Why do you think India and China aren't diverse by themselves, and within themselves? India probably has more languages than all of Europe. Would it be sensible to treat Europe (or even just the Schengen area) as one country, to "increase diversity"? I think that would be dumb. European countries are obviously very diverse and we see that more clearly because they're sovereign nations on a map. India and China are mega-countries and we fail to appreciate the diversity within.
> Basically no one from small nations would get a green card
Why would that happen? It would be a first-come-first-served system. If a person from a small nation applies, they'll get it at the same time as someone from a bigger nation who applied at the same time as them (modulo processing time variances).
> Would it be sensible to treat Europe as one country
Why would it? Europe isn't a country. India and China are countries. I fail to see your point. It's obviously more diverse if Chinese, Indians, Europeans, South Americans, Africans etc have a more or less equal chance, and that's what the current rules are supposed to provide.
> It would be a first-come-first-served system
So you think immigration status should be determined by whether someone gets their forms in on the 1st of January or not? I'm not sure that's entirely practical or fair. Perhaps a lottery would be more suitable.
> Using countries is a very inaccurate way to measure diversity.
It's a perfectly accurate (fraud aside) measure of diversity in country of origin. Whether that's a meaningful kind of diversity is a different question.
> The EU is many countries, but is less diverse than India, a single country.
Less diverse in what?
> If India reformed itself as a union of states, suddenly the backlog of Indian immigrants would be cleared!
That assumes that the sourcing of qualified prospective Indian immigrants to the US is basically uniform across the succesor states India would be a subdivided into.
> most people in Finland and Austria have more cultural similarity to their neighbors than I do with the 2nd generation Chinese immigrants that live on one side of me and the French-Creole couple on the other side.
Do you think there are no Chinese immigrants in European countries?
My examples were about people who have been living natively in certain areas for centuries. Of course, on top of that, we have had immigrants from all over the world in recent decades: Turkish people came to Germany in large numbers in the 50s, Tamil people fleed Sri Lanka in the 90s and came also to Europe, then all the refugees from the Balkan Wars and more recently from Syria and Ukraine, ...
Is NYC more ethnically and culturally diverse than a random mountain village in Austria? Yes, for sure. But Berlin is also more diverse than some random town in Montana. That's just a feature of big cities.
As a whole, though, I feel you're severely underestimating the cultural diversity in Europe.
We have the exact same problems with different cultural segments of the population having distinct discourses about important issues such as gender roles, LGBTQ, COVID, the war in Ukraine, etc.
>> Why should a French, German or Romanian arbitrarily have special rights to enter my country, while an Indian, Mexican or Nigerian is subjected to ever harsher visa rules?
Without saying that this is right, the general logic is that the countries in the EU have met certain criteria (economic, legal, etc.) in order to join the club. The citizens of these countries have mostly similar standards of living, education, judicial systems, etc. Hence, allowing free movement is not a big deal because it is assumed the citizens of one country won't move en masse to another, and if a significant number of them do, they won't be a financial burden on the host country. There are also a bunch of reciprocal and cost-sharing agreements (e.g. medical services may be charged to the country of origin, etc.)
This whole framework and inter-country cooperation doesn't exist with respect to countries outside of the EU, and that's why these countries aren't willing to take a chance with universal freedom of movement. (Just a recent example comes to mind where a bunch of non-EU migrants were deported from Greece for various violations and their country of origin refused to accept them. In the EU any member state can deport/remove citizens of another member for certain violations and the country of origin is legally required to accept them.)
> One would think Europe would change immigration law to encourage people who would naturally have some affinity or ties to the region.
Is this a roundabout way of saying that European countries ought to prefer white immigrants? Europe has a little bit of history with regard to governments making laws that discriminate on the basis of race. Might not be such a great idea to turn back the clock on that one.
> I think the actual reason is something like a vast western empire promoting diversity as a good thing for your country.
The diversity train is a relatively new phenomenon.
EU expansion to the East had many factors. One of them being to have less barriers to get a cheap seasonal workforce pick vegetables in western EU countries [1].
Go back a few more decades: Germany in particular asked hundreds of thousands of people from Turkey to immigrate into Germany to help rebuild it after WW2. It's now the biggest foreign-origin population in Germany.
> why are you not counting immigration within Europe when looking at European immigration?
That would make about as much sense as counting immigration between different US states. I know it's fashionable to pretend someone immigrating from a neighboring country is the same as from half-way across the world, but it's just not so.
> Most European countries have much more stringent immigration policies
Depends on your definition of stringent. You picked the one outlier - Switzerland - where apparently your canton gets to vote on whether you become a citizen. Or something crazy like that, idk.
Most European nations I'm familiar with let you become a permanent resident after residing legally for a certain number of years, and passing a language test. Then citizenship after some more years and more tests.
Is the US very different from that? Unless you're born in India or China...in which case, you might have an easier time in Europe.
> What stops this from happening in the Schengen Area
EU countries are much more uniform than the rest of the world in their level of welfare support and social development (e.g. UK and even Portugal are much more alike than say Bangladesh and the US).
Besides, there has been a lot of movement from poorer countries to richer countries within the EU, and many people in the richer countries are angry about this. See Brexit etc.
> In some other countries, your ethnicity/background/religion would get in the way far more than in the US.
I completely disagree. I'm from Europe and applied to a few American-based companies and they all had these ridiculous forms related to anti-discrimination and the like. Is it that big of a problem in the US? That's whay I'm asking myself when I have to fill in those forms. Why do you have to know my ethnicity? Why do people in the US _constantly_, and I mean CONSTANTLY, talk about their origins? Literally no one cares in Europe, but it's always said in the US. "Native-american btw", "african-american btw", etc. I personally think this is an issue in the US, but it isn't that big of an issue in Europe.
> This is not to say we don't have room for improvement, we do. Just that we're more meritocratic than certain other first world countries.
I personally think that this is an illusion. Europe is in my opinion a lot more meritocratic than the US from my visits. I think the US is very hypocritical when it talks about immigrants as the whole of the US is made of immigrants, just all from different generations. Europe doesn't currently have a problem with building a wall to keep the Mexicans out or anything.
> I'll gladly agree that Europe is gloriously diverse, but you really should stop underestimating American cultural diversity.
Same differences exist in Europe in particular countries. Mountainers in Poland have different culture from Silesians, or Kashubi. Kashubi have different language, too. And Poland is one of the least diverse countries in Europe thanks to Stalin forced expulsions.
Switzerland has smaller population than New York City, and still have 3 official languages (or 4, depending on how you count). And there are countries in western Europe that have serious separatist movements. More serious than Texas.
People all over the world watch Hollywood movies, so we know at least something about cultural diversity of USA. People in USA don't know anything about smaller countries in Europe, so they assume it's all the same. Availability heuristic.
I think that it makes it more probable for people in USA to underestimate Europe diversity than the other way around.
> Certainly in Europe where countries are tiny the vast distances we have here are incomprehensible to them.
Don't you just see Europe as one groupcomprised of many small countries, the same way you see the US comprised of smaller states ?
Even from your comment, stating you're from Europe is basically that. I've been to both, I'm not sure that makes such a difference except the EU doesn't have huge deserts, but I'm not sure that's a big point if we're focusing on human culture.
> Unlimited immigration is unsustainable (Europe can’t support 3bn people), so there have to be some limits.
If it were just about population, why is there no concern with natural population rise due to birth rates?
> Also, I value my culture (not in the “food & language” sense, but in “enlightenment values” sense), and have no interest in admitting more people who don’t value or respect this culture.
Surely then it would be possible to institute a "cultural test" where people who do agree with "enlightenment values" are free to immigrate. I also think it is incredibly questionable for europe to lay claim to "enlightenment values", as if those are a single unified system of values that belongs solely to europe and is matched by modern european states.
> Maybe they should think about getting interested people on a citizenship path
One thing you'll find out is that the EU member states (along with Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc.) are really not very friendly or welcoming in terms of "path to citizenship".
One thing I'd like to see actually is open immigration and potentially more free trade between the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. I'd add Ireland but I think EU status would be a problem.
> But if we extend the same logic to the whole world, isn't the EU basically a racist organisation? Why should a French, German or Romanian arbitrarily have special rights to enter my country, while an Indian, Mexican or Nigerian is subjected to ever harsher visa rules?
Because that right is reciprocated to British people in those countries!
> The EU has a very strict immigration policy for people outside of the EU and it also has natural language barriers that bar foreigners from almost all jobs.
I would disagree, or do you mean immigration as in naturalisation? The EU's blue card [1] system will give you a residence permit (initially a limited one that you'll have to extend after a few years, and afterwards usually a permanent one) if you have a master's degree and a job offer where the salary is market-compatible. As for the language, places like Germany are desperate for IT people that the companies are adopting English as the corporate language, it also helps with the employees from other EU countries who are there thanks to freedom of movement.
> The US' population is much more diverse than European countries
Having lived in both continents I can tell you this is absolutely not true, particularly in Western Europe.
Large Western European cities/capitals are usually a huge melting pot of locals, foreign Europeans, North Africans, Sub-Saharan Africans, Middle Easterners, Central Americans, South Americans, South Asians and East Asians.
Cities like Amsterdam and London are even white-minority, highlighting how multicultural Europe can be.
Go to some of the largest German cities and you'll feel like you're at a UN meeting.
> I think it's likely we are leaving a subsection of our population behind economically and this is showing up in the population numbers.
Well, this is unfortunately a human problem and I'm not entirely sure if there's a solution or if it could be mitigated. I like UBI as a concept and I do think it would be enormously beneficial for humanity as a whole, but I'm not sure if it's feasible.
>Within Europe you have cultures and mentalities as diverse as you can imagine.
Isn't it the same with US?
>... try to apply knowledge about something that 'worked' in one EU country to another invariably fail.
Have any source for that information?
> I've yet to hear someone call themselves a European first.
Well, your anecdotal evidence matches the study data[0]. Only three percent of EU citizens identify as "european first". However more people identify as "nationality and European" than "only my nationalty".
>Language is the least of the problem.
Common language for 90+ of citizens would go a long way to establish common culture.
Why do you think India and China aren't diverse by themselves, and within themselves? India probably has more languages than all of Europe. Would it be sensible to treat Europe (or even just the Schengen area) as one country, to "increase diversity"? I think that would be dumb. European countries are obviously very diverse and we see that more clearly because they're sovereign nations on a map. India and China are mega-countries and we fail to appreciate the diversity within.
> Basically no one from small nations would get a green card
Why would that happen? It would be a first-come-first-served system. If a person from a small nation applies, they'll get it at the same time as someone from a bigger nation who applied at the same time as them (modulo processing time variances).
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