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I've been thinking a bit about this lately, and I think you could achieve this slowly in the US with an expansion of the visa lottery process.

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My thoughts too, and the article sort of says this at the end.

If the worry is that future migrants might not pay their way, why not charge them more for visas, or make them pay extra taxes, or restrict their access to welfare benefits? Such levies could also be used to regulate the flow of migrants, thus avoiding big, sudden surges.

This is what the US does right now through the lottery system but it's just so restricted that no one in their right mind could call the US borders "open".

What do you mean? The lottery just gives you a green card. Once you have it, you can apply for naturalization in 5 years. Once you get your citizenship, you have pretty much all the rights and benefits as any other citizen, except you can't get elected president.

I was more referring to the big sudden surges part in that there is in fact a lottery acting to regulate the flow of migrants. I'd even go so far as to say that under many circumstances, a green card gets you many of the important rights and benefits as any US citizen (other than voting of course).

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