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I've heard this argument going back to Milton Friedman, but the immigration discourse these days is quite detached from any economic concerns. Forget impoverish

I've heard this argument going back to Milton Friedman, but the immigration discourse these days is quite detached from any economic concerns. Forget impoverished people; there is rabid opposition to pretty much all immigration including, for example, investor or employment categories. It's a lot more tribal than rational.

hikkerl 8mo ago
[flagged]
- disgruntledphd2 8mo ago
  > With recent legislation here in Australia Are you of Aboriginal extraction? Otherwise, I'm not sure an ethnic homeland for you would be Australia, right? This stuff is so weird, as basically all humans migrated to wherever they are now. Like, I'm pretty sure that I have Celtic, Norman, Viking and other ancestors, despite my official ancestry being Irish (and all of my last 3-4 generations being born in Ireland). Is it culture? That would seem to be what people are actually looking for, and I can definitely see the appeal, but culture is something that is generated from interaction with other members of a culture, and isn't dependent on genetics (consider how you or I might behave in OpenAI vs Anthropic vs Goldman Sachs).
  - eudamoniac 8mo ago
    Yes it is culture. The desire for an ethnostate is a proxy desire for a monoculture, somewhat easier to implement because it's easier to see someone is white than to see their behavior patterns. There are also studies that show most people have subconscious tension among other races even from the same culture, though. But the outright desire for an ethnostate or a monoculture are both politically untenable in the West. Never mind that every country we idolize, e.g. Japan, Scandinavia, are essentially that. America is not a good candidate for that for various reasons, but I see no reason that Denmark or Japan shouldn't be able to codify their ethnic makeup and adjust immigration policy accordingly. As a Korean, it is really nice to visit Korea and feel among 'my people', even though culturally I'm an American. I've heard very similar things from my white friends who move to Utah or visit Scandinavia. It's a feeling that seems to be deeply embedded in the lizard brain, to be among your tribe, identified visually and then culturally. Countries have the right to cultivate this feeling among their citizens.
    - jgwil2 8mo ago
      > Never mind that every country we idolize, e.g. Japan, Scandinavia, are essentially [ethnostates]. In Sweden 25% of the population has foreign background, in Norway 19%, in Denmark 14%. Hardly "ethnostates" at all.
      - eudamoniac 8mo ago
        Okay, but those are very recent developments to which the historical sentiment hasn't fully caught up. To the extent it has, it's via negative memetic sentiments, e.g. "Stockholm is now the rape capital of the world!" Sweden, at least, also, doesn't capture racial demographics, so we don't know the makeup of the foreign born population. Walking around Helsinki, you don't need statistics to notice the homogeny.
        eudamoniac 8mo ago
        Didn't have time to check Norway and Denmark before, but looking now it seems most of the foreign born population is still white/European. > figures from World Population Review suggesting around 83.2% are Norwegian, and another 8.3% are other Europeans, totaling roughly 91.5% of European descent, though exact "white" percentages vary by source and definition, with estimates often placing the broader "white" or European-origin population well above 90%. Another source I found puts non-Danes in Denmark at 9%, putting their white/European percentage at 95%. For approximate parity comparison, Japan is 98% Japanese, UK is 82%, and France is 71%, all falling. Imo Norway and Denmark still qualify as ethnostates, though maybe not for much longer.
    - LexiMax 8mo ago
      > Countries have the right to cultivate this feeling among their citizens. I disagree, because what seems to always be the logical next step is "My monoculture is superior, and deserves dominion above your monoculture, which deserves eradication. And oh by the way, if you don't like our monoculture and try to escape it, we'll invade that place too." That's kind of what the "mono" in monoculture implies. Multiculturalism isn't an asset because it's the most stable form of soceity, rather it's best we've figured out when the alternative is bloodshed between warring tribes.
roenxi 8mo ago
Sure. But hypothetically, if we pretend people are rational for a few minutes here, how does the Ellis Island idea interact with a functional welfare system?
- mothballed 8mo ago
  Friedman's argument was more so to just keep them as illegals but not deport them. That way they can support the welfare system but not use it. Friedman didn't want to make them legal until the welfare system has been crushed. Of course that might require some changes to make it actually true illegals don't use state benefits. You need to cut off WIC for illegals, public schooling for illegals for instance before they will actually not be using public benefit. Also their children become legal via jus soli. The obvious down-side is that those citizens / legal residents who have the skill level of illegal immigrants (sad, but commonly true) will see their real wages depressed and more competition for the job.
- array_key_first 8mo ago
  I would imagine more young, ambitious working age adults would help the welfare system, not hurt it. If you look globally at countries which have issues with their large social services, they're almost all mostly homogeneous and declining in population, especially among the young. Which makes sense if you sit back and think about what social services are typically offered and where the money comes from.
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
rayiner 8mo ago
High skill immigration still brings cultural change. My parents came here from Bangladesh, and while they superficially assimilated, they’re still culturally Bangladeshi. They, like virtually all the Bangladeshis and Indians I know, still overvalue formal education, undervalue risk taking, elevate familial over civic obligation, don’t value economic modesty, believe elites should rule over “the common people,” etc. And this was despite spending 35 years almost completely isolated from other Bangladeshis. Culture is very deep and not easily changed. Libertarians assign culture zero substantive value, viewing people as fungible economic actors. Like many libertarian assumptions, that one isn’t grounded in empirical observation.
- disgruntledphd2 8mo ago
  > Culture is very deep and not easily changed. This seems somewhat incorrect to me, as people change jobs and with it, culture, basically all of the time.
  - rayiner 8mo ago
    The cultural differences between companies in a country are superficial compared to the cultural differences between countries. We have strong evidence that deeper cultural, everything from attitudes towards saving, government, and social trust, persists for generations after immigration: https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/36/2/rethinking-immigration https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/36/2/rethinking-immig... (“The authors found that forty-six percent of home-country attitudes toward trust persist in second- and fourth-generation immigrants—in the adults whose parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents were immigrants. People from high-trust societies, like Sørensen, transmit about half of their high-trust attitudes to their descendants, and people from low-trust societies do the same with their low-trust attitudes.”). You can see this just by going around the country. Scandinavia has much higher social trust than Italy. The upper midwest, where Scandinavian immigration dominated, has higher social trust than NJ/NY, which saw mass immigration from southern Italy. These deep-seated cultural variations, in turn, have a strong impact on societal prosperity: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/09/joseph-henrich-explores-weird-societies/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/09/joseph-henric... (“One of the points I want to make is a lot of the big institutions we think about, like Western law or representative government, actually flow, in part, from the way people think about the world.”).
_DeadFred_ 8mo ago
Man I'm ashamed that I wanted to see H1B reformed and was a part of this crowd. I want more immigration I just don't want companies able to abuse people/people be treated any different/having less rights/power than anyone else in American. I think I'm just going to be full 'open borders' now because otherwise it always ends up with trash manipulating things in racist/corporate power way.

hikkerl 8mo ago

[flagged]

disgruntledphd2 8mo ago
> With recent legislation here in Australia Are you of Aboriginal extraction? Otherwise, I'm not sure an ethnic homeland for you would be Australia, right? This stuff is so weird, as basically all humans migrated to wherever they are now. Like, I'm pretty sure that I have Celtic, Norman, Viking and other ancestors, despite my official ancestry being Irish (and all of my last 3-4 generations being born in Ireland). Is it culture? That would seem to be what people are actually looking for, and I can definitely see the appeal, but culture is something that is generated from interaction with other members of a culture, and isn't dependent on genetics (consider how you or I might behave in OpenAI vs Anthropic vs Goldman Sachs).
- eudamoniac 8mo ago
  Yes it is culture. The desire for an ethnostate is a proxy desire for a monoculture, somewhat easier to implement because it's easier to see someone is white than to see their behavior patterns. There are also studies that show most people have subconscious tension among other races even from the same culture, though. But the outright desire for an ethnostate or a monoculture are both politically untenable in the West. Never mind that every country we idolize, e.g. Japan, Scandinavia, are essentially that. America is not a good candidate for that for various reasons, but I see no reason that Denmark or Japan shouldn't be able to codify their ethnic makeup and adjust immigration policy accordingly. As a Korean, it is really nice to visit Korea and feel among 'my people', even though culturally I'm an American. I've heard very similar things from my white friends who move to Utah or visit Scandinavia. It's a feeling that seems to be deeply embedded in the lizard brain, to be among your tribe, identified visually and then culturally. Countries have the right to cultivate this feeling among their citizens.
  - jgwil2 8mo ago
    > Never mind that every country we idolize, e.g. Japan, Scandinavia, are essentially [ethnostates]. In Sweden 25% of the population has foreign background, in Norway 19%, in Denmark 14%. Hardly "ethnostates" at all.
    - eudamoniac 8mo ago
      Okay, but those are very recent developments to which the historical sentiment hasn't fully caught up. To the extent it has, it's via negative memetic sentiments, e.g. "Stockholm is now the rape capital of the world!" Sweden, at least, also, doesn't capture racial demographics, so we don't know the makeup of the foreign born population. Walking around Helsinki, you don't need statistics to notice the homogeny.
      - eudamoniac 8mo ago
        Didn't have time to check Norway and Denmark before, but looking now it seems most of the foreign born population is still white/European. > figures from World Population Review suggesting around 83.2% are Norwegian, and another 8.3% are other Europeans, totaling roughly 91.5% of European descent, though exact "white" percentages vary by source and definition, with estimates often placing the broader "white" or European-origin population well above 90%. Another source I found puts non-Danes in Denmark at 9%, putting their white/European percentage at 95%. For approximate parity comparison, Japan is 98% Japanese, UK is 82%, and France is 71%, all falling. Imo Norway and Denmark still qualify as ethnostates, though maybe not for much longer.
  - LexiMax 8mo ago
    > Countries have the right to cultivate this feeling among their citizens. I disagree, because what seems to always be the logical next step is "My monoculture is superior, and deserves dominion above your monoculture, which deserves eradication. And oh by the way, if you don't like our monoculture and try to escape it, we'll invade that place too." That's kind of what the "mono" in monoculture implies. Multiculturalism isn't an asset because it's the most stable form of soceity, rather it's best we've figured out when the alternative is bloodshed between warring tribes.

roenxi 8mo ago

Sure. But hypothetically, if we pretend people are rational for a few minutes here, how does the Ellis Island idea interact with a functional welfare system?

mothballed 8mo ago
Friedman's argument was more so to just keep them as illegals but not deport them. That way they can support the welfare system but not use it. Friedman didn't want to make them legal until the welfare system has been crushed. Of course that might require some changes to make it actually true illegals don't use state benefits. You need to cut off WIC for illegals, public schooling for illegals for instance before they will actually not be using public benefit. Also their children become legal via jus soli. The obvious down-side is that those citizens / legal residents who have the skill level of illegal immigrants (sad, but commonly true) will see their real wages depressed and more competition for the job.
array_key_first 8mo ago
I would imagine more young, ambitious working age adults would help the welfare system, not hurt it. If you look globally at countries which have issues with their large social services, they're almost all mostly homogeneous and declining in population, especially among the young. Which makes sense if you sit back and think about what social services are typically offered and where the money comes from.

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

rayiner 8mo ago

High skill immigration still brings cultural change. My parents came here from Bangladesh, and while they superficially assimilated, they’re still culturally Bangladeshi. They, like virtually all the Bangladeshis and Indians I know, still overvalue formal education, undervalue risk taking, elevate familial over civic obligation, don’t value economic modesty, believe elites should rule over “the common people,” etc. And this was despite spending 35 years almost completely isolated from other Bangladeshis. Culture is very deep and not easily changed. Libertarians assign culture zero substantive value, viewing people as fungible economic actors. Like many libertarian assumptions, that one isn’t grounded in empirical observation.

disgruntledphd2 8mo ago
> Culture is very deep and not easily changed. This seems somewhat incorrect to me, as people change jobs and with it, culture, basically all of the time.
- rayiner 8mo ago
  The cultural differences between companies in a country are superficial compared to the cultural differences between countries. We have strong evidence that deeper cultural, everything from attitudes towards saving, government, and social trust, persists for generations after immigration: https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/36/2/rethinking-immigration https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/36/2/rethinking-immig... (“The authors found that forty-six percent of home-country attitudes toward trust persist in second- and fourth-generation immigrants—in the adults whose parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents were immigrants. People from high-trust societies, like Sørensen, transmit about half of their high-trust attitudes to their descendants, and people from low-trust societies do the same with their low-trust attitudes.”). You can see this just by going around the country. Scandinavia has much higher social trust than Italy. The upper midwest, where Scandinavian immigration dominated, has higher social trust than NJ/NY, which saw mass immigration from southern Italy. These deep-seated cultural variations, in turn, have a strong impact on societal prosperity: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/09/joseph-henrich-explores-weird-societies/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/09/joseph-henric... (“One of the points I want to make is a lot of the big institutions we think about, like Western law or representative government, actually flow, in part, from the way people think about the world.”).

_DeadFred_ 8mo ago

Man I'm ashamed that I wanted to see H1B reformed and was a part of this crowd. I want more immigration I just don't want companies able to abuse people/people be treated any different/having less rights/power than anyone else in American. I think I'm just going to be full 'open borders' now because otherwise it always ends up with trash manipulating things in racist/corporate power way.