Hacker News Reader

Comment by daenz | Hacker News Reader

I googled our immigration backlog, and according to multiple sources[0], the current number of pending immigration applications is 10M. These are people who are willing to fill out the applications and wait. It's not unreasonable to assume that this is the tip of the iceberg, and that there there are many more people who don't bother to apply because of the processing times and likelihood of getting in. Suppose there are 5x more people who would instantly migrate if immigration was completely open. That's about 17% of the current US population.

That seems like a lot of people for local communities to absorb, especially if these are people that require a lot of financial assistance.

0. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/us-immigration-backl...

View on HN

Your methodology is flawed. You have no idea how extensive the backlog is, nor how reflective it is of a general willingness (and ability) to migrate to the USA. For all you know 90% of all migrants willing and able to migrate to the USA have (or will) filed the paperwork to do so.

The backlog could also be abnormally large at the moment and cases are piling up. 10M could very well be the accumulation of the past 3-10 years of immigration applicants.

So the actual range here—if migration was set free—could very well be as low 1M or as high as 10M.

Regardless. Even assuming the high end here, and in a 10 year period, 100M people would migrate to the USA. My honest question was, is there any reason to be concerned about that figure?

>as high as 10M

Assuming the upper bound is as high as the backlog of immigration applications is not reasonable. A reasonable assumption is that the upper bound is at least as high as the applications.

>My honest question was, is there any reason to be concerned about that figure?

I answered that. Adding a large number of new people puts a strain on society. If you don't think people are being paid enough, or get enough benefits, or have a high enough standard of living, or that there's enough affordable housing, then why do you think adding more people would fix that?

>> as high as 10M

Sorry, I wasn’t clear. I meant yearly migrants. If every year fewer applications are processed then filed, it adds to the backlog. So the only information you get by looking at the backlog is total number of willing migrants. However they (or rather we, as I am personally one of the applicants in that backlog) are not gonna migrate here all at once, some are willing but not able (for whatever reason), some are old and no longer relevant, some are duplicate, etc.

In reality an open border policy would come gradually. So the number of yearly migrants would gradually grow, until it reaches a local peak and then slow down. Many willing people will delay their migration if they can’t find a job, etc.

So I pulled that lower bound of 1M from current migration trends. Last year it was about 700k but that was a covid year, so 1M is an easy guess of a lower bound. As for the upper bound I just took a wild guess... There is no way of knowing that number unless you do some extensive survey, and plug it into a computational model (I wonder if anyone has ever done that).

But honestly the actual number doesn’t actually matter. Societal modelling is a funny science with a lot of interacting variables. The current state of prohibitory migration actually affects the behavior of current migrants, if the migration would be free, the behavior would be different (think decriminalizing drugs).

My skepticism about the concerns people have for free migrations is that I actually see little evidence to warrant these concerns. People say stuff like: “puts a strain on society” without explaining how, or by showing evidence. Historically societies have grown by way more then 17% over a short period and did just fine. Currently the societies which are taking many migrants seem to handle it kind of well actually. There are rural communities in Iceland which grow by 30-40% in a single year by taking in 4-5 refugee families, and do just fine.

So given our evidence so far, I would say that any concerns about “opening up the floodgates” are unjustified.

>People say stuff like: “puts a strain on society” without explaining how, or by showing evidence.

I did explain how though. Do you disagree that there is a lack of affordable housing? If not, then adding more people makes it worse. Do you disagree that workers aren't being compensated fairly? If not, then adding more people makes it worse. Do you disagree that your average person doesn't have access to inexpensive medical care? If not, then adding more people makes it worse.

Tell me which of those points you disagree with, and I can point to evidence.

Like I said, Societal modelling is a funny science. These things are really dynamic. I can agree with your points that there is a lack of affordable housing and that common workers are underpaid, but at the same time disagree with your conclusion that allowing free migration will makes matter worse.

In fact a plausible dynamic is that seeing the potential surge in the demand for cheap housing, a developer might seize the opportunity, lobby their local government for more liberal zoning and start building small and cheap housing to be rented mainly to temporary workers coming with free migration. A more plausible scenario is that migrants will choose to delay their migration until they have secured a high enough paying job and housing they can afford. (Maybe they will get a job in the now booming construction industry.)

There are similarly complex dynamics with the labor market, perhaps the surge in new workers will push further unionization and actually increase the wages. Or—more likely—xenophobic politicians will fear the surge of migrants, and as a counter measure raise the local minimum wage, thinking that saturating the labor market makes is so companies won’t be able to afford migrant workers.

The point is, we don’t have any reason to believe one way or the other These models are complex and it is probably impossible to construct an unbiased one. As it stands we can only look at the evidence from history and current examples. And they do seem to indicate that the worries people have of free migration are not justified.

It sounds like you're saying that you want to overload the social systems with immigrants so that they become overburdened and then *magic handwaving* a utopia emerges. You're talking about playing with peoples lives as if they're fun experiments, while at the same time acknowledging that you don't understand how complex these systems are or how they'll behave. And if you're wrong, everyone is worse off.

Can you understand why people aren't interested in policies that come from that perspective?

You are misreading into my statements, and putting words in my mouth. Perhaps I was not clear enough. But I only took these examples to demonstrate how dynamic these things are. If you can construct a hypothetical that turns things one way, I can just as easily create an equally plausible scenario that turns things the other. The point of my exercise was simply to demonstrate that, not to advocate for some utopia.

Current implementations of free migrations don’t come as some experiments, they come from policymakers recognizing the benefits of free movement of people. This is one of the fundamental rights (the four freedoms) within the EU (or, to be more accurate, the Schengen Area).

Also, like I said, free migration won’t come all at once. The EU currently has free migration within a certain area. I hope this area will gradually expand (though I’m pessimistic it will reach far outside of the continent). Similarly free migration for the USA might start with Canada and Mexico, then expand to the Americas, and the Pacific, then maybe merge with Europe’s, Africa’s, etc. Each expansion will, no doubt, be met with fierce resistance from xenophobes, so you don’t have to worry that this would happen quickly. If I’m wrong (which I probably am; as my hypotheticals were never meant to be read as predictions) this policy can easily be slowed down, and even reversed. However, history and current implementations would suggest that there is at least little harm and potentially many benefits we are missing out on by keeping our migrations so restricted.

> 10M could very well be the accumulation of the past 3-10 years of immigration applicants.

Longer than that.

For example, Indians applying under EB-2 have a 150 year waiting list until they can get their actual green card. https://www.cato.org/blog/150-year-wait-indian-immigrants-ad...

I'd like to think that most of those 10 million pending applicants are either 1. already in the US or 2. no longer in the US/have never been there, so it's questionable whether they would actually make the move.

Why are you assuming that folks will require a lot of financial assistance?

I would be assuming if I said "especially because", not "especially if"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com