This is only a good idea if we ignore that a billion people would migrate in a few months in an attempt to escape poverty. The results would be catastrophic.
The article specifically discusses this.
"Unskilled migrants care for babies or the elderly, thus freeing the native-born to do more lucrative work."
Sorry, no, I don't want migrants deeply afflicted with weird cultures left alone with my baby nor my mother.
Right, and if those unskilled immigrants don't all find jobs as nannies and nurses (since I won't be the only one keeping them from the most vulnerable), then I'll be taxed to pay for them anyway. That's not "nothing".
If the cultures are very different, and they come in huge numbers that refuse to assimilate, then I suffer dilution of mine. That's not "nothing" either.
Taxed to pay them what. If you have a beef with welfare programs in the us, you should take it with the welfare programs. Foreigners never had a voice or a vote in terms of what qualified for such kinds of programs.
> If the cultures are very different, and they come in huge numbers that refuse to assimilate, then I suffer dilution of mine. That's not "nothing" either.
This argument could be made verbatim against many things that today are considered bigotry or illegal.
Indeed - and they should not be a beneficiary either. Do you for a moment believe that "New Deal" / "Great Society" laws would ever have passed, if under the understanding that the whole population of the Earth would be entitled to receive it?
> This argument could be made verbatim ... that today are considered bigotry
That does not make the argument erroneous, only un-PC.
It makes it heinous, because heinous things are said and done with that argument. "We shouldn't hire women, because they will affect the culture we have", etc.
> "Unskilled migrants care for babies or the elderly, thus freeing the native-born to do more lucrative work."
No, it's this:
> Gallup, a pollster, estimated in 2013 that 630m people—about 13% of the world’s population—would migrate permanently if they could, and even more would move temporarily. Some 138m would settle in the United States, 42m in Britain and 29m in Saudi Arabia.
> Gallup’s numbers could be an overestimate. People do not always do what they say they will. Leaving one’s homeland requires courage and resilience.
So less than a billion, net, world wide.
> Sorry, no, I don't want migrants deeply afflicted with weird cultures left alone with my baby nor my mother.
Well you are free to continue to pay the higher price for the person of the culture you prefer. Others who don't care can pay a lower price. Isn't that capitalism?
So your retort to "if we ignore that a billion people would migrate in a few months in an attempt to escape poverty" is that it will be "less than a billion", then the article didn't exactly reassure. It's a quibble between basic numbers (population in the third world) vs hypothetical numbers (Gallup's rolodex), not a substantial discussion or disagreement.
This is not how it works in Germany: migration proponents want tax paying citizens to sustain their utopic dream. Once they have to pay out of their own pocket, the position changes drastically.
> If the worry is that future migrants might not pay their way, why not charge them more for visas, or make them pay extra taxes, or restrict their access to welfare benefits? Such levies could also be used to regulate the flow of migrants, thus avoiding big, sudden surges
That's the solution!
They depend on government handouts or other donations and making them pay more will solve the problem now
> open borders
also FTA:
> why not charge them more for visas
Someone forgot what "open borders" means.
> To clarify, “open borders” means that people are free to move to find work. It does not mean “no borders” or “the abolition of the nation-state”. On the contrary, the reason why migration is so attractive is that some countries are well-run and others, abysmally so.
You're using a different (and unspecified) definition of "open borders" than the authors of the article.