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Comment by bill_joy_fanboy | Hacker News Reader

Citizenship in this country is not a right. Why is it important that we allow more people in from these other nations? Why is that a good thing?

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It is not a right, for sure. However, there are historical reasons why they are county wide quotas. Before the 1965 INA (Hart-Celler Act, which JFK wanted), they had a national-origins quota system: each country's quota was based on the existing immigrant population of that national origin already in the United States, using data from the 1890 census. Because the U.S. population in 1890 was overwhelmingly from Northern and Western Europe (especially Protestants), this formula strongly favored those groups. Immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe was heavily restricted because most of them are Catholics. Once Catholics got political power, thanks to JFK, this is reformed in favor of what we see country based caps.

The national-origins formula was explicitly designed to maintain the existing ethnic composition of the U.S.--in other words, preserve what policymakers at the time considered the “traditional” American demographic makeup.

Fascinating, and thank you for this history.

In fact it's the opposite. We used to have a system that promoted western european, and we decided to change that. So we split them up in a way that encourages diversity. People from populous nations think this isn't fare. American's think it is explicitly fair, that our system makes sure people from all over the world come and join us, not just immigration dominated by the highest populous countries.

I understand the diversity is good, and that immigration can create that take. But I don't understand that 'immigration good, policies for diversity bad' take?

Policies encouraging diversity aren't necessarily good or bad on their own. It may be that it is time to readjust those quotas based on the current needs.

> American's think it is explicitly fair, that our system makes sure people from all over the world come and join us, not just immigration dominated by the highest populous countries.

I'm an American, and I don't understand how it is explicitly fair that India and China with areas of very large and populations of very large have the same immigration caps as Belize. Especially when something happens and Sudan becomes Sudan and South Sudan and the same people and the same area now have twice the cap; how is that explicitly fair? If India reorganized as the Union of Indian Republics (which I hope is not an offensive hypothetical name), where each state became a full country with an ISO-2 code and an ITU country code, would it be fair that each of the 36 member states have the same cap as any other country? Also, I'm not sure why the overall caps haven't changed since 1990. It feels like they should be indexed to something.

I think this version of quotas/caps is better than the previous version, but that doesn't make it explicitly fair.

I would be interested in knowing what the priority dates would look like if we adjusted the overall caps every ten years after the census to some percentage of overall US population (the 1990 cap was set at approximately 0.3%) or annually based on estimates works too, and also adjusting up the per country caps a bit too.

Basically the idea is that foreign nationals can only have as much leverage as the quota. This is based partly on old fears that European powers would recolonize the US.

Whether or not is necessary or not, I can’t say but if India separated into 500 different counties, then the US would only be catering to 500 micronations, maybe even divided on ethnic lines, and not a single powerful one which could get cultural dominance.

For a historical case, look at the British Empire. If given a large quota, most immigrants would be from the original isles because that’s who have the financial means to cross the ocean, while the billion plus people living in colonies like India wouldn’t have a chance until the Empire breaks.

No, this policy is currently kept based on our reason for immigration, to encourage diversity. We would lose that, and make immigration be basically for highly populous countries. That isn't why the USA has immigration. We don't have a system purely to get bodies in the country.

The USA is not the British Empire. The USA did away with preference for western Europeans and replaced it with a system for everyone. It pisses me off we are told we are being racist by... making sure all races get a chance to come here?

Is it fair that Bugatti Chiron has to obey the same speed limit as Geo Metro? The country cap is the limit on the speed of immigration from that country. If we establish such a limit for any reason, why does it have to be proportional to the size of the country? If anything, it should be lower for the bigger countries if we consider this a safety measure against a country gaining too much influence, similar to trucks having lower speed limit than cars on some roads.

Refugee programs are separate from the immigration caps already.

If it was free for all, because of the way math works, you would get mainly immigrants from the higher populous countries. We have as our reason for high immigration being diversity, and we would lose that, and replace it with 'immigration is for Chinese/Indians/other populous countries'. That isn't why we have our immigration system, nor why people support it.

I have no problem with your notion of diversity. The whole EU population is 450 million, and there are 27 countries within the EU. So, the question: is China/India less diverse than the whole EU? Some say "yes"; others, "no". Both provide good reasons for their answers.

However, one can't deny the original immigration template with a variable. Original value for this variable: "national-origins". That value is replaced with "country wide quotas". The other value is f(diversity): another formula f based on the variable 'diversity'.

American citizens and their politicians have total freedom to replace the template, or change the current value for one of the variables, or replace with another variable.

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

This is just a tired old emotional argument. It won't phase anyone who sees the results of modern immigration practices.

We get it, you don't like immigrants.

This sneering oversimplification pushes people away from generosity. It's ok to see and have emotions about the very real negative side of immigration. Lumping all those people in with the theoretical "just racist with no other rationale" crowd is harmful.

> generosity

we tried being nice, reaching across the aisle, etc. and that got us Orange Man 2.0

No it didn't. Putting up a candidate that talked about the stars and the moonlight instead of real problems Americans have got you Orange Man 2.0. To think, that they played the same game they did with Hillary and thought they could get away with it should really get you angry with party leadership.

I don't see how this is a counterpoint to my opinion. You can cultivate the generosity of natives to be open to immigration to whatever degree you think is just (e.g. by declining to use mockery/hate as your default position toward anybody who thinks there is any problem with the state of immigration), and you can do that regardless of your generosity level toward a political party that on average is more conservative or more hateful on immigration than the other. But that seems obvious, so I'm not sure what you're saying.

"This sneering oversimplification pushes people away from generosity. "

If you don't like "sneering oversimplification" you're really not gonna like it when you find out what smug "I'm the adult in the room" rhetoric does to both how you're perceived by interlocutors and the limitations on your own ability to work out the logic of these situations.

It’s not an argument, it’s a value.

It's an argument based on a value. The parent's position is ostensibly that the value does not currently survive contact with concrete reality in the US today.

America has a pretty generous immigration cap. But we have chosen as a nation that we want diverse immigration. At one time we prioritized western europeans, and we decided that wasn't a great policy. So we switched to one that encourage people from everywhere. This is what American's want, diverse immigration. I don't get how that somehow is bad? I don't get how more populous nations should have greater representation. Again, we had larger groups from certain countries (western europe) and we decided we SPECIFICALLY don't want that, that that isn't fair immigration policy and isn't part of America's diversity. We aren't going back to that.

It's certainly a popular poem, but I don't see any great evidence it has ever reflected American values.

Not even in that only 3% of the US population is Native American, and the rest are therefore descended from or are themselves immigrants?

All the more reason to avoid the fate of the Native Americans.

As time goes on, the rejection of the idea of US-born people being "natives" in the sense that the rest of the world uses the term, simply because we have another term, "Native Americans" (which, as you will notice, is a proper noun), with a different meaning, is getting more and more dishonest. Yes, language is funny. Yes, the origins of nations are tragic if you go back far enough, and future citizens inherit the distributed weight of that guilt (but not the responsibility). But now, we have 300 million living people whose practical reality we would like discuss, and on that topic you are free and encouraged to disagree with anybody.

What did you do to earn your citizenship?

Idk about US, but in Europe we are in dire need of migration. The shortage in for example health care is acute and alarming, at least in Germany.

Our cleaning women is just about to finish her three year training program. However she failed the final exam because of the complicated wording of the test. Her German is good enough but formal German is a different beast. She is allowed to redo the test a single time next week. If she passes, she will have an official German degree but has to leave the country because her visa is based on the training program. She then has to reapply for another visa to be allowed to reenter Germany.

Completely dysfunctional in my opinion. The system should bring people in that will be a net positive for the country while filtering out criminals.

I think you just don't want to pay those professions adequately. Additionally I believe non eu migration on average hasn't been a net positive in various western european without even taking into account a load of externalities.

Why do you believe that it hasn't been a net positive? Talking about regular migration, not refugees, and it's quite difficult to migrate to Germany, the country makes sure that you are a net positive to at least the economics (everything else can't be measured on an individual basis).

Because it hasn't been in the places where it was measured adequately with a similar makeup. And typically it's not even close. You can find papers on this from the netherlands (look up borderless welfare state, university of amsterdam), denmark, etc Certain demographic historically brought in to work(morocco, etc) cost on average few hundreds of thousands. This mostly trough abysmal employment statistics (the majority of non eu migrant women here in brussels is neither working nor looking for work, among men it's still >30%) and lower income employment which also costs the country on average. And this is despite a whole hosts of internationals that come in for the higher paying jobs at the international companies, etc.

In the long run it seems likely enough that it will become mainstream that people don't have the right to enforce borders against others.

Like the real long run, try to use your imagination.

> In the long run it seems likely enough...

Does it seem more likely than the alternative? If so, what is your argument that that is more likely?

Pragmatically: if you want to enforce the legality of a state-affirmed migration path, it has to be viable. Without a militarized border (which is impractical based on nation size and undesirable for fiscal and moral reasons) and a militarized interior (do you _like_ what ICE is becoming?), the best mitigation for illegal immigration is viable legal immigration.

Fiscally: immigrants have above-average entrepreneurial tendencies. It doesn't take a lot of enterprise creations and resulting tax payment and job creation to offset a _lot_ of social service consumption. Inbound migration also is what keeps the US from having a net-shrinking population, which until we can get away from late-stage capitalism is a death knell for the economy.

Morally and ethically: this is a nation of immigrants. If you claim to be a native, do you speak Navajo? Ute?

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Why not? Why is a bad thing?

It’s not a bad thing per se, but democratic action can produce cultural shift to something that was previously considered outside of the scope of your country’s way of life. What matters is what you want to achieve as a country, a society, a community and so on. This is something groups of people have to decide for themselves, and the worst form of disagreement is violence.

I am of the view that more than 10 countries in the world should be built on enlightenment ideals, have a rule of law, have systems and processes for providing a good quality of life, and have centers of education and productivity.

I don’t think it’s reasonable that we should shift billions of people to live in a handful of nations via immigration. If that’s the overall plan, then nations where those people are immigrating from should just become vassal states.

It isn’t necessarily, but it’s currently used in the US to allow the wealthy to avoid investing in Americans.

Instead of investing in Americans by lowering costs of necessities (food, housing, education, children) they chase short term profits for the benefits of shareholders (which is by and large the ultra rich). It’s much cheaper to import labor where the above costs were paid for by somebody else.

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