There has to be equilibrium or it's a policy that will drive down worker wages, increase the wealth of the 1%, and leave the United States crowded and poor.
>They don't bite.
I grew up in a class of around 50% children of immigrants. I'm aware that they don't bite.
But, it's nice of you to instantly assume that I'm a xenophobic person just because I question your policy ideas on immigration. Of course the person who wants 20x immigration would assume the same thing about you, and then you're in the left-wing purity spiral. So let's just leave off the insinuations of personal flaws, okay?
>the target should be, if someone wants to come here and make a better life for themselves, they should be able to.
Please, please watch this 6 minute TED-style talk on immigration numbers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPjzfGChGlE
Your basic goal of helping the world is good. But your convictions have completely disconnected you from the strictures of reality.
Your goal isn't coherent. If your target is 5x immigration, then you're not even close to your stated goal of accepting everyone who wants to come. 5x immigration would be about 5 million per year. Africa alone adds 30 million people per year via births over deaths. If 1/3 of those want to enter, then you haven't even absorbed most of the population growth of one continent, much less helped existing Africans, or anyone from anywhere else.
The entire Western world (USA, Canada, Australia, Europe) is about 15% of the world population. It is simply impossible that 15% of the people can save 85% of the people by absorbing them. Even if only, say, a third want to come, it's simply mean dissolving Western countries and leaving the third world without any help or guidance at all.
If your goal is to help people in other countries - which is a good goal - you need to start approaching it with solutions that can actually work. We have to help them grow where they're planted.
>If someone is willing to leave their country and move to America, we can make it work and it can be a win-win for both sides.
This is such a fairy tale. Not every person in the world shares your values. What if that person hates democracy and want to usher in a global theocracy?
When I went to college it was 30% asian, and they didn't bite either. There were brown kids and black kids, and many foreigners.
I don't think what makes America special is country of origin or the appearance of the people who live here. A lot of anti-immigration sentiment has undertones (or overtones) of xenophobia. This is understandable--foreigners are weird and unknown, and some parts of America are 95%+ white with few/no immigrants, or only European immigrants.
> 10 years of 10x immigration would be 100,000,000 people, so about 11 cities the size of New York of 100% new immigrants. Such masses could not possibly assimilate to any significant degree; they'd obviously form huge enclaves.
Ok, maybe 10x is too much, maybe the number should be more like 5x. This would require some sane policy from state and local governments. In the Bay Area, where I live, this would mean substantially increasing housing stock and density. It may mean other things for other localities. Maybe there are limits based on income level. But the target should be, if someone wants to come here and make a better life for themselves, they should be able to.
If someone is willing to leave their country and move to America, we can make it work and it can be a win-win for both sides.