3 ms·

> Sometimes the costs are hidden from most people. [..] It’s like immigration The costs of immigration are not hidden, nor are its benefits. Financially speaki

> Sometimes the costs are hidden from most people. [..] It’s like immigration The costs of immigration are not hidden, nor are its benefits. Financially speaking and from the point of view of the state, immigrant are net negative in the first couple of years - and then they are net positive for the rest of their lives. Immigration exists because market demand for workforce exists... I always find hilarious that it is the most free market advocates who tend to ignore that.

monero-xmr 3y ago
I’m an open borders guy but the “sanctuary city” I live in seemed to never consider the costs of such sanctuary.
RajT88 3y ago
> I always find hilarious that it is the most free market advocates who tend to ignore that. A lot of free market advocates don't seem to understand how markets work. One of the main ways you grow an economy is to add people to it. You are adding jobs, by both creating labor supply and demand for goods and services. It's really very simple. The economy is made of people, stupid!
- monero-xmr 3y ago
  Require immigrants to be self-sustaining at some minimum amount. Have a job ready or otherwise prove the ability to pay for your housing (someone willing to board you). Otherwise, instantly applying government handouts to someone without any skills - language or otherwise - and often with kids and disabled relatives - makes the idea of unlimited open immigration a daunting cost.
  - vkou 3y ago
    Open immigration is obviously incompatible with a society that has open social benefits, but the United States currently has neither.
  - RajT88 3y ago
    > Require immigrants to be self-sustaining at some minimum amount. Have a job ready or otherwise prove the ability to pay for your housing (someone willing to board you). These are the sorts of arguments which get trotted out for only certain kinds of immigrants. Where I live in Chicagoland, Eastern European immigrants (Poles especially) face a lot of the same kinds of issues. Lots of signs and documents are printed in English, Spanish and Polish around here. They just try like hell to get here, however they can (often illegally, via visa overstays, just like immigrants from Latin America). But for reasons I will leave as an exercise for the reader, nobody around here is advocating these sorts of rules to be applied to Poles. I used to live in a town that was 49% Latino (really, Mexican was most of that). You will find that most of those folks would pass this test you suggest. Most people are not moving to a country where they have no job and no place to stay - there's always some community of friends and family they are connected with where they can land and get on their feet. Obviously! You'd have to be mad to move your whole family to a place where you have no job and no place to stay. If that option seems attractive to you, then probably conditions in your country of origin are so bad that you really should be a refugee.
    - monero-xmr 3y ago
      That’s fine - let’s codify it then. The law says you have to have that situation, or you can’t come to the US. I’d support it.
      - RajT88 3y ago
        Legal work/family visa holders already have this check: https://www.usa.gov/visas https://www.usa.gov/visas Are you suggesting changes to the visitor visas? https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/tourism-visit/visitor.html https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/tourism-... What you propose doesn't make sense for visitor visas. What exactly are you suggesting, and what problem do you think it is going to solve? Furthermore, if you accept that it's not really that much of a problem and a "Trust but Verify" type of situation, why bother given the risk of unequal/selective enforcement?
        3y ago
dataflow 3y ago
> Immigration exists because market demand for workforce exists The massive wave of migration the US is seeing from (say) Venezuela is due to market demand in the US? Are you sure there isn't a bigger factor driving this?
- liotier 3y ago
  Arbitrage, it is not just for hedge funds. And by now, everyone south of the Mediterranean, or south of the Rio Grande, knows that North America and the EU are not the land of milk and honey. They know what to expect, the price to pay to build a better life. Half of my friends here are sub-saharan Africans, most of whom came illegally, a bunch of which came on the dreaded pneumatic boats through Libya, Morocco and Turkey. One thing is certain: they know an opportunity when they see it and they'll hang on to it. They left their friends, their family, their weather and their food behind - they work to make the adventure worth that. Most fun is that, in practice and not in theory, the French government recognizes that: come illegally, work hard illegally, prove that you don't depend on the state for survival and, in practice, you'll have residency within about five years. It is unwritten and cannot be expressed openly for fear of a xenophobic backlash, but that is administrative reality in France. I could wax lyrical about "land of opportunity" but yes, it is about working to achieve potential, in conditions they don't find on their home market.
  - dataflow 3y ago
    You're conflating "perceived quality of life" with "actual demand in the job market". That's the distinction I was trying to make. I don't get the impression the migrants necessarily know (or have much opportunity to care if so) anything about the job markets at their destinations. They often don't even know where they'll finally end up, let alone what kinds of jobs they'll end up having to take -- or, as many discover, be left unable to take and have to end up on the streets. They just know where they don't want to be (in an impoverished country, in the middle of immediate threats to their lives, etc.), and they know they won't have the same problems they had back home irrespective of whether/how they earn an income, so they solve that part and worry about the rest later.

monero-xmr 3y ago

I’m an open borders guy but the “sanctuary city” I live in seemed to never consider the costs of such sanctuary.

RajT88 3y ago

> I always find hilarious that it is the most free market advocates who tend to ignore that. A lot of free market advocates don't seem to understand how markets work. One of the main ways you grow an economy is to add people to it. You are adding jobs, by both creating labor supply and demand for goods and services. It's really very simple. The economy is made of people, stupid!

monero-xmr 3y ago
Require immigrants to be self-sustaining at some minimum amount. Have a job ready or otherwise prove the ability to pay for your housing (someone willing to board you). Otherwise, instantly applying government handouts to someone without any skills - language or otherwise - and often with kids and disabled relatives - makes the idea of unlimited open immigration a daunting cost.
- vkou 3y ago
  Open immigration is obviously incompatible with a society that has open social benefits, but the United States currently has neither.
- RajT88 3y ago
  > Require immigrants to be self-sustaining at some minimum amount. Have a job ready or otherwise prove the ability to pay for your housing (someone willing to board you). These are the sorts of arguments which get trotted out for only certain kinds of immigrants. Where I live in Chicagoland, Eastern European immigrants (Poles especially) face a lot of the same kinds of issues. Lots of signs and documents are printed in English, Spanish and Polish around here. They just try like hell to get here, however they can (often illegally, via visa overstays, just like immigrants from Latin America). But for reasons I will leave as an exercise for the reader, nobody around here is advocating these sorts of rules to be applied to Poles. I used to live in a town that was 49% Latino (really, Mexican was most of that). You will find that most of those folks would pass this test you suggest. Most people are not moving to a country where they have no job and no place to stay - there's always some community of friends and family they are connected with where they can land and get on their feet. Obviously! You'd have to be mad to move your whole family to a place where you have no job and no place to stay. If that option seems attractive to you, then probably conditions in your country of origin are so bad that you really should be a refugee.
  - monero-xmr 3y ago
    That’s fine - let’s codify it then. The law says you have to have that situation, or you can’t come to the US. I’d support it.
    - RajT88 3y ago
      Legal work/family visa holders already have this check: https://www.usa.gov/visas https://www.usa.gov/visas Are you suggesting changes to the visitor visas? https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/tourism-visit/visitor.html https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/tourism-... What you propose doesn't make sense for visitor visas. What exactly are you suggesting, and what problem do you think it is going to solve? Furthermore, if you accept that it's not really that much of a problem and a "Trust but Verify" type of situation, why bother given the risk of unequal/selective enforcement?
      - 3y ago

dataflow 3y ago

> Immigration exists because market demand for workforce exists The massive wave of migration the US is seeing from (say) Venezuela is due to market demand in the US? Are you sure there isn't a bigger factor driving this?

liotier 3y ago
Arbitrage, it is not just for hedge funds. And by now, everyone south of the Mediterranean, or south of the Rio Grande, knows that North America and the EU are not the land of milk and honey. They know what to expect, the price to pay to build a better life. Half of my friends here are sub-saharan Africans, most of whom came illegally, a bunch of which came on the dreaded pneumatic boats through Libya, Morocco and Turkey. One thing is certain: they know an opportunity when they see it and they'll hang on to it. They left their friends, their family, their weather and their food behind - they work to make the adventure worth that. Most fun is that, in practice and not in theory, the French government recognizes that: come illegally, work hard illegally, prove that you don't depend on the state for survival and, in practice, you'll have residency within about five years. It is unwritten and cannot be expressed openly for fear of a xenophobic backlash, but that is administrative reality in France. I could wax lyrical about "land of opportunity" but yes, it is about working to achieve potential, in conditions they don't find on their home market.
- dataflow 3y ago
  You're conflating "perceived quality of life" with "actual demand in the job market". That's the distinction I was trying to make. I don't get the impression the migrants necessarily know (or have much opportunity to care if so) anything about the job markets at their destinations. They often don't even know where they'll finally end up, let alone what kinds of jobs they'll end up having to take -- or, as many discover, be left unable to take and have to end up on the streets. They just know where they don't want to be (in an impoverished country, in the middle of immediate threats to their lives, etc.), and they know they won't have the same problems they had back home irrespective of whether/how they earn an income, so they solve that part and worry about the rest later.