alt Hacker NewsI'm personally happy to welcome anyone who's willing to come, work hard, pay taxes, and support democratic ideals. This is how most of our ancestors got here, and it seems fair to me that we continue to extend that offer to other would-be immigrants.
Worth noting that the economic literature also shows that this is firmly in our best interests, and immigrants and their children more than pay their way in future taxes and future entrepreneurship.
The US didn't even have a particularly selective immigration process for the first century. It was only after a big influx of Chinese immigrants (and a corresponding backlash) that we enacted our first immigration controls, limiting how many immigrants could come from a given country each year. The aptly-named "Chinese Exclusion Act" of 1882.
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Sure, let's have that debate then. I think what frustrates many US citizens is immigration is clearly broken but for various political reasons, Congress won't touch it. It's clear the system is at the breaking point.
>and immigrants and their children more than pay their way in future taxes and future entrepreneurship.
As someone who is involved in local politics, and encourages more people to be, this is true in long run BUT not in short term. This causes a ton of friction since localities which don't have unlimited debt power ends up eating the cost of this immigration.
Here is CBO source on this: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61464
"Broken borders" is an oxymoron. Something we cannot tolerate. Borders, by their nature, are our definition as a nation and our protection as a country. Broken borders do not exist. We cannot tolerate them. Strong border control must be part and the first part of any comprehensive immigration reform. It's the obligation of our elected officials to keep the American people safe, and our borders are one of our early lines of defense to do that. It used to be our first and only line of defense, but in this age of technology, more is possible.
The system that we had up until the late 1800s had a natural rate limiter in that the technology of the time made international travel so time consuming and expensive that immigration was simply an impossible pipe dream for the vast majority. It was also limited in impact on the native population because there were no welfare programs of any kind at the time, so an immigrant was never an expense item on the budget.
It may be your personal opinion that we should have the open borders policy you describe, and you are perfectly entitled to that, but here is mine. Your idea is borderline insane. Putting bleeding hearts in charge, who will allow things like this out of some compulsion that fairness demands we have the same immigration policy now as we did in the 1800s, is national suicide. I will continue to vote for anyone besides your side, even right wingers that I find repulsive, because I fear that someone on the left who lacks fundamental self preservation instincts will put in place policies like the ones you support.
The US today has the highest percentage of foreign born population since 1850 (I can't find numbers before that). If the US had truly open immigration we'd probably see several hundred million migrate and probably in the billions. What laws do today practicality did before.