[supplied_demand]

== But they don’t know how to reconcile “can save a few” with “can’t literally bring all poor people here without destroying our country.”==

It’s also possible that they hold a fundamentally different view than you and aren’t just naive idiots.

The phrase “destroying our country” is very charged and completely unsubstantiated in your comment. It’s almost like you are falling victim to the same type of emotional reaction you accuse others of holding.

[xp84]

Ok, "destroying" is ambiguous meaning.

But you don't think that admitting, say, half the populations of all the world's best-known failed countries like Somalia, Haiti, Syria, El Salvador, DRC, etc. would be bad for a Western country? A combination of lack of education, different cultural expectations, normalized crime and corruption, etc. means that the citizens from there would be bringing all of their problems with them. A randomly-selected person from those countries is a poor fit to be productive within our alien societal framework (doesn't speak the language, doesn't understand how Westerners conduct business, doesn't have cultural context in so many things). However the problem is, compared to a random person born into a Western society, such a newcomer is well-suited to get ahead by subverting the Western societal framework, such as by taking advantage of our lax approach to property crimes, or as I pointed out in this thread or another, exploiting Western guilt to land years-long rent-free hotel stays.

[supplied_demand]

==But you don't think that admitting, say, half the populations of all the world's best-known failed countries like Somalia, Haiti, Syria, El Salvador, DRC, etc.==

This has never happened, is not happening now, and has not been proposed by any current political party. Open borders is a falsehood that has never existed in our lifetimes and nobody is proposing today. If we are going to discuss the topic, let's stick with reality.

At the same time, my ancestors who immigrated from southern Italy didn't speak English, were very uneducated, weren't considered "white", didn't have the same cultural expectations, and brought all their problems with them. All of this happened during the golden age of American progress and growth (the exact era we are trying to "make again"). I find that interesting.

==such a newcomer is well-suited to get ahead by subverting the Western societal framework, such as by taking advantage of our lax approach to property crimes==

And yet, study after study shows us that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than American-born citizens [0] [1] [2] [3]. Let's move past the fake hypotheticals and discuss the known facts.

[0] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w31440/w314...

[1] https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2020-10/working-pa...

[2] https://www.themarshallproject.org/2019/05/13/is-there-a-con...

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/30/upshot/crime-...

[skissane]

Part of steelmanning / reading charitably is trying to put aside overly emotive/rhetorical/alarmist presentations of an idea and just concentrate on the facts of the matter.

Suppose that Madeupistan is a wealthy developed country with a population of 1 million. Over the next decade, its government has decided to admit 100,000 immigrants. It is evaluating two plans for doing:

Plan A: Admit 100,000 university-educated professionals with established careers and no criminal records

Plan B: Admit 100,000 people at random from all who apply, with no restrictions on who can apply

At the end of the decade, will the people of Madeupistan be happier under plan A or plan B? Almost surely the answer is A: plan B will admit a lot more socially disadvantaged people, worsening crime rates, poverty, social cohesion, violent extremism, etc, compared to A

Now, plans A and B are “ideal types” which don’t correspond to any real world immigration policy - really they represent extremes on a continuum of immigration selectivity, with A being a super-selective immigration policy and B being super-unselective

In the real world, Australia is significantly closer to A and further away from B than France is; and, unsurprisingly, France has significantly greater immigration-related social problems than Australia has.

And the real tragedy of it, is people end up blaming immigration and immigrants in general, when many of the problems they complain about are not inherent to immigration in itself, just to the mismanagement of it by many (but not all) Western nations

The question then is, do the people who “hold a fundamentally different view” agree or disagree with this argument about mismanagement of migration flows - and if they disagree, what is their counterargument to it?

[supplied_demand]

== In the real world, Australia is significantly closer to A and further away from B than France is; and, unsurprisingly, France has significantly greater immigration-related social problems than Australia has.==

Your example completely ignores the facts of history and geography in favor of simplicity and a narrative.

Australia is a former colony, France is a former colonizer. Australia is an island, France is a small part of a much larger continent. Density is considerably higher in France than Australia.

There is a large immigration blowback happening in Australia today, even with your ideal policies.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-27/have-the-political-wi...