[thoms_a]

You can also look at Canada, which brings in ~500,000 (documented, skilled) immigrants per year relative to their 35MM population. Of course, housing in Canada is now the most expensive in the entire OECD.

Alas, the Canadian government is deeply committed to the same lord and savior of the USA, the Free Market(TM), to magically produce the required infrastructure for this massive population influx. However, His Invisible Hand has not yet intervened in Canada's favor.

[mardifoufs]

Canadian immigration policy is the exact opposite of "opening the flood gates and letting everyone in". It's a highly "discriminatory" point based selection process, accepting almost exclusively educated and skilled candidates.

If anything the American immigration policy is much closer to what's being proposed, considering it usually aims for immigrant diversity (through the lottery, for example) rather than just education/work status. They are also more lenient towards undocumented immigrants, and deal with a ton more of them than we do here.

The only thing canada proves is that you can take a high number of immigrants yearly relatively easily (at least on the short/medium term, as you said infrastructure and housing aren't keeping up) as long as they are vetted and carefully picked. Now, maybe the last part isn't even necessary, but we wouldn't know just by looking at Canada.

[rayiner]

> It's a highly "discriminatory" point based selection process, accepting almost exclusively educated and skilled candidates.

Judging by my family's experience, Canada's model is an excellent way to get lots of college-educated foreigners working retail service jobs. Just because the Canadian government assigns points for a Bangladeshi college degree doesn't mean Canadian employers do. The kids end up doing pretty well, but I'm not sure that's the intended function of the immigration system.

> considering it usually aims for immigrant diversity

An essential element of the U.S. system is family reunification. It encourages social stability by ensuring that immigrants usually already have a community and support network here.

[masonic]

>~500,000 (documented, skilled) immigrants per year

Source? lamerceria.ca says 284,000 all-cause immigrants for 2019-2020 (unclear whether that's 1 or 2 calendar years). Even if it's one year, your "500K highly-skilled" immigrant number looks off by close to an order of magnitude.