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>> as high as 10M Sorry, I wasn’t clear. I meant yearly migrants. If every year fewer applications are processed then filed, it adds to the backlog. So the onl

>> as high as 10M Sorry, I wasn’t clear. I meant yearly migrants. If every year fewer applications are processed then filed, it adds to the backlog. So the only information you get by looking at the backlog is total number of willing migrants. However they (or rather we, as I am personally one of the applicants in that backlog) are not gonna migrate here all at once, some are willing but not able (for whatever reason), some are old and no longer relevant, some are duplicate, etc. In reality an open border policy would come gradually. So the number of yearly migrants would gradually grow, until it reaches a local peak and then slow down. Many willing people will delay their migration if they can’t find a job, etc. So I pulled that lower bound of 1M from current migration trends. Last year it was about 700k but that was a covid year, so 1M is an easy guess of a lower bound. As for the upper bound I just took a wild guess... There is no way of knowing that number unless you do some extensive survey, and plug it into a computational model (I wonder if anyone has ever done that). But honestly the actual number doesn’t actually matter. Societal modelling is a funny science with a lot of interacting variables. The current state of prohibitory migration actually affects the behavior of current migrants, if the migration would be free, the behavior would be different (think decriminalizing drugs). My skepticism about the concerns people have for free migrations is that I actually see little evidence to warrant these concerns. People say stuff like: “puts a strain on society” without explaining how, or by showing evidence. Historically societies have grown by way more then 17% over a short period and did just fine. Currently the societies which are taking many migrants seem to handle it kind of well actually. There are rural communities in Iceland which grow by 30-40% in a single year by taking in 4-5 refugee families, and do just fine. So given our evidence so far, I would say that any concerns about “opening up the floodgates” are unjustified.

daenz 4y ago
>People say stuff like: “puts a strain on society” without explaining how, or by showing evidence. I did explain how though. Do you disagree that there is a lack of affordable housing? If not, then adding more people makes it worse. Do you disagree that workers aren't being compensated fairly? If not, then adding more people makes it worse. Do you disagree that your average person doesn't have access to inexpensive medical care? If not, then adding more people makes it worse. Tell me which of those points you disagree with, and I can point to evidence.
- runarberg 4y ago
  Like I said, Societal modelling is a funny science. These things are really dynamic. I can agree with your points that there is a lack of affordable housing and that common workers are underpaid, but at the same time disagree with your conclusion that allowing free migration will makes matter worse. In fact a plausible dynamic is that seeing the potential surge in the demand for cheap housing, a developer might seize the opportunity, lobby their local government for more liberal zoning and start building small and cheap housing to be rented mainly to temporary workers coming with free migration. A more plausible scenario is that migrants will choose to delay their migration until they have secured a high enough paying job and housing they can afford. (Maybe they will get a job in the now booming construction industry.) There are similarly complex dynamics with the labor market, perhaps the surge in new workers will push further unionization and actually increase the wages. Or—more likely—xenophobic politicians will fear the surge of migrants, and as a counter measure raise the local minimum wage, thinking that saturating the labor market makes is so companies won’t be able to afford migrant workers. The point is, we don’t have any reason to believe one way or the other These models are complex and it is probably impossible to construct an unbiased one. As it stands we can only look at the evidence from history and current examples. And they do seem to indicate that the worries people have of free migration are not justified.
  - daenz 4y ago
    It sounds like you're saying that you want to overload the social systems with immigrants so that they become overburdened and then *magic handwaving* a utopia emerges. You're talking about playing with peoples lives as if they're fun experiments, while at the same time acknowledging that you don't understand how complex these systems are or how they'll behave. And if you're wrong, everyone is worse off. Can you understand why people aren't interested in policies that come from that perspective?
    - runarberg 4y ago
      You are misreading into my statements, and putting words in my mouth. Perhaps I was not clear enough. But I only took these examples to demonstrate how dynamic these things are. If you can construct a hypothetical that turns things one way, I can just as easily create an equally plausible scenario that turns things the other. The point of my exercise was simply to demonstrate that, not to advocate for some utopia. Current implementations of free migrations don’t come as some experiments, they come from policymakers recognizing the benefits of free movement of people. This is one of the fundamental rights (the four freedoms) within the EU (or, to be more accurate, the Schengen Area). Also, like I said, free migration won’t come all at once. The EU currently has free migration within a certain area. I hope this area will gradually expand (though I’m pessimistic it will reach far outside of the continent). Similarly free migration for the USA might start with Canada and Mexico, then expand to the Americas, and the Pacific, then maybe merge with Europe’s, Africa’s, etc. Each expansion will, no doubt, be met with fierce resistance from xenophobes, so you don’t have to worry that this would happen quickly. If I’m wrong (which I probably am; as my hypotheticals were never meant to be read as predictions) this policy can easily be slowed down, and even reversed. However, history and current implementations would suggest that there is at least little harm and potentially many benefits we are missing out on by keeping our migrations so restricted.

daenz 4y ago

>People say stuff like: “puts a strain on society” without explaining how, or by showing evidence. I did explain how though. Do you disagree that there is a lack of affordable housing? If not, then adding more people makes it worse. Do you disagree that workers aren't being compensated fairly? If not, then adding more people makes it worse. Do you disagree that your average person doesn't have access to inexpensive medical care? If not, then adding more people makes it worse. Tell me which of those points you disagree with, and I can point to evidence.

runarberg 4y ago
Like I said, Societal modelling is a funny science. These things are really dynamic. I can agree with your points that there is a lack of affordable housing and that common workers are underpaid, but at the same time disagree with your conclusion that allowing free migration will makes matter worse. In fact a plausible dynamic is that seeing the potential surge in the demand for cheap housing, a developer might seize the opportunity, lobby their local government for more liberal zoning and start building small and cheap housing to be rented mainly to temporary workers coming with free migration. A more plausible scenario is that migrants will choose to delay their migration until they have secured a high enough paying job and housing they can afford. (Maybe they will get a job in the now booming construction industry.) There are similarly complex dynamics with the labor market, perhaps the surge in new workers will push further unionization and actually increase the wages. Or—more likely—xenophobic politicians will fear the surge of migrants, and as a counter measure raise the local minimum wage, thinking that saturating the labor market makes is so companies won’t be able to afford migrant workers. The point is, we don’t have any reason to believe one way or the other These models are complex and it is probably impossible to construct an unbiased one. As it stands we can only look at the evidence from history and current examples. And they do seem to indicate that the worries people have of free migration are not justified.
- daenz 4y ago
  It sounds like you're saying that you want to overload the social systems with immigrants so that they become overburdened and then *magic handwaving* a utopia emerges. You're talking about playing with peoples lives as if they're fun experiments, while at the same time acknowledging that you don't understand how complex these systems are or how they'll behave. And if you're wrong, everyone is worse off. Can you understand why people aren't interested in policies that come from that perspective?
  - runarberg 4y ago
    You are misreading into my statements, and putting words in my mouth. Perhaps I was not clear enough. But I only took these examples to demonstrate how dynamic these things are. If you can construct a hypothetical that turns things one way, I can just as easily create an equally plausible scenario that turns things the other. The point of my exercise was simply to demonstrate that, not to advocate for some utopia. Current implementations of free migrations don’t come as some experiments, they come from policymakers recognizing the benefits of free movement of people. This is one of the fundamental rights (the four freedoms) within the EU (or, to be more accurate, the Schengen Area). Also, like I said, free migration won’t come all at once. The EU currently has free migration within a certain area. I hope this area will gradually expand (though I’m pessimistic it will reach far outside of the continent). Similarly free migration for the USA might start with Canada and Mexico, then expand to the Americas, and the Pacific, then maybe merge with Europe’s, Africa’s, etc. Each expansion will, no doubt, be met with fierce resistance from xenophobes, so you don’t have to worry that this would happen quickly. If I’m wrong (which I probably am; as my hypotheticals were never meant to be read as predictions) this policy can easily be slowed down, and even reversed. However, history and current implementations would suggest that there is at least little harm and potentially many benefits we are missing out on by keeping our migrations so restricted.