Your ideal immigrants are young parents with healthy children, who are apparently willing to abandon their own parents? And somehow this is a good thing?
Should the country receiving the immigrants let elderly grandparents be cared for by their own country's pension and aged-care and healthcare industry, instead of burdening the receiving countries?
Absolutely unequivocally yes.
The grandparents can always come visit on tourist visas and the immigrants can visit their original country too.
I seem to recall the notion that elderly people are normally isolated, atomized wards of the “aged-care industry” as a relatively recent innovation, no? Versus people seeking to bring elderly relatives to reproduce the sort of multigenerational households that more traditionally handled aging care, and that do that today in other parts of the world?
Nations are able to afford it with a healthy dependency ratio, but with the Baby Boom generation leaving the workforce, it will no longer be possible.
A young family who have recently migrated are saving for a house and college, to make them pay for a decade of end-to-life treatment (cancer treatment, dialysis) at United States price ranges is unaffordable even for very high income earners.
Remember the two parents have four grandparents, and two children (the receiving country would love for them to have a third).
That said, I am open to a special visa with a million dollar escrowed deposit per elderly parent to cover their healthcare. Without extreme restrictions they are bound to become a healthcare burden on the system.
I was of the impression that, in the US at least, such immigrants might be allowed to purchase Medicare if they’d been here for a long time and worked/paid payroll taxes for many years—but that they certainly wouldn’t qualify to get it for free in the way native-born people do. Native-born people with 10 years of formal employment, anyway.
Not sure how that works with Medicaid—it sounds like [1] some states have chosen to implement that in ways immigrants can access if they come in on green cards and spend their working lives in the US, paying in to the system—but that seems to me more like a local policy choice than a primary feature of the immigration system.
For that matter, in your formulation, should the working-age immigrants themselves, who permanently resettle and work their whole life in the US, be denied access to old-age benefits when the time comes?
[0] https://www.kff.org/faqs/medicare-open-enrollment-faqs/enrol...
[1] [PDF] https://www.health.ny.gov/health_care/medicaid/publications/...
Oh, I wasn't familiar with the 'public charge' requirement of the US immigration system. That's excellent in principle, and wonderful if enforced adequately.
> Not sure how that works with Medicaid—it sounds like [1] some states have chosen to implement that in ways immigrants can access if they come in on green cards and spend their working lives in the US, paying in to the system—but that seems to me more like a local policy choice than a primary feature of the immigration system.
Yes, agree that's not a feature of the immigration itself but a local policy choice. Some states are very lax with Medicaid qualification rules eg, California recently expanding coverage to illegal immigrants with loosened criteria that legal immigrants won't qualify. I recall changes were made in response to federal tightening of rules. It's still a bad policy, but a local one.
> For that matter, in your formulation, should the working-age immigrants themselves, who permanently resettle and work their whole life in the US, be denied access to old-age benefits when the time comes?
No, one principle is they have paid into the system for a long period of time then they should of course be able to access benefits.
The other principle is by that time they are ready to retire they will certainly permanent residents but hopefully citizens, so not seen differently than other citizens.
Even moreso with arbitrary rule changes with zero deadlines meaning they can't even necessarily fly back in emergencies without risking losing their status in the US?
Based on my reading of the law, you can overstay a tourist visa and receive Medicaid coverage in California relatively quickly.
(But that's a different discussion)
Are those the people Europe and the US are look to immigrate?
GP mentioned “abandoning your parents” when you immigrate as if that’s absurd. In reality it’s the most normal thing imaginable.
I know hundreds of people who live outside their home country and I can’t thing of a single one of them who took their parents with them. When does that ever happen?
My wife "abandoned" her entire family to come to America at 18, didn't speak a word of english, had a suitcase and barely enough money to survive a week.
She doesn't regret it and her family doesn't think they were abandoned.
This "abandoned" idea is great example of a poor idea that goes into policy that doesn't match reality.
That's what I'm responding to. That the first immigrants to America came under very different circumstances. Circumstances that wouldn't get them into America today.
Abandoning your parents isn't absurd when you don't have other good options. It's also not the most normal thing imaginable. Would you abandon your parents and go to another country if they can't join you at all?
We want the "best and brightest" but we also want them to have to abandon their parents to do it? Many of the best and brightest have other options.
For the most part it was companies looking for gold, furs etc, with the support of their governments. Companies founded the colonies and trading posts for the benefit of the stockholders and the governments. The consideration of colonists was a distant third. When the supply of easy marks dried up they turned to indentured labour and then slavery.