[remarkEon]

The current immigration regime is still relatively new, it is not as if it has existed for the entirety of the existence of the United States. It's an artifact of the late 20th century, and only just now accelerated in the early 21st. That's barely a single generation. So, no, I don't take it as a given that essentially limitless immigration - even if loosely constrained on "high skill" - is somehow axiomatically good for the United States.

[hash872]

I'm a little confused. It's possible to be very pedantic and say that the current immigration law only dates back to the 60s, but the population of the United States is 97.9% not from this continent. There was a wave of British, Spanish, and French immigration in the 17th & 18th centuries, followed by Germans, Italians, and Irish in the 19th & 20th. In the 19th century the legal regime about immigration was literally 'open borders', there were hardly any legal controls at all. The vast vast majority of us are the descendants of immigrants (my apologies if you personally are 100% Native American, didn't mean to lump you in)

[remarkEon]

I think you're the one being overly pedantic if you only qualify 100% Native American as "American". This country isn't just some economic zone that people come to and from for the purposes of commercial or business activity. If that's all it was, then a much more lax or liberal immigration regime would make perfect sense.

>but the population of the United States is 97.9% not from this continent.

This would be a surprise to the 85% of us who were actually born here. In its most simplified form, what those of us who are skeptical of the current immigration regime are wondering out loud is if these processes do actually make "people born in America" better off. "Immigration is always good" has been the mantra since, as you speculate, the 1960s. Probably worth evaluating that idea from first principles from time to time.

[hash872]

But we're all descended from immigrants. Do you think it was wrong when the British & Italian & Irish & German all moved here en masse? Assuming no, what would be different about the latest wave of immigrants?

[remarkEon]

I honestly view this point - that there were prior waves of immigration from various European nations, and before that concurrent waves of forced migration from Africa and elsewhere (though this is left unsaid) - as a bit of a non-sequitur, bordering on bait, largely because it happened over a very long timescale into an essentially empty nation. Suppose I answered in the negative (that I don't think there was anything wrong with it). That wouldn't change anything at all about the current debate. It isn't some kind of gotcha, that if I don't have a problem with British/Italian/Irish/German/French/whoever coming during various migration waves it somehow neuters any particular point about how any immigration regime should, in my view, be structured such that there are clear and defined benefits to the people already living in the country. Enumerated elsewhere in the thread, but the H-1B system in particular is for the benefit of industry (POSIWID etc etc). Not people already here.

It is worth noting, though, that after the peak of immigration in the late 19th century and ending in the 1910s, the United States very intentionally shut off immigration to allow time for assimilation to do its work.

[hash872]

I think the main point that I want to make is that attracting all of the world's smartest people to our country, and staying the world's superpower in technology & science, does have extremely 'clear and defined benefits to the people already living in the country'

[remarkEon]

The United States achieved its super power status during the most restrictive phase of its immigration history, but now we're getting somewhere. Things like Operation Paperclip are clearly good ideas, and should be replicated for e.g. Russian or Chinese scientists, as but one example.

[hash07e]

By your logic humans are migrant therefore no borders for all....

[buescher]

Not immigration - settlement. And not even exactly that in the cases of the French and Spanish. Would you count Hawaiians as 20th century immigrants?

[cuteboy19]

if anything the previous regime was even more unconstrained. add to that generous blanket amnesty etc and today seems more gated than ever