It’s worth considering how increased immigration is different than an equivalent increased birth-rate. Are we really worried about running out of resources from a modest increase in immigration?
If the US has a robust economy, then it should ‘scale up’ as population grows (by immigration or birth-rate). For example: with a larger population we should be able to increase demand for local food and reduce farm subsidizes.
But it’s not clear to me that this is true in the age of globalization. Our disparity between wage growth and healthcare costs makes the US unable to compete worldwide. I can’t help but think that an increase in immigration will just mean more container ships with food and trinkets.
And if the economy doesn’t scale up with immigration, then it won’t with birth-rate either. Which begs the question, “What the heck is our long-term plan?” Hang on to the status quo as long as we can?
My husband had an O visa (“alien of extraordinary ability”) which specifically precluded any path to permanent residency. No other visa type was available to him, and marriage to a US citizen (had gay marriage even been legal at the time) would have been a violation of his visa, per our immigration lawyer, so we both left.
As I’ve said in the past I consider it a good thing, and I’d limit immigration restrictions to the actually dangerous categories. Violent criminals, disease carriers and the like.
If we are talking about the US, it’s “purge all non-white people”. To the extent that counts as a “plan”.
Any talk about increasing US immigration or making it more fair is by definition going against present practices and whatever plans presently exist. The goal is to literally depopulate the country in the name of ethnic purity, not invite in outsiders.
Not that I’m advocating this, but I do wonder if there’s a grain of truth in there somewhere when people look at how society’s changed since the women’s lib movement and the subsequent (unrelated) economic disruptions of the 1970s and 80s.
I mean, we effectively doubled the workforce in a short amount of time, and then suddenly start crying about employment problems, lack of wage growth, etc… like that wasn’t a foregone conclusion when something like that happens.
I can also totally see some unenlightened sorts blaming it on women and thinking that if things were like they were in Grandpappy’s day with only men working, and only white men in certain sorts of jobs, things would be better for them. Which is probably technically true, but it’s also ridiculous to think that would actually be achievable or desirable.
They also conveniently overlook the resurgence of the rest of the world after WWII and the rise of other nations like China, Korea, Mexico, etc… in manufacturing, and how that basically spreads around all the lucrative blue collar jobs that used to be highly concentrated in the US after WWII.
I don’t really think immigration has too much bearing on any of that, other than the nativist calculus that just looks at numbers and assumes that without all these furriners, there would be more jobs for the locals, regardless of whether or not locals want to hang drywall, frame houses, mow lawns, work as low paid line cooks, and all the other things immigrants commonly do.
It might have been easier, but it was definitely not easy. I mean, you would think that a woman with two graduate degrees and a job lined up would basically be able to just stroll into the immigration office, take the citizenship test, and get sworn in right away.
But no, when her student visa expired, there was a surprising amount of red tape she had to undergo just to stay and work while she satisfied all the requirements for citizenship. She was actually a bit salty that the way the immigration system worked, it was often easier for uneducated, non-English speaking immigrants from certain countries than it was for her.
It all ended up well, but it was kind of harrowing for her for a while, and for no good reason that I could ever discern.
Nobody says their plan would actually happen. However, there is enough talk amongst influential people about increasing birth rates, coupled with concerns about demographic shifts and restrictions on reproductive rights to make me think they would be thrilled if women went back to being Suzy homemaker with 4+ kids.
It’s an idea I’ve seen pushed for decades. It’s the inevitable result of sexism & the unwillingness to blame employers for anything colliding with the lump of labor fallacy. It’s just the gender-based version of all those rants about immigrants “stealing our jobs”.
Pretty much mythical. There have always been lots of women working; though often with access only to certain types of jobs and often only for less pay than men got. It’s certainly true that some people think it worked that way; and it’s true that there was a while when one salary could often support a family (with the assumption that there was a woman doing a lot of unpaid work to keep that family functioning), but even during that time there were a lot of women doing paid work.
And also assumes that immigrants somehow don’t buy anything and therefore don’t create any jobs by doing so.
Many, many people are in denial that we live in a consumer-driven economy; we’ve been propagandized for over a century about how all wealth flows top down from the already rich and that consumers and workers alike are just worthless parasites. So the fact that more consumers means a bigger market and therefore a bigger economy just doesn’t compute.
That’s been government policy for decades. Deporting convicted felons who were in the country illegally from prison was routine. The only issue was whether you got deported as you entered prison or had to complete your sentence first and then were deported as part of your release. As far as I know, nobody was arguing against this policy.
To me, this is the key criteria. Anyone, a political refugee or a 0.1% immigrant, needs to be given the chance to learn and adopt the host countries values-and if they don’t they shouldn’t stay. I don’t even agree with deporting criminals. Crime has too many causes to be a one size fits all problem. Outside a few high growth countries, immigrants are in the adopted countries best interest.
Well I think that’s the big issue people have with immigration, isn’t it? Having a few diverse neighbors is fine but no one wants to wake up one day and find that everyone in town suddenly looks and acts and speaks a different language with different values from them.
I really don’t like her comment–it reeks of white entitlement; and, moreover, with Trump’s “ethnic cleansing” approach, a PoC having her credentials would NOT be given citizenship. In fact, the woman could be deported on arrival at office just for overstaying visa
I’m quite curious exactly what these “different values” that immigrant’s have that are so different from “our” country’s values are . . . aside from eating the dogs and the cats of course.
I swear, these people and their foreign ways. Chow mein, Hamburg steaks, Pizza? And who the hell is this Saint Paddy?