[ShrigmaMale]

you're acting as though an immigrant from any of the dense population centers has the same impact as a native-born child on the culture and economy. that is false. sometimes it's for the better (in America, we have many well-educated immigrants from India and China). sometimes it's for the worse (see Europe's struggles with uneducated muslim immigrants from north Africa and the Middle East).

importing large groups of people sometimes works; we did it pretty well in America because we had so much room to grow. transportation and communication were also much harder, so it was less easy for people to maintain ties to their former country and family there; they adapted a little more, though ethnic ghettos were still a problem.

it's not an intractable problem but saying "just get immigrants bro" isn't really a good solution. we are sometimes biased in the US because we are selective (too much so, I think). we bring in the best from high-population areas like Africa and India and we see benefits for that. on the other hand, while migrant working and a moderate level of illegal immigration are fine and even economically beneficial, it would be silly to deny that the current levels are causing severe problems. when you lose that selectivity and control, things don't turn out so well. and to import enough people to make up for falling birthrates we would have to broaden our horizons beyond skilled workers.

[btbuildem]

You omit the masses of working poor immigrants that do a lot of the manual labour North Americans do not want to do -- predominantly in agriculture, construction, small manufacturing, and healthcare. They're the de-facto essential workers.

Europe's struggles seem to be caused more by a culture clash. Immigrants will always bring their way of life with them, and group together - it's a constant of human nature, this is how we preserve identity. Moving to a different country is a traumatic experience when done voluntarily; imagine having to permanently leave home under duress and on short notice.

As an immigrant myself, what always struck me as paradoxical is the nationalist / cultural pride that a lot of immigrants tend to display. I'd sum up my knee-jerk reaction to it as "Bro, if X is so great, why did you leave?" -- again, this is spoken as a person who left their homeland, with first-hand experience of some of the complex issues that surround all that. I still don't quite understand what drives that "flag-waving", but I hope to one day.

Having said all that, I would encourage my adoptive country to be proactive in their immigration policies. Putting it harshly, "get the good ones before they go somewhere else". The geopolitics of the world will only become more chaotic as the impacts of climate change cause hardship in the less habitable areas of the planet -- big migrations are inevitable. If you want your country to arrive in the 22nd century while preserving most of your way of life, you can't be clinging to outmoded ideas.

[strken]

The idea that immigrants are a good idea because they do labour your existing population won't do is quite socially destructive and the cause of technological stagnation. It separates people into a de facto caste system where unpleasant jobs are also underpaid, prevents automation from becoming cost effective, and can block a country from reaping the benefits of skilled migration.

[btbuildem]

I didn't mean to assign a value judgement to this -- maybe I can phrase it better. It's not that the "local" people don't want to do certain jobs, it's that the capital owners are not willing to pay fair wages for labour, and then only people who are desperate enough (poor immigrants) end up doing do these jobs.

I'd love to hear some examples where this has caused technological stagnation and blocked skilled migration -- US and Canada provide solid counter-examples to these claims. Both countries take in immigrants at both ends of the economic spectrum, from coveted H1B high-paying tech jobs, to seasonal farm workers who exist in slavery-like circumstances. Both countries show significant, sustained technological innovation.

I agree this is destructive to the social fabric, and it separates us into strata. But I have a hard time believing that immigration is the cause; a simpler explanation would interpret it as one of the symptoms, with the underlying causes being closely related to the relentless transfer of wealth to an ever-shrinking "elite".

[strken]

The one I was thinking of was slavery in the US, and the technological innovation in the south vs the north.

A better example might be the low price of labour-intensive hand-picked fruit (particularly berries) in the US and the correspondingly low agricultural automation. It's not that machines don't exist, or that berry picking is going to prevent the next Facebook, it's that they aren't cost effective in the short to mid term even when longer term investment would eventually improve the whole industry. This is really hard to measure and I don't have any good sources for either side of the argument right now.

I also want to make a distinction between skilled and unskilled migration. I don't think skilled migration is harmful to the social fabric in an enduring way, nor migration with the same proportion of skilled and unskilled labour as the host country.

[lappet]

> what always struck me as paradoxical is the nationalist / cultural pride that a lot of immigrants tend to display.

Also an immigrant, and I have observed that some immigrants tend to be become more conservative when they move. Or perhaps they have stopped evolving when their peers in the home country have moved on. I think this might be partly due to dealing with the trauma of displacement, and partly due to lack of diversity in thinking. I have mainly noticed this in a generation older than mine.

[Lord-Jobo]

>you're acting as though an immigrant from any of the dense population centers has the same impact as a native-born child on the culture and economy. that is false

I am not, i am acting like immigrating literally anybody is going to be massively better than a declining population. If they live in a country, they are paying for housing, food, and services, and almost certainly have a job. taxes on top of all of that. I think the attitude of being picky is fine and wise, right now, but eventually you are really going to just want anyone instead of going inverted.

[shiroiuma]

This simply isn't true. They're not going to be paying for housing and services and having a job if they commit crimes and go to prison. Certain host countries have found that certain immigrant groups tend to have very high crime rates and cause a lot of social problems. And even if they avoid crime and have a job, extremely low-paid immigrants aren't going to be paying much in taxes under a highly progressive taxation scheme.

High-skill immigrants are almost always a big win for the host country because of the things you cite, and more (they bring innovation, start businesses, etc). Low-skill/low-education ones are a crapshoot. It's better to have an inverted population pyramid than deal with all the social ills that come from immigrants that cause too many problems.