Comment by koe123
12 hours ago
The most insane thing to me is that legal (non-asylum) immigration is somehow framed as a “moral” thing that nations do out of charity.
Its not: you get to directly address a shortage in your country without the burden of raising and training the person. Arguably, if you don’t mind morality, the immigrants are also easier to exploit. And all that + you get a free tax payer!
My reading is that Americans (but also other parts of the world) are 1) uneducated on this topic 2) racist and or xenophobic to the point of self sabotage.
Quite literally if county building was a video game where the xenophobia of the masses could be ignored, I would brain drain the shit out of every country, leaving myself stronger and the rest weaker.
Switzerland does this well. In Switzerland, immigrants are mostly permanent residents. Achieving Swiss citizenship is very difficult. They have a bunch of immigrants in their country, yet immigration is much less divisive than in other countries, since they have such a well-designed system.
The US has a naturalization-driven model of immigration, which is being tested by fast jet travel. It worked OK in the days when you had to pay a bunch to cross the Atlantic and you couldn't easily communicate with your relatives back home. But things are different now.
The citizenship model or naturalization model creates policy implications for accepting immigrants. New voters, new policies. Of course the people on the losing end of this policy shift become upset: https://arctotherium.substack.com/p/increasing-skilled-immig...