Your premise is flawed. If I create a new nation and my nations social contact is one norm: no outsiders, then you can't simply be a national by agreeing to the contract.

In practice, nations prioritize their own citizens, in the same way you will prioritize your family. Do you abandon taking care of your family because it would be "more fair," to take care of someone on the other side of the planet?

Your countrymen should have aligned values, cultures, goals, missions, etc that prioritizes them. That's the fabric of society.

The problem you’re ignoring is that there is not a 1:1 correlation between citizenship and people who agree to the social contract.

Everyone who gives up freedom to the state is entering into a social contract with that state, citizenship or no. Once those people enter into that contract, they deserve all of the rights and services the contract provides.

By tying the contract to citizenship, you provide a way for racists and nationalists to steal from the people arbitrarily determined to be noncitizens, usually along racial lines.

Preach it fellow human. I sometimes am baffled by how little a damn people in privileged positions can give about others. All they're interested in is preserving their position of privilege, and their political views and philosophy on life will typically reflect that. Personally I would give citizenship and a free house to any good hearted hard working individual and not give a damn where they come from. Our whole society would benefit if we didn't have to waste so much of our brain power just on surviving.

At the same time, if a surplus of noncitizens enter and suddenly the country's ability to provide for all of its people is strained, wouldn't that be a grave disservice to the citizens? What would be the difference between a citizen and a noncitizen then? Not that a country like the US is reasonably providing for a large portion of the populace anyways, so I suppose that's a moot point right now.

No, as these people who are part of the influx, once accepting the social contract, are no better or worse than anyone else who has agreed to the social contract, citizen or no.

Besides, all evidence suggests immigrants benefit a society substantially more than they harm it. In the US for example, noncitizens consume significantly fewer national resources while still paying the full amount of taxes expected of citizens.

I don't deny that immigrants are beneficial at the moment. However, some people aren't going to have jobs. Besides, it's not as if noncitizens should be paid less just because they can survive with those wages. I'm saying that if the US actually cared for all of its people, I'll say present immigrants included, there won't be room for an arbitrary number of new immigrants. Are you going to try to stretch that limit until something bad happens? I have no interest in excluding people of "other races" or something like that, but pragmatically, I think the line needs to be drawn somewhere at some point.

There is no "pragmatic" limit. As more people arrive, more jobs are needed to support them, more jobs are made available as a larger pool of workers able to do a wider variety of tasks for wages that allow for corporations to turn a profit. It's a self sustaining cycle.

The general rule here is that unless there's an obvious reason to deny equal people something you've given other people, you shouldn't deny it in the first place.

> The general rule here is that unless there's an obvious reason to deny equal people something you've given other people, you shouldn't deny it in the first place.

Of course. The problem is that your view of the economy is optimistic, perhaps dangerously so. Let's hope we never reach the limit and have a concrete problem on our hands, I guess.

My view is not optimistic, it's reflective of reality.

As much as a weather forecaster's is, I suppose.

I’m not predicting anything.

This viewpoint appears somewhat naive and unrealistic. It's important to consider that there are literally billions of people who might be willing to make certain sacrifices and agree, or at least pretend to agree, to a social contract just to migrate to the US. What would happen in such a scenario? Society could collapse. To get a clearer perspective on this, it's worth examining what started happening in the European Union around 2015 when there was a substantial influx of immigrants from Africa and Asia. It created huge social tensions. Look at the rising crime rates in Sweden (majority from immigrants, that's not some right wing propaganda but actual statistics, just google it), the increased popularity of far-right parties like AFD in Germany or neo nazi parties in France or Italy. I am grateful that this perspective is in the minority because the consequences of the proposed decisions could potentially harm society. There will always be individuals who exploit divisions and tensions between groups to gain power. Don't forget that Hitler was elected in democratic society.

Society would not even come close to collapsing, that is unrealistic.

> Your countrymen should have aligned values, cultures, goals, missions, etc that prioritizes them. That's the fabric of society.

12% of the US population are second generation immigrants [0]. Obviously, third generation percentage is even higher.

Good luck reconciling that with your thoughts on what a "nation" should be.

[0] https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...

You throw a lot of half baked assertions on this thread but it doesn't seem to go anywhere.

Who should a nation put first then?

I dont see the connection between how citizenship is acquired (AFAIK each nation is free to set the rules/laws that they think is fair) and if citizens should get special treatment or not.

If citizens can't get "special" treatment over non resident in their own country what's the point of countries?

How people become residents and what "rights" they have die to this status is part of the "social contract".

A nation supports the people who agree to the social contract upon which the nation is founded, citizenship be damned.

Citizenship in the US is a profoundly broken system with a horrendous and racist past, and using it to decide who deserves the benefit of the social contract and who doesn’t is actively buying into the nationalistic and false idea that Americans are superior just because they were born somewhere and foreigners weren’t.

You wouldn’t argue that black slaves weren’t worthy of US protection and services until the 14th Amendment was passed, would you? You wouldn’t pretend like the US granting and then revoking citizenship from Mexican settlers repeatedly in the 19th and 20th century was acceptable, would you? Was the Chinese Exclusion Act acceptable?

A foreign life is worth exactly the same as an American life, and the difference is completely arbitrary.

You're now blatantly strawmaning. Nobody is talking about the value of a life or people being superior to others. We're discussing employment policies.

That’s exactly what is being discussed, even if you don’t realize what it is you’re saying.

Americans are not more deserving of jobs than foreigners, Americans are not better than foreigners.

Americans are free to rule their country as they wish that is basically the premise it's founded on. Deserve means nothing in this context.

Deserve means everything in this context, because I, as an American, am discussing with my fellow Americans how our country works and the principles upon which we ought to rule ourselves.

Those principles are heavily founded in “deserve”. You are watching some infinitesimally small part of that “ruling” process.

Citizenship is meant to limit external actors influencing the vote of who should represent the people of any given area, and being qualified to represent the people by virtue of a sustained commitment and longevity.

No, it's meant to determine which people have agreed to the social contract. Citizenship is not some sacred thing you must earn; simply agreeing to give up some freedom is all it takes to benefit from the social programs offered by a government.

The bureaucratic concept of "citizenship" is just a way for people to construct barriers of hate around the benefits offered by a nation while still forcing people to accept the sacrifices.

Are you putting other people before your family, friends or neighbors?

My family and neighbors aren’t occupying 3.7 million square miles and aren’t numbered in the hundreds of millions, so the analogy does not hold.

At what square footage does it start holding then? At what point do you start caring more for others than your family and vice versa?

When you aren’t the sole owner of the resources being managed. Once you establish a commons, you need a bureaucracy of some kind to manage it.

Like a shareholder company? So they should pay dividends to non stock holders?

No. But they shouldn't restrict sales based on birth / color, and allow everyone to buy-in. The problem here is that people who actually want to join/buy/agree cannot do so.

Man that's some serious goal post moving happening on this thread. We go from land superficy to land ownership - with a little sprinkle of "muh racism" because why not.

Is it about land superficy or about ownership? Can we establish a clear framework here instead of constantly jumping from one wishy washy thing to the other?

You aren't the sole owner of your house either. Even without a mortgage you are not. So if someone adhere to the social contract in your house I assume you let them in to do as they please (within the limit of the contract of course.)

The house analogy makes zero sense, as my house is not a commons (I am sole owner, even with a mortgage, methinks you don’t have one of these), but if it were then yes, anyone agreeing to the social contract of the government of my home would be allowed in or out.

It’s about how to manage shared resources amongst people who all have equal claim, which is everyone who has agreed to the social contract. When you agreed is irrelevant.

Frankly, I would argue that many people born in the US do not hold up their end of the social contract, and should thus take a backseat to immigrants who would come here and care deeply for the social contact in their place.

Zoning laws, property taxes, liens, HOAs. You live a fantasy, you never answer any question in replies and just keep jumping from one thing to another. Completely unproductive. Done here.

All of which I consent to and benefit from? You don’t understand what ownership or citizenship means, clearly.

Yes, you are done.

"Judge a person by their actions, not their words"

When you willingly leave your family out in the cold, thanksgiving winter; to have space to provide random passersby into your house to eat your turkey, lets talk!

Everything you said is wrong