[anovikov]

Try thinking of it that way: there are many Russians in the Silicon Valley, they are smart people, a significant part of its success story, definitely make a great positive contribution to the ecosystem.

Now imagine that U.S. allowed any Russian in. Getting my idea now?

So immigration is a good (maybe even necessary) thing for a nation to be successful. But just careful, selective immigration. In every country, by definition, average people are born on average. You don't want them, every country already has enough of it's own home-born mediocrity.

[ido]

I'm not American myself but I'd have no problem letting every Russian who doesn't have a criminal record (and are able bodied etc..) immigrate to my country[1][2].

The fact that they're willing to pack up and move to a foreign country half way across the globe for the chance of finding work means they are already above average in their ambition & work-ethic.

[1] ideally every country would implement freedom of immigration like that, so they don't all end up in 1 place.

[2] incidentally I'm Israeli, and Israel has tons of immigrants from the former Soviet Union (over a million out of a total population of 7 million).

[anovikov]

Why don't you think they will direct most of their talent in squeezing as much public funds as possible, working inofficially in criminal or semi-criminal activities. That's what people in Russia do without immigrating anywhere, and those able to immigrate will be probably more talented in this regard.

[ido]

Do they do this because Russians are somehow genetically inclined to dishonesty? Or is it because the opportunities for honest work with a decent pay in Russia are a lot worse than in the west?

I postulate that even if the 1st generation immigrants might bring some cultural baggage with them, their children will mostly share the culture of their host country (modulo ethic cookery & speaking an extra language).

BTW we don't have to theorize anything, as the reason that there are so many Russians in Israel is that it was fairly easy for them to come here if they could prove they had some Jewish heritage (for many of which a very faint one, like one grandparent being a non-practicing Jew) & we don't see this doomsday scenario you predicted.

[anovikov]

Israel does not have choice: it is a Jewish country and it has to invite Jews, not someone else. There are not so many Jews in the world to filter them (and the better kinds of them are probably well-off enough in their current countries to repatriate).

America has choice on the other hand: lots of people want to get there, and you can't take all of them even if yo wish. Why don't filter? That is even more true about Canada.

[ido]

That's not the point we were discussing, you were saying that just allowing anyone ("any Russian" for our example) to come will be a negative thing because it will bring a lot of people who would just leech off of the social welfare system.

My rebuttal is that this is very similar to what happened in Israel, a large and fairly random ("have some degree of Jewish decent") group of people were allowed to immigrate with very little hassle & it ended up being positive for all involved (except maybe the country they left).

The population of a country already much more densely populated than the US grew by 65% in 20 years[1], so this is not a case of it only working because not many people wanted to immigrate.

To summarize: my opinion is not that there should be 0 filtering, but that there should be less filtering than there is today, and that increasing the amount people coming over would benefit countries like the US and Canada.

[1] http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&#...

[anovikov]

Canada is already a country of immigrants. If they lower entry barriers, won't next generation of Canadians be of less quality than the current one? Of course there will be more of them, but do they NEED more people, especially at the expense of quality? Maybe about the current size is right for them - they are in no immediate threat of say, territorial losses to some foreign power, or any other threat arising from low population (for Israel situation is the opposite: It needs as many Jews and as few non-jews as possible, due to being rounded with enemies, so it's OK if these are any Jews you can find, and even allow some flexibility about who is a Jew).

Canada came to where it is now (a nice place, with places like Toronto or Montreal near top of world's liveability index) exactly due to that: they have been very picky about people who they let in.

Somehow people fight for lowering immigration barriers thinking they are a discrimination of some sort and yet nobody thinks that say, entry exams to college are a discrimination. But these are essentially same thing: allow everyone into a good college and in a few years you'll get a shitty college (because both good professors will leave to avoid teaching idiots, and good students will not enroll for same reason).