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?
I fully support immigration but it is possible for there to be too much, especially if other policies (like building housing) are not in sync. Look at Canada: they have proportionately more immigration per-year than the US and it's likely a large contributing factor to their housing crisis.
Another thing to address is immigration being heavily concentrated in certain cities. I don't think people should be punished based on where they want to move to, or limited from immigrating to certain places instead of others, but the government should probably try to incentivize immigration to be more dispersed.
That said, I think the US could definitely take in more skilled immigrants than we do now. Actually the majority of immigration to the US is not through skilled-labor programs but instead things like family unification. That's kind of silly.
Immigration is a must if you don't have a high enough birthrate to sustain economic growth - because we don't know how to manage a declining economy - and why would you accept that when you have the tool of immigration? Not because there is any fundamental need for a racially or culturally diverse population. Those things seem like they would be beneficial in my opinion, but not required.
We need more immigration it will have at least a temporary salutary effect on our underlying demographic issues. It’s weird to me that no arguments ever seem to reach the mainstream these days that population growth achieved by mass immigration worked for the Americas before ( and by worked I mean in a narrow economic sense it was attended by many bad problems )
In your first post, you were arguing that immigration improves the place. Now you're arguing that we should allow immigration even if it doesn't.
Huh.
If the population is really sparse, immigration really does improve the society -- it allows for specialization, with supermarkets, karate studios, and the like. Then, as the population gets more dense, the marginal benefit of population growth, assuming random average people, decreases. Eventually, it goes negative. At that point, you need to raise the bar -- e.g. only admit high quality immigrants, or family reunification (which benefits citizen family members). The higher the population, the higher the bar needs to get raised.
The problem with your analysis is that it doesn't take into account the total population number. Any advocacy for immigration that doesn't differentiate between a national population of 100 million, 350 million, and 900 million, if that advocacy argues that it benefits the country, is intrinsically defective,
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Together immigrants and their U.S. born children account for roughly 75 percent of annual population increase in the U.S. In absolute terms, that’s an additional 2.25 million people each year.
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We need more if we are to sustain our tax base; immigration only seems high because fertility is relatively low. While it's a lot in absolute terms, the US is only around 180th in terms of population density, well below average.
I don't know if decreased immigration is a cause of the current situation, but it does strike me that increased immigration is a potential solution. Unfortunately it appears unlikely due to the political situation in the US.
I think when you have a country which many more people want to live in than it can realistically sustain, you're bound to end up with a system which isn't equal. It's like a game of musical chairs with 500 people and 5 chairs.
The US has 50m foreign-born residents, the second highest is Germany at 16m. There's no country on Earth which takes in more immigrants (I'm actually one of them!) yet my whole life I've seen nothing but people demanding that they take in even more.
> Your first link notes a slowing down of immigration to US 2017-2020.
A small slowing down, that still left immigration higher than at almost any other point in US history.
> US immigration is, like many things, at a historic peak because population size is at a historic peak. Percentage-wise, foreign born immigrants make of a record high proportion of the US population
Your second sentence directly refutes your first - US immigration is at a historic peak in both absolute and relative (compared to US population) terms.
> Our population is aging..
That's an argument that immigration is necessary, not that it's "very little".
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.
Very good article. His argument definitely makes sense on an individual level. When I was in living in France, I wondered why it was impossible for me to buy a house and live there permanently. It was only because of artificial borders. It didn't make sense.
However, on a population wide basis, it is a different story. The article uses refugees and oppressive governments (exceptions to the rule) in order to make his argument. A tactic I distrust. He does make a good point about the EU, although I think the jury is still out on that one.
I believe we should have more immigration in the US. However, we limit immigration for a reason. And the reason is too many people at once burden the infrastructure. We can only build so many freeways, schools, and hospitals at once. So, a large influx of immigrants will cause traffic, crowded classrooms, and long waits in the emergency rooms. Anyone who lives in LA can tell you this is the case since California has had a rapid population primarily driven by immigrants.
Immigration should be massively increased in the US. The surest way for the US and west to grow its international influence, economy, and live up to its values is through immigration. It’s not a zero sum game: immigrants create jobs for everyone. They increase many forms of diversity and expose us to may PoVs. Multiculturalism works, as exhibited by the higher social capital in major cities compared to the ethnically homogenous rural areas. The West would increase its economic competitiveness with other powers (ie China) that are less likely to increase immigration. This will strengthen the security and influence of western powers, giving them also a worldly outlook compared to those with much less immigration.
Faux immigration like H1B and other guest worker visas cruelly create a second class workforce. It would be more humane to allow more actual immigration.
It’s an obvious policy win, I wish more people would vocally support radically increased immigration.
Yet the US has more immigrants than any other country, with an immigrant percentage comparable to Germany (on the high end of larger European countries)[1]. This sounds like more of a "Nobody Goes There, It’s Too Crowded" argument...
The argument being made conflates illegal and legal immigration. American legal immigration continues to exceed one million annually, easily dwarfing any other country.
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".
This is nothing that increased immigration can't solve. Immigration has insulated the US from the age curve that has afflicted most Western nations for generations.
• The US has too few people.
• The US has too many people.
If the former, we should increase immigration beyond whatever the current levels are.
If the latter, population decline obviously isn't a concern.
Which of these universes do we live in? It can't be both.
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