[mlyle]

> 20 years from now America might have $8000/month starting wages (pretax) with $5800/month rent for a broom closet

Hyperbole. You think, for a US average, that nursing comp is going to go up by 20-30%, but rents will go up by 300%?

> People really overestimate the appeal of their countries as an immigrant destination.

When the waiting list is huge, trending upwards rapidly, and many don't even bother to try because of the difficulty in clearing the list... there's pretty clearly significant demand.

That doesn't mean these trends stay true forever, but it's a fair bit of near to intermediate-term momentum.

[grapeskin]

Wages for jobs with an influx of cheap immigrant labor don't rise (they drop) and rents have been rising exponentially and inflation is accelerating. My figures were likely a bit too optimistic so I do apologize for that. Places I rented for $600/month 6 years ago are now reaching $2000/month now, so assuming the trends hold for 20 years and factoring in the drop in the value of the dollar, rents may very well more than quadruple.

Immigration has been trending downwards for a very long time in the US[1]. There are far more desirable countries these days (such as Canada), and even then, those will likely lose their appeal as well.

[1] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2020/12/15/just-be...

[mlyle]

> Wages for jobs with an influx of cheap immigrant labor don't rise

If demand for nursing goes through the roof, wages for nurses will rise.

> factoring in the drop in the value of the dollar

If you're factoring change in the value of currency for rents, you should be considering it for in-demand jobs.

> rents may very well more than quadruple.

You're positing a scenario where the population wanting to rent falls, rents quadruple, and wages decrease markedly in real value. This seems to be self-inconsistent.

> Immigration has been trending downwards for a very long time in the US[1].

Then you cite an article mostly about internal migration. The real numbers don't look like that so much: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/imm...

Immigrants are a larger share of the US population than any time since 1920, and much, much larger in absolute numbers. Net migration is a bit lower in these past 4-5 years than in years previous-- mostly because of restrictive Trump-era policies and decreased illegal migration from Mexico. And they fell off a cliff for the past couple of years because of, well, COVID.

But the actual queues for immigrant visas are also longer than before.

[grapeskin]

Living in a country with massive demand for nurses that's being filled by immigrants, wages are plummeting. Demand still far exceeds supply.

You can also look at America's farming industry. Demand is tremendous. Wages are incredibly low and dependent on immigrants who'll work for next to nothing, because it's better to accept missed opportunity than risk setting a higher wage standard.

Looking at what you linked, total immigrant population increased by 12 million from 1990 to 2000, 8 million from 2000 to 2010, but about 5 million from 2010 to 2019. Big dip.

[mlyle]

> Looking at what you linked, total immigrant population increased by 12 million from 1990 to 2000, 8 million from 2000 to 2010, but about 5 million from 2010 to 2019. Big dip.

Yes, the sharp hockey-stick rise of number of immigrants and their share of the population cannot go straight up forever. The only way immigrants can significantly increase in share of the population, while the population increases, is for net migration to be in excess of long-term historical averages. This is still happening today!

Up till COVID, legal immigration was still looking pretty healthy: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/Ann...

This number isn't smooth, but the average is basically constrained by legislation. Note 1987-1991 is a special case after the 1987 and 1990 immigration acts provided for the normalization of the status of many illegal immigrants. Indeed, even the post-COVID number exceeds all years 1920-1988.

> Living in a country with massive demand for nurses that's being filled by immigrants, wages are plummeting. Demand still far exceeds supply.

Wages are so much higher than source countries (e.g. the Philippines) that -doctors- are frequently relocating and completing supplementary training to serve as nurses in the US. Remittances are 9% of GDP in the Philippines and the Philippines is building capacity to educate nurses that far exceeds internal demand; they have to go somewhere and compensation in the US outstrips other options. The number of immigrants in nursing is artificially restricted by immigration quotas.

Indeed, nursing wages are so high in the US compared to other US professions that demand outstrips supply of nursing education for domestically educated nurses.