When is the country full? The US is arguably overpopulated by 100 million. It is not possible to be an environmentalist and favor continued high immigration rates.
All this talk about importing "talent" is highly disingenuous. The bulk of current immigration is low skill and puts pressure on low-end wages, and many government services budgets.
The history of immigration in America is a handful of waves interspersed by much longer periods of assimilation with close to zero immigration. The current wave, beginning in 1968, is absolutely unprecedented in volume and length.
I'm always curious when people say they advocate increasing immigration. Right now, the United States takes about 1.2 million immigrants legally into the country every year. Does this seem too low a number to you? If so, do you see a practical need for some kind of limit, or are you in favor of limitless immigration?
No, we don't. This is a mantra that keeps being repeated without much substance.
Housing affordability, job quality, public finance sustainability won't get any better with immigration. Maybe salaries keep being depressed, consumer demand increases, and that's good for profits. But I can't think of much more!
It's a balance, if you don't have enough immigration you want more, if you have too much you want less. Which side of the curve the US is on is debatable.
There have always been limits to immigration. Almost no one is saying no immigration. Needs change. What the country needs now might not be the same as 150 years ago.
I think people sort of forget that "only let so many people into the country" isn't something we have to do, or that limiting immigration is some absolute positive thing.
This phenomena is why I'm strongly pro-immigration. Speaking as an American, I want there to be more Americans. We're not making them ourselves so we need to import. The more we import now, the better since the current population is both younger and more numerous than it will be in a few decades when we'd actually need the imported population. Doing it now means the Americanization of the immigrants will be more complete. We should bring them in and turn them American while we still have the numbers and dynamism to do so.
There's also a matter of whether a nation prioritizes its own people over foreigners that e.g. want to be immigrants.
If it doesn't (at least to some degree) then it doesn't make much sense for it to exist as a sovereign nation (in the trivial case, everybody could come in that wants it at anytime).
If it does, some discrimination and sending back of illegal immigrants is inevitable.
The situation is a little trickier for the US though, because itself is a hodgepodge nation made up of immigrants (were most conventional nations have a larger degree of homogeneity). So it can't in good faith say "no immigrants" (at best it can say, "no more immigrants, there's enough of us already here").
(Of course those immigrants first got to exterminate the natives and get their land, so the origins of the US is not exactly a success story for peaceful immigration...)
The US does currently take over 1.2 million immigrants legally into the country every year. Certainly, a reasonable person could argue that number should be higher, but that's still a pretty high number for a country that is "closing its doors".
But we aren't talking about years, are we? We are talking about total numbers of immigrants allowed. What is the USA's ranking in total legal immigration?
Did you read the article you linked to? The sub title includes “Overall growth slowed”. And anyway it’s talking about the total immigrant population that’s built up over several decades, and even if that wasn’t an issue, it’s talking about absolute numbers rather than percentages of the population. As a percent of the population, immigration to the USA peaked in the early 20th century, which is when my 4 grandparents arrived. Immigration to the USA, nowadays, is just a small trickle, compared to what it used to be.
It’s not about the ethnicity of the people who have immigrated, but not creating incentives for new people to come here permanently. Not “no Indians” but instead “America is full.”
I don’t believe America really needs high skill labor. When my family came here in 1989, America was already the undisputed #1, and there were less than 1 million desis in the country. Today there are over 6 million—but America is in decline. I’m not saying there is a correlation, but I think it’s self-indulgent to say the country needs skilled immigrants.
The US allows over 1 million immigrants per year. Maybe less the past year, but still extremely high on an immigrant per capita basis.
H1B was being abused and needed to be reigned in.
There are still plenty of people coming into the country through various means, the US is still extremely generous with immigration.
There are plenty of qualified citizens here and in the zero sum game that is hiring national immigration policy should put their needs first before anyone else's.
At what point do you feel the USA will have enough immigrants? It's already a nation of immigrants!
reply