2 ms·

> Name a single developed country in the last 70 years where high immigration from the developing world has improved quality of life and the social and politica

> Name a single developed country in the last 70 years where high immigration from the developing world has improved quality of life and the social and political order? OK: The developed country you live in — and to which your own family immigrated from the developing world. Sure, sometimes it takes a few generations to assimilate the newcomers. But it can definitely be a good thing overall. I'm curious why you arbitrarily limit your time frame to the last 70 years. One pair of my own grandparents, who were lower-middle-class or working-class people AFAIK, immigrated to the U.S. from the Balkans in the early 20th century. They were part of a flood of immigration from eastern and southern Europe. Back then, that part of Europe would have been regarded by many "real Americans" as part of what we now call "the developing world." My siblings and cousins, though, are quite firm that our grandparents and parents made net-positive contributions to American society, however modest those contributions might have been in those initial years. EDIT: On another branch of my family tree, my great-grandparents came here in the late 19th century as part of a continuing Irish diaspora that had started in response to the Great Famine. In that era, the Irish were viewed with disdain by many of the same "real Americans." (My late grandmother used to tell of seeing signs in the early 20th century: No Irish need apply.) Today, anyone who claimed that all those Irish should never have come here would be regarded as totally out of touch with reality.

rayiner 2y ago
I limited the time horizon to 70 years because Japan’s experience with immigration is much more likely to be like Sweden’s or France’s than America’s. But America isn’t even an exception. Without immigration, America would be more like Australia or Canada in the late 20th century. Those are better countries than the U.S.: more socially cohesive, better run, lower in crime, less corrupt, and more efficient. Canadians and Australians get much better government per tax dollar because they spend far less political capital bridging over group conflicts. The influx of immigration I was a part of made Virginia a worse place too. It was an extremely orderly and well-run state when I was growing up in the 1990s. It’s still coasting on that, but in 30 years it will go the way of California. It’s not a coincidence that there are zero immigrant societies that function as well as Denmark or Sweden. Disorder and conflict is part and parcel of putting different cultural groups in the same place and having them try to run a country together.
- dctoedt 2y ago
  If time travel is invented in your lifetime, you should go back a thousand years or so and have a talk with King Cnut — he of the legend of showing his courtiers just how much control he had over the tide [0] — about your views on immigration. Immigration comes because migrants are dissatisfied enough with the status quo to take risks to do something about it. That ingrained tendency is a major part of human progress. The accompanying disruption can be uncomfortable. But it plays a big role in how humanity's learning things we didn't know about reality — and in figuring out how to deal with it. Some familiar examples: The amount of life-improving technology that came from WWII, the Cold War, and the Space Race. Advances in vaccine research instigated by the global spread of covid-19. And so on, and so forth. (Back in the 1980s, Jared Diamond argued that humanity was better off millennia ago, when people were hunter-gatherers, and that the invention of agriculture was the worst mistake in human history [1]. Shockingly, his argument didn't seem to get any traction.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cnut#The_story_of_Cnut_and_the_waves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cnut#The_story_of_Cnut_and_the... [1] https://www.livinganthropologically.com/archaeology/agriculture-worst-mistake/ https://www.livinganthropologically.com/archaeology/agricult...

rayiner 2y ago

I limited the time horizon to 70 years because Japan’s experience with immigration is much more likely to be like Sweden’s or France’s than America’s. But America isn’t even an exception. Without immigration, America would be more like Australia or Canada in the late 20th century. Those are better countries than the U.S.: more socially cohesive, better run, lower in crime, less corrupt, and more efficient. Canadians and Australians get much better government per tax dollar because they spend far less political capital bridging over group conflicts. The influx of immigration I was a part of made Virginia a worse place too. It was an extremely orderly and well-run state when I was growing up in the 1990s. It’s still coasting on that, but in 30 years it will go the way of California. It’s not a coincidence that there are zero immigrant societies that function as well as Denmark or Sweden. Disorder and conflict is part and parcel of putting different cultural groups in the same place and having them try to run a country together.

dctoedt 2y ago
If time travel is invented in your lifetime, you should go back a thousand years or so and have a talk with King Cnut — he of the legend of showing his courtiers just how much control he had over the tide [0] — about your views on immigration. Immigration comes because migrants are dissatisfied enough with the status quo to take risks to do something about it. That ingrained tendency is a major part of human progress. The accompanying disruption can be uncomfortable. But it plays a big role in how humanity's learning things we didn't know about reality — and in figuring out how to deal with it. Some familiar examples: The amount of life-improving technology that came from WWII, the Cold War, and the Space Race. Advances in vaccine research instigated by the global spread of covid-19. And so on, and so forth. (Back in the 1980s, Jared Diamond argued that humanity was better off millennia ago, when people were hunter-gatherers, and that the invention of agriculture was the worst mistake in human history [1]. Shockingly, his argument didn't seem to get any traction.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cnut#The_story_of_Cnut_and_the_waves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cnut#The_story_of_Cnut_and_the... [1] https://www.livinganthropologically.com/archaeology/agriculture-worst-mistake/ https://www.livinganthropologically.com/archaeology/agricult...