| This fellow was in the top quartile of his former economy--let us bring him into the United States so he may be worth more as a member of our top quartile!". That's rubbish. How so? The reasoning seems quite clear. A skilled developer currently working at some shitty Indian company might be allowed to create value for millions of people at Google. It's not labor shortages that are causing all the runaway costs in healthcare, and to pretend that bringing over physicians will somehow improve our situation (without explicitly saying how) is just wishful thinking. Higher supply -> lower price. Less scarcity. Simple enough. Why do you feel this wouldn't help? You seem to feel that there will be no gains from trade due to immigration. Can you explain this claim? As for your concern about poor people voting, I share this concern. These are issues to work out. I generally favor excluding immigrants and their children from the welfare state and voting, and taking immigration from a diverse set of countries with high assimilatability. But these are implementation details, not a reason to scrap the whole idea. Incidentally, the only reason I favor deporting our current illegals is an instrumental reason. We need more immigration, but we also need to control it carefully (as you note, it can be dangerous). If we fail to enforce our existing laws, we create incentives for breaking our current (and future) laws. |