This is inaccurate. More people, even low skilled ones are still a huge benefit to your society. They buy goods and services in the local economy increasing demand and work tax paying jobs. Immigrants children grow up to greatly out earn their parents pay way more in taxes than they their parents. The only immigrant group that could be considered a liability are older low skilled workers who have passed the age to have kids and live a couple of decades of working years. The reason certain countries don’t like immigration is because a conservative faction wants to keep society in place.

Maybe we have to rethink our economic system so that producing more humans just to create new customers is a perverse incentive.

Less humans means less demand means less work. In our current paradigm, this is a problem. In a healthy paradigm, it is a solution.

Less people? Rebalance human development with nature. Less consumption of resources? Wonderful. Less jobs? Great, let's all work less and live more.

Many would call this utopia, I call it sanity. I'd also say that couple not reproducing or doing so at increasingly old age, is the ultimate sign of how our economic system doesn't even support one of the most natural things there are: to form a family. It is openly hostile to this option.

And we want do double down on that? The trend of economic security is going to be even less, not more.

> The reason certain countries don’t like immigration is because a conservative faction wants to keep society in place.

This is so simplified that it is basically false. There are a range of reasons for not supporting immigration, but basically no one wants to "keep society in place". I will note that the USA had historically low immigration in the post-war period that was associated with rapidly rising wellbeing[0].

[0]: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/Ann...

That was almost entirely due to America rebuilding Europe and every other major industrial power knocked off their perch for a couple of decades. It had nothing to do with immigration. Additionally Americans were still having lots of kids at that point so the population was growing without immigratiom.

Those European countries also developed fast without much immigration (including Switzerland and the Nordics, which were not affected much by the war). It may have nothing to do with immigration, but you certainly haven't proved that.

Edit: Currently the poorest parts of the US population are stagnating at best, at a time when rates of both legal and illegal immigration are quite high. It is hard to make the argument that immigration is preventing things from getting worse.

Yea they were mostly rebuilding the physical world and not having to completely rebuild society from the ground. Small countries like the Nordics aren’t great examples because they’re so small and a massive part of their wealth came from selling oil to the wider world. The amount of oil revenue generated per person in those countries allowed them develop such a high standard of living along with really smart and egalitarian government policy and investment. That’s not really repeatable for a country as large as the US although money could certainly be used better.

France invited large amounts of immigrants from Africa to help rebuild so it’s not like they didn’t see immigration.

I think there are two main reasons that the poorest parts of the population are stagnating. One is poverty traps, and especially multi generational poverty traps are very hard to escape. Another is geographic location. Americans dont move as much as they used to, all around the world poorer people move to areas with more jobs and opportunity but today mostly richer people move and poorer people stay put in areas that are impoverished.

Immigrants largely don’t come with a set geography or generational poverty weighing them down which is why their kids do so well.

That's inaccurate at best about the Nordics. Norway, yes, and Denmark to some degree. Neither Finland or Sweden have or had any significant oil and gas reserves, but built their economies on industry (and mining to some extent).

Agreed, but mining has historically been a big in Sweden (part of the reason why so many minerals were named by Swedish scientists). While we now have focus on other areas it has always been an important part of the economy.

This is pretty wrong. Most immigrants come from much poorer countries, and they themselves have to restart everything from scratch, with little saving and no home ownership.

People coming from the Philipines, or India, or Eastern Europe, post communism from the 90s had to restart everything from scratch, including learning the language, yet over time they end up doing well.

You have this weird mentality, that all immigrants are coming rich, and from rich countries, which is the opposite from the truth.

I guarantee, that Someone in Bangladesh coming here, has had a much harder life, than the average minority living in Brooklyn or Queens.

Yet, even the obstacles, they end up doing better than the locals. So, initial conditions are not the major hamperer of success.

Not sure where you got that idea but I definitely don't think all immigrants coming here are rich, I'm a huge advocate for more poorer/low skilled immigration. I've outlined in a bunch of other comments why exactly but for them if their life struggling in the US is better than where they left and they are voluntarily here to give themselves and their children a better life it's good with me and a huge benefit to the USA.

> Those European countries also developed fast without much immigration

That doesn’t seem correct, at least not universally. Germany invited a large number of immigrant workers to deal with its labor shortage after WW2.

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastarbeiter

Similar for the Netherlands and Belgium

> Currently the poorest parts of the US population are stagnating at best, at a time when rates of both legal and illegal immigration are quite high. It is hard to make the argument that immigration is preventing things from getting worse.

An argument that immigration is a net positive for the economy:

https://www.thebalance.com/how-immigration-impacts-the-econo...

Some anecdotes of small towns being saved by immigration:

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/local/gray-matters/article/...

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2019/08/15/hmong-immigrants-he...

> Some anecdotes of small towns being saved by immigration

Why would saving small towns in general be a value?

The US has desperately needed vast consolidation of small population centers and increased population density toward greater urbanization, for many decades.

One of the worst attributes of the US is its over-sprawl and weak development of public transportation. The ideal would be to eliminate thousands upon thousands of small towns, with those populations moving to far superior situations in or near cities, and for the US to stop being lazy and stupid about building out public transportation.

Saving small towns is certainly not a good argument for huge volumes of low-skill immigration at exactly the wrong time in history for that type of immigration. The US should be copying Canada and Australia, focusing primarily on high-skill immigration and dramatically reducing low-skill immigration. What the highly developed welfare states all grasp that the US still doesn't (apparently), is that the immense value in high-skill immigration, beyond the obvious, is that it brings a huge immediate net tax positive that pays for your existing population's social welfare costs, whereas low-skill labor does something closer to the exact opposite. Most low-skill labor would struggle to covers its own real social security cost over time, much less everything else. The US has a very progressive taxation system, high-skill labor foots the tax bills. High-skill labor is also vastly superior as it pertains to net healthcare costs and system subsidization. Every functional welfare state in Europe knows all of this, meanwhile the US is wandering around like an idiot in the dark bumping into walls.

Far less low-skill labor, more automation, far more high-skill labor, increased social safety net from the net tax boost of inverting the labor focus, build public transportation, greater consolidation of population centers, all linked by regional high-speed rail. We already know this model works exceptionally well and we know exactly why it works.

Postwar sprawl is a huge problem, but it'd be good if prewar towns were saved.

You're going to get pushback if you try to say "everyone needs to live in the Big City". They don't. There are other options.

Because streetcar suburbs are fine. Villages are fine. Actual towns are fine.

What's bad is strip-mall sprawl. Highways, burbclaves, and office parks. None of that is worth saving.

And some of the new "denser" development misses the point. Rows of townhomes set up in a farm off the highway with no commercial center? That's dense but bad.

New condo complexes -- private compounds with pools and such -- that take up whole city blocks? Also dense, but bad. These represent the "enclosure" (with everything that entails) of urban space.

But "small towns"? Fine -- if they're actually towns, and not just strip-mall wastelands.

You're wrong that low-skilled immigration is a net loss for the USA. Low skilled immigrants contribute more than they take out by a good amount. They increase demand and grow the economy. Additionally their kids grow up and out earn them drastically being huge net-positives.

Small towns not connected to big cities are shrinking unceasingly, unless there is some special local thing to save them, like a special factory or a tourist attraction. In my part of the south almost every town had their downtown destroyed first by walmart, and then later by the ecosystem of small businesses all withered away and now the downtowns of places with a few thousand people have almost nothing but a grocery store and gas station. On top of the young people move out of all of these towns looking for work. It's got to be incredibly sad for older people to see their world just disappearing, which is think is part of the appeal of certain nationalist politicians.

Your point about high-skill vs. low-skill immigration is interesting, but allow me to invert it: If developed countries can benefit by causing (only) high-skilled people to immigrate, can they also benefit by somehow causing (only) low-skilled people to emigrate?

Their point is that is becoming less and less true and will likely be false soon. Most labor simply isn't worth as much as it used to be. This is evident in stagnant wages and the view of large families not as assets but as liabilities.

You can try to spur local demand by expanding your population (via birth or immigration) but what we really care about is GDP per capita. Most very populous countries are not wealthy.

> Most labor simply isn't worth as much as it used to be. This is evident in stagnant wages

You're assuming an efficient market, which we've long known is a flawed assumption.

Where is that assumption? I'm not seeing it in the claim.

Taking stagnant wages to imply that the labor is worth less is taking for granted that reduced prices means reduced value. It's probably more accurate (though still oversimplifying) to view it as a cartel suppressing wages.

> They buy goods and services

the wonder of economic development is that as a country's quality of life and wealth increases, consumption increases.

the typical american probably consumes about 4000x as much energy as the typical DRC. we still have a long, long way to go before we can accommodate the whole world living like an american.

even as population growth stalls, or even reverses course, the ability of humans to keep expanding its appetite for the finer things in life can never be quelled.

The average energy usage per person in the USA has been going down in the past few decades as appliances and electronics get more efficient. It will continue to go down as more things electrify and shift to renewables. We can decrease resource consumption through smarter growth policies like building denser, public transit while growing our population for economic benefit.

> They buy goods and services in the local economy increasing demand and work tax paying jobs.

That heavily depends on the immigrant group, and is, on average, not true in most of Europe where many immigrants heavily depend on welfare and it turns into intergenerational dependency. I'm sure it's different in countries that aren't offering full benefits to immigrants, and are much harder to reach via illegal migration, i.e. the US, Canada, Australia or New Zealand, but that kind of blanket statement isn't accurate.

I’ve read about this and a big reason is it’s simply so much easier to get a job in the US. You’re not dealing with unions and America just has way more low paying jobs. You can def argue this isn’t a good thing but working a low paying job is better than working no job.

More low paying jobs just leads to more misery for poor people, and more money for me. That is not how I want to live.

There is limited supply of housing and low qualified jobs.

Maybe read what Marx wrote about Irish immigrants to UK. And those already spoke local language and shared similar culture.

Limited supply of housing is an artificial local government constraint using tools like zoning and permitting to stop the construction of new housing keep prices high for incumbent owners. I agree it’s a huge problem but I would rather fight the constraint on supply than limit demand (partially immigrants) when they contribute so much else. We shouldn’t restrict economic growth and deny millions of people the chance at a better life to appease NIMBYs.

USA is amazing at assimilating immigrants. Mostly the places the furthest away from any immigrants that don’t actually interact with them have a problem. The melting pot isn’t a myth it’s real.

Please. We have 40% unemployment in Greece among young people. Housing is bloody expensive to build. It is not some goverment conspiracy!

Did you actually try to immigrate into US? It is one of the worst countries at accepting immigration. Any normal country gives citizenship after 5 years of residency. In US it is like 30 years.

And from far away it looks like your melting pot is broken. Too many groups fighting each other.

"30 years" is factually incorrect. The requirement is to be a permanent resident for 5 years (I can find links if needed). Source: I'm currently awaiting my naturalization appointment, if all goes well the total time from setting my foot in the US to becoming a citizen will be few months short of 9 years (~2.5 years on work visa & 5 years on green card + ~1.5 years wait for naturalization appointment).

With that said, it may be tricky to become a resident [1] in the first place. There are per-country-of-birth quotas, currently the wait times for people born in China / India can be significant (if taking the work visa route), up to 11 years. The longest wait that I see is for family-based immigration from Mexico - 24 years' wait for "married sons/daughters of US citizens". [2]

[1] resident to me means lawful permanent resident

[2] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/v...

That may be true for you or the Greek person here. Not for indians, Chinese, and Mexican.

Only one category ("married children of US citizens"), only for Mexicans, comes close enough to ~30 years total time (~24 years waiting to become LPR, +5 years being an LPR in USA) to consider the "30 years" as valid IMO. The fact still remains that the requirement for citizenship is to be a LPR for 5 years (this is the upper bound, there are cases where less is possible), it is the LPR part that may take time, as I've already mentioned in a reply to my comment. For China and India the total times are closer to 15-20 years. All of this is for family-based immigration, which I'd expect to be generally less interesting as it requires people to already have a fairly close family member who is a US citizen.

Not familiar with housing in Greece. I should have clarified I’m talking about the US where housing is quite cheap to build but regulations make it illegal to build most types of housing.

I was born in the US but a lot of my family are immigrants and I know how tough the system is, I’m arguing to make it much easier.

I’m sure on the outside it does look broken and there are lots of issues to fix, but take a walk around pretty much any American urban metro area and it’s working amazingly well.

I can understand the situation in Greece is much different, especially when compare the amount of refugees compared to the population of Greece. But I think a lot of the issues boil down to Greece having a quite shit economy at the moment causing more issues. If jobs were abundant in Greece then I think immigration wouldn’t be as contentious. Although that’s just me taking from no experience. I’m interested in hearing your view.

I would love to see how American cities deal with large scale immigration. SF got maybe 10k people on its streets and there is already talk about martial law and forcefully mopping people into rehabs. What would SF do with 1 million people on its streets? Athens and other cities managed...

Greece does not have a shit economy, we do relatively well. There are simply not enough jobs.

US is the same. Show me an entry level job, that pays enough to buy a house and raise a family...

Do you mean like NYC? Literally the city built on large scale immigration? Also the state of California. Houston, Texas is the most diverse city in the country and you can buy a house for less than the national average. There are hundreds of millions of people in the US who own homes and raise families on entry level jobs, the just don't live in high cost of living areas. That's not to say their lives are all perfect and rosy but its possible. I'm not denying housing affordability is a problem, it absolutely is but narrowing your view of America to SF when it is the most extreme example is a little disingenuous. My hometown has tons of people where 2 parents work slightly above minimum wage jobs and own homes and raise families. It's 2 hours from 2 major cities. You can absolutely have a good life without making a ton of money. Now healthcare... that's a separate issue.

I'm not sure where you're getting your news on America but martial law isn't being declared anywhere. Most of the country is relatively peaceful and people are happy - https://news.gallup.com/poll/351932/americans-life-ratings-r...

If there are simply not enough jobs in Greece, that means the economic situation isn't great. A highly functioning economy should be produces lots of jobs as businesses grow and expand. I'm not arguing Greece should take more immigrants though, you sound like you don't want them and neither does your country. I would be happy for America to accept all of them, refugee or PhD Scientist, but unfortunately the political situation at the moment doesn't allow for that.

》but take a walk around pretty much any American urban metro area and it’s working amazingly well.

I choosed SF bcos you wrote this. NY etc have similar problem. Modern US cities are not capable to accept and absorb large scale immigration of people who are not already integrated into society. People who do not speak local language and have very different culture.

Martial law was suggested as a way to force homeless into shelters and rehabs. SF gets around 700 people per year, and it already abandoned basic humanitarian principles. Look at recent Louis Rossmann video, this mishandling is systemic problem in US: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8WGjCeFyr1g&pp=sAQA

》USA is amazing at assimilating immigrants

I disagree with that. I will leave it here.

Why didn't you try to look at some numbers? If anything, immigration to the US has accelerated in the last 50 years. 4.7 percent of the population were immigrants in 1970. The number increased to 13.7 percent in 2019.

"Since 1970, the share and number of immigrants have increased rapidly, mainly because of large-scale immigration from Latin America and Asia. The vast diversification of immigration flows was ushered in by important shifts in U.S. immigration law (including the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 which abolished national-origin admission quotas; the creation of a formal refugee resettlement program with the Refugee Act of 1980; and the Cold War-era grant of preferential treatment to Cuban immigrants); the United States’ growing economic and military presence in Asia and Latin America; economic ties, social linkages, and deep migration history between the United States and its southern neighbors; and major economic transformations and political instability in countries around the world." - [0]

People from Asia and Latin America, those who contribute the majority of the boom in migration since 1970s, are those by default don't speak English natively and have distinct culture. 22 percent American spoke a language other than English at home.

> Modern US cities are not capable to accept and absorb large scale immigration of people who are not already integrated into society. People who do not speak local language and have very different culture.

Incorrect. As of 2018, 20% of NYC residents are naturalized citizens (born abroad), 10.9% are legal and 6.3% are undocumented immigrants. [1]

[0] - https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/frequently-requested...

[1] - https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/immigrants/downloads/pdf/moia_an...

You can disagree but it's true, the melting pot isn't a myth. I'm a brown skinned child of immigrants and my entire friend group is white and black people who have been here for generations along with other children of immigrants. Even my anti-immigrant Trump supporting next door neighbors are like a second family to me. Again for the vast majority of the country people get along amazingly well regardless of background, you just hear about the bad parts on the news. You can keep thinking people don't integrate into society but after 1 generation of being in the US anyone from anywhere can safely call themselves American. I can't say the same for Greece but culturally in the US wave after wave of immigrants become fully integrated American quite fast.

Or read what Malthus wrote before him.

How about no.

You’re thinking in humanistic terms, not geopolitical terms.

I’m thinking in purely economic terms

There's only so much juice you can squeeze out of a shrinking workforce, though.

And as retirees continue to make up a larger portion of the popular vote - they'll continue to demand more from a shrinking workforce.

At some point (I imagine in my lifetime) - the straw will break the camel's back.

> And as retirees continue to make up a larger portion of the popular vote - they'll continue to demand more from a shrinking workforce.

Sure, if you fail to outsource to other countries; or automate your economy enough.

> There's only so much juice you can squeeze out of a shrinking workforce, though.

For most countries, you can get access with a job offer. Countries are not against people who can get employment where they have shortages.

But a "bare human" is barely employable which is how he turns into a liability. ie: immigrating more people (randomly) will generate a negative return at least in the short-term.

>> juice you can squeeze out of a shrinking workforce

On the assumption that the economy is based on a workforce. An economy can be based on paper assets. An "innovation nation" that makes GDP out of intellectual property assets, banking and offshore investments could sustain itself without the need for an ever-growing labor force. SK isn't Luxembourg, but nor is it India.

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

As a tax haven, Luxembourg depends on France + Germany's tolerance for tax evasion though. Granted, it has worked out great for them, but it's not necessarily a long-term strategy.

> There's only so much juice you can squeeze out of a shrinking workforce, though.

For the developed world, where a lot of the wealth coming in is capital returns from global corps whose ability to generate wealth isn’t constrained by local population size, that just means you need to tap that more effectively. It’s a problem for the payroll tax model of social support funding, perhaps, but unless you are emotionally attached to that model, I don't see that as a big cost.

Yes, similarly retiree savings isn’t limited to your economy. A country could have a continuous stream of goods imported that’s supported by past investments, which is more or less the goal of sovereign wealth funds.

However, it requires great long term management making the system overall less stable.

Automation is progressing faster than new 'types' of jobs are created. In many sectors they'll be poised to be oversaturated with workers. Owners are happy to remove the human element wherever reasonably possible.

Except the US has a large labor shortage that predates covid in construction, agriculture, domestic work, scientists, engineers and more. If automation comes then great but the basic principals of more people in an economy means more demand for goods and services still applies.

> Except the US has a large labor shortage

No, it has less labor supplied at current prices than purchasers would prefer. Market clearing quantity at current prices being less than buyers would prefer is...the normal case of a market economy.

It's only a shortage if buyers paying more wouldn't increase market clearing quantity, because of some constraint besides “you haven't offered enough money to convince more people to sell their labor”.

I agree with you. The critical question here is, on a broad scale, whether the competitiveness of the American economy depends on lack of choice for low-wage workers. Example: The health insurance system reduces choice for workers, who are legitimately terrified of losing healthcare.

> It's only a shortage if buyers paying more wouldn't increase market clearing quantity, because of some constraint besides “you haven't offered enough money to convince more people to sell their labor”.

Yes, that constraint is immigration law.

The US def has a labor shortage if it wants to stay globally competitive in some sectors. Americans will either buy strawberries from immigrants on agricultural visas, they will buy strawberries overseas or they won’t buy strawberries. There is no scenario where they buy strawberries picked by people making $30/hr.

The US tech sector can pay every software engineer 300k starting salary but at some point you’re completely hobbling the ability for new businesses to start and grow.

US has been letting in millions of IT immigrants for decades and it’s technology salaries are highest in the world. Simply put the demand created by these immigrants for more software services outstrips the increase in supply of engineers. They also start a ton of new companies so you have agglomeration effects of having more people.

Sure US companies can and should pay more but there is certainly a point where labor is expensive enough to make new growth prohibitive. The USA has much more abundant cheap labor than Europe which is why we have all the new innovative companies starting and not there. When these companies grow they produce lots of high skilled jobs as well. Think of Uber. Lots of drivers are low skilled immigrants, but the ability for a new company to have so many to drive for them spurred and entire new industry with thousands high paying tech jobs as well.

Low skilled immigration is a win win win for the USA. Americans get cheaper goods and services, a fast growing dynamic economy and hard working tax paying citizens to grow the nation and make it richer. They create huge demand for goods and services growing the US economy and market size. Low skilled immigrants may not be working the most glamorous jobs but they come to the US voluntarily knowing their children will vastly out earn them and be American. They prefer it to the situation that they left behind. These people are not financial liabilities to the USA.

None of this is an argument against higher pay, workers rights, safety standards. Uber drivers and strawberry pickers should be protected with the full force of the US government from abuse, and we should have safety nets in place to make sure they’re not destitute. Those should all be sought after. But increasing low skilled immigration makes the USA much richer overall and should be drastically increased.

Since you mentioned strawberries, Driscolls, the U.S. berry giant, a) actually yields most of its strawberries from Mexico, and b) is poised to increase automation even further. Have a look at the careers page here and take note of what they're seeking in the U.S. proper - https://www.driscolls.com/about/careers

> There is no scenario where they buy strawberries picked by people making $30/hr.

You're presenting a false dichotomy. Not only would people would pick strawberries in the U.S. season for less than that (assuming they would seek unskilled labor), consumers are accustomed to paying premium for "local" produce when in season.

> The US tech sector can pay every software engineer 300k starting salary but at some point you’re completely hobbling the ability for new businesses to start and grow.

There are always young engineers starting out desperate to get a job who would kill for the opportunity to work at a startup.

> the demand created by these immigrants for more software services outstrips the increase in supply of engineers.

FANG serves a global market, and the notion that there's some sort of lack of software services that consumers want is ludicrous. In the first place these are quickly filled in by app creators capitalizing on opportunity, in the 2nd, people generally don't know what they want when it comes to as-of-yet-invented software, they're told what they want by large companies.

> Americans get cheaper goods and services,

They already get that from imports.

> a fast growing dynamic economy

Benefiting the rich overwhelmingly.

Notwithstanding skill, because immigration isn't just about low-skilled workers (Canada doesn't prioritize it for instance), high supply of workers is lobbied for on the part of companies in order to suppress wages. That is the only reason.

>>Notwithstanding skill, because immigration isn't just about low-skilled workers (Canada doesn't prioritize it for instance), high supply of workers is lobbied for on the part of companies in order to suppress wages.

Maybe I misunderstood your comment but Canada does prioritize high(er)-skilled immgrants over low-skilled immigrants as per the Canadian Federal Skilled Workers points system used to score potential immigrants applying to enter the country on a long-term basis.

[1] https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/se...

Yep that's what I meant.

> Since you mentioned strawberries, Driscolls, the U.S. berry giant, a) actually yields most of its strawberries from Mexico, and b) is poised to increase automation even further. Have a look at the careers page here and take note of what they're seeking in the U.S. proper - https://www.driscolls.com/about/careers

Yea but that's my point. In the US for a lot of industries such as agriculture you can allow immigrants to come to the US and pick them for cheap or its going to get outsourced. There isn't a scenario where you have highly paid strawberry pickers. The amount of people paying premium for local produce is a drop in the bucket compared to the overall market. American consumers overwhelming buy whatever the cheapest produce is. I think increasing the number of agricultural visas for Mexican & South/Central American workers to come the US is a good thing, otherwise those strawberries just get grown in Mexico. Even in the depths of the great recession Americans were not lining up to pick produce, it's just not a job Americans want to do or are there enough non-immigrant workers in places with lots of farms.

> There are always young engineers starting out desperate to get a job who would kill for the opportunity to work at a startup.

This is much more true in the US than Europe because we have way more startups that make it big. And we have way more startups that make it big because there are so many more engineers here. More skilled tech immigrants is good. It's a cycle.

> FANG serves a global market, and the notion that there's some sort of lack of software services that consumers want is ludicrous. In the first place these are quickly filled in by app creators capitalizing on opportunity, in the 2nd, people generally don't know what they want when it comes to as-of-yet-invented software, they're told what they want by large companies.

I'm not sure what point you're even trying to make tbqh, did I say there way a lack of software services? I'm arguing when more tech immigrants come to the US, they create more demand for services like cloud computing and other SaaS. That in turn increases the need to hire more engineers to fulfill the demand. The end result of letting more highly skilled immigrants come to the US is a fast growing and innovative tech sector more-so than other nations. Yes tech is global but a huge, outsized part of it is centralized in the US. The more people we allow to come here, the more startups can hire and grow. If you cut off immigration, lots of startups wouldn't be able to hire enough engineers to grow as they would get out competed by the big tech companies. Yes you can pay more, but if you have 20k job opening and 10k engineers then the companies that lose that bidding war just won't get started or grow.

> Americans get cheaper goods and services,

America is filled with lots of double income highly educated couples with children that rely on low skilled immigrants as nannies, landscapers, cab drivers and other domestic jobs that can't be exported but make their lives run. As long as there is no abuse and the immigrants want to be here and make enough to get by, I don't see this as a bad thing. They are willing to work incredibly hard to give their children the chance at a better life.

> Benefiting the rich overwhelmingly. If you're in the top 40% of America you're rich. Hacker News is filled with rich engineers due to the points I've outlined above. America is really good at creating more and more rich people because we're good at business. Back to my Uber example, how many millionaires has Uber created, and how many immigrants make some money and get the chance to support a family based on it. Now if they think the bargain isn't worth it, then they don't have to stay in the US. But the truth is lots of them do think its worth it because they and their children will be better off down the line.

> Notwithstanding skill, because immigration isn't just about low-skilled workers (Canada doesn't prioritize it for instance), high supply of workers is lobbied for on the part of companies in order to suppress wages. That is the only reason.

If you believe this you've missed my entire point. The labor market is supply and demand. If you think it suppresses wages you've missed the entire demand side of the equation. Immigrants increase demand more than they increase supply. Wages are not reduced. There is papers and papers worth of academic literature on this subject. The only demographic that sometimes looses out is low skilled workers who directly compete with low skilled immigrants. There is very little of this overlap as a lot of the poorest American's aren't willing to go pick produce or cut lawns. If more immigrants lowered wages the US would have the lowest wages in the world but it doesn't, not by a long shot. By your logic software engineers would be making poverty wages due to high levels of immigration, but they don't. They're some of the highest paid people in the country. More immigrants mean more economic growth which is good for everyone.

> In the US for a lot of industries such as agriculture you can allow immigrants to come to the US and pick them for cheap or its going to get outsourced.

For this particular US industry, it already is outsourced, the company profits from labor in Mexico.

> There isn't a scenario where you have highly paid strawberry pickers.

You're doubling down on this when I made it clear it's all relative. You don't need an engineer's payscale to entice more agricultural workers when they have zero education.

> I think increasing the number of agricultural visas for Mexican & South/Central American workers to come the US is a good thing, otherwise those strawberries just get grown in Mexico.

Yes, they already are. Check the packaging at your grocery store. The company just yields the profits.

> This is much more true in the US than Europe because we have way more startups that make it big. And we have way more startups that make it big because there are so many more engineers here. More skilled tech immigrants is good. It's a cycle.

This is too simplistic of a view. The valley has the capital, that's why startups can make it. There are more engineers because they're clamoring for potentially large salaries in very expensive cities. More engineers means more competition and consequently suppressed wages; it's not a given that they all make it to FANG, and it's not a given that the small company or startup they start with will get any consideration or funding. For a young engineer, a company's success doesn't matter so much in the beginning, they're desperate for experience in order to better compete if they've missed their first opening at a FANG. You can be a good developer and still never get hired there, in which case you'd eventually move out of the valley.

> did I say there way a lack of software services?

That is the exact implication when you suggest the demand for software services sufficiently outweights the supply of workers. It is a nonsensical statement. Demand being created basically reiterates what I said, but here again, it's not a given that your shiny new service will lead to substantial demand. The vast majority fail.

> If you cut off immigration

No one said anything about cutting off immigration. The counter to high, unfettered immigration isn't "no" immigration, it's a sensible rate that actually considers other factors like wages, unemployment status etc rather than only a corporation's desires.

Even Statistics Canada clearly lays out that increasing immigration over a certain rate suppresses wages: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/89-001-x/89-001-x2007001... . This is from the government itself.

> The end result of letting more highly skilled immigrants come to the US is a fast growing and innovative tech sector more-so than other nations.

The end result is a faster growing GDP, and as we have already established, a higher GDP does not reflect better prosperity for people in places of high inequality. It means the rich get richer, and the purchasing power of the middle class diminishes.

> nannies, landscapers, cab drivers and other domestic jobs that can't be exported but make their lives run.

Nothing reflects privilege like a nanny. Working class Americans don't have nannies. Landscaping can pay quite well and you can make a living driving cabs, it's not something only immigrants want.

> If you're in the top 40% of America you're rich.

The poverty rate is 10.5%. The average annual wage is $51,916.27 and the real median personal income in the US in 2019 is $35,977. Most workers are not rich, and wages have not been catching up with inflation let alone GDP. Wages are suppressed over decades.

> If you think it suppresses wages you've missed the entire demand side of the equation.

You have a distorted, naive view of the consequence of this increase of demand.

New bodies need a place to live (housing prices are skyrocketing), they need food (this increase does basically fuck all for the vast majority of Americans because it's so automated and controlled by very few rich families), they need transportation (the infrastructure is effectively just maintained at this point i.e. subways and buses, and vehicle manufacturing is going fully automated), and they want entertainment (so an elite cadre of Hollywood studios and video game producers can get slightly richer).

So far in these examples, the increase in demand does not demonstrate a need for new jobs. Housing would be one, except it's artificially restricted owing to zoning laws so the snail's pace is pegged. Basically everything else as demand goes can already be met with, in aggregate, very little need for new workers on the whole. With the grip of automation tightening, among other issues, this idea that demand will automatically lead to new jobs is unsubstantiable. The most generous view is that the ratio of new bodies to new jobs created is worsening.

We're on the cusp of serious popular consideration for UBI, with the implication that availability of jobs will diminish more rapidly than new ones are created. If this is further realized, then an increase in immigration makes zero sense.

> By your logic software engineers would be making poverty wages due to high levels of immigration, but they don't.

No. FANG is a top money-maker that dominates the stock exchange but represents a fraction of total occupancy by sector in the country, so they're interested in maintaining talent. Not every sector is like FANG, but then not every programmer works at one - wages won't be maintained everywhere, pretty much like the other sectors. Add to the fact, programming jobs available are projected to decline 9% in the next decade - https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/... . So it seems more bodies will not in fact directly translate to more available jobs even in IT. Consequently wages will fall if there is high competition, and a 9% difference sounds like it.

> Low skilled immigration is a win win win for the USA.

Mediocre, bad, unlucky or badly located, geographically, citizen workers lose out. And then they vote for Trump :-)

Pay more and the labor shortage will disappear. Every industry exploiting temporary visas or undocumented workers claims there's a shortage.

There is no labor shortage. When wages increase in all those areas those labor 'shortages' mysteriously end.

Automation isn't an issue (except for wealth gap). Automation opens up new jobs

The point not being that automation is an issue, but that a slowly shrinking workforce is not one either.

I hate this viewpoint. It makes it seem like retirees are a nefarious bunch who are taking advantage of youngsters.

In reality, age discrimination makes it nigh impossible to land a meaningful job once you're over the age of 60.

Agree that age discrimination is a big, complicating factor. Saw this impact a very qualified family member who had to tap some connections in their network of past coworkers just to find a mediocre role. (They're massively over qualified.)

I think another reason for some negative feelings is the appearance that some generations have pulled up the ladder after their accent: in real estate, pensions, healthcare, etc.

This is nihilistic and terribly misinformed. A LOT of foundational economic activity is what we derisively call "unskilled labor," performed by the very "semi-educated humans" you're talking about.

In the US alone, we literally import seasonal workers to prop up our agriculture industry. We pay them just enough to survive, give them few rights and little stability, and generally tread them as an underclass.

People like this undergird the whole of the modern global economy.

Every child born is a "bare illiterate human". Are you also making an argument against having children?

If you want to be really draconian about it, immigration can select for people with skills where the home populate will always have the same average of innate abilities.

Children have a lifetime ahead to learn and grow, as opposed to illiterate adults who are handicapped at that since they are past their prime neurological and societal plasticity.

Except for the immigrants that created the Pfizer vaccine, right? Those two worked out.

Also, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S109095162...

There's more than enough research that we don't need this, "prime neurological and societal plasticity" pseudoscience.

The real world is not some dystopian SF ruled by cool kids wearing shiny armor. The world's economy is still run by people consuming goods and services, creating demands - declining population is not an insurmountable problem but it does pose a huge challenge for any nation's economy.

Fewer people -> fewer sales for Ioniq and Galaxy S -> less money made by these companies -> less money available for industrial research -> worse technology for your servers, drones, military satellites, submarines, whatever -> lose the war.

One of the most nihilistic takes I’ve seen in a long while.

With “worth”, “value”, “liability” you are only talking about the narrow, economic definitions of those words.

The problem is not everything valuable is captured in economic expression, not everything is readily marketable, which doesn’t mean they are not valuable. And I am not being romantic here; for the longest time we suffered for not measuring the value of childbirth, mothering a newborn and general domestic labor for example. (Surrogacy being new aside, also doesn’t make a reliable proxy because it doesn’t measure mothering in situ, contractual asymmetries get priced into the transaction.)

Hyperindividualistic western fantasy assumes even attachment and emotional needs can be marketed (eg therapy), but suicide rates show that traditional close-knit societies fare much better. Just because you can’t measure the dollar amount of small talk and care from your neighborhood grocer, doesn’t mean it is worthlessness.

People are worthless only if you waste them. You risk wasting them when you instrumentalize and objectify them excessively, when you interject the market into relationships you shouldn’t.

The waste theory is a self-fulfilling prophecy of neoliberalism. And I agree that we might be getting there if we don’t awaken from the normativity of market thinking.

Automation isn't at the point where you can get economic and productivity growth with a declining population. Maybe in the future this will be true, but it's not true now. Even highly automated economies will see contraction and tax base decreases. The current solution, ala the Bank of Japan, is to run huge deficits, and they are on the cutting edge of what an aging population looks like.

This is delusional. We're extremely far away from automating the entirety of society.

As people have less kids, age out of the workforce, and live longer, who's going to pick the crops? People far away in 3rd world nations? Who's going to be working the jobs to pay them? Do we expect the small amount of working-age people to support themselves + their kids + retired parents + grandparents? Who's going to be the nurses and the firefighters?

Japan and Germany both have aging populaces and low birth rates. Germany is taking the immigration route, and Japan is taking the automation route (as it's much more xenophobic). From a macroeconomic perspective, Germany's strategy seems to be winning.

And I don't know about you, but when I'm old, I'll take a human nurse over a robot nurse any day of the week.

In 100 years, educated, intelligent people like us could easily be a "liability," as even budget AI far exceeds human intellect on every conceivable dimension. Through their robotic bodies, which they can produce themselves, they can exceed human physical limitations in every imaginable way.

It's going to happen. Ambitious, power-hungry humans are like moths to a flame.

So if you want to imply that you possess some level of intelligence, then take a small inductive step, and then, consider reevaluating your moral outlook on the value of human life.

If true it's a mistake. Education is a piss poor measure of people's ability to contribute.

cue amateur historian pontification