> Why does a Guatemalan immigrant add more value to American society than a sixth generation Appalachian? Why would a Guatemalan immigrant + a sixth generation

> Why does a Guatemalan immigrant add more value to American society than a sixth generation Appalachian? Why would a Guatemalan immigrant + a sixth generation Appalachian add less value to American society than only a single sixth generation Appalachian? > Where does this thought process come from? Immigration is a source of economic growth at a certain threshold. China doesn't need net immigration because they have too much labour relative to their economic potential, India likewise. The Japanese on the other hand are indeed considering changing their position on immigration because of a labour imbalance.. in 1995 Japan's per capita GDP was nearly double Canada's.. now Canada is crushing Japan - which has become a nation of retirees. Now perhaps there is a magic formula to generate levels of productivity that can offset the fertility issues that come with prosperity but no nation has managed to find it. The fact of the matter is that all modern research seems to indicate that poorer nations waste labour, rich ones lack it - so net immigration works out to be a win-win in general. (The specifics of skilled immigration is more complicated, there are of course some market inefficiencies in all things.) Japan has invested a lot of public resources into figuring out how to age & grow and they've aged and not grown, if you have a solution to offer them that has worked elsewhere I know they would be excited to hear it. It would be very surprising to find a large number of Guatemalans saying “what we need to improve this country is a bunch of non-Guatemalans” where non-Guatemalans implied "cheaper labour" because they have lots of cheap labour doing absolutely nothing productive.