4 ms·

> declare they simply cannot handle the influx They cannot handle it with the resources being given. This is true for the red states like Texas and what not, t

> declare they simply cannot handle the influx They cannot handle it with the resources being given. This is true for the red states like Texas and what not, the social services we do have struggle to handle the load. But we're choosing to let these systems struggle. We could solve it if we chose to do so. In 2020 our population was ~330 million people. Even if 12 million people immigrated to the United States, that's an influx of 3.6%. In reality its probably closer to 4 or so million, so really more like 1.2%. We're supposedly the wealthiest country on the planet with so much opportunity and freedom and yet we can't handle adding far less than 5% of the population as migrants in five years? If that's the case, we're probably the poorest country on the planet, not the wealthiest.

mzmzmzm 1y ago
And that's a population of millions admittedly including many minors and major barriers to thriving, but overall far fewer elderly or disabled people than the general population. Boosting immigration is only an economic drag if you structure the asylum/immigration process to prevent people from working, which we do now seemingly to punish communities that accept immigrants.
jjk7 1y ago
They are concentrated in major cities not evenly distributed across all of the US.
- vel0city 1y ago
  This does nothing to change the facts of my statement. And even then, we could choose to do something about that. We could do more to help people settle all across the US and be well supported to succeed. But we don't. So instead, we have people crowd the areas where we turn a blind eye to hiring illegal labor and have the social impacts concentrated there and then refuse to actually do anything to help those social costs. But these are all things we choose to do. We could choose to do something else.
  - jjk7 1y ago
    You make it sound so simple, they don't want to live in a small town where they will stand out; with no social support or services. How do you decide who goes where? What stops them from moving back to the bigger cities? How to you limit demographic displacement? The UK is doing this, and the US under Biden was trying at a smaller scale with Haitians in smaller towns. It doesn't work, and isn't so simple.
    - vel0city 1y ago
      > with no social support or services Once again, we're choosing to not have these social supports or social services. It's a choice. We could do it if we wanted, after all we're allegedly the wealthiest country on the planet but somehow can't seem to afford anything. > How do you decide who goes where? I'm not suggesting we force it to be a top-down forced decision. I'm often a pretty free-market and empowering people to make their own decisions kind of guy, when it makes sense. And sure, people will tend to cluster more in large cities, that happens even for non-migrants. But in the end, we're doing practically nothing to encourage people to spread out that social cost (or worse, encouraging for forcing the clustering), and that doing nothing is a choice. And then we're doing very little to support these places experiencing such large social costs, which is once again a decision. All of this is stuff we could do differently, we just choose the status quo (or now choosing violence!) that doesn't work well for a lot of us. Sure seems to be making some people exceptionally wealthy though.
    - jauntywundrkind 1y ago
      There's many towns & small cities that have been revitalized by immigrants communities. Lewiston Maine, Charleroi Pennsylvania. America is really struggling to support & enable a people, to create a social safety net. Opportunity is low. But often when immigrants come in from other places, they will put in enormous energy, that can bring some very sad towns back to life.
    - _DeadFred_ 1y ago
      Huh? Have you driven through Iowa lately? Southern Idaho?
- freejazz 1y ago
  Guess what is also true of the US population in general...
ljsprague 1y ago
[flagged]
- vel0city 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - ty6853 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - vel0city 1y ago
      I definitely don't know enough about the history of such issues to make a deep and reasoned take and thus will mostly shut up until I read more about it. I only vaguely know what big news sources have said about such things in passing. But as a quick take I think the land pressures of native Hawaiians is radically different than the land issues of white Christians in Texas. And it's not like there's any deeply historic religious connections to Arlington Texas to white Christians for a quick example is there? The worry if cultural elimination is probably radically different at a quick glance wouldn't you agree?
      - ty6853 1y ago
        Cultural elimination though real is largely a fraudulent right IMO, it is imposing 'positive' rights like the right to not have your culture eliminated. That's not how rights work, you have the right to practice your culture but not force other people to be practicing yours. I'm generally for open or at least non-discriminatory immigration. A few sticking points 1) Discriminatory settling patterns are well established as imposed law in the US, i.e. 'hawaiian home lands', American Samoa, Saipan, etc. The first step here is to make ALL US nationals and citizens equal, before we can really even hope to start making immigrants equal. Given limited political capital this would be my #1 priority to burn that capital on. 2) Welfare is essentially incompatible with open immigration and pushes the populace heavily towards favoring middle age wealth foreigners -- that is basically europeans and white English speaking countries. We could probably make it a little less 'racist' if immigrants were forced to permanently disclaim any access to public funds. 3) Immigration is justified under human and properties rights, freedom to go wherever one is invited or has ownership, and basic human liberties. Immigration in practice in the US heavily relies on use of public facilities, which are paid for by the tax payers -- as property owners you would be violating their rights if US persons cannot control foreign access to the public properties they are forced to pay taxes for. i.e. there should be zero immigration controls whatsoever crossing from one ranch to the other on adjacent parts of the Mexican border, but when you use public resources you are now becoming a trespasser if the property owners don't consent.
sureokbutyeah 1y ago
Yes, basically this. Americans have to hustle all day in the war against "line go down". Our agency is not allowed to be put to caring for other people but the illusion the 1% alone prop up society. So sick of Americans empty-analysis and ignorance of externalities their society puts on others; overseas colleagues see it as white Taliban. They don't see people in streets over tariffs screwing up their lives, so they've started to tell their politicians Americans (as in the public) are not reliable actors. They don't realize it, but the American publics own credibility is shot, not just their politicians. I have taken to cutting off friends and family and shit talking anyone in public that wants to socialize; do the politic work to put me on the hook for their healthcare, otherwise I refuse to bother with their existence. Withdrawing from people's lives is a forcing function for self reflection. You all keep me off the hook caring you exist. I just have to help make line go up. Anything to do with you all as individuals is not my responsibility. That's the choice of the American people. I'm here to profit, not give a fuck you exist. That's what my fellow Americans taught me through their feckless political effort. Illusory idea some invisible hand gives a shit based upon the gibberish from history they read by people who were wanking their literacy rather than inventing indoor plumbing.
- rangestransform 1y ago
  My government owes everything to the people inside the borders and nothing to the people outside
ahmeneeroe-v2 1y ago
[flagged]
apwell23 1y ago
> In reality its probably closer to 4 or so million your calcuation needs to account for ppl coming in on non immigrant visas too. usa issued 10 million non-immigrant visas in 2024. not counting 5 million tourist visas.
- johnnyanmac 1y ago
  If they were approved visa, they aren't exactly an illegal immigrant, no? That's a different issue entirely. Also, Trump approved for. Ore H1B Visas this year.
  - apwell23 1y ago
    > they aren't exactly an illegal immigrant, no? parent and gp comments are talking about "immigrants" . where do you see illegal immigrants ?
    - johnnyanmac 1y ago
      Up the chain mentions "perceived enemy". ICE is supposedly cracking down on illegal immigration. Are we instead saying that anyone not born in the US but comes in is an enemy?
      - apwell23 1y ago
        but context was set to just 'immigrants' . Why would i go up the chain if the context was reset ? Are you saying 'immigrants' anywhere in this thread automatically implies 'illegal immigrant' . Thats really confusing to me. > Are we instead saying that anyone not born in the US but comes in is an enemy? this is ridiculous twisting of my comment. I was just correcting record about population increase from immigration. population increase doesn't happen just from immigrant visas, ppl on non-immigrant visas stay in the country often for decades.
        vel0city 1y ago
        Then let me clarify, I was intending to talk mostly about illegal immigration and asylum seekers, the kinds of immigrants person I was replying to was probably mostly talking about. These are the immigrants people seem most concerned about, as they typically have a higher rate of relying on social services and welfare at least in the short term. It is these kinds of immigrants which impose the largest initial cost on society to allow in. But sure, somewhere around 4-5 million illegal/undocumented immigrants, add another 10 million or so non-immigrant visas (which I agree, tend to have people end up staying for lots of other reasons), we're still somewhere around 15 million or so migrants with most of those having some kind of stable job lined up before they arrive. It's still less than 5% of the overall population increase with these migrants, but now a lot of these in this addition are largely economically self-sufficient from the get-go (those with work visas). You're not really changing my point at all. In the end we're just too poor to deal with a generally pretty minor increase in population over several years while simultaneously seemingly being the wealthiest nation on the planet? How does that make sense? Also, your claim of: > usa issued 10 million non-immigrant visas in 2024. not counting 5 million tourist visas is factually incorrect. The US issued around 11.5 million non-immigrant visas, of which 8.5 million were visitor visas. So not a total of 15 million visas and excluding the tourism its really about 3 million non-immigrant not-tourist visas. > in 2024, in Fiscal Year 2024, we issued 11.5 million visas, and that’s a world record for us, breaking all previous records. Of these 8.5 million were visitor visas. https://2021-2025.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-and-secretary-of-commerce-gina-raimondo-on-the-economic-benefits-of-u-s-travel-and-tourism/ https://2021-2025.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-and-s...

mzmzmzm 1y ago

And that's a population of millions admittedly including many minors and major barriers to thriving, but overall far fewer elderly or disabled people than the general population. Boosting immigration is only an economic drag if you structure the asylum/immigration process to prevent people from working, which we do now seemingly to punish communities that accept immigrants.

jjk7 1y ago

They are concentrated in major cities not evenly distributed across all of the US.

vel0city 1y ago
This does nothing to change the facts of my statement. And even then, we could choose to do something about that. We could do more to help people settle all across the US and be well supported to succeed. But we don't. So instead, we have people crowd the areas where we turn a blind eye to hiring illegal labor and have the social impacts concentrated there and then refuse to actually do anything to help those social costs. But these are all things we choose to do. We could choose to do something else.
- jjk7 1y ago
  You make it sound so simple, they don't want to live in a small town where they will stand out; with no social support or services. How do you decide who goes where? What stops them from moving back to the bigger cities? How to you limit demographic displacement? The UK is doing this, and the US under Biden was trying at a smaller scale with Haitians in smaller towns. It doesn't work, and isn't so simple.
  - vel0city 1y ago
    > with no social support or services Once again, we're choosing to not have these social supports or social services. It's a choice. We could do it if we wanted, after all we're allegedly the wealthiest country on the planet but somehow can't seem to afford anything. > How do you decide who goes where? I'm not suggesting we force it to be a top-down forced decision. I'm often a pretty free-market and empowering people to make their own decisions kind of guy, when it makes sense. And sure, people will tend to cluster more in large cities, that happens even for non-migrants. But in the end, we're doing practically nothing to encourage people to spread out that social cost (or worse, encouraging for forcing the clustering), and that doing nothing is a choice. And then we're doing very little to support these places experiencing such large social costs, which is once again a decision. All of this is stuff we could do differently, we just choose the status quo (or now choosing violence!) that doesn't work well for a lot of us. Sure seems to be making some people exceptionally wealthy though.
  - jauntywundrkind 1y ago
    There's many towns & small cities that have been revitalized by immigrants communities. Lewiston Maine, Charleroi Pennsylvania. America is really struggling to support & enable a people, to create a social safety net. Opportunity is low. But often when immigrants come in from other places, they will put in enormous energy, that can bring some very sad towns back to life.
  - _DeadFred_ 1y ago
    Huh? Have you driven through Iowa lately? Southern Idaho?
freejazz 1y ago
Guess what is also true of the US population in general...

ljsprague 1y ago

[flagged]

vel0city 1y ago
[flagged]
- ty6853 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - vel0city 1y ago
    I definitely don't know enough about the history of such issues to make a deep and reasoned take and thus will mostly shut up until I read more about it. I only vaguely know what big news sources have said about such things in passing. But as a quick take I think the land pressures of native Hawaiians is radically different than the land issues of white Christians in Texas. And it's not like there's any deeply historic religious connections to Arlington Texas to white Christians for a quick example is there? The worry if cultural elimination is probably radically different at a quick glance wouldn't you agree?
    - ty6853 1y ago
      Cultural elimination though real is largely a fraudulent right IMO, it is imposing 'positive' rights like the right to not have your culture eliminated. That's not how rights work, you have the right to practice your culture but not force other people to be practicing yours. I'm generally for open or at least non-discriminatory immigration. A few sticking points 1) Discriminatory settling patterns are well established as imposed law in the US, i.e. 'hawaiian home lands', American Samoa, Saipan, etc. The first step here is to make ALL US nationals and citizens equal, before we can really even hope to start making immigrants equal. Given limited political capital this would be my #1 priority to burn that capital on. 2) Welfare is essentially incompatible with open immigration and pushes the populace heavily towards favoring middle age wealth foreigners -- that is basically europeans and white English speaking countries. We could probably make it a little less 'racist' if immigrants were forced to permanently disclaim any access to public funds. 3) Immigration is justified under human and properties rights, freedom to go wherever one is invited or has ownership, and basic human liberties. Immigration in practice in the US heavily relies on use of public facilities, which are paid for by the tax payers -- as property owners you would be violating their rights if US persons cannot control foreign access to the public properties they are forced to pay taxes for. i.e. there should be zero immigration controls whatsoever crossing from one ranch to the other on adjacent parts of the Mexican border, but when you use public resources you are now becoming a trespasser if the property owners don't consent.

sureokbutyeah 1y ago

Yes, basically this. Americans have to hustle all day in the war against "line go down". Our agency is not allowed to be put to caring for other people but the illusion the 1% alone prop up society. So sick of Americans empty-analysis and ignorance of externalities their society puts on others; overseas colleagues see it as white Taliban. They don't see people in streets over tariffs screwing up their lives, so they've started to tell their politicians Americans (as in the public) are not reliable actors. They don't realize it, but the American publics own credibility is shot, not just their politicians. I have taken to cutting off friends and family and shit talking anyone in public that wants to socialize; do the politic work to put me on the hook for their healthcare, otherwise I refuse to bother with their existence. Withdrawing from people's lives is a forcing function for self reflection. You all keep me off the hook caring you exist. I just have to help make line go up. Anything to do with you all as individuals is not my responsibility. That's the choice of the American people. I'm here to profit, not give a fuck you exist. That's what my fellow Americans taught me through their feckless political effort. Illusory idea some invisible hand gives a shit based upon the gibberish from history they read by people who were wanking their literacy rather than inventing indoor plumbing.

rangestransform 1y ago
My government owes everything to the people inside the borders and nothing to the people outside

ahmeneeroe-v2 1y ago

[flagged]

apwell23 1y ago

> In reality its probably closer to 4 or so million your calcuation needs to account for ppl coming in on non immigrant visas too. usa issued 10 million non-immigrant visas in 2024. not counting 5 million tourist visas.

johnnyanmac 1y ago
If they were approved visa, they aren't exactly an illegal immigrant, no? That's a different issue entirely. Also, Trump approved for. Ore H1B Visas this year.
- apwell23 1y ago
  > they aren't exactly an illegal immigrant, no? parent and gp comments are talking about "immigrants" . where do you see illegal immigrants ?
  - johnnyanmac 1y ago
    Up the chain mentions "perceived enemy". ICE is supposedly cracking down on illegal immigration. Are we instead saying that anyone not born in the US but comes in is an enemy?
    - apwell23 1y ago
      but context was set to just 'immigrants' . Why would i go up the chain if the context was reset ? Are you saying 'immigrants' anywhere in this thread automatically implies 'illegal immigrant' . Thats really confusing to me. > Are we instead saying that anyone not born in the US but comes in is an enemy? this is ridiculous twisting of my comment. I was just correcting record about population increase from immigration. population increase doesn't happen just from immigrant visas, ppl on non-immigrant visas stay in the country often for decades.
      - vel0city 1y ago
        Then let me clarify, I was intending to talk mostly about illegal immigration and asylum seekers, the kinds of immigrants person I was replying to was probably mostly talking about. These are the immigrants people seem most concerned about, as they typically have a higher rate of relying on social services and welfare at least in the short term. It is these kinds of immigrants which impose the largest initial cost on society to allow in. But sure, somewhere around 4-5 million illegal/undocumented immigrants, add another 10 million or so non-immigrant visas (which I agree, tend to have people end up staying for lots of other reasons), we're still somewhere around 15 million or so migrants with most of those having some kind of stable job lined up before they arrive. It's still less than 5% of the overall population increase with these migrants, but now a lot of these in this addition are largely economically self-sufficient from the get-go (those with work visas). You're not really changing my point at all. In the end we're just too poor to deal with a generally pretty minor increase in population over several years while simultaneously seemingly being the wealthiest nation on the planet? How does that make sense? Also, your claim of: > usa issued 10 million non-immigrant visas in 2024. not counting 5 million tourist visas is factually incorrect. The US issued around 11.5 million non-immigrant visas, of which 8.5 million were visitor visas. So not a total of 15 million visas and excluding the tourism its really about 3 million non-immigrant not-tourist visas. > in 2024, in Fiscal Year 2024, we issued 11.5 million visas, and that’s a world record for us, breaking all previous records. Of these 8.5 million were visitor visas. https://2021-2025.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-and-secretary-of-commerce-gina-raimondo-on-the-economic-benefits-of-u-s-travel-and-tourism/ https://2021-2025.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-and-s...