immigration does have a net benefit for the US economy as a whole, but those benefits accrue almost entirely with the owners of captial. Owners take advantage of a large pool of low skill workers to operate more profitably by depressing the wages of unskilled workers. It's often said that illegal immigrants take jobs that Americans won't do, but most people would pick strawberries for $50 an hour; the reason that owners can successfully offer low wages for unskilled, back-breaking work is because of their access to a pool of unskilled migrant labor. Unskilled and low skilled native workers forced to compete against immigrants see their wages fall.

("In summary, the immigration surplus stems from the increase in the return to capital that results from the increased supply of labor and the subsequent fall in wages. Natives who own more capital will receive more income from the immigration surplus than natives who own less capital, who can consequently be adversely affected." - "The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration", The National Academies)

Also, while the US economy as a whole may benefit, illegal immigration is a net negative on the balance sheets of state and local governments: they do not pay enough in taxes to make up for the services they consume. This is localized to the communities where illegal immigrants live, while the profits from cheap immigrant labor do not necessarily remain in the community.

While the National Academy of Sciences says that subsequent generations of immigrants make up for the defecits created by first generation immigrants, this is a blended number for all immigrants, high and low skill alike, not just low or unskilled illegal immigrants.

Dead Reckoning fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Jan 17, 2019

# ¿ Jan 17, 2019 20:35

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > US Immigration Policy Megathread