You can have a huge welfare state or open borders but not both. Unless the US invents a perpetual motion machine.
Edit: downvotes and running away, the mark of a rational mind
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_mig...
I see Austria, Belgium, UK, Germany, Denmark, Italy accepting more immigrants per capita than the US.
In many of those countries, the "huge welfare states" have prerequisites ( for instance you can't just come in as an economic migrant and ask for unemployment benefits).
Furthermore, i thought the US was the richest country - it certainly has by far the most expensive military. But the flying spaghetti monster forbid money goes to other people.
That changes the political and migration dynamics significantly.
How often does that happen? HN often becomes a mental gymnastics competition in these matters.
How exactly?
2. You talk about per capita then switch to US having the most expensive military. Why not use per capita for costs? US is not the highest. Israel and UAE come before. It makes more sense to use per capita figures for cost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...
3. The US is also above Iceland, Polan, Spain, Ireland, Finland, Israel, Japan, etc. Why leave that out? This kind of bad faith discussion is really boring.
4. "the difference between the number of persons entering and leaving a country during the year, per 1,000 persons (based on midyear population)" It doesn't distinguish between permanent and non-permanent visitors. Also, it doesn't say whether illegal immigration is counted.
5. "In many of those countries, the "huge welfare states" have prerequisites ( for instance you can't just come in as an economic migrant and ask for unemployment benefits)." Thanks for making my point! The US has few such restrictions.
And of course my original comment is flagged because we can't have free discussion going against the party line.
> But the flying spaghetti monster forbid money goes to other people
I am not going to respond to a ill-informed jab at religion.
Total estimated population of unauthorised migrants in the US is around 11.4 million and declining (around 3% of population). 310,000 unauthorised migrants arrive in a year https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/immigra...
It looks like somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 people each year step to the next stage of their path to naturalisation in the US, this is probably the most reasonable way to count migrants. https://www.dhs.gov/immigration-statistics/special-reports/l...
That would give a total of around 500,000 migrants a year, the population of the smallest G8 country (Canada) is around 38 million.
The only way to get close to Canada’s population is to take the all-time estimated immigrant population (around 45 million, or 13.7% of population).
The closest you can get with the present-tense “admits” rather than “over 60 years has admitted” is to take all I-94 entries, which are explicitly non-immigrant entries, include tourists and office-visit visas, and would not be part of any welfare state.
There is no need to invent a perpetual motion machine to support people who are (broadly) supporting themselves (if through a legal migration route) or whose total size accounting for deaths and those who leave by choice is stable (if through an unauthorised route).
There's also a book called "Nobody Died at Sandy Hook", which argues that the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax staged by the Obama administration as a pretext to take everybody's guns away. People can write and publish books about anything.
Care to make an actual argument?