[bubblethink]

I've heard this argument going back to Milton Friedman, but the immigration discourse these days is quite detached from any economic concerns. Forget impoverished people; there is rabid opposition to pretty much all immigration including, for example, investor or employment categories. It's a lot more tribal than rational.

[roenxi]

Sure. But hypothetically, if we pretend people are rational for a few minutes here, how does the Ellis Island idea interact with a functional welfare system?

[array_key_first]

I would imagine more young, ambitious working age adults would help the welfare system, not hurt it.

If you look globally at countries which have issues with their large social services, they're almost all mostly homogeneous and declining in population, especially among the young. Which makes sense if you sit back and think about what social services are typically offered and where the money comes from.

[mothballed]

Friedman's argument was more so to just keep them as illegals but not deport them. That way they can support the welfare system but not use it. Friedman didn't want to make them legal until the welfare system has been crushed.

Of course that might require some changes to make it actually true illegals don't use state benefits. You need to cut off WIC for illegals, public schooling for illegals for instance before they will actually not be using public benefit. Also their children become legal via jus soli.

The obvious down-side is that those citizens / legal residents who have the skill level of illegal immigrants (sad, but commonly true) will see their real wages depressed and more competition for the job.

[_DeadFred_]

Man I'm ashamed that I wanted to see H1B reformed and was a part of this crowd.

I want more immigration I just don't want companies able to abuse people/people be treated any different/having less rights/power than anyone else in American. I think I'm just going to be full 'open borders' now because otherwise it always ends up with trash manipulating things in racist/corporate power way.

[rayiner]

High skill immigration still brings cultural change. My parents came here from Bangladesh, and while they superficially assimilated, they’re still culturally Bangladeshi. They, like virtually all the Bangladeshis and Indians I know, still overvalue formal education, undervalue risk taking, elevate familial over civic obligation, don’t value economic modesty, believe elites should rule over “the common people,” etc. And this was despite spending 35 years almost completely isolated from other Bangladeshis. Culture is very deep and not easily changed.

Libertarians assign culture zero substantive value, viewing people as fungible economic actors. Like many libertarian assumptions, that one isn’t grounded in empirical observation.

[disgruntledphd2]

> Culture is very deep and not easily changed.

This seems somewhat incorrect to me, as people change jobs and with it, culture, basically all of the time.

[disgruntledphd2]

> With recent legislation here in Australia

Are you of Aboriginal extraction? Otherwise, I'm not sure an ethnic homeland for you would be Australia, right?

This stuff is so weird, as basically all humans migrated to wherever they are now. Like, I'm pretty sure that I have Celtic, Norman, Viking and other ancestors, despite my official ancestry being Irish (and all of my last 3-4 generations being born in Ireland).

Is it culture? That would seem to be what people are actually looking for, and I can definitely see the appeal, but culture is something that is generated from interaction with other members of a culture, and isn't dependent on genetics (consider how you or I might behave in OpenAI vs Anthropic vs Goldman Sachs).