Absolutely nothing. It's central planning for something that doesn't require it: http://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-optimal-number...
As for why it's imperative to Americanize immigrants. Look at how much trouble the U.S. has had cultivating democracy in places like Iraq. Most people acknowledge that the Iraqi people aren't ready for Democracy. Do you think they would be any more ready for democracy if you moved them en masse to Minnesota?
This is a really contentious statement that you just drop in both as fact and as the basis of your entire argument.
No, I would not say that 'the Iraqi people aren't ready for Democracy' is a true statement. I also wouldn't say that what 'most people [in the US]' think about the Iraqi people's readiness for democracy [in Iraq] is really relevant to the question of whether they are ready for democracy [in Iraq]. I also wouldn't say that the question of whether they (as a group) are 'ready' for democracy in Iraq is relevant to answering the question of whether individual Iraqi people are 'ready' for democracy in Minnesota (whatever that means).
> Look at how much trouble the U.S. has had cultivating democracy in places like Iraq.
It also doesn't help that we have a long history of doing the exact opposite of 'cultivating democracy' in the Middle East (ie, going in and deposing democratically-elected leaders so that we can install dictators that are friendly to the US).
The US has had trouble cultivating democratically elected regimes that are friendly towards us in countries like Iraq. In the US, we tend to conflate 'democratic government' with 'government that shares our objectives and goals'.
And we're not talking about whether individual Iraqis in Minnesota are ready for democracy. We are talking about the link posted earlier in the thread, which suggested that the optimal number of immigrants in the U.S. would be two billion. That's not encouraging immigration of selected individuals, it's endorsing wholesale migration of huge populations.
Well that's an easily defined metric, isn't it...
There's nothing that says you must let immigrants become citizens right away, or give them all the same privileges citizens are entitled to. For instance, it wouldn't be at all unfair to kick people out for certain classes of crime.
There's nothing that says you must let immigrants come.
Fixed that for you.
You already have a process of green card + a bunch of time leading to eligibility. Isn't that good enough?
> For instance, it wouldn't be at all unfair to kick people out for certain classes of crime.
you mean prior to them getting citizenship right?
It is good for a laborer when there is more available work than there is labor - they can command better rates and generally have a better quality of life (see: almost everyone in the tech industry right now). It is good for someone with lots of capital to have as much excess labor as possible (assuming there's still people that can afford to buy that person's products). When a person with capital can make cheaper products because the labor is cheap, it doesn't necessarily mean that all products become cheaper. You end up with the walmart economy where you have the people who own and manage in their mansions and everyone else unable to generate any meaningful wealth.
Once you remove the "indentured" part from H1-B's, we'll never hit the cap again.
