Comment by tathougies

5 years ago

Having mexic-enter is vastly different than immigration. It's dishonest to compare the two.

Namely.. I am someone who is against illegal immigration but I would support mexico joining the usa

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tathougies

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runarberg  5 years ago

The point of the parent is to demonstrate how silly zero-sum arguments against immigration are, not to compare. A similar anecdote is to point at the open border policy inside the EU. Allowing free migration of people within the EU states (i.e. open borders) has had tremendous economic benefits for every member state, except perhaps the countries that are loosing workers.

Consider also that free migration is allowed within the US borders. Everyone in South Carolina is currently leagally allowed to migrate to California. Is California loosing money to South Carolina because of this?

  • tathougies  5 years ago

    > Consider also that free migration is allowed within the US borders. Everyone in South Carolina is currently leagally allowed to migrate to California. Is California loosing money to South Carolina because of this?

    Again... completely apples-to-oranges comparison. Migrants between South Carolina and California share enough in common that it hardly classifies as migration other than due to the internal political divisions of the United States.

    Legal immigration to the US is a zero-sum game, by law, and this is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.

    • runarberg  5 years ago

      Tell me, what precisely is the economic mechanism that makes California loose money from Sonorense migrants, but not from South Carolinian migrants. What is it that migrants from Baja California, Liberia, or Ireland lack in commonalty with native Californians but migrants from Louisiana have?

      I’m also a little confused as to what you mean by zero-sum by law. Is there a law that states that the federal government has to pay with each immigrant? If a Jamaican immigrant produces growth for the US (say by doing labor and contributing to the economy), then the US has to, by law, pay that growth back to Jamaica? Are we not talking about economic zero-sum?

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