Hacker News Reader

Comment by Causality1 | Hacker News Reader

This phenomena is why I'm strongly pro-immigration. Speaking as an American, I want there to be more Americans. We're not making them ourselves so we need to import. The more we import now, the better since the current population is both younger and more numerous than it will be in a few decades when we'd actually need the imported population. Doing it now means the Americanization of the immigrants will be more complete. We should bring them in and turn them American while we still have the numbers and dynamism to do so.

View on HN

I'm Australian, have lived in the US, and now live in Denmark. I'm also pro immigration, both for skilled and unskilled workers. However Non-Western (as defined by the Danish Ministry of Statistics) has been financially costly for the welfare state, and the assumption that unskilled immigrant descendents will (as a whole) outperform their parents has not been realized.

There's blame on both sides. Denmark doesn't do a stellar job of integrating outsiders despite ample funding. Likewise there are cultural incompatibilities, such as the handshake-citizenship debacle in a country that has arguably the closest gender equality in the world.

My personal lesson is that immigration is really complicated. I truly believe people should be free to move wherever to realise their maximum potential. But in holding this standpoint you must acknowledge the very real costs incurred.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to

True, but I was primarily thinking of immigration from Western nations like Mexico and even Europe. It's surprisingly hard for, say, a British person to move permanently to the US. I'd like to see that changed.

Every Western nation has sub-replacement fertility rate now. Mexico is still slightly above, but will likely go below in the coming decade.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Total_Fertility_Rate,_195...

> I truly believe people should be free to move wherever to realise their maximum potential.

Why? Why not improve their local environment to better help them "realise their maximum potential"? (I put your words in quotes because it's not a phrasing I like very much).

Why create a world where people have to move to have better opportunities rather than creating a world where there are better opportunities in increasingly more places?

By definition welfare is a net loss. Otherwise it wouldn’t be needed.

How can it be bad for immigrants to get more than they put in, but not citizens?

The “immigrants will get more out of welfare than they put in” is exactly how welfare is supposed to work!

Welfare recipients spend every penny they receive so it contributes to the economy by keeping money moving.

It's not a zero sum game.

Many (most in some countries) immigrants are citizens, so I don't think that's the distinction you meant to make.

Why do you want there to be more Americans? Is there some advantage to more people living in the geographical region?

Are you hoping that it will allow certain aspects of the culture to spread / persist?

If the latter, would it be as good to cultivate those things at home and allow them to spread on their own merit?

Or do you prefer for more people to exist under the national banner for its own sake?

All of the above. More Americans puts us in a better position to compete against China and India, and we can't expect our technological superiority to give us an edge forever. My view is of course biased, but I sincerely believe the world would be a crueler place were Chinese culture and military power to replace American cultural popularity and military power.

So I guess you want immigrants but not Chinese immigrants then? Otherwise they would bring their cruel culture to America?

I'm an American and I want there to be enough nurses and orderlies in American nursing homes when the time comes that I need them.

I’d rather go quietly into the night when the time comes that I’m not self sufficient (via assisted suicide). Perhaps that’s wishful thinking, and I won’t have the mental fortitude at that time.

Also likely, "culture of life" virtue signallers will prevent you from doing what's right for you by nudges that make suicide difficult, painful, and illegal. Part of your plan should be to support assisted suicide politically. For example, Neil Gorsuch wrote a book advocating against euthanasia, making him one of the worst Supreme Court picks I can imagine. https://press.princeton.edu/titles/8317.html

No thanks. I don't want there to be more Americans, I want there to be a better quality of life for the Americans that exist now and their descendants.

I don't see how it figures that more people packed into the same territory competing for a dwindling pool of resources is good for my country, even if the hundreds of millions of newcomers are eventually "Americans". I support controlled immigration when it benefits our country, but immigration for the sake of growing our population seems monumentally foolish. Housing, education, and healthcare are already scarce resources - let's focus on how to build our country into a better place to live for the people who are already vested in the system. In before "they'll pay for our pensions!" - debunked, more like "we're already paying for their food, housing, clothing, education, healthcare, and children", at least when it comes to illegal immigrants.

Also, for the environmentally-conscious - people moving here, a high per-capita carbon emissions country, from low per-capita carbon emissions country, is contributing to climate change. It's very frustrating to see publications from Wapo, to Time, to NatGeo encouraging Americans to stop having children to fight climate change, while simultaneously supporting high levels of immigration that contribute very significantly to increasing our population.

Why are you not making them yourselves? If it's because of economics, it clearly indicates unsustainable growth. The only thing immigration would support is below-livable wages.

I'm strongly pro skilled immigration. Automation is going to leave a lot of unskilled people unemployed and that will lead to civil unrest.

Automation is not new, it has been happening since the printing press, the cotton gin and the assembly line.

We should bring them in and turn them American while we still have the numbers and dynamism to do so.

Which implies American levels of consumption and environmental damage.

Problem 1: who would want to come to a country where they can be indoctrinated not to have babies?

Problem 2: it is unethical for rich people to depend on the fertility and then parental obligations of poor people in order to produce new people who will then be taxed to pay for the sterile old rich person. That is asking someone else to do all your hard work for you for free.

“..new people who will then be taxed to pay for the sterile old rich person. That is asking someone else to do all your hard work for you for free.“

Um do you live here? That is basically how the economy works.

One cannot conclude an "ought" from an "is" without further assumptions.

I’d prefer to reserve as much of the country for my own descendants as possible, thanks. That’s what this country is: territory that our ancestors have bestowed upon us so we can have a place to live. We should do the same for our descendants, instead of just giving it away to whoever wants it. The rest of the humans on this planet already have their own countries.

Today's immigrants are the future other grandparents of your future grandchildren, or great grandparents of great grandchildren. If you doubt it, look a few generations back in your family tree.

Nobody needs immigrants to have ancestors for their descendants. However you slice it, immigration increases competition for the future citizens of this country.

I’d prefer to reserve as much of the planet to my own descendants. Immigrants may use more some infrastructure of your country but overpopulation surely use more the planet. By allowing immigration, you increase chances for immigrants to be more educated and therefore reduce the overall birth rate.

> By allowing immigration, you increase chances for immigrants to be more educated and therefore reduce the overall birth rate.

How do the people who immigrate here affect the behavior of people in the countries they left behind? Why would they not continue having too many children?

>The rest of the humans on this planet already have their own countries.

Do you not see the historical irony? Your (presumably European) ancestors had their own countries too. So did the inhabitants of the Americas before white people arrived there from 'their own countries'.

I've never understood this argument. How long does a territory need to be occupied for before the natives of that area can call it "their country."

Every country has a starting point, the USA's is just more recent.

We can’t undo the past. And, actually, European and African settlement of the Americas is an event that argues in my favor. There would be a lot more Native Americans today if their ancestors had had the ability to maintain territorial integrity. We should not voluntarily resign our descendants to the same fate.

I think we need to slow the pace of immigration, to preserve our culture.

To preserve what 'culture' exactly? When you say 'our' who are you referring to?

Obviously he means the American culture and by our he means Americans. There's no denying that if immigration is high enough, and assimilation poor enough, culture will change very quickly. Not saying its the case in the US but it's simple to understand what he meant.

You say that, but there are plenty of people with books and spots on TV that say the exact same things about 'culture' and they mean 'white' (and say it explicitly). It's a way for people to make an argument about something that doesn't need numbers or data, since immigrants rapidly become a net positive on the economy and commit less crime.

You don’t have a culture if it doesn’t change, you have an ideology.

...but if you import an ideology into your culture you'll end up with escalating conflict. The refusal to see this has created something more akin to a powder keg than a melting pot (to paraphrase the old moniker) which has the - already partly realised - potential for some serious destruction.

You realize all of the larger cultures on Earth are melting pots, right? Sweden, France and Germany each by themselves are cultural mutts, for example. To deny this is to deny history and archeology.

The "melting pot" idea of multiculturalism has been proven to be inaccurate, a better term for the way things actually work is a "salad bowl" - just search on "melting pot or salad bowl" to read more on this subject.

The example of Sweden is indicative of what I tried to convey as it has made the "salad bowl" concept part of its constitution which states that the country should "actively promote the distinctive collective identities of national minorities and immigrants" ([1] gives some insight in how things came to be like the way they are in Sweden). In the space of a few decades the country went from being one of the most homogeneous on earth to a boiling kettle of contrasting and often clashing cultures to which the term "mutt" - a mixed breed which has characteristics of all its predecessors - is not applicable as the constituent cultures mostly hold to their own. It is at the interfaces between those cultures tensions arise, sometimes between native Swedes and immigrants but more so between different groups of immigrants.

[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt20q22fw.13 ("The Political Dynamics of Multiculturalism in Sweden")

Reply on news.ycombinator.com