> Immigration can't be effectively regulated by any means available to a moderately democratic state.

That's debatable. But lets assume it for the sake of argument.

> Should immigrants receive the BLS? If yes, you go broke. If no, the immigrants are essentially second-class citizens who have to work for an extremely low wage (because they would have to pay indirectly for the BLS).

I think this claim is overly simplistic; also, I think there are several categories to consider,that I think you've failed to distinguish:

(1) Naturalized citizens should certainly receive whatever universal or guaranteed income is adopted, but immigrants don't become naturalized citizens immediately.

(2) Legal immigrants (the number and characteristics of whom a democratic state can effectively regulate), who are not citizens, probably should be eligible for the support [1] as well, but may be admitted on criteria that include having means of support that make it less likely that immigrant will be a recipient (in a GMI scheme) or net recipient (in a BI scheme).

(3) Non-immigrant, but legally-present workers, visitors, etc. should not generally be eligible for the support. In the case of non-immigrant economic admission categories, adequate support means should be part of the conditions for admission. There may be some exceptions to this (note [1] again may apply to these exceptions) or some categories of non-immigrant admits that are qualified for alternative, status-specific support.

(4) Those illegally present probably should not be eligible for the benefits, but may be eligible for some kind of normalization of status process after which they would become legal immigrants who might be eligible for benefits (to which note [1] would apply again). This normalization process might include up-front payment of a fine for those with means, or commitment to income contingent future payment of the fine with nominal interest, and might even include limitations on benefit eligibility for some period even beyond what regular legal immigrants might face, or commitments to repay any benefits claimed during a certain transitional period on an income-contingent basis. (In general, payment for normalization -- or payment for above-quota legal immigration -- makes sense for individuals who are not personally barred, since limits on levels of such immigration are a cost-of-immigration control measure, and its better for people who want to immigrate to bear the costs then for society to bear the costs of inefficiently trying to keep them out, and then also bearing the costs of them coming in anyway.)

[1] As productivity advances and if the basic support improves to provide more than a very minimal floor, its not entirely unreasonable that non-citizens might recieve less than the full support level, however, possibly based on a sliding scale based on residency; in theoretical terms, in a rent on the commons model, this represents a kind of "vesting" process where the immigrant doesn't become a full "owner" until they are naturalized; in practical terms it provides basic social support but reduces the immediate immigration incentive.

All this actually presupposes that you can get rid of illegal immigrants, otherwise anyone who does not get the BLS (for whatever reason) will essentially earn a fraction of the money the recipients get. Why? Well for one thing his wages by means of taxation have to pay the BLS to everyone else. Secondly if he has children, they probably don't get BLS either, and he has to pay for them out of a minimum wage, too, which a BLS recipient doesn't need to do.

Also my point about not being able to stop immigration is indeed debateable. In fact it's debated very hotly in lots of countries. And not a single country is achieving any success in this regard, no matter how strong the motivation. Look at the US and Canada and their undocumented immigrants. Already, immigration enforcement in these countries is causing more trouble than it is supposedly worth.

I could see, for 3, granting the stipend paid for by a tax on remittances.

A solution - though extremely unlikely in this day and age - would be to abandon the notion of nations. Especially in the far future, if we are ever to meet aliens. Imagine having to explain that you only represent one of 196 nations. Seems a bit silly to me.

The "national" level will always matter. It's a problem of governing and risk management. Different regions have different problems, and the bigger an organisational structure, the more complicated. The hierarchical system with different levels of legislation and regulation at least works.

In some sense we are already working towards a global government by claiming human rights to be universal. Out of that endeavour there will (in the far future) emerge a central authority or assembly which effectively enforces human rights and free trade.

Would it not be possible to change the standard US/THEM mental model without meeting a new THEM?

Imagine having to explain that you represent some people only because you told those people you represent them. What with all the independence movements, the direction of the world seems to be toward a million nations, not world government.

There are trends in both directions, toward government at levels beyond traditional nation-states (this is particularly visible in European institutions and things like the International Criminal Court, a permanent international court with jurisdiction over persons rather than nations), and toward smaller nation-states. Its not hard to imagine an end state where a narrow range of basic functions were handled by a world government (or a collection of function-specific, separately-constituted, global institutions), but where the unit below that was a set of governments (which might be characterized as "national") over regions smaller than today's nation-states (at least, the medium-to-large nation-states of today.)

This is what I hope for, though I'd like to think it happens even without aliens.

Maybe the hypothetical aliens also only represent their own nation?

Immigrants aren't even citizens; I don't think they receive any sort of social security in most countries even today. I'm not saying that's the optimal policy, just that they wouldn't be worse-off.

In Europe, most immigrants can receive social security, which doesn't mean they do.

In the US, undocumented immigrants have that problem though. Some politicians praised illegal immigration because that's a young, eager workforce with zero rights and benefits.

Also it seems that welfare states can't really save money by excluding immigrants. At the very least the society has to foot the bill for medical emergencies, so declining them prevention and health care may fire backwards. It's hard to "get rid" of the immigrants' children, so you better make sure they get the same education and chances as citizens do (or you end up with a young, poor and extremely discontent minority). If these children aren't put in good schools and fed accordingly, they will also be sicker and less intelligent than their peers.

That's why I think social security is a very profitable business for state and society.

Yes, I agree. In my opinion, every resident of a country should have both social and medical security. The reason is simple: there are two main ways that the government finances itself: consumption taxes and earnings taxes. Earnings taxes are proportional, or even progressive; anyways, 0 earnings -> 0 taxes. On the other hand, even the homeless are paying consumption taxes - if they eat food, someone has bought it, and that someone also paid taxes; so, if you give food to a homeless person, you're also donating a share of taxes you paid.

That way, everybody is taxed fairly - proportionally to how much they earn and consume. So, everybody should also be treated fairly - provided all the basic services that the government provides.

In almost entire Scandinavian (Sweden, Denmark, Nowray) if as an immigrant you loose your job, you've got 3 to 6 months to find a new job. If you can't find, you can't stay legally and you become illegal. In during the time of job searching you get no social security.

Declaring someone an illegal immigrant doesn't necessarily make him go somewhere else. Especially if he is from some country where employment is even harder to find. Less so if we're talking about well-educated or at least skilled immigrants. They tend to go where they are more wanted.

The small, rich countries in the north have a lot less problems with controlling immigration, owing to cold or wet borders, low absolute population and low population density. These countries only recently became attractive to immigrants. They may even be able to deport most of the illegal immigrants.

Germany for example can't expulse illegal immigrants on a grant scale. Justified public outrage about "German mass deportations" would even be the least of problems. It's just logistically and politically impossible.

That's why I say that immigration is almost impossible to regulate effectively with the means available to a democratic nation. You'd need some kind of STASI to hunt down hundreds of thousands of immigrants. Nothing would be worth that....

Not the case at all in many advanced countries, where non-citizen permanent residents have full health coverage and access to social assistance programs. Japan and Canada are two concrete examples. Also, many immigrants do become citizens in their country of residence.

On the other hand we (I'm in the UK) seem to be drifting in that direction, that if you don't work you get social security. I don't know that it will ever be a simple fixed amount though as the government want to encourage people to be somewhat productive rather than just getting drunk etc. Here's part of the UK system:

http://www.focusondisability.org.uk/brates-1.html

Absolutely not - we're going in the other direction.

"Universal credit" is an administrative project to coordinate all the existing systems. The disability payments you linked to are subject to increasingly stringent processes which end up declaring terminally ill or permanently severely disabled people "fit to work" and withdrawing the funds they need to survive. This has resulted in some poverty-related deaths and suicides.

Jobseekers' allowance is also subject to heavy scrutiny. I've heard that the best strategy if you have children is to declare yourself self-employed on a zero-hours basis: this stops the jobcentre from hassling you as you no longer count as "unemployed", you just don't have any work. You can then claim "working family tax credits", housing benefit, and child benefit.

Guess it depends on the time frame. I was thinking more now compared with 100 years ago. I'll give you the present Tory government is trying to undo it but I think they are fighting against the tide of history.