[deogeo]

> ..you end up either with the labor theory of value (we deserve it because we worked hard for it), or nativism (we deserve it because we were here first). The first is economically indefensible, and the second is morally indefensible.

So a country looking to the well-being of its own people first, and only second to the well-being of others, is morally indefensible? Should governments be reduced to nothing more than the facilitators of the Free Market? And if anyone votes for a different kind of government, well, they voted wrong?

[solatic]

> Should governments be reduced to nothing more than the facilitators of the Free Market? And if anyone votes for a different kind of government, well, they voted wrong?

Governments should facilitate competition in markets, not free markets. "Free" markets are economic anarchy; like political anarchy, power is inevitably seized and exploited by strongmen. Competitive markets have high entrepreneurship, low barriers to entry, easy access to credit for new businesses, and increasingly stringent requirements for companies as they grow larger and larger.

And yes, competitive markets welcome foreign imports, which reduce the price of inputs and therefore make it easier to start new businesses. Yes, competitive markets welcome immigration, since so many immigrants become entrepreneurs and so many others fill key roles in companies which would not exist without them and provide plenty of jobs for native-born citizens.

If somebody votes for a different kind of government, then they either voted short-sightedly ("he's going to save jobs! ... but not in my town. And the jobs he did save, moved away a couple years later...") or they voted ignorantly ("They promised me the sun and the moon for free! Why didn't anybody do that before?"). Political budgeting is like NIMBYism, everyone wants to expand infrastructure/education/social-welfare/environmental spending, but nobody wants to cut the programs they personally benefit from to help pay for it.

[solatic]

> So a country looking to the well-being of its own people first, and only second to the well-being of others, is morally indefensible?

In the context of an argument arguing that there aren't enough jobs to go around because immigration is too high, your notion of a government's "own people" is nativist, because actually legal immigrants are also the government's "own people". Certainly this is the case for legal immigrant citizens. Legal immigrant non-citizens may not be full participants in a country's democracy, their right to live and work in the country may be revocable, and the government may not answer to legal immigrant non-citizens in a democratic sense, but they are otherwise full participants in society - they use the same infrastructure, buy the same goods and services, and can be communal forces for good or bad, just like anybody else in society. So yes, they are the government's "own people", and when the government acts on a societal-wide scale (taxes, infrastructure spending, etc.), it does so in a way which affects all of us.

Illegal/undocumented immigration is a black hole of a topic that more often than not devolves more into a discussion about the rule of law vs. realpolitik than it does about whether immigration quotas are good or bad. In any case, the government's de facto inability to enforce immigration quotas has absolutely nothing to do with the question of whether immigration affects the ability of legal residents and citizens to find high-paying work, since virtually no illegal/undocumented immigrants can find high-paying work.

[deogeo]

You're arguing about who counts as a country's "own people", and in the sibling comment, whether limiting immigration is in the interest of those people.

In my comment, I raised neither point.

You are not addressing whether a country prioritizing it's own people is morally defensible - the core point of my comment.