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Comment by runarberg | Hacker News Reader

> I get that we can't open the flood gates

Serious question, has this ever been shown to be a concern. If we would open for free migration, is there seriously any reason to think that migration would be so intense that the country wouldn't be able to handle it?

I ask because I seriously doubt it. Historically migration has been pretty liberal, and there are place which offer free movements of people (e.g. the EU) where opening up the borders (or the flood gates if you will) has turned out to be a great success.

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"Great success" is relative...

In my small EU country, this has created a caste of low-paying jobs that only immigrants do, and the hiring process usually goes along "put out an ad, offer minimum pay" - "noone local wants to do that job for minimum wage" - "complain you can't get workers" - "get work visas for foreigners".

This would/could be mitigated by raising the minimum wage for foreign workers (eg., you need a cleaning lady, the pay for a foreign worker must be atleast 1.5x the average pay currently working cleaning ladies get, so they'll try to get a local for atleast 1.499x the average pay first and then if really desparate hire a foreigner).

We have plenty of the low-paying jobs that only immigrants do in the US as well.

Some are via temporary work visas, some are via undocumented immigrants. The fact that they are undocumented immigrants means that they have very few legal protections, which makes it a lot easier for employers to exploit them.

If you also pay immigrants well, they actually integrate well.

A huge barrier to integration is lack of social mobility. Europe hasn't really closed the class gap between Europeans and immigrants (either economic immigrants, or escaping a shit country immigrant)

But if you pay well, you also get the locals to do the job.

I know higly educated people in demand (scientists, engineers,...) are well paid anywhere, but "free immigration" would bring in a lot of people, bringing a lot of jobs down to minimum wage or even lower.

I mean all of this needs executive pay to not keep skyrocketing vs everyone else.

> In my small EU country, this has created a caste of low-paying jobs that only immigrants do, and the hiring process usually goes along "put out an ad, offer minimum pay" - "noone local wants to do that job for minimum wage" - "complain you can't get workers" - "get work visas for foreigners"

Where? This doesn’t sound like the Irish experience at all. Another small EU country.

Your teenagers come over to USA in the summer and do those low paying jobs.

I live in slovenia, stuff like construcion, cleaning/housekeeping, garbage disposal, etc. is mostly done by (more) southern balkan people (bosnians, serbs, albanians, etc.).

Even if you go further north (austria, germany, switzerland,...), it's easier to talk to eg. construction workers if you know any of the ex-yugoslav languages, than using eg. german.

Raising the minimum wage for foreign workers

Now that's a good idea. Right now, there's "E-Verify", through which employers can verify immigration status. But it's not mandatory. Jobs that don't require E-Verify should have to pay at least 2x the state minimum wage.

Farmers who depend on exploiting cheap labor oppose this. They even have a lobby for that.[1] They'd be using slaves if they could get away with it.

[1] https://www.fb.org/issues/immigration-reform/e-verify/

> In my small EU country, this has created a caste of low-paying jobs that only immigrants do

This is flat out false. While it’s true that there’s a lot of internal migration from poorer EU countries to richer ones due to significantly higher pay for unskilled/low-skilled labour, almost none of the people taking them can be considered immigrants, because very few of them have the intention of long-term relocation. They all almost universally move for a couple of years to make and save some money and then return back to their countries.

And there absolutely are locals even in the richest EU countries doing minimum wage jobs. But they also aren’t doing them for long. There’s just a significantly larger pool of people willing to take them.

> very few of them have the intention of long-term relocation

Yep, and they all build huge houses in the balkans, that they then never visit, because they stay in austria/germany/switzerland/..., because after 30 years living abroad, they have noone left "back at home", their kids go to school in EU, and finished school there, and don't want to move back either, their doctors are there, their pensions are there, their friends are there, so they stay.

Sure, there are a few locals doing some minimum wage jobs, but on pretty much every construction site across europe (and especially the countries mentioned above), you'll be able to communicate using one of the ex-yugoslav languages.

> because after 30 years living abroad

The EU expansion where the poorest countries joined happened in 2004., and mass migration didn't really happen until the aftermath of 2008, so it's 15 years at most.

> they have noone left "back at home", their kids go to school in EU

This is not true for most. They have plenty of friends and extended family is back home.

> their pensions are there

You can collect your pension from one EU country in another.

> so they stay.

No idea about migration from Balkans, but it's provably false for migration from the Eastern EU members. Even to the English speaking countries (UK, Ireland), where the language barrier is less of an issue.

The migrations were not just intra-EU, they were from outside of EU too, eg balkan states, the turks in germany, etc.

That's irrelevant then. It's significantly easier to return to your home country knowing that you could always go back to Germany etc without too much hassle.

For non-EU citizens/permanent residence holders (which is actually not as simple to acquire as it sounds) it's a far more difficult decision that it is for EU citizens.

In the extreme case of the United States, if you leave the US for more than 6 months as a green card holder without acquiring a re-entry permit (which is good for only up to 2 years. There's no way to leave the US for more than 2 years as a green card holder and to be able to return with any certainty)

And even worse, virtually all illegals in the US are inadmissible for 10 years after they leave the US, so there's no path to legal status for them at all. And if they have illegally re-entered after deportation, they are banned for life.

This is a really good point. Liberating migrations will change the behavior of migrants and hence the dynamics are completely different.

This is often talked about in the context of decriminalizing drugs. If you apply the current behavior to drug users to a world where access to drugs is less restricted, you can come up with all sorts of weird problems, which will simply not manifest because the nature of drug use is completely different when it is not a crime.

Similarly applying the current behavior of restricted migrants to a world where migration is free, is a little misguided.

Exactly. The non-EU migrants to the EU have to go through a lot of paperwork and it takes a lot of time. And if you then leave without naturalizing (which for most non-EU citizens is probably going to take over 10 years from the day of arrival, not to mention the daunting requirements to actually achieve it in most of the EU), you’ll likely have to through the same paperwork again, because “permanent residence” is only permanent if you remain a resident.

For example I’m a permanent resident in the UK (under the EU settlement scheme, post-Brexit), but I haven’t lived in the UK for 2 years now. So in 3 years my status there will lapse. I can go back now, but I won’t be able to in 3 years. And I have it easy. Permanent resident status (ILR, or indefinite leave to remain, as it’s called in the UK) lapses in 2 years for people who didn’t gain it under the EU settlement scheme.

I went back to my home country precisely because I knew that it’s no big deal for the next 5 years. I wouldn’t have left if I knew that I’d have to return within 2 years. I would have naturalised, and maybe then. Which, again, costs a lot of money, takes a lot of paperwork, and takes a lot of time. (Which, again, is easy for me, because my home country allows you to hold multiple citizenships. That’s not the case for everyone.)

> If we would open for free migration, is there seriously any reason to think that migration would be so intense that the country wouldn't be able to handle it?

Depends on what you think "be able to handle it" means. There are many tradeoffs.

> there are place which offer free movements of people (e.g. the EU) where opening up the borders (or the flood gates if you will) has turned out to be a great success

The EU has a very strict immigration policy for people outside of the EU and it also has natural language barriers that bar foreigners from almost all jobs.

> The EU has a very strict immigration policy for people outside of the EU and it also has natural language barriers that bar foreigners from almost all jobs.

I would disagree, or do you mean immigration as in naturalisation? The EU's blue card [1] system will give you a residence permit (initially a limited one that you'll have to extend after a few years, and afterwards usually a permanent one) if you have a master's degree and a job offer where the salary is market-compatible. As for the language, places like Germany are desperate for IT people that the companies are adopting English as the corporate language, it also helps with the employees from other EU countries who are there thanks to freedom of movement.

[1] https://visaguide.world/europe/eu-blue-card/

As you have noted the blue card allows you to work in any EU country once you get a work permit in one. You can go on LinkedIn and see how many companies are ready to sponsor your first work permit even for positions that require a degree and 5+ years of experience. Places like Germany are desperate for IT people, yes, but most companies still wouldn't hire people without ready work permits.

> The EU has a very strict immigration policy for people outside of the EU and it also has natural language barriers that bar foreigners from almost all jobs.

In addition to the EU immigration policy, each individual state has got it’s own, and it’s typically a lot laxer than the EU one.

So it’s not really that simple. The blue pass is a bad example.

I googled our immigration backlog, and according to multiple sources[0], the current number of pending immigration applications is 10M. These are people who are willing to fill out the applications and wait. It's not unreasonable to assume that this is the tip of the iceberg, and that there there are many more people who don't bother to apply because of the processing times and likelihood of getting in. Suppose there are 5x more people who would instantly migrate if immigration was completely open. That's about 17% of the current US population.

That seems like a lot of people for local communities to absorb, especially if these are people that require a lot of financial assistance.

0. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/us-immigration-backl...

Why are you assuming that folks will require a lot of financial assistance?

I would be assuming if I said "especially because", not "especially if"

Your methodology is flawed. You have no idea how extensive the backlog is, nor how reflective it is of a general willingness (and ability) to migrate to the USA. For all you know 90% of all migrants willing and able to migrate to the USA have (or will) filed the paperwork to do so.

The backlog could also be abnormally large at the moment and cases are piling up. 10M could very well be the accumulation of the past 3-10 years of immigration applicants.

So the actual range here—if migration was set free—could very well be as low 1M or as high as 10M.

Regardless. Even assuming the high end here, and in a 10 year period, 100M people would migrate to the USA. My honest question was, is there any reason to be concerned about that figure?

>as high as 10M

Assuming the upper bound is as high as the backlog of immigration applications is not reasonable. A reasonable assumption is that the upper bound is at least as high as the applications.

>My honest question was, is there any reason to be concerned about that figure?

I answered that. Adding a large number of new people puts a strain on society. If you don't think people are being paid enough, or get enough benefits, or have a high enough standard of living, or that there's enough affordable housing, then why do you think adding more people would fix that?

>> as high as 10M

Sorry, I wasn’t clear. I meant yearly migrants. If every year fewer applications are processed then filed, it adds to the backlog. So the only information you get by looking at the backlog is total number of willing migrants. However they (or rather we, as I am personally one of the applicants in that backlog) are not gonna migrate here all at once, some are willing but not able (for whatever reason), some are old and no longer relevant, some are duplicate, etc.

In reality an open border policy would come gradually. So the number of yearly migrants would gradually grow, until it reaches a local peak and then slow down. Many willing people will delay their migration if they can’t find a job, etc.

So I pulled that lower bound of 1M from current migration trends. Last year it was about 700k but that was a covid year, so 1M is an easy guess of a lower bound. As for the upper bound I just took a wild guess... There is no way of knowing that number unless you do some extensive survey, and plug it into a computational model (I wonder if anyone has ever done that).

But honestly the actual number doesn’t actually matter. Societal modelling is a funny science with a lot of interacting variables. The current state of prohibitory migration actually affects the behavior of current migrants, if the migration would be free, the behavior would be different (think decriminalizing drugs).

My skepticism about the concerns people have for free migrations is that I actually see little evidence to warrant these concerns. People say stuff like: “puts a strain on society” without explaining how, or by showing evidence. Historically societies have grown by way more then 17% over a short period and did just fine. Currently the societies which are taking many migrants seem to handle it kind of well actually. There are rural communities in Iceland which grow by 30-40% in a single year by taking in 4-5 refugee families, and do just fine.

So given our evidence so far, I would say that any concerns about “opening up the floodgates” are unjustified.

>People say stuff like: “puts a strain on society” without explaining how, or by showing evidence.

I did explain how though. Do you disagree that there is a lack of affordable housing? If not, then adding more people makes it worse. Do you disagree that workers aren't being compensated fairly? If not, then adding more people makes it worse. Do you disagree that your average person doesn't have access to inexpensive medical care? If not, then adding more people makes it worse.

Tell me which of those points you disagree with, and I can point to evidence.

Like I said, Societal modelling is a funny science. These things are really dynamic. I can agree with your points that there is a lack of affordable housing and that common workers are underpaid, but at the same time disagree with your conclusion that allowing free migration will makes matter worse.

In fact a plausible dynamic is that seeing the potential surge in the demand for cheap housing, a developer might seize the opportunity, lobby their local government for more liberal zoning and start building small and cheap housing to be rented mainly to temporary workers coming with free migration. A more plausible scenario is that migrants will choose to delay their migration until they have secured a high enough paying job and housing they can afford. (Maybe they will get a job in the now booming construction industry.)

There are similarly complex dynamics with the labor market, perhaps the surge in new workers will push further unionization and actually increase the wages. Or—more likely—xenophobic politicians will fear the surge of migrants, and as a counter measure raise the local minimum wage, thinking that saturating the labor market makes is so companies won’t be able to afford migrant workers.

The point is, we don’t have any reason to believe one way or the other These models are complex and it is probably impossible to construct an unbiased one. As it stands we can only look at the evidence from history and current examples. And they do seem to indicate that the worries people have of free migration are not justified.

It sounds like you're saying that you want to overload the social systems with immigrants so that they become overburdened and then *magic handwaving* a utopia emerges. You're talking about playing with peoples lives as if they're fun experiments, while at the same time acknowledging that you don't understand how complex these systems are or how they'll behave. And if you're wrong, everyone is worse off.

Can you understand why people aren't interested in policies that come from that perspective?

You are misreading into my statements, and putting words in my mouth. Perhaps I was not clear enough. But I only took these examples to demonstrate how dynamic these things are. If you can construct a hypothetical that turns things one way, I can just as easily create an equally plausible scenario that turns things the other. The point of my exercise was simply to demonstrate that, not to advocate for some utopia.

Current implementations of free migrations don’t come as some experiments, they come from policymakers recognizing the benefits of free movement of people. This is one of the fundamental rights (the four freedoms) within the EU (or, to be more accurate, the Schengen Area).

Also, like I said, free migration won’t come all at once. The EU currently has free migration within a certain area. I hope this area will gradually expand (though I’m pessimistic it will reach far outside of the continent). Similarly free migration for the USA might start with Canada and Mexico, then expand to the Americas, and the Pacific, then maybe merge with Europe’s, Africa’s, etc. Each expansion will, no doubt, be met with fierce resistance from xenophobes, so you don’t have to worry that this would happen quickly. If I’m wrong (which I probably am; as my hypotheticals were never meant to be read as predictions) this policy can easily be slowed down, and even reversed. However, history and current implementations would suggest that there is at least little harm and potentially many benefits we are missing out on by keeping our migrations so restricted.

> 10M could very well be the accumulation of the past 3-10 years of immigration applicants.

Longer than that.

For example, Indians applying under EB-2 have a 150 year waiting list until they can get their actual green card. https://www.cato.org/blog/150-year-wait-indian-immigrants-ad...

I'd like to think that most of those 10 million pending applicants are either 1. already in the US or 2. no longer in the US/have never been there, so it's questionable whether they would actually make the move.

Fell free to ask any Native American to get an insightful answer to this question.

While this is a technically correct answer, I can't help but think the US isn't at particular risk of being colonised by a militarily overwhelming foreign force that also has smallpox. Indeed, if this were a concern, mere immigration law would hardly help!

Technically speaking, the US is the overwhelming military force that also has smallpox (in a BSL-4 lab somewhere), so perhaps his warning was for other countries, just in case?

But the point about the immigration law probably not helping much in this scenario still stands.

>that also has smallpox.

Are you seriously unaware that that's "not a thing"? No US government entity, military or otherwise, has ever deliberately infected a native population with smallpox. You're reduced to making shit up?

I don’t see your parent implying that anyone deliberately infected other populations with smallpox.

I did not say that anyone was deliberately infecting anyone. But smallpox doesn't care about your intentions.

I don’t think any Native American societies lost their lands, language and culture, because they had free migration as a policy. Rather they lost it because of an active genocide conducted by a hostile force.

> where opening up the borders (or the flood gates if you will) has turned out to be a great success.

Yup, great success: https://apnews.com/article/438bb0ac98d04459ab2e392f3c4fc5ef

Germany is definitely a modern cautionary tale of open door policy not working.

You can also look at Canada, which brings in ~500,000 (documented, skilled) immigrants per year relative to their 35MM population. Of course, housing in Canada is now the most expensive in the entire OECD.

Alas, the Canadian government is deeply committed to the same lord and savior of the USA, the Free Market(TM), to magically produce the required infrastructure for this massive population influx. However, His Invisible Hand has not yet intervened in Canada's favor.

Canadian immigration policy is the exact opposite of "opening the flood gates and letting everyone in". It's a highly "discriminatory" point based selection process, accepting almost exclusively educated and skilled candidates.

If anything the American immigration policy is much closer to what's being proposed, considering it usually aims for immigrant diversity (through the lottery, for example) rather than just education/work status. They are also more lenient towards undocumented immigrants, and deal with a ton more of them than we do here.

The only thing canada proves is that you can take a high number of immigrants yearly relatively easily (at least on the short/medium term, as you said infrastructure and housing aren't keeping up) as long as they are vetted and carefully picked. Now, maybe the last part isn't even necessary, but we wouldn't know just by looking at Canada.

> It's a highly "discriminatory" point based selection process, accepting almost exclusively educated and skilled candidates.

Judging by my family's experience, Canada's model is an excellent way to get lots of college-educated foreigners working retail service jobs. Just because the Canadian government assigns points for a Bangladeshi college degree doesn't mean Canadian employers do. The kids end up doing pretty well, but I'm not sure that's the intended function of the immigration system.

> considering it usually aims for immigrant diversity

An essential element of the U.S. system is family reunification. It encourages social stability by ensuring that immigrants usually already have a community and support network here.

>~500,000 (documented, skilled) immigrants per year

Source? lamerceria.ca says 284,000 all-cause immigrants for 2019-2020 (unclear whether that's 1 or 2 calendar years). Even if it's one year, your "500K highly-skilled" immigrant number looks off by close to an order of magnitude.

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