I'm not saying they will. I'm only saying the US has become far less attractive to immigrants over recent years. It might not even have any impact on the US, who knows.
From a purely economic perspective immigrants capture almost all net economic boost for themselves. Capital/property owners get a small boost. It's a wash or net negative for the general population of the country.
That's from a purely economic perspective. What nobody ever wants to discuss is that creating an ever-more culturally and ethnically fractious country is a huge problem looking ahead decades quite aside from near term GNP prints.
Immigration into the US from central & south America has been steadily going down for years now. The demographic change is mostly due to differences in birthrates, not even whittling down immigration to 0 will change this.
This is inaccurate. More people, even low skilled ones are still a huge benefit to your society. They buy goods and services in the local economy increasing demand and work tax paying jobs. Immigrants children grow up to greatly out earn their parents pay way more in taxes than they their parents. The only immigrant group that could be considered a liability are older low skilled workers who have passed the age to have kids and live a couple of decades of working years. The reason certain countries don’t like immigration is because a conservative faction wants to keep society in place.
Do you think immigration has disadvantages? Could you name them?
For some people the disadvantages outweigh the advantages (like offering a solution to birth rates, provided low birth rates are a problem). Immigrants and their descendants can and have swung election results. Nothing wrong with this but for some people this is too big of a disadvantage.
This shouldn't surprise you, there are many countries with very little immigration, very strict immigration laws, and low birth rates, so for them the disadvantages outweigh the advantages, and they are not even democracies.
Your belief does not make it a reality. Studies have shown that all kinds of immigration greatly benefits host countries, and especially aging Western ones with declining populations.
Immigration is a complex issue and can be problematic in many ways. But blaming the poorest of the immigrants for taking away the share of the wealth of the bottom 80% of the lopsided Pareto distribution is disingenuous.
"nation of immigrants" - You know that kinda getting old.
We're all immigrants if you dig back far enough, but in reality if you were born and raised in a country, you are not an immigrant and within a couple of generations, there are likely to be no real residual effects.
There are exceptions to this rule which are related to inheritance and cabals of cultre but for the most part, immigration seems to be a net gain, it's a lack of social mobility that is causing problems.
Modern Europe immigration policy seem are a bit fucked up, but I imagine you can pretty well correlate education and welfare with crime stats, but beyond that, hardening your ordinary criminal doesn't seem to help anyone.
Immigrants have plenty to lose. Take my own example. Living in America for a few years (first as a graduate student and then as a software developer), I have made strong connections and a social life here. I lose everything if I don't make it.
There are two big problems for immigrants:
The Green Card process takes ~10 years. Imagine staying put in one company for 10 years. The legal immigration system is so haplessly broken that if I lose my job (say, late in the GC process), I get kicked out. My wife can't work. I cannot have kids without them confusing nationalities. I cannot buy a house. Immigrants are living on a thin strand, sacrificing a lot.
Motivated immigrants, who wish to start a company, cannot do so either because there are no visas to do so easily. Until we get a Green Card, we cannot quit our jobs and go on a road trip of the US, like my colleagues do. Realize that there is an opportunity cost, a small window, in which we all are highly motivated to start something. We immigrants typically waste that window in simply waiting for the Green Card to arrive (all-the-while, hoping we don't get laid-off).
The loss of this opportunity is one of the biggest reasons why many choose to head back to their own countries to start companies.
In summary, Immigrants have A LOT to lose. Grass is not green on this side either.
Source: Me. An Immigrant working in SV who's not allowed to start a company because of the ridiculous immigration system.
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