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Europe - sure US has mostly solved our population aging problem with having fairly open immigration and high immigration numbers relative to the rest of the dev

Europe - sure US has mostly solved our population aging problem with having fairly open immigration and high immigration numbers relative to the rest of the developed/rich world.. Now if politics change that, it's another story.

zirgs 4y ago
High immigration numbers are fine for countries like the USA. But for many small countries it's a death sentence.
- ericmay 4y ago
  Why? And do you mean small geographically or small population-wise? Perhaps both/neither?
  - zirgs 4y ago
    Population wise. Imagine 500k immigrants a year. It would be nothing for a country like India. But it would be a death sentence for Iceland.
    - ericmay 4y ago
      Death sentence in that you envision the services and economy can’t handle that many new immigrants?
      - zirgs 4y ago
        Iceland with 80% of immigrants would not be Iceland any more. Its language and culture would be completely marginalised and replaced with something else.
        steveBK123 4y ago
        No one is saying Iceland should take 80% immigrants. A rational conversation is that US takes a higher % of immigrants than most of the developed world. No one sane is comparing notional numbers comparing a 330M country & small 5M countries. Talking % terms means it doesn't matter the base size.
        andsoitis 4y ago
        > Talking % terms means it doesn't matter the base size. I think wether or not it matters depends on whether the effects of an increase is linear, sub linear, exponential, etc.
        distances 4y ago
        That's a bogus reason though. No culture is static, Japan or US or Germany 100 years ago were very different to the current day. Culture is how citizens live their lives, and it's pointless to try to immortalize something that is naturally in constant flux.
        ericmay 4y ago
        On the other hand, what rights do people have or not have to preserve their culture or their way of life? An exaggerated example, but a good litmus test here is something simple like are you ok with lots of Americans moving to country X (let's use China and Norway) and making it culturally more like America? You can't say that this is a problem but then Iceland (since that's the example we're using) being weary of accepting large numbers of immigrants out of fear of culture change isn't a valid concern also.
        avar 4y ago
        Iceland's combined first- and second generation immigration is around 18% of the total population[1], [2] seems to suggest it's around 25% for the US. The country has also signed up to accept practically unlimited immigration. It's a part of the EEA (the economic area of the EU), meaning that a population of around 500 million can move there tomorrow with very few legal hurdles. "Unlimited" in the sense that the difference between 500 million and the world population of 8 billion hardly matters for a country with a population of far less than 1/2 million. 1. https://www.hagstofa.is/utgafur/frettasafn/mannfjoldi/mannfjoldi-eftir-bakgrunni-2022/ https://www.hagstofa.is/utgafur/frettasafn/mannfjoldi/mannfj... 2. https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2016/demo/P23-214.pdf https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...
        steveBK123 4y ago
        Sure, but the practical limit is basically the attractiveness of an environment, economy & availability of jobs. All things being equal, how many people want to flock to Iceland to work in tourism and fishing? Maybe with the right immigrants one could replicate their last financial bubble & crisis.
        avar 4y ago
        As an Icelander, our traditional culture has already been completely marginalized and destroyed by the outlawing of piracy, as well as of raping and pillaging. If the rest of the world would agree to look the other way on those topics, I'm sure we could be persuaded to once again accept double-digit percentages of the population as sla..., ahem, immigrants every year.
        kerpotgh 4y ago
        It depends, if it’s slow enough you’ll end up with a hybrid culture that has parts of both.
        hnbad 4y ago
        Why is that a problem? Languages and culture change all the time. Iceland is hardly "Iceland" anymore compared to any sufficiently past "Iceland" (e.g. pre-Internet, pre-aviation, pre-motor vehicles, etc) but I don't see any reason why that is a bad thing in principle. This seems an odd concern to be raised in a language that can charitably be described as the bastard child of Norse and French mostly spoken by people who never sat foot in Great Britain. You also seem to assume all of those immigrants are culturally and language-wise homogeneous, which is unlikely to be the case unless, say, something catastrophic happens to Canada causing its population to flee to neighboring countries (and even then that's a bad example because Canada is heterogeneous itself).
    - gotorazor 4y ago
      Considering that Iceland has a population of less than 400k, more than doubling the population over a 12-month period in the cold would be a death sentence not just the the country, but for all the new immigrants that are moving there.
manuelabeledo 4y ago
> US has mostly solved our population aging problem with having fairly open immigration and high immigration numbers relative to the rest of the developed/rich world I'm not sure about that. For starters, it's easier to immigrate to Germany or the UK than to the US, and by percentage of the population, Germany does host a higher number of immigrants. The US does accept more foreigners yearly, but it makes it a long way, if any, to stay in the country permanently.
- codekansas 4y ago
  A key difference is jus soli citizenship in the Americas, if you're born here you're a citizen
  - steveBK123 4y ago
    Yup, we don't have permanent citizen sub-classes like Koreans in Japan who end up being neither Korean nor Japanese even multiple generations in.
- eldaisfish 4y ago
  Skills. The US hoovers up the world’s skilled immigrants. Germany - like much of the non-english speaking world is left with the scraps. Don’t take it from me, look at what the German government is doing with allowing foreigners to immigrate there. When a country throws open its doors the way Germany has, you must ask the question - why?
  - m0llusk 4y ago
    Population crash, that's why. You can choose not to have kids but enterprises cannot choose to not have employees. People can be taught new skills.
- nemo44x 4y ago
  Maybe legally but we literally have millions of people that come here to work every year and are not documented. Nearly 3 million last year and although there are many refugees that are here for help, it's mainly people that want to work in everything from kitchens, the landscaping, to construction, to farming, to whatever else can make use of people that want to work hard every day at a manual job and show up.

zirgs 4y ago

High immigration numbers are fine for countries like the USA. But for many small countries it's a death sentence.

ericmay 4y ago
Why? And do you mean small geographically or small population-wise? Perhaps both/neither?
- zirgs 4y ago
  Population wise. Imagine 500k immigrants a year. It would be nothing for a country like India. But it would be a death sentence for Iceland.
  - ericmay 4y ago
    Death sentence in that you envision the services and economy can’t handle that many new immigrants?
    - zirgs 4y ago
      Iceland with 80% of immigrants would not be Iceland any more. Its language and culture would be completely marginalised and replaced with something else.
      - steveBK123 4y ago
        No one is saying Iceland should take 80% immigrants. A rational conversation is that US takes a higher % of immigrants than most of the developed world. No one sane is comparing notional numbers comparing a 330M country & small 5M countries. Talking % terms means it doesn't matter the base size.
        andsoitis 4y ago
        > Talking % terms means it doesn't matter the base size. I think wether or not it matters depends on whether the effects of an increase is linear, sub linear, exponential, etc.
      - distances 4y ago
        That's a bogus reason though. No culture is static, Japan or US or Germany 100 years ago were very different to the current day. Culture is how citizens live their lives, and it's pointless to try to immortalize something that is naturally in constant flux.
        ericmay 4y ago
        On the other hand, what rights do people have or not have to preserve their culture or their way of life? An exaggerated example, but a good litmus test here is something simple like are you ok with lots of Americans moving to country X (let's use China and Norway) and making it culturally more like America? You can't say that this is a problem but then Iceland (since that's the example we're using) being weary of accepting large numbers of immigrants out of fear of culture change isn't a valid concern also.
        avar 4y ago
        Iceland's combined first- and second generation immigration is around 18% of the total population[1], [2] seems to suggest it's around 25% for the US. The country has also signed up to accept practically unlimited immigration. It's a part of the EEA (the economic area of the EU), meaning that a population of around 500 million can move there tomorrow with very few legal hurdles. "Unlimited" in the sense that the difference between 500 million and the world population of 8 billion hardly matters for a country with a population of far less than 1/2 million. 1. https://www.hagstofa.is/utgafur/frettasafn/mannfjoldi/mannfjoldi-eftir-bakgrunni-2022/ https://www.hagstofa.is/utgafur/frettasafn/mannfjoldi/mannfj... 2. https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2016/demo/P23-214.pdf https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...
        steveBK123 4y ago
        Sure, but the practical limit is basically the attractiveness of an environment, economy & availability of jobs. All things being equal, how many people want to flock to Iceland to work in tourism and fishing? Maybe with the right immigrants one could replicate their last financial bubble & crisis.
      - avar 4y ago
        As an Icelander, our traditional culture has already been completely marginalized and destroyed by the outlawing of piracy, as well as of raping and pillaging. If the rest of the world would agree to look the other way on those topics, I'm sure we could be persuaded to once again accept double-digit percentages of the population as sla..., ahem, immigrants every year.
      - kerpotgh 4y ago
        It depends, if it’s slow enough you’ll end up with a hybrid culture that has parts of both.
      - hnbad 4y ago
        Why is that a problem? Languages and culture change all the time. Iceland is hardly "Iceland" anymore compared to any sufficiently past "Iceland" (e.g. pre-Internet, pre-aviation, pre-motor vehicles, etc) but I don't see any reason why that is a bad thing in principle. This seems an odd concern to be raised in a language that can charitably be described as the bastard child of Norse and French mostly spoken by people who never sat foot in Great Britain. You also seem to assume all of those immigrants are culturally and language-wise homogeneous, which is unlikely to be the case unless, say, something catastrophic happens to Canada causing its population to flee to neighboring countries (and even then that's a bad example because Canada is heterogeneous itself).
  - gotorazor 4y ago
    Considering that Iceland has a population of less than 400k, more than doubling the population over a 12-month period in the cold would be a death sentence not just the the country, but for all the new immigrants that are moving there.

manuelabeledo 4y ago

> US has mostly solved our population aging problem with having fairly open immigration and high immigration numbers relative to the rest of the developed/rich world I'm not sure about that. For starters, it's easier to immigrate to Germany or the UK than to the US, and by percentage of the population, Germany does host a higher number of immigrants. The US does accept more foreigners yearly, but it makes it a long way, if any, to stay in the country permanently.

codekansas 4y ago
A key difference is jus soli citizenship in the Americas, if you're born here you're a citizen
- steveBK123 4y ago
  Yup, we don't have permanent citizen sub-classes like Koreans in Japan who end up being neither Korean nor Japanese even multiple generations in.
eldaisfish 4y ago
Skills. The US hoovers up the world’s skilled immigrants. Germany - like much of the non-english speaking world is left with the scraps. Don’t take it from me, look at what the German government is doing with allowing foreigners to immigrate there. When a country throws open its doors the way Germany has, you must ask the question - why?
- m0llusk 4y ago
  Population crash, that's why. You can choose not to have kids but enterprises cannot choose to not have employees. People can be taught new skills.
nemo44x 4y ago
Maybe legally but we literally have millions of people that come here to work every year and are not documented. Nearly 3 million last year and although there are many refugees that are here for help, it's mainly people that want to work in everything from kitchens, the landscaping, to construction, to farming, to whatever else can make use of people that want to work hard every day at a manual job and show up.