[mark_edward]

Considering the enormous benefits of moving to the US for most of the people in the world, I don't really like the idea of it being easier for the rich rather than the poor to migrate when they're already rich. For a lot of people, crossing a border and doing the exact same job can easily 5-10x real income. It's what my dad did. What I would like is a preferential option for the poor in migration policies. The positive aggregate effects of migration are well known as generally positive according to mainstream economic analysis, but the social problem is that, similar to free trade, it's a policy that creates very very invisible gains (largely unnoticeable as an individual things like marginally lower prices, marginally higher productivity) but with extremely concentrated and visible harm. The family trade is carpentry and I grew up working in it and viscerally saw being undercut by contractors using undocumented labor, so i know it's real. I just think migration doesn't have to be structured this way.

I don't have even the vaguest idea of policy in this (although I'm sure there's some research I can read up on), but I think something can be done, whether via some kind of redistribution scheme, regulation, etc. to attempt to mitigate these effects by redistributing aggregate gains to those hurt hard. I watched many people develop virulent xenophobia and racism because of the issues of undocumented labor and improperly managed migration. I wish in addition to free trade treaties we could have free movement treaties without having to form some pseudo federation like the EU.