Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by 6865 793 days ago
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.

1 comments

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...

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

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