By that logic, we should be sending all the migrants to Greenland. Hmm, maybe that’s Trump’s master plan?
Does that figure include the estimated undocumented population, or is it only naturalized citizens, or somewhere inbetween?
Over how many years did that “almost 50 million” arrive?
And, even more to the point: if you look at immigrants as a percentage of total population, the USA is nowhere near the top.
America is a leeeettle more prosperous and sustainable, smart guy. I forget what the exact number was and can’t be arsed to cite, but IIRC y’alls threw away something around the order of 1700 calories worth of food per person, per diem. That’s enough to feed 3/4th of a person. And that’s, yanno, without double the population working the fields or clearing land to cultivate.
A lot of things are up for debate wrt immigration. “America is too full already !” is ludicrous on its face.
I didn’t count Alaska (or Hawai’i) in the surface comparison.
I did not. Russia is not in Europe - be it geographically or politically. Besides Russia’s population beyond the Urals isn’t really worth counting until you reach the ocean fronts.
Where they’d be in significant danger.
Migrants in Mexico Face Kidnappings and Violence While Awaiting Immigration Hearings in U.S.
At a Mexican safe house, migrants risk violence as they wait in the shadows
– lots more evidence is available.
I’d be quite happy for the US to work with Mexico and the UNHCR to establish refugee camps in Mexico. I’m under no illusion that refugee camps are nice, perfectly safe places. On the other hand, if these migrants are fleeing horrible violent situations, then refugee camps would be a step up. Would that be as nice as living in the US? Probably not. (I’m not sure if being living-outside homeless in America sucks less than being in a refugee camp.) However, if the US is going to have managed immigration, and not open borders, it will need to have limits. Which means finding compromises for handling desperate people and methods for excluding economic migrants unwilling to wait their turn.
What’s your solution? Allow in everyone says they’ve been oppressed?
Well, Europe’s population is not 700+ million without counting Russia.
These are all statements nobody is going to dispute. The issues are where should our immigration policy be on the scale between zero and eight billion; what standards should we apply to determine who is allowed in; and what practices are acceptable in enforcing our immigration laws.
Most of Russia’s population is actually inside of the boundaries of Europe, IIRC. All but about 40 million, I believe.
EDIT: Yep: Europe - Wikipedia
According to the 2017 UN International Migration Report, 15.3% of the US population is immigrants. For France, it’s 12.2%. For Europe as a whole, it’s 10.5%.
https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/publications/migrationreport/docs/MigrationReport2017_Highlights.pdf (PDF) pp. 29 & 30, column 4.
Maybe France could at least try to catch up to the UK (13.4%)?
Fire up Google Earth. Try to find a speck of France (or the UK) that isn’t either a) a city b) cultivated fields or c) a national park.
That’s not to say France is packed to the brim or couldn’t do better - we should, especially since we’ve been raping West Africa for a while and the least we could do is reap the “rewards” of that behaviour. And we also waste a lot of food, and we also have some low density regions left (but really, I spent my youth in the Massif Central and wouldn’t wish it on anybody).
That being said, what’s your point, and how does that invalidate my earlier argument, please ? Or should we just take your whataboutism as an admission of defeat ?
Why would you want to exclude economic migrants? Especially the ones with job offers in hand?
It is the asylum seekers who represent a problem, since there wouldn’t be any if something hadn’t gone horribly wrong somewhere. However, anyone who has ever seen an actual refugee camp would not suggest anyone should spend even one night there. To discourage economic migrants from claiming to be refugees (which would only happen in the context of a quota on migration), you could always disallow asylum seekers to work while their application is being processed, but that is probably counterproductive since many refugees are highly skilled and educated, so why would you want doctors, lawyers, engineers, tradesmen, etc staring at the walls all day or forced to work under the table? Plus you would have to house and feed them anyway.
shrug Fine, I’ll spot you a couple hundred million Slavs, I ain’t even care. We’re still 600+ to your 300 and change, still parked in a strictly lower total acreage. Now what ?
Well it looks like France has about 12.4 million hectares of private forest. I’m not interested in turning that into immigrant villages. I just felt like trying.
http://facesmap.boku.ac.at/library/FP1201_Country%20Report_FRANCE.pdf#targetText=Privately-owned%20forests%20are%20highly,of%20the%20private%20forest%20surface. p.11
Some of that is in the Entre-Deux-Mers, which I’ve ridden a bike around. Nice place.
My point is that for all of the recent controversy about US immigration policy, historically the US has been welcoming for immigrants and actually has a high number of immigrants. Despite some reduction in Central American immigration and overall immigration, the US is still accepting huge numbers of immigrants. In 2017, the US issued 1,127,167 permanent residency visas. http://www.ncsl.org/research/immigration/snapshot-of-u-s-immigration-2017.aspx
Also:
Could those numbers be higher? Sure. Is the US wildly behind Europe when it comes to immigration, a subject you brought up? No.
I’ll also note that I think population density is a lousy metric for measuring suitability for immigration. I happen to think that Canada and Australia have good immigration policies. However, their immigrant/area ratio is going to be much smaller than the US by any measure you care to use.
Generally, I don’t want to exclude anyone who comes to the US or the UK with a job in hand. I just kind of would like them to have a visa/right-to-work and be sure they’re not going into the black market before they come in. The one’s who don’t have a job offer and are assuming that the market for unskilled physical labour is boundless? I’d kind of like to keep their numbers down to what professionals believe is a number that the job market can sustain.
Here’s a snapshot of refugee camps in Tanzania. They’re not nice places, but they’re not hellholes. I’m sure that with a concerted effort, the US and Mexico could create camps at least as good. Specific to the point of allowing skills-based immigration for asylum seekers, I’m for it. It has a negative effect on the country they’re fleeing, and I hope they eventually go back. But if a skilled refugee worker is available to fill an area in the economy where there’s a skill shortage? Give them a visa and let them in
See post #64.
Or the USA could try to at least catch up to Canada? 21.5%, same report as your cite.
I don’t think we should try to match the United Arab Emirates, at 88.4%. We probably don’t even need to match Switzerland, at 29.6%.
But if what you’re trying to claim is that 15.3% is extraordinarily high, no, according to your own cite, it isn’t.
I don’t think percentage is the right way to look at it; the US takes in a LOT of migrants- look at the graph on page 6 of the document Wrenching Spanners linked. The US hosts far more than anywhere else- at a glance, more than the next four nations combined.
I have already said I think the US could effectively assimilate more. However, I don’t think that unlimited is desirable. Now could I give an exact number as a cap, of course not.
I could probably quibble about some aspects of your post, but in general, I agree with it. The USA needs to have an immigration policy based on economic demand for immigrants, and humanitarian principles, and with a view of the overall socioeconomic impacts of immigration to American society. We might disagree on some of the details, but I don’t think there’s any fundamental disagreement between our positions. I think the disagreement is that I’m willing to acknowledge the setbacks of limiting humanitarian immigration, and state that it’s necessary, and you’re hoping those limiting actions aren’t necessary.
If the US wants to increase its percentage of immigrants by 6.1%, roughly a 40% increase in the percentage of immigrants within the total population, I’m fine with that. I’d prefer that to happen over at least a twelve year time frame, and within a managed legal framework, but those are perceptual numbers. I’d like some technocrats who’ve done some serious analysis of the impacts of immigration to advise the government on the wisdom and timescale of increasing immigration. If trustworthy people present numbers-based advice on an acceptable level of increased immigration, I’m not going to object to their numbers, if they hold up to scrutiny. Dogmatic based numbers; those I’m going to be sceptical about.
I’m not sure what happened to my earlier link, but here it is: