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While I get where you're coming from, I think there's a middle ground that isn't just "let everyone in" or "shut it all down." One idea is a market-based immigr

While I get where you're coming from, I think there's a middle ground that isn't just "let everyone in" or "shut it all down." One idea is a market-based immigration system—basically, you pay an entry fee to immigrate, which adjusts based on things like age. So younger people who have their whole working lives ahead of them would pay less, older folks would pay more. This could replace the broken discretionary system we have now, where it’s all about family ties and not what we need economically. Plus, it would cut down on smuggling, raise a ton of revenue, and make immigration more efficient. It’s a practical way to let people in, without completely open borders, and would bring in the workers we actually need. It’s not about scrapping border security—just rethinking how we approach immigration to make it work better for everyone.

kmeisthax 2y ago
Family reunification visas have helped America dodge several bullets when it comes to immigration. We're actually one of the easier countries to get admitted to, and we know how to integrate large numbers of unskilled migrants at scale. The trick is that family members already provide a support structure for new migrants, who integrate, and form the support structure for the next wave of migrants. Do this across every nationality ever and you have basically the US's current demography. A "What we need economically" immigration system is what's currently eating the EU alive. EU countries basically don't do any work integrating immigrants, they expect everyone to be an economically desirable immigrant that can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Which is great until you have a refugee crisis, or two, and now your country's flooded with people you don't know how to integrate, your native population is turning hard-right, and the migrants are too but in just an ever so slightly different way that somehow makes them more of a threat to the right than left-wingers and liberals. We already have a "market-based immigration system", it's called a "golden visa", except the cost tends to be in the six to seven figures. It's a way for really rich people to buy their way into a country, not a serious means to admit large numbers of economic migrants. The above also applies to points systems like Canada's, which selects for middle-income countries that have lots of university-educated English or French speakers. That's great if you want to import half of India and China, not so much if you want a diverse immigrant pool.

kmeisthax 2y ago

Family reunification visas have helped America dodge several bullets when it comes to immigration. We're actually one of the easier countries to get admitted to, and we know how to integrate large numbers of unskilled migrants at scale. The trick is that family members already provide a support structure for new migrants, who integrate, and form the support structure for the next wave of migrants. Do this across every nationality ever and you have basically the US's current demography. A "What we need economically" immigration system is what's currently eating the EU alive. EU countries basically don't do any work integrating immigrants, they expect everyone to be an economically desirable immigrant that can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Which is great until you have a refugee crisis, or two, and now your country's flooded with people you don't know how to integrate, your native population is turning hard-right, and the migrants are too but in just an ever so slightly different way that somehow makes them more of a threat to the right than left-wingers and liberals. We already have a "market-based immigration system", it's called a "golden visa", except the cost tends to be in the six to seven figures. It's a way for really rich people to buy their way into a country, not a serious means to admit large numbers of economic migrants. The above also applies to points systems like Canada's, which selects for middle-income countries that have lots of university-educated English or French speakers. That's great if you want to import half of India and China, not so much if you want a diverse immigrant pool.