Coming China collapse?

[Copper]

And lucky for us Mr. Biden saw this coming and invited millions of people to come here from other countries.

[Wim]

@Copper In fact this could be a good thing, provided they sustain social welfare/pensions/etc by paying taxes.

[Copper]

I say we should bring them all in - legally. Give them a voter ID and a tax bill.

[Wim]

@Copper Agreed.

[taiwan_girl]

I am a big fan of legal immigration. The only reason the US is not like some other industrial countries (falling population, rapid aging population) is because of immigration. As mentioned above, it is a big problem in North Asia (China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan).

[xenon]

Immigrants tend to be more enterprising than the average person too. Takes a lot to uproot and go to a new place. It's not a guarantee, but it's not nothing either.

But agreed with TG - I think this is underappreciated right now. When the global population starts falling and we see the economic effects of depopulation, we'll start competing harder for immigrants.

[Mik]

The question becomes what immigrants do we want?

[xenon]

Oh I completely agree. We're stuck in stupid land in this country though. We can't even agree on basics (whether borders should be enforced, what the right number of immgrants are, etc.)

Designing immigration policy is deceptively hard. In Canada they recently did skill based immigration - basically Mitt Romney's idea of stapling green cards to diplomas.

Always sounded like a great idea to me. BUT I've seen the downsides in Canada:

• A bunch of diploma mill colleges pop up that provide a shit educational product, but satisfy the legal requirements

• Migrants take on massive loans from their home countries to get here, then massive educational loans, then face massive housing costs on top of that - not a bright future

• Lots of young people come here without any family - which makes it really hard to assimilate. At least with family migration you have people to show you the ropes, these young immigrants just stick to each other and their old culture

Anyways - I'm rambling now. But immigration policy is hard enough without being stuck on stupid.

[Mik]

Yes, and we've been stuck on it for decades now.

[Jolly]

It's not hard. We had a braceros program for years. It worked. Temporary green card, go back home when the farm season is over. Keep a clean record and renewal is automatic.

For more permanent immigrants, vet them and issue green cards by lottery, with exceptions for close family of U.S. citizens or areas of high need, such as physicians.

[Copper]

@xenon said in Coming China collapse?:

At least with family migration you have people to show you the ropes

I'm sure their professors will fill their heads with great ideas.