321–330 of 701 posts
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Well, first of all, many consumers are also low-end salary earners. Second and perhaps more importantly, the more salaries are driven down, the less money those earners have to spend, which means businesses will see less potential revenue.
The added spending from the additional incomes is likely to be larger than the reduction in spending in the baseline incomes.
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> One of the basic premises of anti-immigrant policies is that you can somehow influence the ratio of "useful" vs "not-useful" immigrants. This is exactly what the study shows is not just possible but easy in screening by nationality. Think about US immigration statistics by country ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_Stat... ): you'll see lots of Central and South American countries. Now take a…
> Hey, you know what countries I don't see on that startup founder list? Mexico, ... Looking at >$1B businesses only, as this story does, presents a rather skewed perspective. Per Fiscal Policy Institute "there are nonetheless more small business owners from Mexico than from any other single country... Immigrants born in Mexico make up 12 percent of immigrant small business owners, followed by immigrants born in Indi…
http://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/larg...
One of the basic premises of anti-immigrant policies is that you can somehow influence the ratio of "useful" vs "not-useful" immigrants. Apart from the idea of sorting people into useful and useless being inhumane, it also seems to be counterproductive. It looks like every kind of screening of immigrants will deter the more desirable ones, as far as that determination is possible on their arrival at all.
Wonder how many birthright US citizens who support this "useful/not-useful" immigration filter would pass if it were applied to themselves.
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> How do you sort out people on a "promising"/"not promising" scale for doing good things for the economy? Ask Australia? But at a very basic level: * Criminal background -> sorry * No high school-equivalent education -> sorry * Crippling, expensive disease -> sorry Those are just three basic things that let you know straight away that this person has little chance to do anything but consume resources.
Under your simple scale you would exclude Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, and Stephen Hawking, respectively. I think they've all been supremely wasteful 'consumers of resources.'
There's no way a standard policy is going to somehow separate the Stephen Hawkings from the general population before they have actually accomplished anything of note.
So your policy can either be cautious, or it can be over liberal.
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It wouldn't be hard to have an immigration system which is biased toward useful vs. not useful. The question is: where do you want to have the cutoff? I'm in favor of a solid border control regime (i.e. "build the wall"), combined with a transparent and straightforward points-based system for mainly immigrant visas. I'd eliminate the inherent racism in the current system (penalizing India and China vs. Equatorial Gui…
"It wouldn't be hard to have an immigration system which is biased toward useful vs. not useful." I think that's extremely hard in terms of startups. You're essentially expecting the government to select what is valuable and what isn't. I don't like unclear visa situations either, but I haven't really seen a country effectively implement "come here and do whatever for a bit as long as you can take care of yourself".…
Also, most people who do start startups are also competent, if not educated, enough to probably qualify under a more traditional points based system. A specific job accepted might be a +5 (and maybe make it contingent on remaining there for some period of employment), a college degree might be evaluated on school/program and +1 to +5, other specific achievements might get some bonuses, age (youth; working life before retirement, generally) would be some benefit, and such. Proof of assets is some benefit, and maybe sponsorship/bond/whatever from some entity could be a factor.
I think we could probably have a lower point threshold than Canada, although I'm not sure. That is mostly a political decision and should involve a lot of factors beyond economics.
If the negative consequence here is you have to come to the US for a job, but your immigration status isn't tied to that job, and you thus have to work in the US for 2-4y before getting PR or citizenship, that's not a huge bar to entrepreneurs, IMO. If you don't already have the business or funding, working in the US first is probably necessary anyway. The problem with H1B is retaining residency after switching to the startup.
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Knowing that explicit white nationalism could be problematic, a white nationalist might speak in code. This is similar to the way someone might speak in code when discussing criminal activity, since it's illegal to surveil non-criminal discussion. The question in court is whether a reasonable person would interpret a conversation as normal speech or criminal code. "The eagle flies at midnight," is obvious code. Other…
>Knowing that explicit white nationalism could be problematic, a white nationalist might speak in code. This is a terribly dishonest debating tactic.
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Walls don't impact legal immigration. They only only impact the proportion of illegal immigrants that sneak across the border.
Yes, we really should put a stop to all those Americans sneaking across the border to work illegally in Mexico. /s > Walls don't impact legal immigration. Yes, they do. But not in a way that you would immediately recognize as linked so I'll forgive you. > They only only impact the proportion of illegal immigrants that sneak across the border. Yes, so they will cross legally and then disappear into illegality. Same th…
I think it would be great to for Mexico to be more prosperous so people wouldn't have to leave their families to come to the U.S. But you also have to ask yourself: does that fit with the purpose of the U.S.?
Having a government necessarily means yoking people, stripping them of their natural autonomy using coercion and under the threat of violence. I'm by no means an anarchist, but the only way I can justify that state of affairs morally is by (1) putting the beast we've created under democratic control, and (2) giving that beast the mandate to work toward the prosperity of its subjects.
Saying that the solution to illegal immigration is for the U.S. government to work to make Mexico wealthy is really difficult to reconcile with what I see as the only legitimate purpose of government.
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> Whenever people put up the walls for their house (which serve the same purpose) those are days of joy too. I don't think that was the context of the OP's comment, but if you wish to extend to those kinds of walls then that's fine with me. It's just not the way I would have interpreted the meaning of a border wall.
> It's just not the way I would have interpreted the meaning of a border wall. Well, consider a country as a people's collective house. In this, a border, if not analogous to the walls, is at least analogous to the fence around the house and/or the lock on the door.
Note that most dictatorships use walls around their 'houses' to keep the population in, not to keep others out.
Note that countries that are bordering other countries with great wealth disparity are using walls to keep the wealth concentrated and those on the other side of the wall poor so they may be further exploited.
This is not the same as you and your roughly equally wealthy neighbor sharing a wall in a duplex or a fence between your two gardens.
Those fences and walls are there for practical reasons and to delineate responsibility and right-of-way, not to specifically make it harder for your neighbor to share in the collective wealth of the neighborhood.
The equivalent of that would be a gated community in a poor country (which by the way look exactly like inside-out prisons).