I believe the perception that the immigration policy is "as much as possible" doesn't reflect reality. Many in the west feel it is the humane thing to offer immigrants in war torn ME an opportunity for a better life considering the selfish meddling the West has been involved in WRT ME policy for the last 100 years (think Sykes-Picot, which carved the ME up for UK/France ends).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes%E2%80%93Picot_Agreement

Countries that had nothing whatsoever to do with Sykes-Picot or the Middle East also feel compelled to import huge numbers of people, so that is not the most parsimonious explanation, unless you think e.g. contemporary Sweden & Norway are somehow responsible for the actions of the UK & France 100 years ago.

Hardly. Zero immigration or zero net immigration? I'm not sure people realise that the only countries that have that state are ones that are both so authoritarian that they can enforce it and so bad that nobody wants to live there.

"Zero work visas" leads to even more egregiously stupid outcomes. No trade shows. No touring bands.

("Zero immigration" also means that if one of your nationals wants to marry a foreigner, they have to leave the country. And so on.)

net migration seems like an entirely irrelevant number here. It's something politicians speak of in the UK just because it's smaller. If the issue under debate is assimilation, then every native who departs increases the relevant ratio.

Well, national borders are an entirely human construct, so there's an argument to be made that freedom of movement should be the default and those who want to restrict it should have to justify themselves.

(I do get that there are justifications given that framing...)

As a human, I am fine with being governed by human constructs like private property, the rule of law, nation states, etc.

I've made a lot of progress though, you've shifted from arguing that it is the default position to arguing that you like the status quo.

Actually, I was ridiculing your stance that something being a human construct is somehow an argument against it.

Here's a more forthright approach: The problem with your argument is that it goes about half a level deep and doesn't hold up to even the most elementary criticism. Specifically, I was pointing out that human constructs are a fundamental element of human existence; they are how we negotiate existing alongside one another. So, trying to argue against something solely because it is a human construct makes about as much sense as arguing that somebody is evil because they were born in February.

My argument was against it being an obvious default.

The notion of real border control is barely 100 years old.

On the contrary, human groups have defended their territorial boundaries against other human groups since the beginning of our species. Even chimps do it.

A perfectly reasonable default position to have, in my mind if you are going to bring outsiders in, you should probably do it for selfish reasons.