[zie]

I don't disagree it could definitely be a problem with the US, but so far, with immigration, it's not been a problem. As long as our immigration #'s stay up, the US should be fine.

So far it's been a steady state, but it's unknown if that will continue into the future.

[makeitdouble]

I agree with both you and the GP, and also see immigration as moving the hard problems from one field to another.

To solve the economic issue of maintaining growth, the US/EU moved to the issue of how to maintain a peaceful but diverse and divergent society.

I see Japan's partial bailing on immigration as a sign they don't see any good way to get through it, and we can see a lot of today's US internal fight as the result of not paying enough attention to how hard it is to adapt a society to the new challenges.

I wonder if there would be third ways, with economic powerhouse moving their "growth" to other countries without a stigma of stagnation or exploitation.

[swalsh]

In the not too distant future, competition for immigration is going to be tough. I wonder if the US has the political atmosphere to offer competitive packages to win over the immigrants we'll need.

[PeterisP]

Why do you think that? It feels that the mid-term (e.g. 20-40 years) outlook for migration would include a large increase of migrant supply due to e.g. climate change issues in the "global south", so instead of competition for immigration it seems likely that places like US would be able to pick whatever kind of migrants they'd prefer to allow.

[swalsh]

Yes, supply of immigrants will increase because of climate change, but I think it's important to understand the current structure of age distributions in the world. The US had a pretty large Millenial generation. Most other countries did not. Which means, we're not REALLY going to be feeling the need to take on immigrants for a while. But as boomers retire, and millenials move to replace them, the countries that didn't have a sizable millenial generation are going to be in a position to have a much higher demand. Those countries are going to be more desperate than the US, and will likely start developing very sizable offers. The US is going to catch up though, the US does appear to be inverting it's demographic distribution as well, but we're 20 years behind. That's actually a pretty big advantage in a bunch of ways, but in terms of competing for immigrants, it's a disadvantage.

[orolle]

Thanks, good points!

[908B64B197]

The real question is: is are we interested in quantity or quality?