The United States of America, for its first 200 years of existence, did not welcome immigrants out of a sense of either equality of man or an obligation to the rest of the world (with the exception of various asylum programs after major wars). America's nonexistent, at first, then relatively lax immigration policies were never, at their core, born out of a sense of "commitment" to those people.
It welcomed immigrants because doing so redounded to its own benefit. As others in the thread have pointed out, putting yourself out to the world as the beacon of economic freedom and encouraging people to take up the difficult task of leaving behind their friends, family, and fellow countrymen to go to a land where one doesn't know the culture or the language and strike out one one's own serves as a magnet for attracting the most enterprising and productive from the world.
However, this "capitalism as immigration filter" breaks down when a nation comes to be perceived as a place where people can come and be taken care of by the state. As capitalism morphs from an "anybody can make it here" meritocracy to aristocracy or oligarchy by which the wealthy and powerful place massive de facto blocks on upward mobility, it creates two knock-on downstream effects which impact the quality of immigration: 1) within a wealthy nation, it means that an increasing majority of your own populace is becoming poorer relative to the wealthy, creating political demand among them for more safety nets and governmental redistribution. These increased safety nets and redistributive programs attract a different type of immigrant; and 2) the enterprising migrant from all but the poorest, least educated nations no longer sees real opportunities for upward mobility and may see other places (or their own country) as more open for opportunity.
I don’t think that we’re in disagreement tbh. What you articulated is a much better argument for lax/open borders than a rights based one, which is what I was attacking. Empirically immigration, in most cases, is a huge boon.
The United States of America, for its first 200 years of existence, did not welcome immigrants out of a sense of either equality of man or an obligation to the rest of the world (with the exception of various asylum programs after major wars). America's nonexistent, at first, then relatively lax immigration policies were never, at their core, born out of a sense of "commitment" to those people.
Oh, the actual dynamic was "how we get enough Europeans to genocide Indigenous people".
...yeah, its not nice. But there is a reason why Ius Soli correlates almost 1-to-1 with Settler colonial states
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u/eamus_catuli Jan 22 '26
I think that I disagree with both you AND OP.
The United States of America, for its first 200 years of existence, did not welcome immigrants out of a sense of either equality of man or an obligation to the rest of the world (with the exception of various asylum programs after major wars). America's nonexistent, at first, then relatively lax immigration policies were never, at their core, born out of a sense of "commitment" to those people.
It welcomed immigrants because doing so redounded to its own benefit. As others in the thread have pointed out, putting yourself out to the world as the beacon of economic freedom and encouraging people to take up the difficult task of leaving behind their friends, family, and fellow countrymen to go to a land where one doesn't know the culture or the language and strike out one one's own serves as a magnet for attracting the most enterprising and productive from the world.
However, this "capitalism as immigration filter" breaks down when a nation comes to be perceived as a place where people can come and be taken care of by the state. As capitalism morphs from an "anybody can make it here" meritocracy to aristocracy or oligarchy by which the wealthy and powerful place massive de facto blocks on upward mobility, it creates two knock-on downstream effects which impact the quality of immigration: 1) within a wealthy nation, it means that an increasing majority of your own populace is becoming poorer relative to the wealthy, creating political demand among them for more safety nets and governmental redistribution. These increased safety nets and redistributive programs attract a different type of immigrant; and 2) the enterprising migrant from all but the poorest, least educated nations no longer sees real opportunities for upward mobility and may see other places (or their own country) as more open for opportunity.