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Population vs. Limited Resources
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Lack of the ability to efficiently distribute and use those resources is a pretty big one.
Lack of resources is a huge issue in nations with no other means of sustaining basic fundamentals. Poor nations without resources are at a significant disadvantage, even to resource-rich poor nations.
It's not that some places should be uninhabited, but that they should only be inhabited in the presence of a strong infrastructure and a native economy capable of self-sustainability or massive exportation. It's extremely hard to have that when your native population is uneducated, constantly warring, and completely dependent on foreign aid.
Well good on you for thinking of that as an acceptable solution, because it's pretty much what happens naturally!
Migration controls chaining people to regions bereft of economic opportunity is kind of a problem here. Easing those controls or actively encouraging migration from those regions seems like it would address that problem.
But then you run into the problem of trying to convince the electorate that what the country needs is to import a large number of poor, uneducated foreigners.
Lead balloons.
Basically, if you want to preserve a group's cultural identity, you need to make sure that the group's values are passed-on. What easier way to keep ideas alive than to plant them in the minds of children?
I find this kind of "Us versus Them" thinking childish and can't wait for it to be stomped-out.
To get more on topic, I personally think it will be possible for future generations to largely repair the environmental damage caused by the developing world. For example, technology is being developed to sequester excessive carbon dioxide. Even if climate change goes unchecked for now, future technology could undo the effects. There is also research being performed to discern the best method of removing chemical pollution; for example, fungi have been found to effectively clean contaminated soil.
I just wish that this sort of clean-up wouldn't be necessary, but it seems it will be.
We've seen a number of countries in the last couple of decades enact reforms that have let them begin the climb out of poverty, at the very least. However, these were countries where the culture and sociiety were not violently opposed to modern ideas. Sadly, there are many parts of the world where the men with guns and power are violently opposed to any potential reforms to their culture and/or government.
Rigorous Scholarship
In only the context of the rampant influx of illegal aliens from across the Mexican border, this statement is fairly wrong. But considering that's the most prominent argument against immigration, I'd say it almost negates the entire statement.
An large addition of poor, uneducated, unskilled laborers with cultural values still widely based in oral tradition and folk wisdom is hardly the same thing as "fear of new ideas."
That being said, proposing large-scale immigration of poor people into richer nations will serve to make those richer nations poorer and will lead to cultural strife. Other than cheaper landscaping and produce costs, it's hard to think of positive benefits of letting in literally millions of poor and uneducated workers into a country like the US.
Rigorous Scholarship
Therefore a large immigrant population, like free trade, if managed properly surely makes an economy more dynamic and upwardly mobile.
When discussing languages, English is seen as being stronger for its acceptance of other cultures words while France has struggled to maintain a strict version of French. The same could be said of cultures mixing. Cultures that take on other ideas are stronger than insular cultures.
The weird thing to me, purely anecdotally, is that educational, economic, and cultural disparity is far less noticeable the closer you get to the US/Mexico border. In my time there, I noticed that most Hispanic people spoke fantastic English, the poverty quotient was low, and educational rates were probably above the US average for both grade school and collegiate study.
But here in Dallas, 500 miles from the border, most of what we get are illegals, and that generally means people who aren't Tejanos, but from deeper in Mexico or even further south like Honduras or other Central American/South American nations. They're not educated, their cultural values are detrimental to general society (as are any sub-group of poor people, regardless of origin), and thanks to Catholicism/Pentecostalism, their teen pregnancy rates are ridiculous and appalling.
But tying this into the point at hand, this isn't an instance where an influx of immigrants is helpful to either side of the equation.
If the concern is having to spend all sorts of welfare money on them, well, nothing stopping you from not spending welfare money on some given class of immigrant. There'll still be plenty of people willing to take those terms.
Really, rich countries are in a position to dictate terms here. Worried about a swarming horde of tired poor huddled masses? Okay, toss green cards at people with university degrees from selected institutions. Those aren't uneducated, and the US gets another high-earning tax payer.
Hell, you could require some class of immigrant to wear ankle bracelets and be booted out of the country the moment they lose their job, and the US will still have people banging down the door.
And, on top of that, Latin American immigrants seem to be picking up many of the social pathologies (illegitimacy, disdain for education etc.) that are so common in America's native underclass.
If we were talking about educated, skilled labor, maybe. But millions of unskilled workers really only serve to help a narrow slice of the populace (i.e., wealthy business owners who can cut their labor costs) while passing on a whole bunch of other costs (health care, social services etc.) to the rest of the host country.
What new ideas are introduced by large groups of uneducated, low-skilled immigrants?
Rigorous Scholarship
That's mainly a problem of convincing the electorate not to be racist and short-sighted. So, nothing new here.
Household servants.
It's the rest of us who have no interest in doing so, plus the Mexican neo-serfs, who get screwed.
Rigorous Scholarship
There's nothing inherently "underclass" about being a household servant. If you're looking to better the lives of poor people (and the middle and upper class as well), it seems like the way to go.
Cheap household immigrant labor betters the lives of the immigrants and their employers both. But I guess win+win=lose to some analysts.
More seriously, introducing domestic workers en masse requires some very careful labor controls to avoid the usual abuse that arises: dedicated agencies and reporting networks, rights to swap employees and employers rapidly, established practices for who controls the worker's movement (agency vs. employer), who is responsible if the worker disappears, who is responsible if the worker takes the employer's family jewelery and vanishes, how workers can remit money to their families in a safe manner, who the worker can turn to first for help, educating both employee and employer as to their rights, etc.
And, yes, dealing with the inevitable "Daddy ran off with the maid" issue in a sensitive manner helps too. Either the state does or society does it on its own; Singapore bans marriage by its migrant domestic workers, even to Singaporeans. Hong Kong does not. Hong Kong has greater problems with abuse.
And, the low wages paid to such workers (who are often paid under the table, so no taxes are collected) means that they will be heavily reliant on social services paid for by taxpayers.
So, yeah, without cheap immigrant labor, the cost of household help will go up. But I'm not shedding any tears over that.
Rigorous Scholarship
And these being, y'know, immigrants, their host country can basically dictate terms of immigration. Like: no recourse to public funds.
This seems like a short term solution at best.
How did that region end up being poor, bereft of economic opportunity and overpopulated in the first place?
Sure, we can allow some of them to immigrate to better countries, but you've done nothing to solve the problem. Whoever stays behind will continue to be poor, have high birth rates and no economic opportunity.
I'll repost what I've said before: there is still no academic consensus on "how did that region end up being poor". Clearly some countries can stop being poor, sometimes very dramatically. Some other countries don't. There is no - no - simple hypothesis that has been demonstrated to correlate.
But immigration is a surefire way of improving at least some people's welfare. And even if you don't care that much, you can think of it in terms of "how can these people benefit us?" and simply start finding ways to make them pay tax to you instead of remaining in whatever unproductive hellhole they're in.
Unless the host country is willing to say that uninsured immigrants who show up in the emergency room can die in a gutter and their kids can't go to public school, there are going to be costs. Western democracies aren't going to pass laws that cut off immigrants from basic social services.
Before the modern welfare state, immigrants didn't impose costs on the taxpayers, generally, because the government didn't provide much in the way of services. That's not the case anymore.
Rigorous Scholarship
Oh, there are very simple solutions to treat-or-gutter type situations. I mean, you can estimate what percentage of immigrants will end up in that situation. Let's say 1% of them do, and it costs $10k each time they do. Okay, you treat them. And you slap $100 on every immigrant in this class as a condition of entry. Call it a foreign worker levy.
And having treated them, you then confiscate what you can and then send the worker involved home. Just in case it becomes systemic.
Please, these are voluntary immigrants. It doesn't matter if they earn minimum wage already, you can still slap 50% tax rates on their minimum wage, and they'll still come. Of their own free will. You can make them pay for whatever costs they incur. This is not difficult!
I at a loss here...
You want to run a Chinese style sweat shop of immigrants and throw anyone who gets sick or steps out of line out of the country?
Edit: ok maybe that was unfair but you can't have "second class citizens", seems like your proposing that the solution to having illegal immigrants treated terribly is to treat legal immigrants terribly
There are a variety of factors that can contribute to a paucity of region-based lack of economic opportunity. Consider, say, old mining towns in Michigan's upper peninsula, or Flint, or Detroit. These had industries that either died or moved away. Some previously oil-rich countries lose their oil. Other times, regions might be synonymous with instability because of ethnic tensions or something similar.
In many cases, allowing or encouraging people to move away from opportunity-impoverished areas is both a short and long term solution. It is a long term solution in places like resource poor Michigan mining towns, where moving away is simply the best option. It may be a medium to long term solution in areas of ethnic conflict as well, with migration gradually affecting demographic changes that may benefit the situation on the ground.
Allowing for migration means that people are able to go somewhere that is often safer working a job that pays better than anything available in their original location. If they can remit money to their original home, that means they can better provide for families. If they can save their money, they may be able to establish a new and better life in their new location, possibly bringing their family along later.
Is being a second class citizen better than being a seventh class citizen?
Yes, this.
You do not get to accuse me of favoring a "Chinese style sweat shop" when your proposed alternative is to... ditch them in places which are worse.
Human suffering does not cease to exist just because it's over some invisible border so that you don't have to think about it.
What you're proposing is potentially dumping impoverished, uneducated immigrants into wealthier, more stable countries and assuming everyone would be better off. Which would not be case for the host country, in most cases.
Rigorous Scholarship
You said there would be costs on the host country. Fine, we make the immigrants pay for the costs. If they don't want to pay, they don't get in, simple. How is that a problem? You still make the lives of thousands that much better off.
It's not Somalia. But Mexico is still a country where one in ten live below $1USD a day.
Yes, they're already there. Does that fact make ignoring them easier? Are they less human because they're not born in the glorious United States of America?
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1568/is_9_39/ai_n24966438/?tag=content;col1
If the 30 affluent countries making up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) were to allow just a 3 percent rise in the size of their labor forces through loosened immigration restrictions, claims a 2005 World Bank report, the gains to citizens of poor countries would amount to about $300 billion. That's $230 billion more than the developed world currently allocates to foreign aid for poor countries. And foreign aid is a transfer: The $70 billion that rich countries give leaves those countries $70 billion poorer. According to the World Bank study, wealthy nations that let in 3 percent more workers would gain $51 billion by boosting returns to capital and reducing the cost of production.
He actually believed that AIDS was one of those things and actually called it a "population control device" saying that the few people who die outside of third world countries are just acceptable losses.
And I am quite skeptical that immigrants working minimum wage (or less) jobs would be able to pay for the costs they impose on the host society.
Not at all. But I don't see how it's right to dump Mexico's problems on the people of the US, especially when the brunt of the negative effects will be borne by the poorest in our country.
It may sound harsh, but immigration policy should serve the interests of the host country. If there are positive effects on other countries, great.
The solution here is to continue to pressure countries like Mexico to fight corruption and create workable, prosperous economies.
Rigorous Scholarship
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
This is so hard to do though and runs counter to the hamfisted political attempts to keep shit where it is for no other reason than the status quo must be maintained in a circular logic shitstorm.