To be fair, American culture is the destruction of other cultures if you take a critical eye at American history. It's quite funny to see people so protective of it.
Well, I'm not talking about American culture, I'm talking about any country taking in immigrants, and general reasons to object to it. It certainly isn't economics-only. (America has already undergone this process in many waves, e.g. when non-Quakers took over Pennsylvania, or when Californians move to Idaho.)
This is a thread and topic about America and immigration in America. To suddenly shift and say that you're somehow not talking about American culture seems rather incredibly disingenuous.
And that said, a culture does not deserve to live by virtue of existing. It's protectionism and xenophobia, founded purely because of fears that immigrants will somehow replace your culture with something you view as being lesser. This is a two-way street because I have seen people use it as an argument against letting in people that would destroy woman's rights or what now here in America...and I've heard it used in fears of immigrants fighting for minority rights or woman's rights in countries like Japan.
It's an argument born out of irrational fears and one I find not compelling at all.
Well I certainly object to the destruction of America’s culture too, but the construction of geofft’s argument is that categorically he could only think of one possible objection to immigration.
And it’s not an irrational fear. It’s a very obvious fact that America with wide open borders would be a worse place for existing Americans to live, just look at the average country and ask if Americans would like to live there, and why not.
I don't believe it's a very obvious fact at all, considering America has had very lax borders in the past and I would not describe it as being a far worse place to live. If you're going to describe something as an obvious fact, how about you back up your obvious fact with citations or data? Otherwise then yes, it would be an irrational fear.
And I would imagine the converse is true: If you asked anyone in another first world country if they would like to live in America, I would bet you'd see the results end up rather negative. Especially after the past few years of nonsense we've exhibited to the rest of the world.
Simply by increasing population, traffic, and pollution it would make the country worse off.
You don’t need studies and citations to figure this out, you need to hold in your head a model of reality. You need above average people, who give more than they take, in order to drive the quality of the country upward.
Let's take your argument to the extreme then: If increasing population -> more traffic -> more pollution, then the obvious thing should be to reduce the birth rate in America which is a far more pressing issue than immigration if we're talking pure population growth.
Not only that but by your own argument since we need 'above average people' who 'give more than they take', the end result should be forcing people out of rural areas (the dense metropolitan areas tend to be more economically powerful) while also ensuring they can't procreate. What I'm getting at is essentially using population growth as an excuse for restricting immigration is itself an excuse, because there are many ways in which the issues of population growth are stymied and more effective at doing so.
And yes, I do want studies and citations. You're essentially begging the question in lieu of actually providing evidence for your own claims. I want you to give me explicit citations for your claims and your 'model of reality', because you're assuming that your model of reality is correct without any factual basis.
Then you're admitting that you're not here to actually debate in any sort of rational manner. If you make a claim and can't substantiate your claim when called out on it, then your claim has no rational or factual basis. At which point your entire argument falls apart, especially when you call something a 'very obvious fact'.
It's obvious now that you're not actually willing to properly argue on your side of the debate. The argumentative burden of proof is on the person making the claims, not the one disputing it. The fact that you're being so flippant about your claims does not do your argument justice.
Not only that, but now you're attempting to twist the argument into something that it wasn't in the first place. Even if we did decrease immigration, that wouldn't fix the issues of traffic and pollution in America because those are born out of poor city planning combined with lax industrial standards. Unless you want to somehow argue that immigrants contribute more to pollution than corporations doing things like say, flaring in West Texas.
If you can't support your claims with evidence when called out on it, then you shouldn't make such bold claims period.
> Simply by increasing population, traffic, and pollution it would make the country worse off.
This doesn't at all seem obviously true to me. It rather seems obviously false: I find big cities more pleasant to live in than small towns, even though they have more of all three. More population seems like an inherent virtue to me. More traffic gets turned into more efficient traffic via public transit, or building denser and more walkable cities, or whatever, which I find more enjoyable than cars. More pollution is a side effect but a solvable one.
If your argument is the model of reality in your head, then you need to admit that the model of reality in lots of other peoples' heads is very different, and there's no reason that your model should win (unless you're claiming that your political opinions matter more than others'?).
I think waiting in traffic and being forced to use alternate means of transportation is a net negative. There are already Big Cities in this country for anybody that enjoys the city-slicker lifestyle, and increasing total population won't make the world better for those people.
Okay, that's correct. And I disagree(d) with what the primary objection is and would be. Maybe not your objection, but most people's, in every country.
I haven’t actually told you my immigration policy, and it’s clear you’ve incorrectly decided you know what it is.
My immigration policy would be to let in the set and sequence of immigrants that makes this country as nice a place to live as possible. Approximated with a greedy algorithm, that means picking the individual that makes this country the most nicer place, letting them in, and then repeating the calculation until we’ve run out of people that make the country a better place for us to live. Culturally, that means cultural optimization, not preservation.
I’d happily stop 99.999% of noncitizens from moving here and working here while allowing Californians to move to Idaho. (I’d also remove the financial penalties California places on people that moved from Idaho to California.)
That's not a coherent policy - that basically describes everyone's policy. That describes the current US policy. That describes my policy. It's just that you've shifted it to a discussion of what makes the country a "nice place to live," which obviously lots of people disagree on. In particular you haven't answered what to do when there are conflicting arguments over whether bringing in a particular person would make the country a nicer place to live or not, or for whom it's nicer.
Specifically, I think that this country would be a nicer place to live for myself if I can hire whomever I want for my team regardless of citizenship and without big government second-guessing my decision, and if they can feel confident about their long-term future once they move, therefore making them a) more likely to accept and b) happier and more productive when they're here.
I also think that the number of people who have moved into the SFBA (myself included, I'll be honest—feeling uncomfortable with that is part of why I left) have made it a worse place to live. I think there are ways to solve that other than internal migration restrictions, and I have other philosophical objections to internal migration restrictions, but I do see their appeal. You, for some reason that I don't totally follow, either don't think that SFBA has become a worse place to live or that this isn't an important criterion in deciding internal policy; I'm curious which it is (or whether I've misinterpreted).
That doesn't describe current US policy, which prevents people from coming that would make the country a nicer place to live, and lets many people in that wouldn't. By design, it even brings in random people.
I'm not describing a policy, I'm describing an ideal. (A simple concrete policy proposal is below.)
You said:
> Here's a simpler proposal: anyone from anywhere can come here and take any job.
So that doesn't describe your policy proposal either. Plenty of people can hold down a job and make the country a worse place for others, or a subset of others, simply by competing for resources, driving down wages in the sector they work in, by being a criminal, or by voting immorally.
I want to let everybody you'd let in, except for people whose immigration would make the country a worse place. Define that ideal as you will.
As a pretty good approximation, we could limit immigrants to those that could qualify for military service.
> myself included, I'll be honest—feeling uncomfortable with that is part of why I left
That's also a reason why I left. My policy as a national policy, is to make the country a nice place for all of its citizens (except criminals and slovenly degenerates) to live in. So that includes people that might like to move from Arizona to California. They're making their own lives better, which counts for something.
> I think that this country would be a nicer place to live for myself if I can hire whomever I want for my team regardless of citizenship and without big government second-guessing my decision
If you're like most employers, that means you're happier if you get to drive down working class wages, while you get to reap greater profits from your pre-established position in the market. That's good for you, but not good for the average American.
To make my goals a little more nuanced: Economically, I want only the smartest immigrants, which do advanced stuff like start companies, work for them, or work in healthcare, which drive up the demand for working-class labor, letting average Americans negotiate a better piece of the pie, while driving down the cost of their healthcare. Culturally, I want supply limited so that immigrants assimilate, and I want all the immigrants and their children to be crime-free pro-life Republican voters. :-)
