> But it's immoral. Rich host countries are poaching productive individuals while selecting against people who are most in need of help, leaving them to be taken care of by their (usually) poorer country of origin.

I'm failing to see how these economics work. Host countries have an incentive to acquire productive individuals. And subsequently they have a negative incentive to acquire those 'most in need' (need metric assumed).

A rough attempt to try and square up the two has me thinking we need two immigration systems. One that treats immigration as an altruistic endeavor, and another that treats immigration as an economic endeavor.

> The fair thing to do would be to accept a random sample of would-be immigrants.

I couldn't disagree with this more. Even with pretending that fairness is a thing, I have to argue that the 'most fair entry path would be some form of earning entry by establishing the criteria up front. Much the same as public universities do in the US.