What happened?
For anyone not following, Bangladesh has the highest population density in the world once you exclude city states. This is a classic example of a slippery slope argument.
This is a more refined concern than "While slowly turning the country into Bangladesh."
There's no reason to believe that Bangladesh will dominate the influx.
We're talking changes in immigration policy to make up for a domestic population decline. It would be naive to think that the only change would be "Let's just take more people without constraints." The US has in the past put restrictions on who can immigrate, and continues to have restrictions (whatever moral judgement is attached to them is left for the reader). You can restrict the countries they come from. You can restrict the education levels. You can restrict the number entering. You can restrict how long they need to be here before they can vote. And so on.
Moreover, maintaining the current US culture is not entirely desirable. It has its good points and its bad points, but in general, a lack of change tends to become a regression rather than improvement. Many of my friends from different countries emigrated to Canada in their teens or early twenties, and I visit the country often. It's clearly benefited from the mix of cultures that came in. The US really doesn't deserve the image of a "melting pot". Do they occasionally have problems related to the various cultures that come in? Sure. Is Canada still better off? Definitely.
Also, more people coming from Bangladesh can't be all bad. At the very least it will supply interesting folks on HN to have discussions with ;-)
That won't help, and possibly makes things worse. For example, I'm part of the high-education, high-income Asian immigrant influx to the U.S. over the last few decades. Our immigration may present a temporary financial boon in industries like medicine and tech. But, as should be obvious, there's cultural risks to importing another society's elites. We bring our elitist attitudes and affinity for top-down administration of society with us. Many Americans would, quite reasonably, say those aren't good things.
I'm not saying we shouldn't have immigration. But more than a quarter of Americans today are immigrants or first-generation children of immigrants. That's a tremendous burden on the country's ability to socialize people into the country's values and principles. And it's a tremendous source of social distress and conflict.
> Moreover, maintaining the current US culture is not entirely desirable. It has its good points and its bad points, but in general, a lack of change tends to become a regression rather than improvement.
Culture changes without foreign influence, though.
Fear can't be a motivator for (lack of) change.
I disagree that we should “move fast and break things” when it comes to culture. If you look around the world, there are more examples of dysfunctional societies than functional ones. More ways to go astray than to be on the right path.
As to the "abstractness", I think you misunderstood. The example you've seen is merely one place, with one set of immigration rules, with a certain set of immigrants, etc. There are a lot of variables, and the majority of the search space has not been explored. That's why this is an abstract discussion.
> If you look around the world, there are more examples of dysfunctional societies than functional ones.
And in most cases, the dysfunction is not due to immigration.
> More ways to go astray than to be on the right path.
There's no right path. Only opinions on what is the desirable path.
* Substitute whichever "him" or "her" you are convinced has committed crimes and not been locked up.