# "Shall issue" visa policy **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 6, 2009, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shall-issue-visa-policy/498890 "2009-06-06T01:02:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Randy\_Seltzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ee7513/32.png) [@Randy\_Seltzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Randy_Seltzer)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shall-issue-visa-policy/498890/21 "2009-06-23T01:32:31Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Of course they can. Good luck getting a judge to rule in Spanish, though. Many judges in Puerto Rico hand down their rulings in Spanish. Just sayin’. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shall-issue-visa-policy/498890/22 "2009-06-23T02:05:57Z")
There are an _awful_ lot of people in the world who speak English - fluent English, that is. Only allowing people in who speak English, are disease-free and don’t have communicable diseases doesn’t actually cut down the numbers all that much. It depends how many extra people you think the US can accommodate. I’ve never quite made up my mind on immigration policies, to be honest, but it is worth bearing in mind just how wide the pool of potential immigrants would be if the requirements were so few. (I assume you mean economic immigrants, of course, not people seeking asylum. Bit harder for them to get ESOL classes before they run for it). ---
**Author:** ![Rodgers01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b19c9b/32.png) [@Rodgers01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rodgers01)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shall-issue-visa-policy/498890/23 "2009-06-23T02:08:09Z")
Well, I disagree with the OP on the grounds that it seems to me that there is a limit to the number of immigrants any country can absorb per year. I don’t know what that number _is_, but I suspect it’s less than the number that would come in if we threw our borders open in the way the OP describes. As for the language debate, my brilliant solution: DIVERSIFY our immigrant pool. Currently, a huge proportion of our (U.S.) immigrant pool is comprised of Spanish-speakers. With such a huge number, you get those rising tensions (whether you think they’re justified or unjustified!) when people fear their country is becoming de facto bilingual. So, instead of admitting 500,000 Hispanics every year, why don’t we admit 50,000 each of, say, Hispanics, Russians, Philipinos, Ugandans, Brazilians, Germans, Jamaicans, Algerians, etc. It’s a win-win approach: a) smaller language communities can keep their language, but have an incentive to assimilate more quickly, b) it’s more fair to people from far-away countries who can’t just slip across our border, and c) it increases our cultural diversity and all the benefits that go along with that. Makes great sense to me. A [cite](http://www.cis.org/articles/2005/back1405.html) as to how homogeneous our immigrant pool is becoming: > [@](#): > > Table 4 shows the distribution of immigrants by region of the world, with Mexico and Canada treated separately. Mexico accounts for 31 percent of all immigrants, with 10.8 million immigrants living in United States, more than the number of immigrants from any other region of the world. Immigrants from Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean account for the majority of immigrants, with 54 percent of the foreign‑born coming from these areas. … The importance of the Western Hemisphere, excluding Canada, is even more striking when we look at recent arrivals. Of those who arrived 2000 to 2005, 58 percent are from Latin America. > > …One of the striking things about contemporary immigration is that there has been a significant decline in the diversity of immigrants; Mexico accounted for 31 percent of all immigrants in 2005, up from 28 percent in 2000, 22 percent in 1990, and 16 percent in 1980. The top sending country in 1970 was Italy, which accounted for only 10 percent of the foreign-born. ---
**Author:** ![Rodgers01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b19c9b/32.png) [@Rodgers01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rodgers01)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shall-issue-visa-policy/498890/24 "2009-06-23T02:30:15Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > I’d want to know .hy the quotas, etc. are at the levels they are. > > I presume there to be a reason that we let so few Mexicans in legally, but I don’t know what that is. Where do you get that impression? According to [this](http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/yearbook/2008/table02.xls) (warning: Excel spreadsheet) (from the [Department of Homeland Security](http://www.dhs.gov/ximgtn/statistics/publications/LPR08.shtm)), 188,015 Mexicans obtained legal permanent residence status in the U.S. in 2008…which was almost as many from that one country as the number from _all_ of Europe (including Russia) and China combined. (121,146 from Europe and 75,410 from China.) If you look at naturalizations that year ([here](http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/yearbook/2008/table21d.xls)), more Mexicans were naturalized (231,815) than Europeans (115,187), Chinese (40,017), and Indians (65,971) combined! I confess I don’t know immigration law, but if anything this looks like favoritism towards Mexico, no? ---
**Author:** ![Rumor\_Watkins](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d9b06d/32.png) [@Rumor\_Watkins](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rumor_Watkins)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shall-issue-visa-policy/498890/25 "2009-06-23T02:54:39Z")
> [@Rodgers01](#): > > I confess I don’t know immigration law, but if anything this looks like favoritism towards Mexico, no? Looks like geographic reality to me. ---
**Author:** ![Rodgers01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b19c9b/32.png) [@Rodgers01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rodgers01)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shall-issue-visa-policy/498890/26 "2009-06-23T03:04:25Z")
> [@Rumor\_Watkins](#): > > Looks like geographic reality to me. Or laxer border control? I don’t know. If it were a simple matter of geographic reality, wouldn’t Mexico have been our primary source of immigrants for decades? (Which it has not been, as per my first post.) At any rate, if not favoritism, it at least seems to show a lack of discrimination, as **Sage Rat** had implied. ---
**Author:** ![Rumor\_Watkins](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d9b06d/32.png) [@Rumor\_Watkins](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rumor_Watkins)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shall-issue-visa-policy/498890/27 "2009-06-23T03:24:20Z")
> [@Rodgers01](#): > > Or laxer border control? I don’t know. If it were a simple matter of geographic reality, wouldn’t Mexico have been our primary source of immigrants for decades? (Which it has not been, as per my first post.) > > At any rate, if not favoritism, it at least seems to show a lack of discrimination, as **Sage Rat** had implied. a) when european immigration was at its apex, the immigration wasn’t primarily economic disparity, it was economic opportunity (which is slightly different), escaping from european overcrowding, persecution, famine, and economic depression, and essentially populating an unpopulated nation. It’s not like the GDP/capita of 19th century europe was 5x smaller than the US - as is the case now vis-a-vis mexico, china, and most of the other sources of immigrants to this country. b) immigration in this country is primarily family based. it’s not really lack of5 discrimination or favoritism or whatever if the country that is sending you the most family-based immigrants is _right next door to you_ where it is cheap to keep in touch with your family, visit them, and bring them to the US. alot easier to afford a bus ticket to el paso than a plane ticket to san francisco. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shall-issue-visa-policy/498890/28 "2009-06-23T03:46:59Z")
Well, I mean, I suspect that the reason why the limit is what it is, is because there’s only so many people that the government can process in a year. We can talk about increasing the number of people we want to give visas to or temporary visas to or whatever, but ultimately you need an infrastructure to deal with all those people. If we bring in people from China and India, if we only take 0.01% of their population each year, we can choose the best and brightest scientists and engineers and still have barely touched the total pool of their best thinkers. If we bring in Mexicans, we’re going to be getting factory workers and construction workers and so forth. Certainly, three or four generations down, their descendants will be spread across all careers at all educational levels, but that will be two or three generations where we could have had the cream of the crop for what a modern nation like the US needs. If the US needs workers who’ll work for less than minimum wage, we might as well just throw away the minimum wage. Then we’d have the same bottom line as we do now, everything would be above board, and quite possibly production would increase because there wouldn’t be the language barrier. However, that’s never going to happen. There was a thread not too long ago about the [economics of slavery](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=500636) the old South. The consensus was that the cheap labor kept the South from modernizing along with the North. They were happy to keep their cottonpickers rather than updating to modern machinery, and ultimately it was a drag on the economy. The US doesn’t have a future as a manufacturing center. We need to be all research and management if we want to stay at the lead of the pack. It certainly sucks that Mexico sucks (if you’re a Mexican), but ultimately we need to look out for our own country. I’m glad to give anyone who wants to make an honest living a chance, but we do only have so many people our immigration force can process, and really we shouldn’t be wasting it on people who aren’t right for the jobs we need. ---
**Author:** ![Rumor\_Watkins](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d9b06d/32.png) [@Rumor\_Watkins](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rumor_Watkins)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shall-issue-visa-policy/498890/29 "2009-06-23T03:53:31Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > If the US needs workers who’ll work for less than minimum wage, we might as well just throw away the minimum wage. Then we’d have the same bottom line as we do now, everything would be above board, and quite possibly production would increase because there wouldn’t be the language barrier. However, that’s never going to happen… > > It certainly sucks that Mexico sucks (if you’re a Mexican), but ultimately we need to look out for our own country. I’m glad to give anyone who wants to make an honest living a chance, but we do only have so many people our immigration force can process, and really we shouldn’t be wasting it on people who aren’t right for the jobs we need. Are you willing to clean the toilet and change the jizz-caked sheets in the hotel room i’m about to occupy at a wage that will allow Red Roof to rent me a hotel room for 49.95 and still make a profit? Didn’t think so. Our relatively high income inequality in this country kind of necessitates the below-minimum-wage, illegal-immigrant worker underclass that we have. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shall-issue-visa-policy/498890/30 "2009-06-23T03:58:18Z")
> [@Rumor\_Watkins](#): > > Are you willing to clean the toilet and change the jizz-caked sheets in the hotel room i’m about to occupy at a wage that will allow Red Roof to rent me a hotel room for 49.95 and still make a profit? Didn’t think so. > > Our relatively high income inequality in this country kind of necessitates the below-minimum-wage, illegal-immigrant worker underclass that we have. Prices will rise, certainly, if you stick to the minimum wage barrier. But, a) supposedly we’re already supposed to be sticking to the minimum wage barrier, so this seems rather hypocritical to bitch about, and b) with increased productivity of the nation, the amount of money per person will be increased by more than the cost of a 1% price increase in hotel prices. That’s one of the key ideas of Economics: Increased productivity always wins against increased prices via extra-increased income. You might as well complain that we’ll obviously go poor by transitioning from steam engines to gasoline. Historically it’s never happened. ---
**Author:** ![Rumor\_Watkins](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d9b06d/32.png) [@Rumor\_Watkins](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rumor_Watkins)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shall-issue-visa-policy/498890/31 "2009-06-23T04:03:58Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > a) supposedly we’re already supposed to be sticking to the minimum wage barrier, so this seems rather hypocritical to bitch about everyone knows what the score is. that’s why “illegal immigration” is almost an unfixable issue. > [@](#): > > b) with increased productivity of the nation, the amount of money per person will be increased by more than the cost of a 1% price increase in hotel prices while that may be true, productivity doesn’t answer where that extra money generated winds up. that’s what income inequality measures. we have the most productive workforce in the world (at least top 3). we have an income equality measurement that is bested by Iran and Cameroon. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shall-issue-visa-policy/498890/32 "2009-06-23T04:08:46Z")
> [@Rumor\_Watkins](#): > > that’s what income inequality measures. > > we have the most productive workforce in the world (at least top 3). we have an income equality measurement that is bested by Iran and Cameroon. And? How exactly does bringing in more Mexicans instead of more Indian scientists aid our income inequality? Countries which achieve income equality do it via 80% tax rates and redistribution, not by hiding their number of poor off the books by importing illegals. ---
**Author:** ![Rumor\_Watkins](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d9b06d/32.png) [@Rumor\_Watkins](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rumor_Watkins)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shall-issue-visa-policy/498890/33 "2009-06-23T04:13:56Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > And? How exactly does bringing in more Mexicans instead of more Indian scientists aid our income inequality? > > Countries which achieve income equality do it via 80% tax rates and redistribution, not by hiding their number of poor off the books by importing illegals. you’re putting the cart before the horse. with better income distribution/equality, i can afford to go to the red roof for the 89.99 a night it would cost me with legit labor, so red roof wouldn’t need to hire a mexican to work for slave wages. it would also cause price inflation, but that’s another issue btw, your comments about everyone in this country aspiring to be a manager or engineer is a pipe dream, both from a feasibility standpoint (not everyone can be that smart) and a reality standpoint (the world economy doesn’t have the capactiy for 300 million mangers and engineers unless another 3 billion people joined the middle class, a good chunk of which would be sub-standard when compared to other people in the world anyway) ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shall-issue-visa-policy/498890/34 "2009-06-23T04:54:28Z")
> [@Rumor\_Watkins](#): > > you’re putting the cart before the horse. with better income distribution/equality, i can afford to go to the red roof for the 89.99 Let’s show some math. You seem to have seized on some economic ideas that are a bit political more than real. We’ll say that there is 300 million American citizens. There are 400,000 legal workers on visas (who don’t work below minimum wage). Then there are 1,000,000 illegal workers (who do work below minimum wage). Our American citizens have an average income of $40k a year. Our illegal workers have an average income of $8k a year. If we bring in as our visa workers principally Mexicans and other laborers, we’ll say that their average income will be around $20k a year. The US GDP (population X average income) will shrink for the obvious reason that we’re bringing in people below the average income, none of whom increase the productivity of the nation and simply inflate the number of poor we have, increasing our income inequality. If we bring in as our visa workers principally scientists and engineers, we’ll say that their average income will be around $60k a year. The US GDP will increase just from this. Each of these will be employed in figuring out ways to either increase the productivity of extant workers or reduce the cost of creation of products. Either way, this reduces the base cost of all products in the US and poorer people can buy them. Overall, we’ll say that we see a 1% decrease in the cost of all American products. In either scenario, we’re paying $8k \* 1,000,000 illegal workers a year ($8 billion). Spread across all Americans, this is a yearly sum of $27. Now since most of people’s money goes towards house, rent, etc. we’ll say that only 30% goes towards the purchase of products. Since the average American makes $40k a year, that’s $12k a year on products. Since there’s been a 1% reduction in price, however, each American has a $120 bonus. Unless we went for the case where there was no reduced price of American products, in which case there is no bonus whatsoever and in fact our average income is lower. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shall-issue-visa-policy/498890/35 "2009-06-23T13:37:21Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > If we bring in as our visa workers principally Mexicans and other laborers, we’ll say that their average income will be around $20k a year. The US GDP (population X average income) will shrink for the obvious reason that we’re bringing in people below the average income, none of whom increase the productivity of the nation and simply inflate the number of poor we have, increasing our income inequality. GDP is not measured as “population x average income”. In fact, it doesn’t take incomes into account at all. ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shall-issue-visa-policy/498890/36 "2009-06-23T18:16:03Z")
Well, modulo some technicalities, gross domestic product should theoretically equal gross domestic income. But even so far as population x average income goes, simply “bringing in people below the average income, none of whom increase the productivity of the nation and simply inflate the number of poor we have, increasing our income inequality.” won’t drag it down. Population x average income isn’t itself a measure of average income or income inequality or any such thing; it’s simply the total income, added up over everybody, and the more people you add, the higher it gets. The only ways to bring it down are to either reduce the population or reduce the income of people already in the population. Even if we imported a billion people, each of whom made only 1 cent a year in income, if nothing else happened, population x average income would go up by $10 million. ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shall-issue-visa-policy/498890/37 "2009-06-23T18:22:04Z")
(Of course, the ceterus paribus clause there is essential. But my point is simply that the meager argument you gave for GDP decreasing was glib and erroneous.) ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shall-issue-visa-policy/498890/38 "2009-06-23T18:32:34Z")
> [@Indistinguishable](#): > > Well, modulo some technicalities, gross domestic product should theoretically equal gross domestic income. Only in the (unlikely) event that you have an even balance of trade, which we don’t. ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shall-issue-visa-policy/498890/39 "2009-06-23T18:37:43Z")
Well, I said gross domestic income, not gross national income, though I did fail to stress the distinction. But whatever; my main point was the rest of that post. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2009, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shall-issue-visa-policy/498890/40 "2009-06-23T18:53:27Z")
Well, yes- Sage Rat seems to be arguing that bringing in unskilled workers reduces overall GDP when it really only reduces per capita GDP - and arguably not even that. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shall-issue-visa-policy/498890.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/shall-issue-visa-policy/498890.md?page=3)