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Comment by ChumpGPT | Hacker News Reader

It's a long process and people who have been vetted and through it don't deserve to be held up unless there is a good reason. I can understand if there is something amiss but to just put the entire thing on hold for "theater" is wrong.

Still from what I understand the US takes in more immigrants every year than any other country.

Worldwide, the United States is home to more international migrants than any other country, and more than the next four countries—Germany, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the United Kingdom—combined

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/frequently-requested...

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> Worldwide, the United States is home to more international migrants than any other country, and more than the next four countries—Germany, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the United Kingdom—combined

That's a somewhat misleading way of presenting data.

It is true that in absolute terms, the US contains more immigrants than any other country on earth.

However, on a percentage of the population basis, the US is actually only around the OECD average in terms of numbers of immigrants: https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/foreign-born-populat... – in 2019, Luxembourg was 47.30% foreign-born, Australia 29.90%, Switzerland 29.70%, Israel 21.20%, Sweden 19.50%. At 13.60%, the US was around the middle.

The fact that the US comes first in absolute terms, is not because the US is unusually welcoming to immigrants, it is because (among developed countries) it is unusually populous – at 333 million people, it is over 2.5 times more populous than the 2nd most populous OECD member (Japan).

The top five countries in the world by population are China, India, United States, Indonesia, and Pakistan. As mega-population superpower/rising-power type countries go, the United states is it for the embrace of immigration.

Our anti-immigration lobby is loud and politicized, but there are smart people doing policy behind the scenes no matter which bunch of belligerent blowhards are in office in a given year.

We should be even more welcoming of immigration than we are, and we should clean up our act on e.g. the southern border and the humanitarian crisis that's completely avoidable there. We don't have this right yet.

But when it comes down to it in realpolitik terms, populous nations are strong nations both today, and especially in 20-40 years when powers like the PRC are going to be faltering badly because of demographic collapse and we're still going strong because new blood kept the country young and vibrant.

US can take in easily another 20-30 million immigrants over say 5-10 years - the question is always how to assimilate when there is already a distinct lack of affordable housing / schools / medical infra. There is literally no public investments in this.

That said the IRA act is poring money into manufacturing which is having direct effects in those states, but require a hard look at easing infra development,

How about migrant diversity? I.e. i found netherland far more diverse than uk.

In the 2021/2022 census, 16% of UK population was foreign-born. The top 5 countries of origin were India, Poland, Pakistan, Romania, and Ireland. [0]

In 2022, almost 15% of the Netherlands population was foreign-born. The top 5 countries of origin were Turkey, Suriname, Morocco, Indonesia, and the Dutch Caribbean. [1]

So I'm not sure, just looking at the statistics, if it is really true that one country is more diverse in terms of migrants than the other.

And, putting statistics aside, do you really think a country which until recently had a second-generation immigrant Prime Minister (Rishi Sunak, both of whose parents were born in East Africa, of Punjabi descent–and his wife was born in India too), is less diverse than the Netherlands, which has not yet in its history had a Prime Minister who was not ethnically Dutch? And I think if you look at Sunak's cabinet, you will notice it was more ethnically diverse than Schoof's is, or any of Rutte's were – and the current Starmer cabinet is more ethnically diverse than Schoof's as well.

[0] https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/mi...

[1] https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/dossier/asylum-migration-and-integr...

So percentages are nearly same - I feel the immigrant tail in NL is far longer

As I said, compare the current Netherlands cabinet to the current UK cabinet:

Schoof cabinet: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schoof_cabinet#Cabinet_membe...

Starmer cabinet: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starmer_ministry#Cabinet

The current UK cabinet contains senior ministers from ethnic minority background, such as David Lammy as Foreign Secretary and Shabana Mahmood as Lord Chancellor. Who are their equivalents in the Netherlands?

Keep in mind

1) The US economy has no choice, it needs immigrants to keep the population from declining. This is why the southern border is what it is. We've trade an economic problem for an immigration problem.

2) In some - many? - cases these immigrants are a brain drain from their home country. That is, when "the best" come here instead of staying home to improve their on country, is that a net positive? We pat ourselves on the back but no one talks about how this hurts the from countries.

Down voted? Why? At least stand up and counter. HN ain't what it used to be. Sad really.

I don’t know the exact algorithm, but I can give you a good idea why this might have happened. I hope you feel I’m not being critical, but rather trying to help explain that this is probably not personal…

1. Sensitive Topic

2. Rhetorical Questions and Ambiguity

3. Implied Criticism

4. Complex Sentence Structure (I’m guilty of writing in the same format as my thoughts too)

5. The Typo (“own country” instead of “on country”)

This effectively describes why you were likely algorithmically downvoted.

Ok. But 0 would be: obvious (to me) facts.

Fact: The US economy needs the headcount, esp since birthrates are down.

Fact: When we "win" the best & the brightest, the country they came from loses. Imagine if instead of fighting the American Revolution, everyone picked up and moved to (e.g.) Canada. The US loves to brag about the win, but never comes clean on the countries that lose.

These key facts are too often not mentioned in the context of this topic, because they alter the myth and change the narrative. So the solution is... DV'ing?

Anywhere else, that would be funny. On HN it's sad.

There is a place for us bottom readers on HN’s too. Honor the downvote.

I do. But what bother me is how consistently these an off topic comment and then a long subdiscussion that continues the irrelevance.

I come here to avoid random smalsmall minded down voting. It doesn't help at all

> no one talks about how this hurts the from countries

It's a fairly common topic when people talk about foreign aid and assistance. The classic dilemma is that we'd like to make sure top people all over the world get as much education as they can use, but we'd also like them to stay in their home countries and do the work of development even though they might rationally view the opportunities someplace else for a highly educated person as quite attractive.

Do we do that? Or when pressed say just that? In general, those who leave are the most able; those who don't less so. We accept at least some of the former, therefore we're skimming at least some cream off the top (for ourselves). In all the discussion and debates about immigration I've witnessed, I've never heard a single leader / decision maker say, "but we have to be careful not to take too many of their best...". Instead, it's always about how great we are about immigration. It can't be both.

In other words, "did you make up that thing you just wrote?" As it turns out, no, I did not. But I'm delighted you would imply that I did! At times my faith in online discourse gets a little too high, and it's healthy to recalibrate.

One example of what I was talking about (merely the first I was able to quickly google): the requirement for Fulbright scholars, who are paid to study at the graduate level in the United States, to return to their home countries, at least for a time, before trying to come back to the US:

You and your dependents are subject to Code of Federal Regulations rule 212(e), the two-year, home-country residence requirement associated with the J-visa. As noted throughout this guide, the spirit of the Fulbright Program is to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries by means of educational and cultural exchange. When you have completed your grant, you are expected to return home to share the knowledge you have gained. This means that until you have resided and been physically present in your home country for a combined total of two years following your departure from the United States, you and your dependents are ineligible to apply for status in the United States as:

Permanent residents, Temporary workers or trainees (visa status H) Fiancé(e)s (visa status K) Intracompany transferees (visa status L) Grounds for applying for a waiver of the two-year, home country residence requirement are extremely limited, and approval of waiver requests is rare. IIE cannot assist in this process. Waivers should not be requested as a means of continuing your grant activities.

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