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Why Legal Immigration Is Nearly Impossible: US Legal Immigration Rules Explained

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Re: Why Legal Immigration Is Nearly Impossible: US Legal Immigration Rules Explained

#61

Post by blindriver »

tomrod wrote: post #16
blindriver wrote: post #6

Just because someone wants to immigrate to the US doesn't mean they should be allowed. This is the underlying truth that is indisputable. This article says that it grants 1 million green cards per year to legal immigrants, which is extremely generous. To say it's "nearly impossible" is absurd. I myself, my wife, and 80% of my friends are all legal immigrants to the US.

> Just because someone wants to immigrate to the US doesn't mean they should be allowed. I'll bite. Why not? We let capital typically move freely. Why shouldn't people be as free to move as money?

Money doesn't consume physical resources the way people do.

Uncontrolled immigration will overconsume whatever resources the country has, and infrastructure can't increase as quickly as unabated immigration. Things like rent will skyrocket and resources like water, sewage, hospitals, schools, etc. will get overconsumed without the ability to increase it quick enough. It will make the country worse very quickly.

Re: Why Legal Immigration Is Nearly Impossible: US Legal Immigration Rules Explained

#62

Post by blindriver »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #35
blindriver wrote: post #6

Just because someone wants to immigrate to the US doesn't mean they should be allowed. This is the underlying truth that is indisputable. This article says that it grants 1 million green cards per year to legal immigrants, which is extremely generous. To say it's "nearly impossible" is absurd. I myself, my wife, and 80% of my friends are all legal immigrants to the US.

> 1 million green cards per year to legal immigrants, which is extremely generous That's a 0.3% rate. How is that "extremely generous"?

0.3% is extremely generous. Those are just green cards/permanent residents. That doesn't include the number of legal immigrants on various other visas. That's 3 million legal immigrants per year. The number of legal immigrants allowed to the US is higher than any other country in the world.

Re: Why Legal Immigration Is Nearly Impossible: US Legal Immigration Rules Explained

#63

Post by blindriver »

legitster wrote: post #28
blindriver wrote: post #6

Just because someone wants to immigrate to the US doesn't mean they should be allowed. This is the underlying truth that is indisputable. This article says that it grants 1 million green cards per year to legal immigrants, which is extremely generous. To say it's "nearly impossible" is absurd. I myself, my wife, and 80% of my friends are all legal immigrants to the US.

> Just because someone wants to immigrate to the US doesn't mean they should be allowed. This is the underlying truth that is indisputable. Why? Why is it indisputable? America existed very prosperously for over 200 years with such a system - the only thing we did was weed out smuggling and criminals.

That was then, this is now. A country is allowed to enforce its borders and protect its citizens from an uncontrolled influx of foreigners.

Re: Why Legal Immigration Is Nearly Impossible: US Legal Immigration Rules Explained

#64

Post by quantified »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #43
quantified wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll bite. Quality of life in terms of natural resources available only goes down with more people. I'd be much happier with maybe 25% of current population level.

Your comment is a common anti-immigrant trope: we're full/out of water/out of land/out of X! Where there are shortages why should the solutions be focused on restricting immigration? Should people having children also be penalized?

I didn't say penalized. I think the same is true for everyone worldwide. We're not out of anything. Plenty of room to cram more in. You don't need high standards for clean water, you can tolerate some sewage and dissolved heavy metals. You don't need more than a 10x15x7-ft box to live in with a bathroom at the end of the hall. You definitely never need to have solitude anywhere for your enjoyment, you can be in a crowd of thousands whenever you are awake. You'll live.

I'd live too, but I'd curse the prior generations that left it this way. But we're not far evolved from chimpanzees and we will grow until we collapse.

Re: Why Legal Immigration Is Nearly Impossible: US Legal Immigration Rules Explained

#65

Post by quantified »

tombert wrote: post #41
quantified wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll bite. Quality of life in terms of natural resources available only goes down with more people. I'd be much happier with maybe 25% of current population level.

That's fair enough, but it would require a pretty radical restructure of our economy to do that. Most of our economy sort of depends on a growing population; this has been an issue with Japan (and their slowly-shrinking and aging population) for quite awhile. Eventually, of course, we will all have to have a neutral or negative population growth rate, but I have to believe that there's an advantage to being the last…

Certainly on all counts there. And enough people believe explicitly in demographic competition to make fair leveling and reduction a problem. But this is what leads to long-term sustainability.

Re: Why Legal Immigration Is Nearly Impossible: US Legal Immigration Rules Explained

#66

Post by toomuchtodo »

legitster wrote: post #47
toomuchtodo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When every US citizen who wants a job in the US has one, one they can live off of with a living wage, sure, it’s up for a conversation (when legitimate labor shortages exist vs faux shortages leveraged as labor cost controls). Why am I going to support immigration that drives down wages for capital returns? Because it makes “the country” more wealthy by making a select few wealthier? Ineffective policy imho. I am nev…

By that logic we should restrict the number of children being born. But the growth of our country from a population of 50 million to 300 million did not result in a job loss of 250 million jobs. If anything, immigrants create many more jobs than they take. The deadweight to an economy is it's non-working population (retirees, children) so an influx of young, working families increases wages overall for natives.

> By that logic we should restrict the number of children being born.

I disagree with this assertion. Controlling immigration is reasonable and proper when a nation state has boundaries, citizens vs non citizens, and an economic system to balance. Forcing people who want children to not have children is neither reasonable nor proper. With that said, we are in luck: the fertility rate is rapidly declining in almost every country [1], so this is not a problem we face. The future faces a worker shortage as the world ages rapidly, but we still must solve for today.

> But the growth of our country from a population of 50 million to 300 million did not result in a job loss of 250 million jobs.

To look at "jobs" in a vacuum is myopic. Are they good jobs? Do people need two or three jobs to survive? If not, we do not have enough good jobs, just jobs. We should be measuring someone's resulting quality of life from their economic activity, not the job(s). As I mentioned previously, if you cannot find domestic labor to perform a job at a market rate living wage, then perhaps immigration should be considered. We are at full employment and workers are still struggling to make ends meet. This does not call for more immigration; this calls for mechanisms to more rapidly push wages up.

Take construction jobs for example. At any time, there are about ~300k-400k construction jobs that are going unfilled due to lack of labor. Would those jobs be filled if domestic workers were trained and wages pushed up? Or would builders prefer to hire immigrants to do the work at wages on offer [2] [3]? The evidence shows the latter. There is a market clearing price for every job to be filled.

TLDR Maximize economic success for citizen workers, and then turn the knob on immigration accordingly.

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

[2] https://limos.engin.umich.edu/deitabase/2024/05/28/undocumen...

[3] https://eyeonhousing.org/2024/03/states-and-construction-tra...

Re: Why Legal Immigration Is Nearly Impossible: US Legal Immigration Rules Explained

#67

Post by tombert »

quantified wrote: post #64
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment is a common anti-immigrant trope: we're full/out of water/out of land/out of X! Where there are shortages why should the solutions be focused on restricting immigration? Should people having children also be penalized?

I didn't say penalized. I think the same is true for everyone worldwide. We're not out of anything. Plenty of room to cram more in. You don't need high standards for clean water, you can tolerate some sewage and dissolved heavy metals. You don't need more than a 10x15x7-ft box to live in with a bathroom at the end of the hall. You definitely never need to have solitude anywhere for your enjoyment, you can be in a cro…

> I'd live too, but I'd curse the prior generations that left it this way. But we're not far evolved from chimpanzees and we will grow until we collapse.

That's not really what the UN predicts [1]. It looks like it'll peak at a bit shy of 11 billion.

Population growth rates have been going down for awhile.

https://www.un.org/en/UN-projects-world-population-to-peak-w...

Re: Why Legal Immigration Is Nearly Impossible: US Legal Immigration Rules Explained

#68

Post by southernplaces7 »

And why was this currently socially relevant post that comes from an organization which despite certain biases has lots of experience examining this very issue, flagged? Who are all these intolerant idiots flagging such content, and more importantly, why does this site keep maintaining such a stupid policy of letting a few rando readers with all their personal ideological baggage flag whatever the hell they want?

Re: Why Legal Immigration Is Nearly Impossible: US Legal Immigration Rules Explained

#69

Post by throwup238 »

tombert wrote: post #67
quantified wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say penalized. I think the same is true for everyone worldwide. We're not out of anything. Plenty of room to cram more in. You don't need high standards for clean water, you can tolerate some sewage and dissolved heavy metals. You don't need more than a 10x15x7-ft box to live in with a bathroom at the end of the hall. You definitely never need to have solitude anywhere for your enjoyment, you can be in a cro…

> I'd live too, but I'd curse the prior generations that left it this way. But we're not far evolved from chimpanzees and we will grow until we collapse. That's not really what the UN predicts [1]. It looks like it'll peak at a bit shy of 11 billion. Population growth rates have been going down for awhile. https://www.un.org/en/UN-projects-world-population-to-peak-w...

Which is mostly a product of cratering birth rates as countries get richer and more developed. I’d argue that’s a sign that we are in the process of collapse. I think we certainly will if 8 or 11 billion people reach the standard of living of the US, just by the ecological impact.

Re: Why Legal Immigration Is Nearly Impossible: US Legal Immigration Rules Explained

#70

Post by TMWNN »

pton_xd wrote: post #4

Conclusion: "The administration should loosen all the restrictions that it has imposed above and beyond what Congress has required, and Congress should overhaul the system to open legal immigration for any person willing to work to contribute to the success of the United States." In other words, we should "promptly admit a majority of the 158 million who told Gallup that they would want to come," according to the 201…

> Left out of the article is an explanation for why the US would be better off it that were to happen.

Cato is also the source of the perpetually reposted chart that similarly asserts that the single most valuable credential on Earth—one which provides full employment and financial access to the world's largest economy, consular aid from the world's largest diplomatic corps, protection from the world's most powerful military—ought to be easy to get for anyone regardless of background, qualifications, or willingness to follow instructions.

(Inb4 "It costs thousands of dollars to naturalize!" and "It takes years to become a citizen!" Again, read the above. There is nothing in the US Constitution or the UN Declaration of Human Rights or the holy book of your choice that says that the process of becoming the citizen of any country ought to be anything other than lengthy and demanding. A process which 700,000 billionaire super-geniuses https://www.uscis.gov/archive/archive-news/naturalization-fa...>[1] are nonetheless able to follow each year for US citizenship, mind you. (There's also a process for having the fee waived https://www.us-immigration.com/blog/how-much-does-it-cost-to...> if you can't afford it.) Still don't like it? Feel free to try your luck in Switzerland, which requires a mere ten years of residency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_nationality_law> in country.

[1] Including yours truly—who confesses to being a super-genius, if not yet a billionaire—once upon a time

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