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I didn't suggest immigration was the solution. It's a stopgap, and an accidental one, but one that happens to be working out in America's favor right now. If we

I didn't suggest immigration was the solution. It's a stopgap, and an accidental one, but one that happens to be working out in America's favor right now. If we had an immigration system like Japan's then we'd have demographic decline closer to Japan's than our own. As for the statistics you cited, they're for permanent residency ("green cards"), not immigrant visas. Due to a few strange quirks of the US immigration system, the time it takes from visa to residency increases based on how many other immigrants came from the same country as you. A lot of these people are going to be Mexicans who have been legally residing in the country on one or more visas for the last 10-20 years. I can't seem to find the visa data in this PDF, and the green card numbers are visa datum with time lag, so I'll continue nitpicking them. Almost half of the green cards granted are for immediate family members, and another 166k are other family sponsorships. The other immigration categories (e.g. refugees, diversity visa holders[0], etc) are less than a quarter of the total green card pool. In terms of finding immigrants who are a net positive to society, family sponsorship is arguably a better basis for immigration than employment. There are a lot of employers who game the immigration system[1] to skirt around America's labor laws. Employers don't care about the people they bring in as long as they work for cheap and do what you tell them. So they're bringing people in with no support network beyond a company that deliberately wants to exploit them. [0] For the same reason why America makes Mexicans wait 20 years to get their green card, people from countries underrepresented in the green card pool can apply for a special diversity visa that right-wingers love to complain about despite the fact that it makes the immigrant pool less Mexican [1] Specifically the H-1B visa program. Also, just to put all my cards on the table: my views on immigration are extremely libertarian. Immigration is one of the most dehumanizingly bureaucratic nonsense processes one can go through with a government. The reason why companies are able to abuse H-1B is because you can't switch jobs outside of other potential H-1B sponsors who are going to expect the same out of you. It's a literal immigrant underclass!

somenameforme 3y ago
Visa data is listed under non-immigrant tables. Generally that information isn't very useful because there's a regular and massive flow of people in and out of the country. What you probably want is to see the net migration rate. That factors in all people, citizen and noncitizen, staying minus leaving. That's here. [1] And here is the total population change. [2] Worldometers has both datums combined here. [3] If there was 0 immigration to the US, the population would still be growing at a solid rate. Demographic collapse lags fertility collapse by around 6 decades. That's the time it takes for the first generation (around ~20 years) to have poor fertility, to start dying. And at that point you start seeing stuff happen at a crazy exponential scale. Japan, for instance, is still yet to reach the final boss, since they only collapsed about 40 years ago. The problem with network based immigration is just a subset of the problem with large scale immigration in general. Reduced standards risk creating entirely separate communities that fail to integrate, imperiling the entire system of immigration. For instance Sweden was, at one time, arguably the most immigrant friendly country in the world. But a large influx of immigrants who failed to assimilate has turned Sweden into a country where the Sweden Democrats [4] are looking to become the dominant party. Various countries throughout Europe are seeing similar outcomes, even if to lesser degrees - Geert Wilders/PVV in the Netherlands, AfD in Germany, and so on. The reason employment visas are so limited is because ideally no company should be hiring foreign workers for jobs that could be done by a local worker. Otherwise you create a scenario where not only do you indeed create an underclass as companies just hire the cheapest most easy to exploit workers from anywhere en masse, but you also destroy your own labor force, economy, and ultimately country in the process of it as well. [1] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SMPOPNETMUSA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SMPOPNETMUSA [2] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/B230RC0A052NBEA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/B230RC0A052NBEA [3] - https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population/ https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population... [4] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_Democrats https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_Democrats

somenameforme 3y ago

Visa data is listed under non-immigrant tables. Generally that information isn't very useful because there's a regular and massive flow of people in and out of the country. What you probably want is to see the net migration rate. That factors in all people, citizen and noncitizen, staying minus leaving. That's here. [1] And here is the total population change. [2] Worldometers has both datums combined here. [3] If there was 0 immigration to the US, the population would still be growing at a solid rate. Demographic collapse lags fertility collapse by around 6 decades. That's the time it takes for the first generation (around ~20 years) to have poor fertility, to start dying. And at that point you start seeing stuff happen at a crazy exponential scale. Japan, for instance, is still yet to reach the final boss, since they only collapsed about 40 years ago. The problem with network based immigration is just a subset of the problem with large scale immigration in general. Reduced standards risk creating entirely separate communities that fail to integrate, imperiling the entire system of immigration. For instance Sweden was, at one time, arguably the most immigrant friendly country in the world. But a large influx of immigrants who failed to assimilate has turned Sweden into a country where the Sweden Democrats [4] are looking to become the dominant party. Various countries throughout Europe are seeing similar outcomes, even if to lesser degrees - Geert Wilders/PVV in the Netherlands, AfD in Germany, and so on. The reason employment visas are so limited is because ideally no company should be hiring foreign workers for jobs that could be done by a local worker. Otherwise you create a scenario where not only do you indeed create an underclass as companies just hire the cheapest most easy to exploit workers from anywhere en masse, but you also destroy your own labor force, economy, and ultimately country in the process of it as well. [1] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SMPOPNETMUSA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SMPOPNETMUSA [2] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/B230RC0A052NBEA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/B230RC0A052NBEA [3] - https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population/ https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population... [4] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_Democrats https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_Democrats