[unishark]

Is that sarcasm? I don't know many people who'd describe the US immigration system as welcoming. But sure, hypocrisy is often the result of nice consistent reasoning. Bend the law in favor of those we want to favor and against those we want to disfavor. Goals like integrity and fairness require a more consistent process however.

[FooBarBizBazz]

Not sarcasm. More a thought about "ratchet" dynamics, memes, and Markov chains, with some anthropologically-flavored cynicism thrown in. If you're a meme named "B", and you can make P(A -> B) >> P(B -> A), then you're going to have more mind-babies. The steady state distribution will have more "B". So norms that favor A -> B over B -> A are interesting.

Not sure if "meme" (US civil religion) or "organization" (US government) is the better description of the actor here.

Also a thought about how apparent inconsistencies, or hypocrisy, can sometimes be explained by finding an underlying true "motive" that explains the various "inconsistent" behaviors. (One example: People who are liberal in their adopted country but conservative in their home country, can be understood as simply being self-interested.) Though in this case the "actor" is not really a person, but an organization or memeplex.

> I don't know many people who'd describe the US immigration system as welcoming.

That's a fair point, which undermines the idea. Well, it's debatable, but I get what you mean. Yes: The (blue-state) norms ("welcome everyone!") don't match the reality (actually it's pretty hard). Say, if you're a high-skilled student from India you wait years in a queue; that doesn't seem particularly "welcoming". (On the other hand, it's easy to win the visa lottery if you're from Kazakhstan. I digress.) On a relative scale we might still call the US welcoming though; its identity is much more built around immigration than other countries' identities are, citizenship requirements are much lower than many other "developed" countries, and even the language -- a mishmash of Romance and Germanic, with a phonetic alphabet, inherited from a trading empire -- is easy to use at a basic level (though its inconsistencies do pose problems for mastery), which again helps spread/assimilation. And in the US you at least can't openly act like your country represents a specific genetic/ethnic group (unlike in many other countries, where that identification is tacitly and unapologetically assumed).

It's the "cultural/mimetic dynamics" aspect that was interesting. The "P(A -> B) >> P(B -> A)" thing.

That this is additionally connected to tax revenue is also interesting. Money enters. Which is another fascinating subject.

These things -- populations, memes, capital flows, births, deaths, conversions -- all flow and swirl and transmutate around, like the weather. I am on the lookout for absorbing states.

[unishark]

It is interesting to view as a kind of state machine though I don't know about treating it as a meme. Certainly a cold calculation. I've long thought that US immigration queues reflects the simple fact that from an individual perspective, if the average person wants to join a group far more than the group wants them to join, there will necessarily be a difficult hurdle to enter and a long line. I suppose this is pretty obvious, but an important fact of life. Also a different case of P(A->B)>>P(B->A). And highly-skilled students from India probably know better than we do how the high-tech pay rates in the US compare versus other places they might more-easily immigrate to.