That’s not quite accurate. A limit is not a ban. Plus, contrary to what others are implying, immigrants are not homogenous economic cogs of productivity. Immigrants come with cultural, religious, etc traits and customs that aren’t always compatible with the customs of the place they are migrating to.
Example: my mother was an illegal immigrant who eventually accepted Reagan’s amnesty and became a citizen. So she was definitely an illegal (if you’re willing to use that terminology) but clearly not banned, in either de facto or de jure senses.
In that case, sounds like she was banned until she wasn’t. Are we to say marijuana wasn’t banned most of the past century, just because eventually we started going easier on the arrestees, loosened some laws against it, and recently pardoned some nonviolent drug convicts?
Everyone comes with those things. That’s what society is. Learning to live alongside people who aren’t always “compatible” with ourselves.
But she wasn’t banned. She come into the country legally, but overstayed her visa. Then she married an American, but failed to apply for a visa by that path (which was open to her, but she would have had to leave the country for a while). Edit: and every time she left the country and returned, she was legal again to reside for another six months, though not legal to work.
Yes, people do banned things all the time. “Illegal immigration,” however you do it, is “banned immigration”. I don’t know how it could be otherwise.
And why? Why should it be illegal to move? For a contrast, moving from, say, New York to California is not banned. The difference is apparent.
Society also has rules, norms and laws. In every society that has formed a nation on this planet there is some form of restriction of immigration. Furthermore, just because one does need to be adaptable to living in proximity to others that doesn’t mean that one is mandated to share space with regards to accepting unlimited migration of fundamentally incompatible customs or ideas.
You think a small nation bordering a larger one or a vastly more densely populated one has a moral obligation to allow unlimited migration? If so it would be relatively easy to expand one’s territory by encouraging mass migration to neighboring states and then voting to annex and that’s just one easy to spot flaw.
This is a very confused statement. I think the source is that you are believing that being for any subset of immigration being not legal, “banned” even, is equal to the statement that the position is for “banning immigration”?
Most folk get that someone wanting to “ban immigration” means being against all immigration, not just say being against allowing documented war criminals to immigrate, or other regulation.
You don’t. Okay then.
And those fundamentally incompatible customs or ideas would be what exactly?
That’s for each country, society, etc. to decide for themselves. But as an example, do you think unlimited migration from Russia into a Baltic state, Israel settlers into Gaza, China into Taiwan, Americans into Canada, any large mass migration into small nations like Switzerland, the Vatican, or Monaco wouldn’t be significantly disruptive?
Anyways, you have questions, but what is your answer to the topic? You for open borders worldwide?
Thank you for your unresponsive but incredibly informative nonanswer.
So, what again is your answer to the question asked in the topic? Are you for open borders, worldwide without exception or is there a limit?
Right, and the limit is really the tipping point where the constitutional safeguards of this hypothetical country are at risk of being overturned by targeted migration. Like, we wouldn’t want some fascist evengalical billionaire to fund migration for millions of Anglo Christian Americans into, say, Belize, whereupon they would vote to rewrite the constitution to become an ethno-religious country. In that case, unlimited migration is clearly working against the concept of self-governance.
So of course we should concede this point to the xenophobes, because the next step is for the xenophobes to acknowledge that there’s no evidence that such a thing is happening in America, and in fact our immigration policies, while much more permissive than many countries, have really been an ace move. Permissive immigration has been great for our country. Then we can give the xenophobes a whistle and tell them to blow it when there’s actual evidence of a coordinated migration-based effort to take over the country, admonish them every time they blow it for false alarms, and let the adults continue to make the decisions.
It’s not worth spending any more time on these hypotheticals.
Well said.
That sort of things simply does not happen.
Excellent points, especially the last.
Actually those are terrible points, because the topic of the thread is explicitly about considering the hypothetical of “any amount of immigration, legal illegal..” with no mention of the United States being the sole destination. So, labeling something xenophobic doesn’t even work anymore but it’s also completely irrelevant to the topic at hand. Which is, again, the question of “any amount of immigration…” so that is a “yes” or “no” type question and if the answer is “yes” it doesn’t hurt to give some examples real or hypothetical because an event does not have had to occur to debate the desirability of said event and if the answer is “no” then that is a de-facto open borders worldwide stance. Which just wouldn’t work for many small countries.
Furthermore, the assertion that in some parts of the world, including the US that immigration has not occurred at the rate that at least locally the nature of the destination has not changed is just false. One higher order effect we’ve seen is the worldwide growth of right wing populism in response to not just immigration but to the environment surrounding the debate on immigration.
He said it best.
As the opening poster, good points that have been made several times: yes there are points where there can be too much, and more so points where there is too much for periods of time (housing supply mismatch in some countries, where the influx is initially a strain on housing supply, but the increased workforce also allows for the shortage to be addressed). There definitely are countries that have had some dimensions of their infrastructure stressed by rapid rates of immigration before the number have resulted in adaptations benefiting all.
From the American perspective the hypotheticals are informative partly because they help clarify how far away from those points of hypothetical concern we currently are.
To elaborate on octopus’ point, the concept of open borders might be doable as long as it is limited to small nations’ populaces migrating into big nations’. It would mean the end of small nations if it were the other way around.
As a Taiwanese person, if we allowed China to send in as many people as China wanted, we’d be overrun. The Baltic states also limit Russian migration for good cause. It’s a cousin of Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance; if you want your nation to remain democratic, then you have to limit migration of people who would hijack or end your democracy.
China sending in as many people as China wants is not immigration.
(And that’s the same problem those other recent thought experiments have.)