The US has many landlocked, east coast, and great lakes city outflows where you can buy property inexpensively. But people tend to not want to raise families or retire needing medical care in declining areas given the choice to leave.

New York city Manhattan has 600k fewer people than 100 years ago and property price to average salary keeps climbing.

I don’t know what the magic is that to expand property ownership. You see cities with thousands of blighted homes and new build suburbs developing 30-90 min away at prices that are a stretch for even well paid middle class jobs.

I think affordable home building and financing could happen somehow but the trend is not going in that direction.

Possibly I'm misinterpreting ....

As far as I know, that's false:

The economic cost I'm pretty sure of: Research has shown (but I won't pretend I can cite it) that immigrants are net contributors. One (admittedly completely conjectured) explanation: Anyone motivated and healthy enough to travel to another country, where there's another language, with nothing but their shirt, is going to be very productive. Few people I know would do that.

A good friend's ancestor escaped a prison camp (political prisoner), traveled across a continent, and found their way here. They did very well - they didn't find the obstacles people face in a free, wealthy country to be especially challenging!

Finally, even highly skilled workforces are mostly not high-skilled. Most jobs are otherwise.

That very much depends on immigration policies and the way a welfare state is setup.

I am sure that countries with strict policies that mainly allow people to immigrate that a country can be sure these people can contribute to the economy, in such cases sure.

But some countries have very lax policies and (in the name of humanitarian aid) allow many people in from poor areas of the world. At the same time some of these countries might have a large welfare state, with benefits like free or cheap healthcare, schooling, state pensions, medical benefits either free or heavily subsidized, unemployment benefits, etcetera.

For those countries immigration is a huge cost. Many immigrants moving to such countries will never (be able to) work. But they will use a large amount of resources from the welfare state. And perhaps such countries hope children of these kinds of immigrants will be a net benefit, but only time will tell.

Because one additional hurdle is that for many of such countries it’s not expected (and there is little push) for immigrants to integrate into society.

For these countries unrestricted mass immigration will mean the dismantling of the welfare state. As there are too many users of welfare services and not enough people paying taxes to finance the welfare state.

Many Northern European countries fall onto this group.

Quote from the conclusion of one of the studies mentioned here: https://miwi-institut.de/archives/2028#:~:text=The%20researc....

I can only speak for my own region in western Europe (Benelux / Germany / France), for us mass immigration especially from non-EU countries has a very high financial and social cost. So high that both in Belgium and the Netherlands there is a large majority to be found in favor of drastically reducing immigration, recent polls show. However in almost all west European countries you've got governments doing the exact opposite of the people's will. In my own country, Belgium, we've got a very generous social security system and as such we attract a lot of immigration that is not interested in working (and/or simply very low skilled, often illiterate).

Among non-EU origins we're at 44.5 % inactivity, not studying nor working, (!!!!!) which is the worst score in all of Europe. Belgium itself is of course partially to blame because our social security system is too flexible, too generous and does not push to work.

Mass immigration from strongly divergent cultures is damaging western society, causing higher poverty, more crime, and rampant feelings of alienation, tearing at the fabric of social values and cohesion. Look at Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden... Go for a stroll in Brussels or Frankfurt, have a look at the numerous ghettos there. Mass immigration is a lose-lose thing, both for the host country and for the newcomers who often sign up for a life in abject poverty.

Yeah, I am aware how absurd it is that "if we want more immigration we should increase the number of work visas awarded to less skilled laborers plus many other things like that, not turn a blind eye to a second class citizenry" is a fringe way of looking at the problem, but that's the cake that's been served us.

I remember the Muslim Ban, the hate against Syrian refugees, the popularity of Trump among people who believe in the "great replacement" theory. I remember family separation, and supposedly God-fearing "conservatives" proudly saying that the suffering of those children were the parents fault for trying to flee ravaged societies and give their kids a better life.

Wanting to crack down harder on illegal immigration is a valid political position and a reasonable goal. But that wasn't all what that shit was about. I don't know if you've truly fooled yourself, but you're not fooling me. I'm never forgetting, and I'm never forgiving.

If any reader is curious, the irony only developed around the time a certain presidential campaign normalized anti-immigrant rhetoric; until then the "old conservatives" were fully aware of the importance of immigration to business owners and the lack of any real cultural incompatibility and never took any steps to reduce it. They sided very much on the elimination of the welfare state which was the solution they saw for the supposed cost issue (highly questionable to begin with, in a country with as little in the way of social programs as the US after the 1980s drew to a close. In a system designed for people that thought social security should depend on the number of hours you have worked, it is hard to imagine what costs they'd be objecting to.)

The way the shift in alignment was carried out always struck me as a sobering example of the shortness of memories, or the impermanence of the public's convictions.

[0] https://www.prb.org/resources/immigration-gives-catholicism-...

> Quote from the conclusion of one of the studies mentioned here: https://miwi-institut.de/archives/2028#:~:text=The%20researc....

Thanks for providing some actual research ... It's not exactly a politically neutral report (but admittedly I'm not providing anything better):

The authors of the study from the University of Amsterdam rightly refer to the American economist and Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman, who explained that the choice at stake is between continuing to accept migrants and maintaining the welfare state.

However, the politically correct politicians and the media look the other way. They refuse to draw conclusions from the unequivocal results of objective scientific research on the negative effects of immigration. The native taxpayer who bears the cost of immigration is paying a heavy price – literally and figuratively – a price that is rising every day.

Unlike most European countries or even Canada though, immigrant Americans consider themselves ... Americans. I mean... my parents are honestly pretty hard core trump supporters and contrary to popular belief, they've been very welcomed at all these supposedly 'racist' events.

> It is something tourists comment on, that they stumble into different neighborhoods and feel they are in a totally different place. There are whole sections of my hometown which basically operate in a different language and where everyone has moved out. It doesn't seem like integration to me. I think people just move around each other in America and can afford to do so more.

Sure, in the big cities where there are lots of immigrants it can certainly be like that. In the more provincial parts of the country you can go -- as I did -- to Oktoberfest celebrated in an old German town, except all the people who live there are now hispanic, philipino, or mixed whatever and are all happily doing the Polka and drinking beer while saluting the American flag.

Also, typically in those 'ethnic' neighborhoods you speak of... people are very patriotic. For example, my brother married into a big hispanic family and some of the older generation definitely speaks Spanish mainly and a lot of the town they live in is primarily Spanish, but they're incredibly patriotic and love America.

> It is something tourists comment on, that they stumble into different neighborhoods and feel they are in a totally different place.

I totally get why tourists might find it weird, but as a native born American, I stumble into many ethnic enclaves in the US and feel pretty at home. Most people aren't used to that.

Immigrants have a substantially higher unemployment rate https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9819060/

Swedish PM says integration has failed https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/swedish-pm-says-integra...

Sure, but it’s cited in a Dutch newspaper article. You can copy and paste in Google Translate: https://archive.ph/HvG8u

Allowing unrestricted immigration from very culturally different countries with hardly any income/educational requirements seem to have had significant economic, social and political cost.

Seems ridiculous to say its “false” that there are complications then offer some vague reference to research that indicates its not a problem in a particular way.

Immigration has served NYC in particular extremely well, over centuries. Probably not a good example!

> Seems ridiculous to say its “false” that there are complications then offer some vague reference

The claim wasn't 'complications', but economic cost. And I already admitted I don't have the research in front of me.

Obviously, my claim wasn't everything is perfect all the time - a claim that applies to nothing in the world.

To jest, Monaco is 2/3 immigrants, I haven't heard many people complaining about violence.

I'd bet most of those are European immigrants, so immigrated from stable countries with good education standards. When we talk about immigrants causing problems we are talking about immigrants from low developed countries where many lacks education, like what happened in the refugee crisis.

I make the difference, as that's the same issue when you reunite a country that has long been under two different regimes. Or when you abolish slavery. Or when there's a rise in homelessness.

The other part of it is, putting the focus on refugees obscures the context of why these people are fleeing their country, and what we have to do with it. It's like discussing about the water leaking from the ceiling, without the context of where it comes from. Perhaps the upper floor getting flooded by leaking pipes merits a bit more thought, I don't know.

Crimes perpetuated by people of migrant background doesn't equate to immigration being the cause of these crimes. If we accept that rhetoric, violent crimes are overwhelmingly done by men, so being a men is the cause of violence, right ?

Are you serious? These bombings are all done by immigrants. That's the proof.

Being a sanctuary city simply means (fundamentally) not assisting the Federal government in enforcing immigration law (which, in the US, is a matter of Federal responsibility and power).

The current issue NYC is facing is that the city is paying for housing and services for these migrants (who, by my understanding, are asylum seekers)--which of course they don't do for normal immigrants who decide to make a life in New York.

I'm not sure if you've ever been to New York City, but it's a heavily immigrant city that simply wouldn't function without them--at all levels, from taxi drivers up to investment banks and, of course, tech.

Supposing that this is true, what happens in poor countries when they selectively lose their healthiest and most productive people to emigration?

Basically it's the classic have your cake and eat it too.

A nitpick:

> Newly arriving immigrants frequently lack the education to be easily absorbed into a highly skilled workforce.

They'll often be highly qualified, though not proficient in the host culture. That's how you see so many Pilipino in the medical field. Or Indian people in IT etc.

> Property ownership is poised to be more easily attainable

It usually doesn't happen: general property value drops down, but as the population decreases the cities are restructured, and some portions of the land are completely abandonned. As a result, the amount of actually valuable property that are near active businesses in easy to live areas doesn't change much (or even decreases, as there's fewer working people)

This is akin to grouping Mexico with other Latin American countries when discussing American immigration. The situation is fundamentally on a country by country basis, rather than geographical proximity.

What struck out to me is mentioning Thailand. There is literally 9x Vietnamese immigrants in Japan than Thai. Even Nepal is twice as many Thai. Then there’s Brazil. Meanwhile, Taiwan, despite having the proximity and cultural/social/political ties to Japan (I was at a Japanese island where I can literally see Taiwan’s mountain) is only the 10th. It’s not a matter of difference in socioeconomic development either. The top two immigrant countries to Japan is Korea and China.

Proximity is a weak correlation. The commonality here is that these are Asian countries.

> working visas are super easy to get but crazy hard to renew

That's not immigration, those are guest workers.

Immigrants with a certain heritage (MENAPT) are on average unqualified and are a burden on the host social system their whole life[1]. It's certainly what I can witness in Germany as well, however we actively seek to suppress any studies that could show this. Up until 2017 we had at least criminal statistics that showed that it's also a broader problem regarding crime[2], but we axed these statistics of course.

[1]: The Economist: Why have Danes turned against immigration? (https://archive.ph/TSsQa)

[2]: German Police Crime Statistics 2017 (https://www.bka.de/DE/AktuelleInformationen/StatistikenLageb...)

In particular, in many countries refugees and asylum seeker can't do general work or have special conditions attached to it, so it's another whole can of worm.

[0] https://www.unhcr.org/news/stories/refugees-and-migrants-fre...

This is certainly an important distinction, however refugees are a small minority of people coming here. Most come from countries that are classified safe* and most even pass several safe countries to come here, which makes them migrants by default.

*: However, they could be in danger because of their religion, sexuality, race. It happens, but it is rare.

I don't think it's really a question of "enjoy your riches," because no matter what your status, nobody can "afford" children, not even the ultra high net worth individuals. It's a burden regardless.

But I think therein lies the answer. There was a time not all that long ago that not having children was a burden. Who was going to bring in the harvest, or at the very least supervise bringing in the harvest? Who could you really trust to take care of you properly when you got old? And of course, there's a biological compulsion as well, but that's much easier to sidestep only in the last couple generations.

As for the burden of having kids, I think it’s way too simplistic to say it was a burden NOT to have them in the past. There were different cultural dynamics, for sure, but kids have always been a mixed blessing—both difficult and extremely rewarding. Having kids has historically forced adults to face their own shortcomings. Not an easy thing to do in any era.

...why do you assume it would be yes?

But if, as hotpotamus suggests, "consent" is a useful way to look at this, then that's not good enough. You can't randomly do surgery on people just because you believe there's a 90% chance they'll be happy with the results.

Someone is unconscious and dying, you can save them with surgery, surely it’s highly unethical to wait for their explicit consent?!

If the ethical thing to do is increase the total happiness (or perhaps contentedness, or satisfaction) of all humans...well it's just not really clear that adding a statistically average human is the way to increase human prosperity / reduce human suffering.

To your other point, now that I'm a parent, it's easy to see that becoming a parent made me into a better person, but there was no way I could have known that that would happen before becoming one.

All of history has been an steady march forward of more prosperity and less suffering accomplished by an entire population of, on average, average people.

We're really really far from extinction. That's just simply not an issue at all.

Something something boson something neutron, and the Earth goes kaboom.

Children can be very dangerous.

Why do rich people in rich countries have fewer children than poor people in rich countries?

Nowhere is it seen that more money correlates to more children.

Second generation and later of immigrants very rapidly adopt the social customs of the country they live in. This is seen everywhere. Vietnamese to Australia. Filipinas to the US. Congolese to Nigeria. Marocs to Spain.

There just aren't throngs of young people living "traditionally" (non-individualistically) yet not having kids.

The rhetoric is still about "increasing female labor force participation".[1]

For clarity, the thing you do first is your priority. This is known as "revealed preference" in economics. And careers are individual things, not collective.

Also for background, fertility declines secularly from mid-teens to mid forties where it goes to zero. Waiting has two costs: you have fewer years in which to have children, and you are less likely to have them in each year. (There is a third one in increased risk of congenital illness in the child too.) Nearly every woman knows these things.

1. https://thechinaproject.com/2022/03/08/women-at-work-in-chin...

Can you really not see how this doesn't work in modern society? Women fought hard to have rights.

In other countries it continued even longer.

Exceptionally idiotic communist policies probably played a much bigger role. At least initially. If you ban families from having more than a single child and perform forced abortions or impose massive fines on those that dare to have a second one. Well.. I’m not sure what else you could expect

These days we can move beyond survival and into real fulfillment. And we need to, as well. We can't live without knowledge anymore. Critical thought brought us this far. And we're really far from extinction. We could do with a few billion less people if we want to be sustainable. The transition will be tough for those getting old but it'll be worth it.

I think that also there is a culture shift that has taken place, there is less pressure to create a traditional family unit. More virtue is given to autonomy and following your dreams than settling down. In addition to this, contraceptives such as IUDs have become much more socially accepted, so less people are getting pregnant. Naturally all of this adds up to a drastically lower average fertility rate than a few decades ago.

In summary, it’s a bit of culture shift, economics and science which has led us to where we are today. The result is that in the next few decades we will either have to start having more children again, or rework the way our economies are structured to account for less growth in exchange for a focus on sustainability and providing a livable wage for all people. Its likely that if we keep with the status quo, quality of life will keep going down until we hit a breaking point.

I think this is overblown and repeated gospel.

People in factories are trained to work the tools and machines they work. What's the barrier for an immigrant besides language?

Shop clerk? Farm worker? Baker? Cleaner? Butcher? Driver? I have an infinite list of jobs that do not require much education and even a longer one of jobs that require it, but only on the resume.

Also, are you assuming immigrants at home don't study, nobody of them is a mechanic or electrician or plumber or carpenter?

Let's be honest: immigrants aren't less educated for western societies. It's us who have went through 20 years of studies to center forms in a web page or work as secretaries or scrum masters or bank clerks.

Math, low skilled immigrants often lacks basic education and can't properly read numbers. That makes them unfit even for most jobs we nowaday call "unskilled" like shop clerk etc. There are billions of such people in the world and when they immigrate there isn't much you can do to get them a job.

There is a reason why most unskilled jobs today require high school, because without basic math you can't do much at all. Immigrants with high school equivalent education or higher can integrate just fine, immigrants with lower level than that are hard to deal with so most countries refuse to take them in but those are the majority of people in low income countries.

In Sweden they are trying to teach these immigrants math etc, but it is hard since they both needs to learn a new language and math and all those standard things as an adult. And after that they have to compete with "unskilled" locals who learned those things as kids.

Some immigrants to Sweden have such different cultural traditions that they even find it difficult to interpret signs and (western) images. They have difficulties learning how to tell time on a clock.

"- The students don't even have the tradition of reading signs. Don't look at symbols, image interpretation is very difficult, numbers and learning the clock is very complicated, says Johanna Karlman, SFI teacher in Borlänge."

(Note: The immigration to Borlänge is mostly from Somalia.)

Source: Sweden Public Service Radio P1, https://sverigesradio-se.translate.goog/artikel/5293678?_x_t...

More generally, the challenges in communication are a well known barrier to outsourcing knowledge work.

Edit: And the "less likely to commit crimes" part is a large part due to USA having such a high crime rate to start with. Last time I looked unvetted immigrants to Sweden and USA had roughly the same crime rate, but in USA that reduced the crime rate and in Sweden it massively increased it. So even if everything else is the same "immigrants increase crime" can be true in one country and false in another just due to the original crime levels being different.

Can you even legally immigrate into the US unless you at least a have bachelors degree (with some exceptions)?

If all western countries only accept educated people. Well.. it’s not going to end well for any of the host countries if migration rates increase significantly.

why though? Why not just figure out how to sustain your population? There may be a period of time where there aren't enough people but that could be a beneficial time where salaries increase, technology improves, etc.

Richer countries have fewer kids. Richer people have fewer kids.

Where consumerism is high, procreation is low, as children and parenthood are antithetical to the ethos of consumption. This ethos infects and corrupts every domain of the culture and conspires against families by creating a mutually enabling thicket of disincentives, consumerizing and commoditizing everything, including sexual intercourse and sexual relations, in general. Contraception and sterile "sex" are paradigmatic of consumerism. Perhaps it is not an accident that Dante places the practitioners of such a lifestyle in the same circle of Hell as usurers: the former take something fecund and renders it sterile, while the latter take something sterile and pretend to render it fecund.

I have to disagree here. Having more money to spend on consumer items is not the only reason to not want kids.

For me it's not about money but about time. I don't want to waste time raising kids that I could have used pursuing interesting opportunities to enrich myself. Which are usually not things that make me financially richer either. And also, I just don't want them. There is no attraction to fatherhood for me.

But I would not call myself consumerist at all. I don't buy that much stuff, don't have a car, only a $100 second-hand TV, buy a new phone once every 4 years or so... But I do have a really interesting life. I couldn't do without that.

And once people become parents their "sex" life becomes pretty much null and void too.

There is definitely a correlation between high standards of living and smaller families yes. But I don't think this is because people want to spend more. It's just that they don't really need a big family for "pension" reasons, don't usually care about religious directives anymore (think the big catholic labourer families of old) and want their life to be more than about having kids. Women don't just want to be a baby machine anymore.

And I think it's good. For environmental reasons our population should be stable, not growing rapidly. 2 children per couple is perfect.

I don't think having a family would be as valuable even.

That’s not even mentioning the fact that you can share your hobbies with your children.

In fact if I'd want a child I'd adopt one and give them a better life. I think it's better to lift an orphan out of poverty than to reproduce myself.

But I'm just not interested in either.

None of my friends who have kids have done this out of a sense of community or purpose though. It was a choice driven by their own desire, just as selfish as my own reasons not to have any.

what does this actually mean? people say this but i dont understand it.

What is so special about creating life, anyway?

Human life is a prerequisite for everything humans create.

Try explaining these concepts to children. Now that’s a challenge!

> And once people become parents their sex life becomes pretty much null and void too.

I can guarantee that’s not true for everyone. Of course, maybe even some single couples get bored of having sex, and maybe even single men see their libido drop with age!

> For environmental reasons our population should be stable, not growing rapidly.

That’s a common trope pushed by degrowth activists like Greenpeace, but not actually true. Technology gives us means to so more with less, so we are far from the limits of even what Earth can support, let alone our solar system.

Could be but I don't want to :) even in work I don't have the patience for training others because it slows me down.

> I can guarantee that’s not true for everyone. Of course, maybe even some single couples get bored of having sex, and maybe even single men see their libido drop with age!

Of course it's not the case for everyone but on average it is for sure. All my friends say they simply don't have enough time or opportunity. Let alone doing more wild stuff like going to sensuality resorts or swinger clubs. It becomes more of a standard up/down "let's get this over with before the kid wakes up" kinda thing.

> Technology gives us means to so more with less, so we are far from the limits of even what Earth can support, let alone our solar system.

Well it hasn't actually delivered that. Right now we're doing more with much more.

Look at the ocean full of plastic, the ever rising oil use. The climate crisis.

If technology can give us those means it should really start doing so pretty soon before we really screw the world beyond repair.

I cannot imagine what system of ethics you are operating from that you would have to ask this question. The point, always, is to provide the best possible life to the greatest number of people, without regard to where those people come from. My goal in life is to maximize human happiness, I do not care what nation a person is from. Unless I'm misreading your words, or you chose your words clumsily, you seem to want a system that works for some set of people but not another set of people. But I'm curious, one what basis would you chose one set of people, and then why would you care about them at all, rather than care about some other group? If you're not going to care about the happiness of all people, then it seems to me you should be consistent and not care about anyone's happiness. But if you honestly care about one group, but not some other group, I'm curious on what basis you chose the group that you care about? And do you really care about them?

"You're only playing a game of managed extinction in cooperation with your country's new settlers"

I think you meant to write "One generation has apparently found it is possible to maximize their happiness without having children, and now gratefully receives help from new arrivals so as to take care of them during old age, as they have no children to care for them."

Catholic (-ish) ultra right wing nationalism, would be my guess. Surprisingly popular in some places. You can pretty much read stuff like that in the newspaper and, to a degree, on billboards.

> I'm curious on what basis you chose the group that you care about? And do you really care about them?

I have two answers for this

1) It is not that, say, I care more about the danish than the syrian.

It is that I find sad that a culture would decide to implode, no matter what culture it is.

This works on a set of assumptions, all of which might be false, but are justifiable (it seems to me) if not correct (for that is harder to predict)

* Receiving a big influx of immigrants that are 20 years or older * Having them and their descendants compose the bulk of your population after a certain year (say, 2070) * Those 2 points significantly affect the makeup of a culture

And moral weights: * That the existence of a culture itself has moral weight comparable to the well-being of individuals

--- 2) There is also the perhaps more immediate issue: If indeed immigrants make the largest part of the population of a country when you are old and need help, can you *really* keep them from voting in a pattern that reduces your ability to get help? For example, from taxing your accumulated wealth now that you are no longer working, or to cut your benefits.

This fear is not unreasonable, and one might be saddened of the (apparent) shortsighedness of not addressing it. Or angry (if one thinks this will happen) that the current middle class and poor of the european country are being sold out by the rich of that country -- they get more labour today, and to live confortably in their old age.

Again it is a matter of weights, you can think that the increase in welfare for the immigrants in question outweights (or even far outweights) these costs and risks (one is a cost only if you value the culture independently of the people, another is a cost only in a probabilistic sense). But neither is absurd on the face of it, and it seems reasonable to be sad that "a culture is doing this to itself".

--------------

The point here is to establish a degree of reasonableness to the other side, so that both sides can start to reconcile their values rather than dismiss them, not to state which side is right (a thing that I frankly do not know)

Not typical for Canada as an example.

The bigger point is that immigration and it's effects are deeply shaped by policy.

The problem is more that they speak a language that people do not want to spend time learning, do not have a particularly dynamic economy, and have issues with work culture, gender inequality, and so on that turns off many foreigners from making the jump.