[BuyMyBitcoins]

>”It might be a good idea to, y'know, let them in and allow them to work.”

There is no need to be glib. The United States already has the world’s most generous immigration policy. And, what is likely the most lenient stance towards illegal immigration and foreign labor of any developed nation.

[6865]

I do not think they're being glib. Do you have examples of the generosity? My SO is American (I'm a European with nearing ten years of IT work experience and counting) and we are going through the immigration system, to call it a hell hole is an insult to hell.

A generous policy would be to make the process simple for individuals that are able to work and contribute on their own. That is not the case.

[BuyMyBitcoins]

Generosity doesn’t mean rubber stamping everyone who wants to emigrate. “Simple” seems to imply that becoming a citizen should just involve filling out a few forms.

I don’t think people truly appreciate the sheer number of people who are trying to emigrate. If I may, which European country do you belong to? I invite you to compare your own nation’s legal emigration numbers and procedures to that of the US. I suspect you’ll find that the barrier to entry is even higher.

As for generosity, here is some information from Wikipedia: “In absolute numbers, the United States has by far the highest number of immigrants in the world, with 50,661,149 people as of 2019.[1][2] This represents 19.1% of the 244 million international migrants worldwide, and 14.4% of the United States' population.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_Stat...

[Jensson]

Divide by population, absolute numbers doesn't give a fair picture.

[Wowfunhappy]

Look. I'm not even necessarily trying to argue that we should have more immigration. But, only one of the below statements can be true:

• The US has too few people.

• The US has too many people.

If the former, we should increase immigration beyond whatever the current levels are.

If the latter, population decline obviously isn't a concern.

Which of these universes do we live in? It can't be both.

[peteradio]

People are not fungible. There is potentially such a thing as a wrong/right person to fill a slot.

[akmarinov]

The world’s most generous immigration policy? How do you figure? It’s super hard to immigrate to the US

[Wowfunhappy]

Then why are we discussing population decline?

I'm just saying, if we need more people, we know where to get them.

[dgoldstein0]

The projections are that population decline will hit the whole world, it's just hitting developed nations first. So immigration is only a temporary solution that'll last a few decades.

If we really want to address population decline, we have to reverse the reasons people are choosing to have fewer children. Which starts with policies aimed to give child-bearing aged adults better financial stability, affordable housing, and support -i.e. easily available, non bank breaking childcare (perhaps even free childcare), improved income / decreased expenses to make it easy to have financial security while also having extra bedroom(s) for kids, and longer, paid parental leave.

Whereas the existing housing crunch, continued downward pressure on median and lower incomes, bare minimum parental leaves, and high cost of childcare in the US discourages and delays a lot of people from having children.

[Wowfunhappy]

> The projections are that population decline will hit the whole world, it's just hitting developed nations first.

And that's a serious problem for the rest of the world! It's not a problem for the US, or any other country rich enough that people are clamoring to immigrate.

Sure, the world will eventually run out of people I guess. But there are so many people who want to come here, that time is exceedingly far away. And population decline is okay if it happens very slowly.

Edit: I'm not against the other policies you listed, I just don't think we need them because of "population decline" specifically. I'm not convinced they would even help with population decline, because families with higher incomes--ie more access to childcare, housing, and so on--are having fewer kids just like everyone else. Immigration, by contrast, really will quite transparently address the need for more people.

[dgoldstein0]

The trouble is by the time we decide whether we need to solve the problem, we may be 20 years or more too late to implement a solution. I.e. if we need a larger labor force to keep social security solvent, we need those children born 18-25 years beforehand so they grow up and start paying in.

Anyhow yeah I don't think policy is the only reason we're in this bind, but let's be honest that we do not make it easy to be parents of young children. Various trends exacerbate this, like the fact that it's now more common to live in different cities than most of your family - which means less free childcare from families. But also many people get their idea of family sizes from what they grew up with and what their friends and family are doing, so the decline in children per woman is going to be rather sticky.

[foogazi]

> So immigration is only a temporary solution that'll last a few decades.

If there is a global population decline then all other societies would start declining- in that scenario the US can keep siphoning citizens

[polski-g]

No countries have experienced a faster fertility drop than the poor countries in the "global south". Chile's TFR numbers just came out last month and it dropped 24% YOY.