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A comment on The Fruits of Immigration. Parent comment

Re:The Fruits of Immigration by anigbrowl on Monday July 18, 2011 @06:44PM (#2778692)
The rate is not that good of a guide, because the US (as it is now) was so sparsely occupied to begin with. In terms of population density, the US is ranked #180 in the world with 32 people/km2 vs. the world (land) average of 51/km2.
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Re:The Fruits of Immigration by geebee on Monday July 18, 2011 @07:17PM (#2778808)
I'm not sure what you mean when you say that the rate "is not that good of a guide." Do you mean that you feel the rate of 1.2-1.8 million a year isn't as high as it sounds because the population density of the US is still relatively low?

Keep in mind, Australia also has a very low population density, but you'd have trouble populating the interior.

New Zealand has a very low population density, and is essentially a large national park. Certainly they could up that population density of 16.4/km^2. Should New Zealand aim to increase its population five to ten fold over the next 50 years to catch up? Is New Zealand an "anti-immigrant" country for not allowing this kind of growth through immigration?

You can say "yes", but then you'd have a tough time identifying a country that isn't "anti-immigrant", and I think the US would come off as one of the more immigrant-friendly nations out there. Not the most so, but pretty high up on the list.

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Re:The Fruits of Immigration by anigbrowl on Monday July 18, 2011 @07:29PM (#2778859)
I'm not sure what you mean when you say that the rate "is not that good of a guide." Do you mean that you feel the rate of 1.2-1.8 million a year isn't as high as it sounds because the population density of the US is still relatively low?

Yes. I do think the US is one of the more immigrant-friendly nations, but the numbers admitted can't be divorced from their context.

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Re:The Fruits of Immigration by sliverstorm on Monday July 18, 2011 @08:39PM (#2779081)
I think what you are replying to was attempting to address the fact that America has a lot of land that is either parks (Yosemite), uninhabitable (Death Valley, Great Plains) or simply unestablished.

No immigrant is going to move into the middle of nowhere; they are going to move to cities or towns. People vs. total area is a misleading number.

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Re:The Fruits of Immigration by anigbrowl on Monday July 18, 2011 @08:59PM (#2779136)
So? It's not like we are never going to build any more cities or that none of the existing towns are going to grow into cities in the future. Nor am I claiming that this is the only statistic that matters.

In any case, this is a curious objection to raise in a thread about a story documenting the inability of rural farmers to hire a productive labor force following a change in the law. Quite a lot of immigrants work in the agricultural sector and live a good way away from major cities.

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Re:The Fruits of Immigration by sliverstorm on Tuesday July 19, 2011 @12:04AM (#2779566)
I'm not saying I'm afraid cities will overflow; I'm just attempting to further expand on the point that the people/land ratio is not as transparent and directly comparable between countries as it is sometimes assumed to be.
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