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A comment on Britain to Foreign Workers: If You Don't Make $50,000 a Year, Please Leave. Parent comment

Re:Britain to Foreign Workers: If You Don't Make $50,000 a Y... by knughit on Thursday February 04, 2016 @11:16AM (#11034921)
Why is 2 stupider than 1?
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Re:Britain to Foreign Workers: If You Don't Make $50,000 a Y... by tonyedgecombe on Thursday February 04, 2016 @11:42AM (#11035160)
The justification for allowing immigration is the shortage of skills. If you use a random process then you won't get the skills you need.

Not that I agree with this, right now we need nurses and programmers, in a couple of years the situation will be completely different.

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Re:Britain to Foreign Workers: If You Don't Make $50,000 a Y... by thescriptkiddie on Thursday February 04, 2016 @02:22PM (#11036449)
I thought the justification for allowing immigration was that it is a human right.
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Re:Britain to Foreign Workers: If You Don't Make $50,000 a Y... by Mikeb85 on Thursday February 04, 2016 @03:23PM (#11036893)
No. If western countries let in 'everyone' who wants to come, they'd be horribly, horribly over-populated and huge swaths of the world would never develop.

The problem is (if you like game theory), that it's in everyone's personal interest to migrate somewhere richer. However, if everyone does that, wherever they came from experiences such massive drain that it'll be worse off. From a purely pragmatic standpoint, unlimited immigration is a poor 'equilibrium' for all involved. 'Developing' nations will never develop, and developed nations will face massive over-crowding.

The reason the west currently allows immigration in the numbers we do is because it's an easy way to get skilled, motivated labour - at once allowing for economic growth as well as driving down the relative cost of labour.

Freedom to travel/migrate should be a human right, however there are many problems with that, considering the current state of the world.

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Re:Britain to Foreign Workers: If You Don't Make $50,000 a Y... by shalmanese on Thursday February 04, 2016 @08:52PM (#11038840)
Which is why all of America lives in Atherton and New Haven and nobody is left in Mississippi or Alabama.
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Re:Britain to Foreign Workers: If You Don't Make $50,000 a Y... by Mikeb85 on Thursday February 04, 2016 @09:11PM (#11038921)
I know you're being sarcastic, but California and NY combined have nearly 20% of the population of the US.

In the US, the most prosperous states are definitely also the most populous.

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Re:Britain to Foreign Workers: If You Don't Make $50,000 a Y... by frankchn on Thursday February 04, 2016 @02:27PM (#11036488)
I think that is the justification for allowing in refugees and asylum seekers (i.e. protecting them from human rights abuses), but not usually used for economic migrants.
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Re:Britain to Foreign Workers: If You Don't Make $50,000 a Y... by ori_b on Thursday February 04, 2016 @03:18PM (#11036856)
If that was the justification, then a lottery doesn't achieve that. Nothing short of completely open borders achieves that.
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Re:Britain to Foreign Workers: If You Don't Make $50,000 a Y... by yuliyp on Thursday February 04, 2016 @03:21PM (#11036881)
Because a lottery gives you the people for whom a small chance of getting in is worth going for. If someone's awesome enough to have lots of awesome opportunities in many places, then they wouldn't commit to a lottery-based opportunity. Thus you lose the top in addition to getting people who barely meet the criteria coming in.
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