I’m really not sure how to parse this. The implication seems to be that we currently must be far below this 10-20% target which you say is a “reasonable goal” thus explaining your support for “allowing much higher numbers”? Am I misreading that?
Looks like I was wrong. Apparently the current percentage is about 15%, which is approximately the historic high last reached in the 1890s.
Yeah, but based on the replies to your post, it seems like a lot of people agreed with your gut feel that we must currently be far below this. I find that very interesting.
How much of the 15% are legal immigrants? Ang how many illegal immigrants do we actually have?
A little less than 25% of immigrants are not legal, so just legal immigrants are still in that 10-15% range.
The only people I’ve seen advocate for open borders are a few randos on twitter, the Economist Magazine some years back, and now Chronos if I understand him properly. Personally, I care little whether the US doubled or halved legal immigration. But once you’re here, you should have human rights.
The best way to control immigration is at the employer level, like other countries do. That means beefing up eVerify. Republicans have precious little interest in this because the constituency that matters to them - big business and agriculture - likes immigration and understands that the illegal kind makes for a compliant workforce.
So we have chatter about border walls and other generally ineffective solutions. Also brutal economy-crushing ones. If nothing else performative cruelty puts a damper on foreign tourism reflected in eg fewer ticket sales for World Cup matches.
Economically speaking, the evidence suggests that immigrants boost the wages of native born Americans, at least at existing levels of immigration. Modestly. Signs could conceivably flip with open borders, but nobody in authority wants that. And who cares? Bigots gotta bigot. To a first approximation, an extra immigrant has no effect on wages, because they consume stuff and add to labor demand while also adding to labor supply. Roughly speaking, it’s a wash.
This liberal would curb illegal immigration at the employer level rather than engage in Gestapo tactics on the streets and building wasteful border walls across the Texas desert.