> I'm in favor of a solid border control regime (i.e. "build the wall"),

Having lived on the east side of Berlin (post Wall!) I cannot forget that that wall was supposedly built to keep people out but of course it kept people in.

I am Australian, and I have to admit the points based system does work there...but. I have lived longest in the USA where the chaos has been beneficial for the country, and thus for me. Australia doesn't have a culture of "creative destruction" and its system has kept that from arriving/emerging.

If the US does choose to shut the door and I'll jump through it before it slams...and continue starting businesses (and creating jobs) elsewhere.

The Berlin Wall was really about keeping people in. Make no mistake about it. It was erected as a response to losing too many people through emigration [0].

Can you say the same about U.S. border control? Hardly.

There's a very big difference between a wall that keeps unwanted people out and a wall that keeps wanted (or everyone) in by force.

In the latter case, even if you have whatever freedom you wish outside the wall, you can have it. In the former, you cannot.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall#Erection_of_the_in...

US recently lost illegal immigrants during the down turn, so it might be about keeping them in. More people went to Mexico than the US from 2005 to 2015, though only by ~150,000.

> In the latter case, even if you have whatever freedom you wish outside the wall, you can have it. In the former, you cannot.

That is obviously and blatantly false. If the world turns hardcore nationalist, then it will be impossible for Americans to move elsewhere, because all countries will have strict imigration policies. How would you move to Mexico if Mexico doesn't allow for imigration? Where would you go?

Having immigration policy and not allowing immigration at all is not the same thing. Even Japan, whose immigration policies are very strict, has both sizeable number of foreign workers and immigrants too. US currently has very open immigration policy (1M immigrating every year) and a problem enforcing the immigration laws it has (tens of millions of illegal immigrants). It's a long distance between this and "no immigration" and there are many points on this way which one could choose to stay in.

Yes, but the reverse is also true. The soviet union, for example, allowed scientists to attend conferences in the west. It also allowed families to visit the ocean. So they did let some people out sometimes. Just as you say that Japan lets some people in sometimes. The end result is the same. Most people will not be allowed to immigrate or even travel in a nationalistic world. Whether it is because countries don't let people out or that they don't let people in is of no consequence.

A good example of this is the case of North Korea and China. NK has a very heavily guarded border between SK and NK. Basically no one has ever escaped via that border. However, people do escape to China, and China deports them back to NK. Is there a difference between NK not letting people go to SK and China deporting people back to NK? The end result, is the same. No one can leave NK.

> The soviet union, for example, allowed scientists to attend conferences in the west

Some scientists, for some conferences. It wasn't easy to get these permissions, and if you have security clearance, no chance. Maybe if you're word-class celebrity, not otherwise.

> So they did let some people out sometimes.

Yeah. It required to pass a lot of checks and having some connections. And depended a lot on where you're going - Bulgaria or Mongolia is one thing, Hungary or DDR is another, France or Spain yet another, and UK or US is completely different. Depending on how ideologically far the target country is, you'd require to be in the more trusted circles and have more connections to be allowed to get there. It's not like you just wanted to go there, you buy a ticket and go, nowhere near it.

> Just as you say that Japan lets some people in sometimes.

Not even close. You obviously know very little of both to compare. You can visit Japan as a tourist anytime. If you want to stay and work, it's harder, if you want to become a citizen, even harder. But entirely not comparable with USSR exit restrictions, not even close.

> However, people do escape to China,

Ah, you misunderstand the situation quite a bit here. People don't just "escape" to China. NK has a huge underground economy which is completely dependent on China. That's how NK has been staying afloat for decades now (well, that and international humanitarian help, which NK openly extorts by nuclear threats), otherwise they'd die out (well, not all probably, China would take over before that, but they don't really want this poisonous radioactive dumpster fire as part of their country or their official responsibility). Of course, this can not be done openly, so it is all done on pretend basis - Chinese and NK powers pretend it doesn't exist and from time to time deport some people for show. But they all know it's a pretense.

> Is there a difference between NK not letting people go to SK and China deporting people back to NK?

Of course there is. Ultimately, the welfare of NK people is the responsibility (and continuing criminal failure) of the NK government. China is not responsible for them, but in fact is trying to manage the situation while keeping the pretense of situation not existing at all, because it's their fault NK exists in the first place.

What is the chaos in the immigration system in the US that benefits you? The uncertainty and delays in the H1B process for employees? Australian US visas are a special case but I assume you are talking about employees. I'd be de privileging family unification visas and removing per country caps, primarily. Also eliminate h1b but as part of improving immigrant visas to accomplish the same mission but with benefits to both domestic and immigrant workers, penalizing the abusive body shops.

Does the ability for people to historically (and to some extent, currently) illegally cross the southern border benefit your business? Does people overstaying visa waiver or other visas help? It would seem to me that being able to easily hire and have a simple, deterministic, and painless process would be a net win.

I didn't think the Berlin part of the wall was ever claimed to be for security; the other inner German border was. I didn't look this up recently so mah be wrong.

> What is the chaos in the immigration system in the US that benefits you?

Sorry I was not clear. The immigration system is absurd and it appears that all the plans are to make it worse for the US (All the announcements I've seen are of enormous benefit to Europe, Canada, Australia, Taiwan, Singapore et al). It's a major liability to trying to do business in the US.

I mean the general chaos of life in the USA. Day to day life here is a grind (you just have to spend so much time on useless shit that you don't deal with in other advanced economies) but in exchange you get people willing to adopt something new at the drop of a hat, who don't give a shit about credentialism, are willing to take outlandish and ludicrous risks, etc. Think of it as the social or meatspace equivalent of Black-Scholes: options with huge fluctuations have higher expected value than more sedate ones. It has made it worth putting up with the dreadful lifestyle crap of the USA. In terms of QoL, Australia, Germany and France (despite everyone being miserable) are much much nicer and a hell of a lot more fun. But for the work environment, hell, you just can't beat San Carlos<->Sunnyvale.

As for the "illegally cross the southern border" part: Of course it is a net positive. Sure. I used not just "legal" labor but union labor to build my house (had my construction supervisor check everybody's paperwork among other things). My housekeeper and gardener are US citizens, unlike me. H1B people are very difficult to get because of the arbitrary crap and uncertainty, but the fact that hiring a foreigner for a startup costs so much more than hiring a local doesn't seem like a bad thing to me.

But it's a net positive because those folks who come here "illegally" are the private sector working around a fucked up immigration system: not only are they a huge economic net addition to the economy (one that's integrated across the border in a massive conurbation) not only by doing jobs that go otherwise unfilled (the whole point of the bracero system) but because they pay rent, buy iPhones etc, but they add spice with great cuisines, music, art, etc. They do tend to be very conservative (heavy on "family values", fiscally conservative etc).

You bring up a great example of the fucked up immigration system. Before the Obama-era border crackdown people moved back and forth more freely across the border. Over the past couple of years, despite the net emigration south, the number of people leaving would be even greater without the border crackdown (the human equivalent of a wall). yes, as with east Germany, increased border surveillance increases the risk of crossing (or the risk of returning) so people simply stay put. An already visible example of what the East Germans got.

> I didn't think the Berlin part of the wall was ever claimed to be for security; the other inner German border was.

Indeed the Berlin part was considered an integral part of the security system. Which it was -- it's just that the sign was reversed from how it was described. My wife grew up next to the larger internal border, so as a kid she liked watching East German late night TV shows that came across -- they showed soft porn on TV allegedly in the hopes of increasing the birth rate.

> you just have to spend so much time on useless shit that you don't deal with in other advanced economies

Just curious, can you provide some examples? (outside of healthcare, which is the well-known hell). Thanks!

For an example of the top of my head, take tax returns. In the UK the vast majority of people don't need to file one—your employer deducts the right amount each month from your salary and off you go. Moving to America I found I had to spend at least half a dozen hours trying to figure out what I had to do, eventually giving up and paying for a service to do it for me and am still unsure I filed correctly.

For another example, take getting a driver's license. In the UK you fill in a form online, they extract any other relevant details from your passport records and put in your credit card details and they send you a license within the week. It's a 15 minute process. In America I got to finding out I had to go to the DMV (and that I should go to the DMV in another city because it's somehow superior) and promptly gave up.

I know you said aside from healthcare, but even if you had the hypothetical best insurance available, with no co-pay or deductible, just keeping track of all of the arcane and opaque numbers, policies and restrictions is a huge administrative burden.

Now to be clear, I understand why some of these systems are the way they are and, in some cases, can see the necessity, but the fact remains that in almost any other developed nation there simply wouldn't be an equivalent administrative burden to just existing.

You've accidentally hit on a problem with much of the complexity of laws in the US: states have autonomy on a lot of things. Healthcare is a big one. It's regulated by the states. Insurance companies incorporate by state. Each state has it's own regulations. Some states are gun friendly, some are not. Although our federal government yields a lot of power, constitutionally, it doesn't have as much as its seems.

It's an interesting model. It was more like the EU in it's inception than today in that each state was it's own country under a thin umbrella of federal government. The outcome of the US Civil War changed that significantly, but not enough to have a coherent, omnipotent federal system. (The EU doesn't have one either; each EU country controls most of their own sovereignty). One main difference is US states can't secede from the US while EU countries can.

Another issue is free borders between states. If state A enacts universal healthcare, how does it prevent the sick inhabitants of neighboring states B,C,D,E from emmigrating and bankrupting the state? This model poses all sorts of problems. Even colleges have to deal with this. If you live in the same state as the college for a year, you are considered a permanent resident and get a significant tuition deduction (like 75% less). There are hundreds of examples of where autonomous states with free borders cause administration headaches.

Imagine if the EU decided to have a governing body that took taxes and distributed services, like healthcare, military, infrastructure, etc. It would have to cut out parts of the tax code for Greece and add parts for France, etc. Not only that, but by industry. Then tack on special interest lobbying. It would be a mess. Not only that, what if 1/4 of the countries didn't have universal healthcare?

Talk to an accountant with experience in dealing with tax both inside and outside the US, and watch them wither before your eyes when they describe the cacophony of the US taxation system. You gotta love a taxation system where everything changes depending on where something is sold versus where something is received versus where head office is, varying right down to the county level...

Most of the reason why Americans get so frothy about tax is because they've made it ridiculously complex to comply with.

Really. In the Czech Republic the tax form for physical persons is a single A3 sheet folded in half, and one quarter of it is notes.

One example is the very complex set of rules for specific professions in the US. There's no one-size fits all business licence as there is in some other countries. If you want to, for example, start a moving business you buy a truck, and then you have to register as a mover in CA, and if your client wants to move their stuff to WA you have to register as a mover in Oregon and Washington as well. You may then have to register into a special commercial fee system for using the highways commercially. This kind of thing really shocks the redneck crowd who thinks that if they've got a pickup truck then of course they can move that sofa for $20 bucks.

Apart from the other examples cited by others: back before paper checks completely vanished (mid 1990s) when I paid my housekeeper I used a special checkbook -- when she deposited the paycheck my taxes were paid automatically. Apart from that checks were already gone. Until the iPhone I could get a better mobile phone in Africa than I could buy in the US.

Paying all your bills is really complicated here, and full of hidden deceptive fees. Food is full of weird labels that don't let you know what you're eating. Send your kids to school -- my god, the TEACHERS pay for the kids' pens, and you have to send a huge number of things that were normally part of school (printer paper???). School lunches -- forget it! And working parents have to come help in school? WTF is up with that?

Buying a house -- what a nightmare (and a racket). This is one of the most corrupt systems in any country, but somehow the US adds insane complexity, at least in California. I have tried to explain this stuff to my kid who is going to university in the US but he doesn't see the point since he doesn't see much future here after graduation.

I could go on but it's too depressing. How about we talk about how people are willing to enthusiastically work for a startup even though chances are good it will go bust? That they will step up and take responsibility and complain less then most? That they are, in general, among the more law abiding people in the world? How great the national forests are? That the prices at the ski slopes are only outrageously high, but that I don't think anyone is trying to go beyond that to rip me off in a covert way?

I mean, living in the US is not much fun, but working sure is. And consider: some of my neighbors complain that poor Mexicans are driving poor "real Americans" out of work, that politicians are all corrupt and the economy is in tatters. A couple of years ago I flew to see my in laws in Germany and then my family in Australia (cheaper round the world ticket). In Germany, the richest country in Europe, the pub conversation was: poles were driving poor "real germans" out of work, that politicians were corrupt and the economy was in the toilet. When I got to Australia, in the pub I learned: that Vietnamese (or was it Indonesians?) were taking the work away from poor "real Australians", that the politicians were all corrupt, and that the economy was in the toilet (in something like the 20th consecutive year of expansion).

Well, I am inclined to like creative destruction and open borders too. But Australia and the US are democracies -- they are ruled by the people, most of whom seem to like a bit more orderliness.

Now if the democratic process is producing something like the White Australia Policy[1] then we have cause to cry out our moral censure from the rooftops. But whatever your view on the current points system, that's just a policy debate, not a great moral issue.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Australia_policy

The WAP has been dead for more than 40 years, and 28% of the Australian population was born overseas (21% if you discount poms and kiwis). In comparison, the UK has 12% foreign-born and the US 14%. If you exclude the refugee crisis last year as a once-off, the only sizable western countries taking in more migrants per capita are Spain and Norway.

As national policies go, there aren't many that have been so resoundingly reversed. The only thing that keeps the WAP alive is people that keep on referring to it, thinking it represents the current state of affairs.

Yes I'm an old fart, born in the (fortunately waning) days of WAP. When I first visited the US, we landed at D.C. and drove north, because to drive south would have meant we would have to split up the family to stay in different hotels. Still, it seemed less racist than Australia.

Nowadays, both have improved but I feel like the positions have reversed. Then again, I don't think America throws kids off navy ships into the water. And they have only one overseas concentration camp that I know of, and I don't think the people in America's wanted to enter the US, unlike the people AUS sticks in camps.

Nobody is perfect. But really, it's astonishing how far Australia has come. Now if only the coalition could reflect that.

> Then again, I don't think America throws kids off navy ships into the water.

When did Australia do that? The claim was that the refugeees threw the kids overboard in order to get a rescue, not that the navy threw them overboard themselves for a photo op. The scandal was about the government lying about refugee actions, not that the navy was drowning kids.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_Overboard_affair

He didn't say that exactly. On the other hand, there are persistent reports about the Australian navy letting refugee ships sink.

By the way, often the only alternative to self-scuttling their ships, for the refugees, is to let their ships be turned around and maybe never reach another shore for lack of navigation skills, water or fuel.

That comment certainly was a bit hyperbolic, but not that far from the actual truth.

In fact I first left Australia (with my parents) because of the WAP, which impacted me even before I was conceived (one of my parents was neither "W" nor "A" so the "P" caused problems). I still have an (older) Aussie neighbor around the corner in Palo Alto who has told me I'm a wog.

First, I doubt that the WAP was passed through a sufficiently democratic process as we understand it now.

Second, I don't accept any non-democratic policy passed by any supposedly democratic system as democratic. No matter the majority it has been enacted by. For me, discrimination by race is by itself against the values necessary for sustained democracy, and as such, not subject to majority approval.

Since you are Australian, you are probably not aware of how biased the immigration system is, against the Indians.

And thats what the earlier comment by throw2bit was referring to, that its better to build a wall to keep illegal immigrants out while reforming the legal immigration to be similar to that of Canada and Australia where the most productive humans with greatest potential are allowed in, irrespective of which country they were born in.

> Since you are Australian, you are probably not aware of how biased the immigration system is, against the Indians.

I am not aware of such a bias, and I have a half a dozen Indian relatives living in the USA (I am an Australian with one Indian parent, currently living in the USA
). I have not studied any current place-of-origin biases in particular (I know historically they were dreadful and for all I know they still are. Certainly the rhetoric is).

> ...that of Canada and Australia where the most productive humans with greatest potential are allowed in...

Ah, but it's all about who decides what is deemed "with the greatest potential". It's what is believed to be needed now of course, whether nurses, plumbers, or geneticists, but what about poets, lunatics, or those who write music I don't enjoy?

> how biased the immigration system is, against the Indians.

What specifically do you mean by that. As far as I know many Indians get Resident visa because of their skills.

There's a limit to the number of green cards that can be issued for people from a particular nationality (country of birth than country of citizenship). This creates a backlog for Indians and Chinese nationals. The backlog causes a long wait time and uncertainty for Indian nationals. There are people, like me, who have been waiting for their green card for more than 7 years. I've been in this country for 15 years now, have a Masters degree and have paid more than half a million in taxes (a couple of acquisitions helped). With equity, I make close to $400k/yr and could probably make more if I had a green card. I have substantial (north of $250k) savings in cash which I hesitate to invest here since I've no idea if I'll get my green card or be sent back. My spouse was finally allowed to work here due to Obama's H4 EAD rule but now that's going to be revoked too. It sucks, since my spouse wants to teach kids with special needs and there's significant demand for such teachers. If my green card doesn't come through in the next couple of years, I'll most likely move back to my home country or one of Canada/New Zealand.

I guess I misread your earlier comment, I thought you were talking about Australian immigration policies to the parent commenter who was an Australian.

My bad, since you are talking about US, yes I agree with you.

> I cannot forget that that wall was supposedly built to keep people out

As far as I know, the Berlin wall was always supposed to keep people in. Strict exit restrictions was common in all soviet regimes, including one in DDR.

Yes, you know correctly, but it was sold as a defence against the west. Which turned into a running joke in "Goodbye Lenin" BTW.

Nobody on planet earth believed the Berlin Wall was to keep people out. Ever.

> I'm in favor of a solid border control regime (i.e. "build the wall")

Walls going up are days of sadness. Walls broken down are days of joy.

The thing to keep in mind here is that such walls built to keep others out can be used just as easily to keep the locals in (on either side).

>Walls going up are days of sadness. Walls broken down are days of joy.

Depends. Whenever people put up the walls for their house (which serve the same purpose) those are days of joy too.

Same for nations that fought hard to establish their borders and sovereignty.

And fewer national borders is not some "wave of the future" -- it's what was tried and rejected when nation states became a thing.

We had large, all-encompassing empires before and it wasn't that nice...

Old proverb: "If you enjoy more fortune and prosperity than others, you don't build a bigger wall, you build a bigger table..."

Except some people want to destroy the table.

Which isn't much better than the horrible analogy of the poisoned M&Ms.

That's a lovely proverb.

> Whenever people put up the walls for their house (which serve the same purpose) those are days of joy too.

I don't think that was the context of the OP's comment, but if you wish to extend to those kinds of walls then that's fine with me. It's just not the way I would have interpreted the meaning of a border wall.

>It's just not the way I would have interpreted the meaning of a border wall.

Well, consider a country as a people's collective house.

In this, a border, if not analogous to the walls, is at least analogous to the fence around the house and/or the lock on the door.

Claims to the contrary the map is not the territory and a country is not a house. Finally, a wall around a country is definitely not the same as a wall or fence around your house.

Note that most dictatorships use walls around their 'houses' to keep the population in, not to keep others out.

Note that countries that are bordering other countries with great wealth disparity are using walls to keep the wealth concentrated and those on the other side of the wall poor so they may be further exploited.

This is not the same as you and your roughly equally wealthy neighbor sharing a wall in a duplex or a fence between your two gardens.

Those fences and walls are there for practical reasons and to delineate responsibility and right-of-way, not to specifically make it harder for your neighbor to share in the collective wealth of the neighborhood.

The equivalent of that would be a gated community in a poor country (which by the way look exactly like inside-out prisons).

>Claims to the contrary the map is not the territory and a country is not a house

I think you miss a "despite" or "notwithstanding" somewhere there.

In any case, even though a country is indeed not a house in some ways (no ceiling for one), it is quite like a house in others -- a set of people live there, some where born there, others came later, but in any case, it's their house, they (and their parents and grandparents) maintained it over the years, and its their decision who comes in and how it's run.

>Note that most dictatorships use walls around their 'houses' to keep the population in, not to keep others out.

That's not generally applicable, except when the dictatorship can't guarantee enough prosperity or is especially violent towards some groups. It's safety and/or food primarily. Otherwise, most people have little intention of living merely for political freedom.

But even if so, it's orthogonal to our subject. Dictatorships might do that (keep their population in), but we're talking about the inverse (keep non-citizens out -- which, by some logic, would be what democracies do).

>Those fences and walls are there for practical reasons and to delineate responsibility and right-of-way, not to specifically make it harder for your neighbor to share in the collective wealth of the neighborhood.

Borders are there for very practical purposes too. To define the area that a nation state controls, taxes, enforces laws, etc, and to keep non citizens of that state, outside of it unless asked to come in.

> I think you miss a "despite" or "notwithstanding" somewhere there.

No, I'm perfectly ok with what I wrote.

What I find interesting is that many people are perfectly ok with exploiting a poorer neighbor, but they definitely should stay on their side of the dotted line.

All this hoopla about illegal immigration, walls and repatriating jobs to the other side of that dotted line will have the exact opposite effect. Illegal immigration will go up.

It's akin to a chemistry process called osmosis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osmosis

Since we're in broken analogy territory anyway, why not use another?

So, in osmosis you have a wall - which should be easy to identify as your border - and two liquids on either side with a varying concentration of some substance. Say 'wealth'.

Now for wealth to stop flowing from one side to the other you will have to reach some kind of equilibrium first.

The faster you reach that equilibrium the faster you no longer have to worry about 'illegal crossings of the wall'.

In the end that border wall never was about people: it was all about wealth, and possibly about the sharing of that wealth.

>What I find interesting is that many people are perfectly ok with exploiting a poorer neighbor, but they definitely should stay on their side of the dotted line.

How is having trade with a poorer neighbor country "exploitation"? Or when manufacturing plants move to the poorer nation? How is that exploitation? It's not good for the higher-paid workers who now are unemployed in the richer country, but it's good for the workers in the poor country who now have jobs which they apparently want because those plants do get staffed quickly.

As for your equilibrium/osmosis analogy, what if that substance differs highly in concentration because there's fundamental differences between the two countries, and one of them is severely broken politically (the other one is too, just not as badly and not in the same way)? Until the fundamental problem in the poorer country is addressed, I don't see how you're going to ever achieve equilibrium unless it's to the severe disadvantage of the richer country (i.e., dragging them down). And the responsibility for fixing that is not with the richer country; doing that is generally called "imperialism" and not viewed positively these days.

>No, I'm perfectly ok with what I wrote.

Because HNers will fill in the blanks for you?

No, because there are no blanks, adding either of those words would change the meaning of the sentence in a way that I don't support.

You wrote:

Claims to the contrary the map is not the territory and a country is not a house.

The correction is saying this should be:

Despite claims to the contrary the map is not the territory and a country is not a house.

This does not seem to change the meaning, but rather makes the sentence read sensibly.

> Note that most dictatorships use walls around their 'houses' to keep the population in, not to keep others out.

They use them for both, as it is common for prisons.

> Note that countries that are bordering other countries with great wealth disparity are using walls to keep the wealth concentrated

As do you - you keep your household's wealth concentrated in your house and your bank account, instead of putting it outside on the street and let anybody who wants take a piece.

> not to specifically make it harder for your neighbor to share in the collective wealth of the neighborhood.

My neighbor's walls definitely make it harder for me to share his wealth. I think that's kind of the point.

Walls don't impact legal immigration. They only only impact the proportion of illegal immigrants that sneak across the border.

Yes, we really should put a stop to all those Americans sneaking across the border to work illegally in Mexico.

/s

> Walls don't impact legal immigration.

Yes, they do. But not in a way that you would immediately recognize as linked so I'll forgive you.

> They only only impact the proportion of illegal immigrants that sneak across the border.

Yes, so they will cross legally and then disappear into illegality. Same thing really, only this time you'll be able to put an exact figure on it.

You know what will really change illegal immigration from Mexico?

Making Mexico wealthy. And if anything that was already happening leading to a decline in people moving to the US and even a reversal (people moving back to Mexico).

But now with the border wall and companies being strong-armed to move their production back to the US how long will it take for that trend to reverse again?

Because the people will follow the work.

> Making Mexico wealthy.

I think it would be great to for Mexico to be more prosperous so people wouldn't have to leave their families to come to the U.S. But you also have to ask yourself: does that fit with the purpose of the U.S.?

Having a government necessarily means yoking people, stripping them of their natural autonomy using coercion and under the threat of violence. I'm by no means an anarchist, but the only way I can justify that state of affairs morally is by (1) putting the beast we've created under democratic control, and (2) giving that beast the mandate to work toward the prosperity of its subjects.

Saying that the solution to illegal immigration is for the U.S. government to work to make Mexico wealthy is really difficult to reconcile with what I see as the only legitimate purpose of government.

Well, it fit just fine until a few short weeks ago.

Mexico was getting wealthier, people were more likely to return to Mexico.

Ironically this whole border wall + move jobs back to the USA thing has made the chances of illegal immigration from Mexico to the USA for a given individual go up rather than down.

As for who would make Mexico wealthy: that would not be the US government but market forces and corporations, the things that America has historically been such a huge proponent of.

But that's all gone now, it's the new times now, market forces are bad, companies need to be 'incentivized' to move their production back to the home country and all those illegals need to rounded up and sent back.

Government would have a hard time achieving the goal of making Mexico wealthy but they sure can do a lot to make things worse which will put upwards pressure on Mexicans to seek a better life elsewhere.

> As for who would make Mexico wealthy: that would not be the US government but market forces and corporations, the things that America has historically been such a huge proponent of.

Market forces are merely a means to an end. The U.S. Government should only permit them to operate to the extent that has the effect of making the majority of Americans more prosperous (which it usually does). Do trade policies that have the effect of making Mexico richer have the effect of making the median American richer? I don't know the answer to that. Americans seem to think not.

> The U.S. Government should only permit them to operate to the extent that has the effect of making the majority of Americans more prosperous (which it usually does).

The US Government should do what is best for the country and it's surroundings in the longer term, not what is best for isolated groups of Americans in the short term, and it was doing mostly that.

Trade policies that only work to the advantage of one of the trading partners are bad for everybody in the long term, they need to be win-win to really work.

> Americans seem to think not.

Americans by and large seem to think things are reasonably ok, as they should given the fact that the country is doing amazingly well. All this talk of doom and gloom is mostly a stage show set up to galvanize the votes of the dis-enfranchised.

It's a natural reaction: who cares if the country as a whole on average is doing much better if your little pocket of it is doing much worse? Who cares about the world as a whole doing better if your part of it is sliding backwards.

Adapt or die is easy to say when you're the one that has adapted, it's a lot harder if you're likely in the part of the population that will simply die.

And that's the heart of the problem, not whether or not the median American is getting richer, if that were the case nothing should have been changed because that was exactly what was happening already.

Weren't you an anarcho-capitalist utopian these past few years? What caused the about face?

This is a good point. Rationally, the US government exists solely for the purpose of advancement of the interests of the American people. However, trade wars are NOT in the interest of the American people either; free markets are. We don't even need to theorize about this, there has been an actual drop in illegal immigration from Mexico because of its rising prosperity. So the rational conclusion should be to continue down this path, as it seems like the only solution that seems to really work.

Also, it is not at the cost of American jobs; of course those specific jobs are lost, but unemployment is down, private sector is adding thousands of jobs etc.

Easier alternative to "make Mexico wealthy" is "make America poor."

You're working on it.

Give it some time.

It would barely impact them. Impoverished people who voyage hundreds of miles through the desert in search of a better life are not going to be deterred by a wall. They'll dig under it, climb over it, or smash right through it if need be.

Border Patrol reports a drop in illegal border crossings of up to 60% [fam units] and 40% indivs, over the last two months compared to the prev year, so it appears that just knowing the chances of deportation are higher is discouraging prospective illegal crossers.

That has nothing to do with a wall.

> Walls broken down are days of joy.

Not if you're a cell.

Not all cells have walls. In fact, come think of it, it's plants that have cell walls, animal cells do not have walls.

For animal cells you would use the cell membrane as an equivalent.

I'm pretty sure if a wall in your house goes down it'd be a day of sadness for you. They say good fences make good neighbors, but it also depends on the neighborhoods (btw, check out rich houses - do they have walls and fences? do they have gates? do they have another gate around the community?) - and if you have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tijuana_Cartel as your neighbors, you may think a wall going up between you and them is not such a bad thing.

> The thing to keep in mind here is that such walls built to keep others out can be used just as easily to keep the locals in (on either side).

Somehow I'm not too worried about not being able to escape from the US to Mexico and the US trying to keep me in. I think you need to rob a bank or something to make that happen?

I'm concerned about potentially blocking US persons from exiting with a wall, but without legal changes it wouldn't be a problem. Even with legal changes, you'd need to restrict a LOT of technology on the US side to keep people from forcibly exiting, and I'd feel morally OK with using force to escape a country.

> I'd feel morally OK with using force to escape a country.

Illegal immigration is fine with you if it is to escape a country, but not if it is to enter a country?

Do realize that by using force to escape one country you'd immediately be illegally emigrating into another.

A lot of your Southern neighbors feel just like you. They use force to escape their economic situation, a prison whose walls are roughly as effective a one built out of stones.

America building 'that wall' is essentially simply making the wall a formal arrangement rather than a social construct that is already there.

I'm not sure why I should be ok with you using force to escape your country but why I should frown upon Mexicans using force to enter yours.

Yes: Illegal emigration is always fine with me. Just not illegal immigration.

Because you apparently base your moral viewpoint around illigal immigration (rather than the other way round), why does the fact that it's illegal change whether it's right or not?

That's a really strange and horrible viewpoint you have.

In my world, it's always OK for someone for someone to enter someone else's land/property if they've been given permission. If's not OK to do so if they haven't. However, holding people prisoner is always morally wrong. That's pretty much the definition of slavery.

IMO, it's always OK for people to forcibly leave someone who's enslaving them; the complication is finding someone who will take them in. Assuming they've found such a place, what possible defense can you have for people who want to imprison them?

>Do realize that by using force to escape one country you'd immediately be illegally emigrating into another.

This is wrong. You're assuming the country they're immigrating into hasn't given them permission. This is a baseless assumption.

> That's a really strange and horrible viewpoint you have.

> In my world, it's always OK for someone for someone to enter someone else's land/property if they've been given permission.

Good.

> If's not OK to do so if they haven't.

Yes, because that suits you well. Because you only recognize those kinds of hardship that you yourself would want to escape from and ignore those that are actually in play.

> However, holding people prisoner is always morally wrong. That's pretty much the definition of slavery.

No, it isn't. There are some points in common but that's not slavery.

> IMO, it's always OK for people to forcibly leave someone who's enslaving them; the complication is finding someone who will take them in. Assuming they've found such a place, what possible defense can you have for people who want to imprison them?

Good question. Ask those who want to build a wall. You do realize that building that wall essentially says: Mexicans, you're on your own, you won't be able to vote with your feet any more, and we will not allow you to come to work in the USA to send money home in order to slowly increase the standard of living South of the border, made worse by American companies being strong-armed into operating North of that same border?

> You're assuming the country they're immigrating into hasn't given them permission.

I'm not aware of any of my friends who 'made it' having received prior permission to enter the country they fled to.

In fact, without exception they ended up in 'internment camps' after which they were allowed to apply to a number of countries around the world who might want to accept them.

Effectively they were in no-mans land.

> This is a baseless assumption.

No, in fact this is the way it goes. Given that I've actually lived on both sides of such a wall for a while I figure my assumptions are anything but baseless.

>You do realize that building that wall essentially says: Mexicans, you're on your own, you won't be able to vote with your feet any more, and we will not allow you to come to work in the USA to send money home in order to slowly increase the standard of living South of the border, made worse by American companies being strong-armed into operating North of that same border?

Please explain what prevents Mexico from improving its standard of living on its own. Mexico is not some kind of slave to America; it's a sovereign nation, in control of its own destiny. It's free to trade with all the other 200+ nations on Earth, or to attempt to negotiate having its people go live there.

Why does America get all the blame in your world for Mexico's problems? Who does America get to blame for its problems?

> Why does America get all the blame in your world for Mexico's problems?

Where do you think the vast majority of the money propping up the organized crime groups that are disrupting civil society in Mexico comes from? The flow of money from the US involved is, proportional to the size of target economy, equivalent to some other country funnelling something like $200 billion a year to armed anti-government groups in the US.

> Please explain what prevents Mexico from improving its standard of living on its own.

Nothing whatsoever. Except of course that no country exists 'on its own'.

> Mexico is not some kind of slave to America; it's a sovereign nation, in control of its own destiny.

No, it's a lot less in control of its own destiny than America, mostly because of America (incidentally, also the biggest consumer in the drug trade). To all intents and purposes Mexico is utterly dependent on what happens on the other side of the border. Of course it is easy to deny that if you choose to do so but it suits quite a few interests in the United States just fine to have a weak and poor country next door.

To the point that there have been serious interventions in Mexican internal affairs to keep it that way benefiting (mostly American) foreign strategic and economic interests.

> It's free to trade with all the other 200+ nations on Earth, or to attempt to negotiate having its people go live there.

To the extent that it is able to do so, it does.

> Why does America get all the blame in your world for Mexico's problems?

It doesn't. Why do you read it as such?

America is to blame only to such an extent that they first establish a whole pile of factories abroad when it suits them and then at the drop of a hat imperils the newly created stability and middle-class in a country next door. That sort of action comes with responsibility.

> Who does America get to blame for its problems?

With great power comes great responsibility. If you don't want to be seen as responsible do not continuously mess in other countries affairs and when you do realize that you can't withdraw that support overnight.

>Do realize that by using force to escape one country you'd immediately be illegally emigrating into another.

Sure, that's fine as long as you aren't illegally immigrating into another.

Then those people can use a local border crossing with a legal visa.

I used the Canadian Express entry system and migrated to Canada within months. I hope & encourage every talented immigrants in the US who are being discriminated based on the country of birth (rather than their skills) to follow suit.

Do not trust an immigration system based on lottery. Trust an immigration system like the Canadian Express Entry based on points which do not discriminate a person for his/her country of birth.

Its absurd and plain stupid that the green card quotas are country based for skilled immigrants in the US ! In Canada, even a temporary worker's spouse can work right from the day they land.

Express Entry is humane & values your skills period.

"It wouldn't be hard to have an immigration system which is biased toward useful vs. not useful."

I think that's extremely hard in terms of startups. You're essentially expecting the government to select what is valuable and what isn't. I don't like unclear visa situations either, but I haven't really seen a country effectively implement "come here and do whatever for a bit as long as you can take care of yourself". Which is what I would think is most compatible with creating startups.

People founding startups are a very small subset of overall immigrants. There is probably another form of visa which would work well for that.

Also, most people who do start startups are also competent, if not educated, enough to probably qualify under a more traditional points based system. A specific job accepted might be a +5 (and maybe make it contingent on remaining there for some period of employment), a college degree might be evaluated on school/program and +1 to +5, other specific achievements might get some bonuses, age (youth; working life before retirement, generally) would be some benefit, and such. Proof of assets is some benefit, and maybe sponsorship/bond/whatever from some entity could be a factor.

I think we could probably have a lower point threshold than Canada, although I'm not sure. That is mostly a political decision and should involve a lot of factors beyond economics.

If the negative consequence here is you have to come to the US for a job, but your immigration status isn't tied to that job, and you thus have to work in the US for 2-4y before getting PR or citizenship, that's not a huge bar to entrepreneurs, IMO. If you don't already have the business or funding, working in the US first is probably necessary anyway. The problem with H1B is retaining residency after switching to the startup.

"People founding startups are a very small subset of overall immigrants."

True, even less create successful startups in a timely manner (even though they contribute overall). Which makes them so hard to target.

"Also, most people who do start startups are also competent, if not educated, enough to probably qualify under a more traditional points based system."

There's only so many ways to measure something and dropping out school to work for random Internet companies and starting your own before you have kids, which is a common profile for entrepreneurial people in Europe, tends to not tick a lot of them.

The US immigration system desperately needs reform, I just don't think any country has managed to create a formal system that is better for entrepreneurship than the realities of running your business illegally in the beginning (or at least pushing the meaning of a business visa). With some reservation for not having looked into the European startup/freelance visas.

E2 visa is a decent proxy for usefulness already.

Somewhat. The conditions are sort of awkward since you have to basically start a company, build contacts wherever you are for an investment and then at the same time build contacts in the US and move you company there.

I think a better situation would be something like a "mini E-2" where you with a lesser investment (say $20k) can start you US company directly, go there for a year and then after that show you meet similar requirements to an E-2, but with US investors. (there could be conditions that you can't hire people or whatever). I guess this is essentially what many people do instead of E-2, but with business visas and other visa schemes.

Yeah agreed the bar for E2 is a bit high and a bit contrived (also not very transparent). But I also understand the government's desire to prevent visa fraud as well.

We have a solid border control regime, so we need to move straight to a rational immigration/visa system.

We don't do effective overstay tracking.

For effective tracking you will need a national Id card for us nationals. That is something many different groups in the US are against for different reasons. Such an id could solve a lot of other problems and of course will create its own problems. But I think the net benefit outweighs the loss.

You could also potentially do it by retaining positive tracking of non-permanent visitors and then going after them as soon as status becomes disallowed. It would be challenging to locate someone in a disallowed visa status on transition without a national ID card, but there are probably ways.

One option might be to enroll them on entry with lots of biometrics, and then do a "not on blacklist" biometric check at government-provided services. That wouldn't necessarily require identifying the US people, just validating that the US people are not the other non-US people.

If we can dramatically reduce the number of illegal status people by making legal immigration reasonable, it becomes easier to go after illegal immigration with more resources per person, and higher penalties.

Other than going to the DMV once a few years, buying a house and flying, I rarely if ever use a government service that isn't transit. When I first come in I use a lot of government services, such as getting a bank account and an SSN, but that is a one time process that happens when your legal.

I think the Republicans would object, because then too many undesirables could vote in elections.

Yeah I mean, the problem is that we can't afford to "let them all in", so how do you decide who to let in? An immigration policy that is held be numerous other countries that favors skilled immigrants seems to be reasonable. On the other hand, brain drain. How will those countries continue to get better and enjoy a modern standard of living if all the smart people leave?

Perhaps nations will be incentivized to fix the underlying causes of their brain drain if they perceive it as a big problem.

Also there is value in "go to US/SV, work there, return home with knowledge of how better systems work, establish in your home country", although there are probably scale effects so it's best for humanity overall for the best people to be concentrated.

(I'm not sure about the merits of immigration, naturalization, and then return to/interface with birth country, vs. a non-immigrant status. There is probably a good case to be made that having people gain US citizenship is overall better, and it provides optionality. With global taxation it is a clear net win for the US, too.)

I agree, but how many people come here from, say, India or wherever, work in IT in somewhere like SF and say ok I've had enough training, time to go make my country a better place? None. I don't blame them either.

Actually there are a LOT of Chinese and Indian entrepreneurs I know who moved to the US, worked here, and especially back in India are now building SV-style companies there. Or are putting parts of their global businesses there -- given how expensive labor is in the US and especially SV, it's a huge competitive advantage to be from, say, Ukraine and be able to set up a great engineering organization there.

I agree it makes less sense for an individual worker to move back (unless there are family or other concerns).

It depends on person, as usual. For many, the US residency is a blessing. Things are nice here, compared to where they come from. The quality of life is much nicer, and this is something i'd most definitely want for my kids.

However, there is also a greater advantage to going back home: Those markets usually lack the capital and the knowledge, and it's relatively easy to copy startups from here and implement them in their home countries.

That is most certainly not the case. While there are many who stay, there are also a sizeable number who go back to their home countries.

Aren't the "brains" the ones most suited to fix those problems in the first place?

No, not if they're not good at national politics, or don't have the right connections to be effective there.

Smart people migrate somewhere else because they are more productive there. Usually they even send back more money than they would earn in their home country.

> the problem is that we can't afford to "let them all in"

Why is that? I'm genuinely curious. Are you making an economic or a cultural argument? On the economic side, there's no evidence that immigration, even mass immigration, has any negative consequences, apart from some more competition at the very low end of salaries, which should obviously be addressed. By and large, immigrants are net contributors to the economy.

> On the other hand, brain drain.

We can hypothesis that tight immigration policy actually creates more brain drain. It's so difficult to come to the US that you're not likely to go back, even for a few years, once you're here. If you can easily move between your country of origin and your country of immigration, you can probably alleviate the brain drain somewhat. Easy come, easy go.

> the problem is that we can't afford to "let them all in"

I believe that cost per person in developed counties is very high and if the marginal person is not paying a large amount of taxes then they will "cost" the system.

Think things like policing, schooling (for their kids), infrastructure usage, medical costs, administrative costs (documents, id, various "counting"), city services etc. etc.

IMO we should allow immigrants an option to fund these costs to jump the queue (eg, you can get a 4 yr visa for $500k or whatever). Many people feel these kinds of systems "unfair", but I see it as a way that a new person to the country and full invest their future in the good of their new country. Of course all the negative checks should still apply (criminal history for example).

> IMO we should allow immigrants an option to fund these costs to jump the queue (eg, you can get a 4 yr visa for $500k or whatever).

How many people do you know that pay $500k in taxes over 4 years?

You may as well make the cost $500 million, you'll get the same number of applicants.

1) thats why "or whatever" followed 500k, it was an example number.

2) 500k taxes over 4 yrs is not the point, the point is to match (or even over charge for) the marginal systemic costs of that person entering the country. Not just a fee for applying for the visa but all the infrastructure and social support costs.

3) Actually there is kind of an entrepreneur system in place anyways. And they allow upto 10k per year https://www.uscis.gov/green-card/green-card-through-job/gree...

> there's no evidence that immigration, even mass immigration, has any negative consequences, apart from some more competition at the very low end of salaries

So, in other words, there is evidence that it does have negative consequences?

I myself don't know either way. I just think that, if what you write is true, an impact at the low end of the salary spectrum isn't something to brush off as if it's nothing and doesn't count.

There's no consensus on that, compared to other areas where there is consensus that immigration, as a whole is either a net benefit or, at worse, neutral. There are, however, individual cases where native born individuals will suffer losses. The answer is better access to retraining.

that effect is only negative from the specific perspective of low end salary holders.

that effect is positive for businesses and consumers.

The attitude you just displayed is basically why Trump won the election. Let me translate your statements to an economic reality: "Screw the entire middle of the country and anyone who doesn't live in cities. Except those guys in Chicago, I guess they're alright."

Low wage earners are a huge chunk of the legal US population. After the government the next largest employer in the country is Walmart. Most of those people live outside major metros because at those wages it's not affordable to get housing in major metros.

I understand your city folk bubble, but I suggest you step out of it before spreading elitist rhetoric. Economies are complex systems which cause strong interdependence between cities and rural areas. The politics from both sides of the aisle of trying to injure their opponents is counter productive to the entire nation.

I see.

I apologize that my logic in support of open borders and extending the american jobs economy to immigrants has been construed as a Trump-esque attitude of "screw the [...] middle of the country"

For what it's worth, I am not on either side of an aisle, and am so disconnected from media that I have no idea how my perspective is in any way correlated to Trump's antithetical closed-borders policy. Please forgive my ignorance of that narrative.

To be clear, I'm not personally opposed to open borders. I'm responding to this line "that effect is only negative from the specific perspective of low end salary holders." which as a statement is deeply lacking in empathy for the fact that MILLIONS of people in this country are "low end salary holders" who are negatively impacted by the labor competition that open borders brings.

This doesn't mean that open borders is a net negative policy, but it does have a tremendous negative impact on real people. That's something that needs to be considered seriously in the policy proposal and mitigated if possible. Hand-waving it away is basically the standard rhetoric of coastal city elites who don't give one iota of brain power for thinking about the "rubes in flyover states". Giving some effort to have empathy for every man, woman, and child in this country and how they're impacted by the policies we espouse, support, and advocate for is one way we can reduce the divisiveness of politics and heal our nation so we can move into a better future.

Agreed, but isn't that perspective of preserving artificially high wages for US jobs is deeply lacking in empathy for the poor of the rest of the world? they are "real people" too, and in the case of mexico and central america, the US has a very real culpability in the economic conditions which created their poverty.

Well, first of all, many consumers are also low-end salary earners.

Second and perhaps more importantly, the more salaries are driven down, the less money those earners have to spend, which means businesses will see less potential revenue.

You are assuming a zero sum market. Generally, when the market changes, the labor force changes as well (skills retraining etc.). It might be inelastic (i.e. changes in labor takes more time to adjust to new markets) but it does eventually happen. This is how the US workforce made the jump from agrarian to industrial to service economy.

> This is just not sound economics at all.

Honestly I think the statements I made are extremely simple.

Is it false that low-wage earners are also consumers?

Is it false that low-wage earners have less money to spend as consumers?

I edited my comment to remove that line.

The rest of your post seems to be talking about cases where the market changes and the labor force changes as a result. But we're looking at the opposite, right? We're looking at a direct change to the labor force, and there may or may not be any commensurate change in the market. So I don't see how your example of the transition from agrarian society applies, at least not directly.

By the way, I'm asking these questions in earnest -- this isn't a debate to me, and I'm more than happy to "lose". I don't know much about this topic and would like to learn.

The added spending from the additional incomes is likely to be larger than the reduction in spending in the baseline incomes.

Why?

Because you end up with more people working and for low wage jobs there isn't all that much room to cut wages.

At the moment we have pretty good job growth combined with low unemployment so new people starting working aren't putting downward pressure on wages (evidence of this is that we are seeing wage growth).

Thanks, that explanation makes sense to me.

It's an economic and cultural one, but not in the terms you have described.

So first you have to decide whether you support completely open borders, or borders. At that point we're arguing about who to let in and how many. Right? So my first comment "can't let them all in" is related to open borders. It would be an unmitigated disaster for a country like the US to have an open border policy. I agree with you that immigrants are net positives. But the details of which are nuanced and worth discussing because the benefit isn't a simple more immigrants == better economy. There are other factors at play.

It's also a cultural argument. People don't like change. They really don't like abrupt change that appears that they have no control over, especially if it involves people with real or perceived different cultural values. These are simple facts of human nature. Mass migration of any people to any other location on earth will inevitably cause tension and conflict. The absolute wrong thing to do is to take a large group of immigrants and settle them in a mostly homogenous community. Again, there is a lot of discussion to be had here.

In regard to brain drain, I think you're flat out incorrect. People may take a vacation to see family, but there is a negligible amount of immigrants that are packing their bags and moving back to their country of origin for any reason. Coming and going between countries is just not happening. If you manage to get a US Visa you're hanging on to it. Softening of the number of visas issued just means more immigrants, not that they return with money and skills to their home countries.

The West probably needs a comprehensive, global effort to teach, support, and train people across the planet. Global warming, conflict, and a widening technology gap will only make things worse.

> On the economic side, there's no evidence that immigration, even mass immigration, has any negative consequences, apart from some more competition at the very low end of salaries

Oh just the low end huh? Why all the whining about H1-Bs on this site then?

> which should obviously be addressed

How? Increasing the labor pool is increasing the labor pool. That doesn't lead to higher or even stable wages.

You didn't get my point. I was alleging any kind of screening will keep those away which you would deem desirable.

Also, despite having probably the most easily "defendable" borders, Canada has quite the population of undocumented immigrants and refugees. Sure they talk a great game of selecting immigrants. But that mostly applies to those who don't come over the southern border or just overstay their visa.

You start getting into weird questions with "usefulness" right?

Is an artist useful?

> Is an artist useful?

Are they a respected contributor in their field?

Can they afford to support themselves here?

Start running down the list of classic famous artists and you may be surprised at how many wouldn't have met those criteria at the time when they created their most important work.

To be fair... a lot were. If anything, most of the artists we still remember from before the modern era did their best work under wealthy patrons or a purpose (David's Death of Marat and Oath of the Horatii both being pseudo-propaganda for the French Revolution).

The view of the starving artist doing their best work for free is compatible with our modern, post Industrial Revolution views but largely inaccurate.

Should artists be exempted from the basic requirement of being able to support themselves that we expect from people of other professions?

If the bar for "can support himself" is suitably low, someone could be an artist, immigrate to the US to work as an engineer or accountant or nurse, and be an artist. Once he can support himself through art (and is likely a citizen), then be a great artist full time.

You have a really sad view of what "art" is, if you think "oh, he can just be a <insert equally time consuming profession>"

For a period of time, I absolutely do think someone can do some other career in addition to art, rather than receiving public assistance.

What is the point to making self-sufficiency an externally-enforced requirement?

If are are going to be deprived of the means of subsistence by state force, we shouldn't expect them to be able to support themselves.

Your bio says: "Aside from living on a Caribbean island during crypto export controlled 1990s, I've lived on a tiny artificial platform in the North Sea, plus more reasonable places like London, Amsterdam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, and spent 6 months diving in Thailand."

So you've moved around a lot. But you want to make it harder for others to do so. It seems to me that you think you are better than others with your desire for a point based system. And your felon policy, should have made it hard for you to move around, given that you claim to have illegally exported crypto ;)

I never broke ITAR -- I strictly complied with it.

That doesn't make it any less absurd for you to have some kind of hatred of anyone who is a felon. You obviously think some laws are wrong given that you explicitly moved overseas to get around them. And you are a hairs width from not having complied, indeed, I think that a reasonable court could have convicted you (did you use knowledge that you gained in the US to help you write crypto?).

> I'm in favor of a solid border control regime (i.e. "build the wall"),

You seem like a pretty reasonable guy, so I'm curious: how do you justify the cost of building and maintaining the wall? And what are we getting in return? "Fewer mexicans immigrating illegally"?

For every dollar you pay in taxes, you want what % going to keeping illegal immigrants out? For me, I really couldn't care less, I'm fine with 0%. The idea that immigrants are more prone to crime or are destructive to the economy is wrong (statistically, if not morally).

What's the upside here?

It's statistically factual, at least in the USA, that illegal immigrants are more prone to crime, and that immigrant households are more likely to use welfare/EBT/etc. than native households.

That is, illegals commit more crimes and are less economically productive vs. the existing population.

> It's statistically factual, at least in the USA, that illegal immigrants are more prone to crime

The most legit source I could find for this was fox news: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/09/16/crime-wave-elusive-data... There are a lot of statistical slights of hand in there and I don't have time to cite them all. Fox News' reputation for being full of shit is well known; if you're unconvinced of that, there's not much I can say that hasn't been said already. From reading the statistics, my takeaway is, "odds are about even, but let's talk about drug cartels"

Is there a better source than that, or is that what you're referring to?

> that immigrant households are more likely to use welfare/EBT/etc.

You're talking about legal immigration now I think? This has nothing to do with "how do you justify the cost of a border wall to keep illegal immigrants out?"

Heh, although maybe you're suggesting we start kicking people out for being broke. That would be a sad state of affairs, if running out of money could get you kicked out of the country.

Anyway, my question still remains of "What's the upside of paying a ton of money for a wall on the border of mexico?" I guess you're saying "crime will go down and economic productivity will go up"? In which case, I just don't see that happening as a result of a wall...

If drug cartels are driving increases in crime (which I think there's evidence of), they can use drones or tunnels (and they are). They'll still kill anyone that is not them. With a wall, you're only keeping out less sophisticated groups that are not going to be adding to the crime statistics. You're keeping out housekeepers, nannies, and day laborers, not gangsters.

As far as legal immigrants not being economically productive, I refer you to the OP titled "Study: Immigrants Founded 51% of U.S. Billion-Dollar Startups".

So again, what are we getting for all that money that would be spent on building, staffing, and maintaining a wall?

re: illegal immigrants prone to crime

It is tough to find accurate stats, because the cities with the largest numbers of illegals immigrants, are also the ones that don't check immigration status. You can't know it if you don't track it... https://www.city-journal.org/html/illegal-alien-crime-wave-1...

However, even the studies from places that tend to being "pro-immigration" backhandedly admit that of an estimated population of 11 million illegal immigrants in the USA, 820,000 of them have criminal records, about 7.5% of the population of illegals.

The BJS doesn't seem to have newer stats, but there is this: https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=836 6.6% of USA population will go to jail during their entire lifetime (via following this FAQ: https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=qa&iid=404 )

So illegals, 7.5% (thus far; some are younger and may commit crimes later in their life) vs. 6.6% for USA population as a whole.

The "immigrant households more likely to use welfare/EBT" can be seen here: http://cis.org/Welfare-Use-Immigrant-Native-Households

There is a detailed explanation of the data sources and methodology; you can scroll down to find the graphs if you just want to see their results.

Concerning your more specific question of "will the wall work" my view would be "we can build part of it to the new high standard, and see what happens" since it is a multi-year project after all.

> Concerning your more specific question of "will the wall work"

That's not my question. My question is "What are we getting for the money?"

Again, you seem to be suggesting "lower crime". I disagree, but let's play devil's advocate: how much lower do you think crime would be? Now divide that by the cost of the wall. That's your "per unit cost of lowering crime with a wall". What's the answer?

> my view would be "we can build part of it to the new high standard, and see what happens" since it is a multi-year project after all

Haha, I want to know what we're getting in return for $$$ and you just said "let's see what happens...", which makes you sound like you're selling timeshares.

See, this is why I didn't bother to answer your question in detail: despite me supporting with sources my factually accurate statement concerning lower crime, you simply hand-waved it away with no evidence of your own, as I suspected that you would.

Hey man, I wish we could all get along, we're on the same team. I read your sources; they prove nothing. You think immigrants are more prone to crime and we should build a wall on the border of mexico? But you can't begin to quantify what we'd get for it? Then you say shit like, "Well let's just wait and see how it goes, haha..." You're on the wrong side of history, and you don't even know why.

> It's statistically factual, at least in the USA, that illegal immigrants are more prone to crime

That's exactly the opposite of factual. This has been debunked extensively. Here's a review piece with some links: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/26/us/trump-illegal-immigran...

> illegal immigrants are more prone to crime

Source ?

Also, as compared to what ? Legal immigrants or existing population ?

How was this determined?

"building the wall" is racism....

regardless, the problem is if you are perceived as not wanting immigrants, the most skilled ones will go elsewhere, because they can.

is that true? or do we merely wish it were true?

certainly talented people will have lots of different options as to where to apply their talent

but lets not pretend that all the places to apply talent are inherently equal, or that that the value propositions of those places is merely a function of whether those places are perceived as welcoming

------------ ------------

though its a highly imperfect analogy to a county, Harvard and Stanford regularly tell 95% of hopeful student that they're not welcome to come and study there, seemingly with little effect on their ability to attract the talent that they do want

I think that does indicate that talent attraction doesn't neatly equal welcomeness

-----------

also seems worth noting, if one of the US's large assets in attracting talented foreigner is its large market available for entrepreneurial ambitions, one of its main competitors in this space doesn't have any issue categorizing entrants in their society based on their likely usefulness for their hosts https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/22/world/asia/china-work-per...

> "building the wall" is racism....

It has come to symbolise it, in a sense of "no more Mexicans." But op specifically meant it literally, as in: be strict about visa enforcements. If you have a wall, but a very liberal immigration policy, that's not racist.

Again: you're right in other situations, but in this specific case, he was playing with the words.

"A baseline of "not a felon, terrorist, etc." ..."

Australia was a penal colony ... yet they seem to be doing fine for themselves now. My point is ... why change the rules of immigration from what existed in 1800s or early 1900s

1) welfare state -- "bad" immigrants impose higher costs now.

2) technology -- bad immigrants (in the form of terrorists) impose potentially existential costs now.

Also, in that period immigration was inherently racist, which I'd absolutely like to change. ("Chinese exclusion act", etc)

Economics have also changed; costs of migration into the US are far lower than before, and we are far richer than we were then, so it changed who would immigrate. I'd expect a remote, expensive to reach place with endless land and a shortage of labor to have different immigration policies than a rich country next to a poor country a short walk away.

When it comes to immigration, there's two different concerns that we shouldn't try to conflate. There's the security aspect and the work permitting aspect and they should be handled almost entirely separately. As far as security goes, I'm fine with DHS and the various three-letter agencies being able to weigh in and veto someone's visa based on whatever vetting process they need to put in place. This part of the system doesn't seem particularly broken, despite how much Trump wants it to be broken so he can keep beating that drum.

As far as the work permitting process goes, that part is almost certainly broken. The H1-B system benefits body shops the most and is almost impossible for smaller businesses to use. It should be scrapped in favor of a system that puts the onus of determining who gets a work visa on the employers rather than the government. A points system is an unnecessary proxy for actually determining someone's ability to do the job and the job interview process is, despite how imperfect it is, the best tool we have for making that determination.

I'd be in favor of allowing any US company to get work a permit for any employee they want to hire, provided they pass the security screening. The necessary caveat would be that the company would need to maintain a certain ratio of US to immigrant employees and salary. This would destroy the body shops that know how to game the current lottery system. And it would make hiring immigrants much more predictable for smaller companies that currently don't benefit, at all, from the immigrant labor pool due to the complexities involved in sponsoring an H1-B visa. It would take race and country of origin almost completely out of the equation, at least from public policy since those decisions would be made by employers. And it would make life better for H1-B visa holders as well, since they could easily transfer to any company that was below the required ratio. Other countries have a ratio system and the worst that happens is they game the system by employing locals in no-show jobs, which doesn't seem like such a bad deal for those locals. It seems appropriately protectionist while still making it as easy and predictable as possible for immigrants.

As far as the wall goes, it's the dumbest public policy suggestion I've heard in my lifetime. Speaking as a Californian, our economy won't work without the steady stream of near-slave labor that comes across our southern border. It's an uncomfortable truth, but almost everyone in the state depends on the work of these people, whether they realize it or not. The fear of deportation keeps them from using services that cost us money. Getting rid of them would be like getting rid of the motor oil in a car engine. All the individual parts would still be there, but the engine would break down. And on top of destroying our economy, the wall would cost at least $20b as well, and Mexico won't be picking up that bill.

Generally points are awarded for job offers, more for specific ones. There is benefit to retaining labor mobility for immigrants.

As a New Zealander. System doesn't work in NZ...

Could you expand your comment? How exactly it does not work?

It's so easy to get into New Zealand, that it's used as a stepping stone for Australia. Spend 2 years in NZ, get PR, 2 more years get Citizenship. Move to Australia without needing a visa to live/work in Australia. You may as well just hand out Citizenship on arrival.

The government isn't doing anything to make people want to come to NZ to start a business, so New Zealanders literally just pack up and move to the UK / Australia.

I think building a wall will increase the net flow of illegal immigrants as currently more people are leaving than entering.

http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/11/19/more-mexicans-leaving-...

I don't think you need >3x the annual median income (that's top 10%) for immigrants to benefit.

Economics research says high wage immigrants benefit while low wage immigrants benefit the natives on net, although it may harm some natives.

In my opinion, even if it may harm some natives, due to the poverty alleviating effects of immigration, we should open immigration to anyone who doesn't have a criminal record. This isn't that crazy, till 1914 in the U.S.:

"Generally, those immigrants who were approved spent from two to five hours at Ellis Island. Arrivals were asked 29 questions including name, occupation, and the amount of money carried. It was important to the American government that the new arrivals could support themselves and have money to get started. The average the government wanted the immigrants to have was between 18 and 25 dollars ($600 in 2015 adjusted for inflation). Those with visible health problems or diseases were sent home or held in the island's hospital facilities for long periods of time. More than three thousand would-be immigrants died on Ellis Island while being held in the hospital facilities. Some unskilled workers were rejected because they were considered "likely to become a public charge." About 2 percent were denied admission to the U.S. and sent back to their countries of origin for reasons such as having a chronic contagious disease, criminal background, or insanity."

(from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellis_Island#Primary_inspectio... )

What I want is this minus the racism and disqualification for health problems except maybe for contagious diseases.

>In my opinion, even if it may harm some natives, due to the poverty alleviating effects of immigration, we should open immigration to anyone who doesn't have a criminal record.

What is the point of government if not to act in the best interests of its citizens? Why are our governments now apparently obligated to act in the best interests of foreign nationals? This has nothing to do with alleviating poverty or humanitarian ideals. It's blatantly obvious that this advocacy for open borders is part of a power grab by the left to ensure that they stay in power for decades to come, at the expense of the people who actually built the society that they want to invite everyone else to live in. What party do they think these people are going to overwhelmingly vote for? I don't understand how people can openly advocate for destroying our society just for political gain.

> What is the point of government if not to act in the best interests of its citizens? Why are our governments now apparently obligated to act in the best interests of foreign nationals? This has nothing to do with alleviating poverty or humanitarian ideals. It's blatantly obvious that this advocacy for open borders is part of a power grab by the left to ensure that they stay in power for decades to come, at the expense of the people who actually built the society that they want to invite everyone else to live in. What party do they think these people are going to overwhelmingly vote for? I don't understand how people can openly advocate for destroying our society just for political gain.

I self-identify as a neoliberal (fiscally conservative); is that part of the left?

Economics research says low wage immigrants are a net economic benefit, so it is in the interest of its citizens, but not completely objectively as some people are harmed. Also, I think the extreme poverty in parts of the world can justify help, just like how 1000$ is more to a poor person than a millionaire.

No, immigration alleviates poverty as Americans are much richer than the average person. Why do you think so many people want to immigrate?

I don't think it's a power grab by the left (open borders are not popular, as you can see right here) and that's irrelevant to the merits of open borders.

> the people who actually built the society that they want to invite everyone else to live in

This criticism seems to be for leftists.

Well, I am against forcing racial diversity, so you can stay with your ethnic group/society in my proposal.

Realistically there is a group within the Democratic party which justifies illegal immigration because it excites the base and offers a potential constituency. We've had this cycle once before - in the 80s the Republicans agreed to amnesty on the condition of enforcement. The enforcement never came.

There's also a group of well-meaning people who see the plight of good people who just want to make a living and therefore are for open borders. The first group takes advantage of the second group and there's no way of disentangling them.

There is a very real criticism, however, that something like open borders could destroy the productive society people are fleeing to especially if that immigration is against rule of law or eventual assimilation.

As the descendants of immigrants who are now Americans, a lot of people are opposed to haphazard immigration without assimilation. American society is so great because people of various cultures come together and make it something new. It appears (to me) that some people don't care about what is sustainable and would rather win for the sake of politics.

>Economics research says low wage immigrants are a net economic benefit, so it is in the interest of its citizens

Economics is not the only factor to factor into someone's interests. Everyone has things they value more than money.

>Also, I think the extreme poverty in parts of the world can justify help, just like how 1000$ is more to a poor person than a millionaire.

How does that justify help? It's not just like you help them to get on their feet and you're done. They and their descendants will live in your society for generations. Nobody is obligated to give them this at the expense of their citizens.

>No, immigration alleviates poverty as Americans are much richer than the average person. Why do you think so many people want to immigrate?

They want to immigrate here because wages are higher. However, there are only a limited number of jobs, and so flooding the job market with more people prevents natives from being able to find work, which is against their interests.

>I don't think it's a power grab by the left (open borders are not popular, as you can see right here) and that's irrelevant to the merits of open borders.

It's exactly like Roosevelt's Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937, where he tried to pack the supreme court with justices favorable to his political faction, except this time they are trying to pack the US electorate. These people and their descendants overwhelmingly vote left.

>Well, I am against forcing racial diversity, so you can stay with your ethnic group/society in my proposal.

That's illegal in the United States. Every ethnic group has to live among every other ethnic group. Nobody can create societies that only allow people of their ethnic group to live among them, so it's not true that anyone can stay with their ethnic group, barring some serious constitutional reforms.

> Economics is not the only factor to factor into someone's interests. Everyone has things they value more than money.

What are the things that affect the case for open immigration?

> How does that justify help? It's not just like you help them to get on their feet and you're done. They and their descendants will live in your society for generations. Nobody is obligated to give them this at the expense of their citizens.

What is the harm in them living in my society?

> They want to immigrate here because wages are higher. However, there are only a limited number of jobs, and so flooding the job market with more people prevents natives from being able to find work, which is against their interests.

No, there are not a limited number of jobs. See lump of labor fallacy. Some natives will have a harder time finding work, but there's a net benefit to natives.

Just read this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/wiki/faq_immigration

> It's exactly like Roosevelt's Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937, where he tried to pack the supreme court with justices favorable to his political faction, except this time they are trying to pack the US electorate. These people and their descendants overwhelmingly vote left.

Don't give immigrants the right to vote or full citizenship then. Problem solved.

> >Well, I am against forcing racial diversity, so you can stay with your ethnic group/society in my proposal. That's illegal in the United States. Every ethnic group has to live among every other ethnic group. Nobody can create societies that only allow people of their ethnic group to live among them, so it's not true that anyone can stay with their ethnic group, barring some serious constitutional reforms.

Source for constitutional reforms being needed? I think the U.S. constitution only says the government can't discriminate based on race, ethnicity, etc.

>What are the things that affect the case for open immigration?

People worry about losing their cultural and ethnic identity. Nobody wants to be made a minority in their own country, no matter how much cheap labor they get out of it.

>What is the harm in them living in my society?

They bring their values and culture with them, and by sharing a society they change it, to a degree relative to how many of them there are, to be like theirs. The places many these people come from often have much different values than the American leftists who lobby for them to be here. I am particularly scared of this as an LGBT individual, as in a lot of immigration, particularly from Muslim majority countries, comes from places where public attitudes towards homosexuality are extremely negative and often violent (see: Omar Mateen).

>Don't give immigrants the right to vote or full citizenship then. Problem solved.

This won't work. Sure, the push now is just for them simply to be here, but creating an underclass of unrepresented people without the same rights as everyone else is a recipe for disaster. It will be easy for people seeking power to inspire hatred in them for their countrymen who are first-class citizens due to their unfair treatment, and then to incite them to violence for their political gain. A much better solution is simply to not let them in at all.

>Source for constitutional reforms being needed? I think the U.S. constitution only says the government can't discriminate based on race, ethnicity, etc.

No one can refuse to let people of a certain ethnicity live among them. This is racial discrimination, which was made illegal by the Fair Housing Act under the Civil Rights Act of 1968. You're right, this is not technically a constitutional amendment, but the result is the same: you cannot stay with your ethnic group. If someone from another ethnic group wants to live in your society, you are obligated by law to let them.

>I self-identify as a neoliberal (fiscally conservative); is that part of the left?

No. The left believes in the workers controlling the means of production and stopping capitalists from exploiting labour by appropriating value that they have no right to. I am for the concept of open borders, though. I wish for the destruction of nations, and like Marx, I am only in favour of 'globalisation' for this purpose - to break down and dissolve those old traditions and natonalities.

The dialectic of immigratation asks to investigate the reason why people immigrate - to move from one state of exploitation (or even a feudal way of living) into a slightly better one (such as you would find in the US). They also immigrate beacuse of war, moved on in no small part by the capitalism of the military industrial complex.

Rather than selfishly trying to 'fix' immigration by building walls, perhaps we should destroy the reason why people want to immigrate. It's unfortunate that world leaders have such little foresight to do this.

It's really not as complicated as you make it out to be. Everyone has a right to put the interests of themselves and their group first and foremost. Given that, the "solution" to immigration is to just not bother with it when it isn't in your interests. The reason the left wants immigration is because they overwhelmingly vote left. The reason the right doesn't is because they don't want to lose their cultural and national identity. Nowhere along the line does anybody care about why people want to be here - it's not their concern.

>The reason the left wants immigration is because they overwhelmingly vote left.

This is extermely narrow-sighted and very uncharitable, and fails to explain the radical left's stance on immigration, given that very few immigrants vote for, say, the Communist party.

>Nowhere along the line does anybody care about why people want to be here - it's not their concern.

And that's what I'm saying the problem is. People have very little foresight such that instead of trying to implement a much more effective solution to this perceived threat to "cultural and national identity" they just say "let's build a wall".

It does not fix the material conditions that lead to immigration. The wall crumbles. People are still getting in, because they want to get in. If those people really cared about their culture so much, they would be willing to help address the cause of immigration.

At the very least, it's a shoddy hack designed to plug a big hole. And this is where we are now; 'the right' wants to use a poorly thought out hack out of narrow self-interest. Because apparently the only humans who matter are those on this side of the line in the sand.

The "material conditions" that lead to illegal immigration in the US are lax enforcement of immigration and labor laws. If we had enforced our laws from the beginning, it would not be a problem. The solution then, is to enforce the laws we have, and remove their incentive to be here, not to go over there and make their country better. We have our own country to make great (again!).

>Because apparently the only humans who matter are those on this side of the line in the sand.

Everyone has a right to act in their best interests. Charity is never obligatory.

>The "material conditions" that lead to illegal immigration in the US are lax enforcement of immigration and labor laws.

These are material conditions, but they do not cover all immigration, so they are insufficient. The bigger material conditions are namely that people want to live better lives, and they think that they can do so in "better" countries like the US.

>and remove their incentive to be here

This is what I am talking about. You must fix the material conditions, which means that you must either (i) make your own country worse or (ii) make others better. Why not do the second?

>We have our own country to make great (again!).

America has always been founded on capitalist exploitation. It never was 'great'.

>Everyone has a right to act in their best interests.

Sure, and it's in your best interest to fix the material conditions for immigration if you don't like immigration.

>Charity is never obligatory.

That's true, but it seems very selfish to not care about the fate of others, simply beacuse they were born somewhere else.

"This isn't that crazy, till 1914 in the U.S."

Are you sure nothing has changed about the economy since 1914?

I am not saying that and I think the only relevant change is welfare programs—which we can remove/limit for immigrants to stop it from being excessively costly.

Tell me a relevant change that affects my case.

Take a look at https://openborders.info for lots of reasons.