[wvoq]

> [P]eople born in this country have more rights to the money being created here than foreigners. Asian countries feel the same way about foreigners. Asian countries are, typically, a lot less open to foreign worker immigrants than is the U.S.

I would like to know why being born in a given country should entitle you to more or less opportunity than anyone else who wants to do business in that country.

I would settle for an explanation of how bad immigration policies can be justified by pointing to states with worse ones.

[KaeseEs]

Easy: the government of any given nation exists to promote the well-being of its citizens and absolutely nobody else.

[wvoq]

I fear you are confusing positive with normative claims, even if your highly doubtful positive claim is true. How do you make the citizens of a given state better off on average by preventing them from engaging in mutually voluntary associations with whomever they want?

When you read that San Jose is one of the fastest growing cities in the US, do you conclude that San Jose will soon be a desirable place to live and do business, or that undeserving foreigners from other states are "taking San Joseans' jobs?"

[malandrew]

Totally agree.

"Northern California for Northern Californians!!!" sounds pretty ridiculous, doesn't it?

[anthonyb]

I fear you are confusing counties with countries.

[wvoq]

The fact that the OP is confusing a positive claim: "states often exhibit little or no regard for the people outside their boundaries" with a normative claim "states _ought_ to act that way" is plainly evident.

That counties and countries are two different things is also obvious, but you need to offer reasons to believe that they are morally distinguishable with respect to economic growth and immigration.

[anthonyb]

Your analogy doesn't hold. San Jose is not a country, and it has no legal right to prevent US citizens from entering its borders. If (eg.) more people enter than its hospitals or roads can comfortably handle, then it can appeal to the Federal government for assistance. The US cannot.

I don't think the original statement is entirely true either - I can think of plenty of countries which don't promote the well-being of their citizens - but I would class those as broken countries, rather than trying to say that the notion of a country is broken. Certainly most western countries exist to benefit their citizens.

[wvoq]

The analogy holds precisely for the reason that San Jose does not consider itself beleaguered by the influx of immigrants who want to live there. The fact that you could entertain thought experiments in which the net consequences of immigration are negative (e.g., a giant flashmob of 50 million people immigrates simultaneously) does not suffice to show that San Jose's hospitals and roads are overwhelmed in the actual world.

In the actual world, San Jose is not in fact appealing to the federal government for assistance; it is reaping the benefits that attend a growing metropolitan population and tax base. On average, San Joseans are better off when more people become San Joseans, for all the same reasons that New York is a more desirable place to live (as measured by the demand for housing) than Wichita.

I've never claimed that there are no states who do not take their citizens' interests into account. I claimed that states often take little or no consideration of the interests of non-citizens. In absolute terms, for example, malaria is a much more pressing human affair than corn subsidies. But corn subsidies primarily affect people within the US whereas malaria primarily affects people outside the US, so corn subsidies dominate malaria in contest for the attention of the US government.

[malandrew]

What makes someone a citizen? In the US, being a citizen is a birthrate or comes via a long, tedious bureaucratic naturalization process. Other countries have different definitions of citizen.

IMHO citizenship by birthright is a pretty absurd notion, but its largely the default for historical reasons tied to war and conscription. Originally governments only gave you the right to citizenship in exchange for the ability to send you to war to protect often economic interests.

The world would be for more efficient and interesting is the "market" for citizenships were far more liquid and people could easily choose their government the way they can already do internationally by moving from state to state and city to city.