I am not taking sides. As a descendant of genocide survivors I don’t care about sides, only life. What’s going on right now is way beyond kids in cages. It’s horrific. And, yes, it’s a lot worse that it has been in decades. I think we are at a run rate approximating 1.8 million a year. That’s just insane, particularly in an economy that is not creating 1.8 million extra jobs per year.
I thought this was about the humanitarian catastrophe, not about economy or jobs, so my take is that US migration policy is not humanitarian with Biden, was not humanitarian with Trump, Obama and previous administrations; claiming that there’s a concerted effort to hide this now… well might be true, but I think it can be better explained with just a general apathy, after all, people were dying during Trump era like they are now, and as mention, while I remember a certain anti Trump rethoric, I don’t remember anti Trump media specially fixated on the worse part.
Migration is a complicated business, and I definitely agree that uncontrolled migration can crash the economy. I don’t think conservative media cares about the border crisis more than just as a power grab.
They are interconnected. If you promote uncontrolled migration and you get 1.8 million people per year, you have to create an additional 1.8 million jobs per year. If not, you are going to have 1.8 million additional unemployed per year. Or, even worse, 1.8 million people working illegally for way below minimum wage being abused and, effectively, living in serfdom without possibility of escape due to both their legal status and the fact that we are not creating enough excess jobs to support such an influx. This is how the economy and jobs turns into an invisible humanitarian catastrophe.
If I remember correctly, last jobs report we created somewhere in the order of 250K jobs. The expectation was in the order of one million. That did not happen. We have somewhere in the order of ten million people unemployed. Do we really want to add another million or two per year through uncontrolled migration.
The principle is very simple. Under ideal conditions, if we want to allow N million people to come into the country (legally or not) we ought to have N million jobs waiting for them. If we cannot generate jobs IN EXCESS of our baseline, we should cut down on migration (legal or not). If we don't, all we are doing is adding unemployed without controls. Aside from the fact that they will require assistance we just can't provide, this isn't a formula for long term success.
When my parents emigrated to the US they went through a series of interviews at the US embassy and had to prove they would not be a burden to US taxpayers for five years. Like it or not, that's the way a country manages immigration responsibly. Yes, of course, you make some allocations for those who need help. That's just being nice people. However, you can't have 50% of your immigration come in without sensible controls. This is the very definition of insanity: You are importing unemployment, which can't lead to anything good in the long term for both the people coming in and the nation.
Please note that I am not injecting Democrat vs. Republican analysis here. You can do this purely by the data and with some common sense peppered into it. The US immigration system currently accepts about 675K people per year into the country legally [0].
Is this number too low? We could explore this argument. What metric do we use? In other words, other than "feelings", how do we objectively assess how many people per year a country --any country-- can or should accept?
The easiest argument to make is: People who can come in and make a substantial job-creating investment should be allowed in because this expands the jobs marketplace. Of course, we have to make sure the investment is actually going to create jobs. Someone coming in to buy ten million dollars of properties isn't going to create a single job. Those properties already exist and all the trades servicing them are working on them. No new jobs.
Beyond that, I think you have to look at the employment situation and see where the country might have gaps. This would change from year to year. For a period you might need doctors, welders, engineers or farm workers. Fine, have legal immigration policy reflect that.
Again, I am talking about ANY country on earth, not the US. This removes the bothersome Democrat vs. Republican arguments. Responsible immigration policy should look after both the nation and immigrants in order to ensure that immigration does not become a burden for one and a tragedy for the other.
Of course you have to allow some number of people to migrate on humanitarian basis. That's just being nice people. It can't be millions though. That's just a sad reality of the equation any nation faces.
And so, as one goes through this analysis, one never encounters a "let's allow millions of people per year into the country without controls". And that is because this makes no sense whatsoever for any nation on earth.
What I find interesting is that nobody argues with the immigration rules of countries like New Zealand or pretty much any other nation in the world. I mention New Zealand because I have a friend who moved there. They had to go through a points-based system and all the legalities to get in. And they did. The funny part is that they did not object to that system at all and actually thought it was sensible. And yet, with the other side of their face, when it comes to the US, they are full-on open borders supporters. I have to admit I don't understand this at all.
Love or hate Trump, his strong southern border illegal immigration position was the correct one for a nation that IS NOT CREATING EXCESS JOBS. We are on a fight for survival. More and more industries and jobs are being eroded by China and other global competitors. Sorry, we just can't have millions of people come in without controls. It makes no sense for the nation or those coming in.
We can't use past examples (50+ years ago) of illegal immigration as a metric to justify what's going on today. Why? Because of the thing I have been repeating: We are not creating jobs in excess. Back then things were very different. China was an agrarian economy. Today they are the second largest economy in the world, are landing drones on Mars and are sucking jobs from every nation in the world. Fifty years ago we were exploding with jobs and growth. Today we are shrinking, and, sadly, it is likely to get worse.
I don't know how to solve this equation without saying that illegal immigration at the current scale is nothing less than insanity.
Look, I fully agree with you, and I also don’t care about Republican/Democrat drama, as I’m not even American.
My point is that on the other side of the border, I fail to see this “open border policy”. If I wanted to migrate to America (which I don’t), I would have to go through the same as your parents, my friends who applied for a Work visa, had to go through the same stuff. Just a few weeks ago, a friend of mine who is a lawyer, who has his own practice and earns a decent amount of money, got his tourist visa denied at the embassy. The legal way is already hard, those who I know nowdays who are illegally, entered legally because crossing the border is deemed too dangerous and only for desperate people.
So you think the amount of people America can house is lower than current immigration, well I don’t have the numbers but I don’t disagree with you. The thing is migrants on the southern border are already risking death. A couple of more border patrol officers might do a nice anti immigration rhetoric, but I don’t really think it’s discouraging enough, and still doesn’t address the problem of people overstaying their visa. So in my eyes, this policies, the critics of “promoting uncontrolled immigration”, and the concern about the humanitarian crisis on the border is more a political argument than something that really address the immigration problem, something that -I might need to reiterate- I agree that should be controlled.
