Immigration killing the USA? Canada?

[Shayne]

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4094926727128068265&q=numbersusa&hl=en

A great video about immigration and the problems its causing the USA.  I think Canada should also be attached to this video as well because we are definitely no better.

[Lazybones]

Beet me too it, I was just watching that..

We do have a different immigration policy, although probably still not much better.

[Shayne]

Oh I am sure ours is different, but I bet ratioly speaking we probably import just as many people as the USA does.

[Lazybones]

Wikipedia has some info on the subject but no direct comparison..

It seems our economy is built on high immigration to begin with, it both cost us and benefits us.

[Thorin]

Well, the general argument is that Americans can't continue to live the good life if they continue to let hordes of poor people into their country - instead, the poor people should be told to stay in their own country and the US should help them there.  It's the same isolationist theory that abounded in the thirties.

Some issues with the actual presentation:

1. If he had shown the bottom 180,000,000 people on that beatiful chart, how much less angled would that slope have been if it were on the same size cardboard?  Remember, it would've *started* "off the charts".  That would've been much less attention-grabbing, which is probably why he specifically didn't include them

2. He talks about helping people who live in third-world countries and uses great marble props, but he should have included the entire population of the world in his marbles - then the difference would have been much less pronounced

3. The US was built on high immigration; his forefathers figured out how to live in an explosive growth period, so why can't he?

4. Sure, double the infrastructure if you have double the population.  But also double the future tax-base, so that point is basically moot (the only argument still open is the idea that the immigrants will never make as much income as the born-in-America citizens, therefore they might not actually double the tax-base, but there's lots of born-in-America citizens that don't contribute to the tax-base).

I don't like that he's suggesting that America deal with the global population increase by shutting its borders so that America can protect its own standard of living.  That attitude will, in the not too distant future, backfire as the world's poor charge and topple the ivory tower trying to take whatever they can to survive.

[Shayne]

He doesn't say shut the borders, he says to decrease the immigration back to a more manageable amount.  Is population doubling every 50 years (i cant recall the actual date) a manageable figure?

This made me think about this from a different angle though, more about the global population growth.  Should the developed nations have to sacrifice their standards of living because of population growths spiraling out of control in many 3rd world countries?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_birth_rate

I would love to see the above link cross referenced with the GDP (PPP) and see where things land.  I would wager that the 3rd worlds are near the top, and the more developed nations are near the bottom (margin of error of course).  (Canada,186 | United States,154 | Germany,223 | China,163 | Japan,208)

[Thorin]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_birth_rate

I would love to see the above link cross referenced with the GDP (PPP) and see where things land.  I would wager that the 3rd worlds are near the top, and the more developed nations are near the bottom (margin of error of course).  (Canada,186 | United States,154 | Germany,223 | China,163 | Japan,208)

If you're going to look at the birth rate, you also have to look at the death rate:

https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rankorder/2066rank.html

This is also nicely indicated by looking at these two images side by side:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Birth_rate_figures_for_countries.PNG
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Death_rate_world_map.PNG

This made me think about this from a different angle though, more about the global population growth.  Should the developed nations have to sacrifice their standards of living because of population growths spiraling out of control in many 3rd world countries?

That's the crux of my issue with his demonstration - I think that if we don't help others when we clearly have it made ourselves, we will eventually face the wrath of the poor as they come in and *take* what we wouldn't give.

[Shayne]

Even factoring in death rate Niger is still around 30, I still think this works in favor of my argument, just that the numbers wont be as high.  Consider that Canada goes from 11 to 3 (which is 10x less then that of Niger).

Many of those countries are EXTREMELY wealthy just caught up in their own internal turmoil to actually develop what they have.  I believe its the Congo that has one of the largest oil reserves in the world (http://www.mbendi.co.za/indy/oilg/af/co/p0005.htm).  How much of what we actually send to these places goes DIRECTLY to the people we are trying to help?  I would wager that the number is pretty low as most of it goes to the corrupt.

[Thorin]

Umm, Congo is a terrible example to use as wealth-gone-bad.  Yes, they have a huge reserve of oil.  However, it's the multinational companies that take the oil, pay nearly nothing for it, and sell it at a huge profit in the west.  It's the overpaid executives of the multinationals that rake in a huge share of that money, followed by the profit-driven investors from the west.  The people living in Congo see almost no benefit because we're taking advantage of them.

Now, Congo is a great example of the poor rising up and taking by force what they think they're owed.  There have been hostile take-overs of drilling rigs by striking workers (and I mean the kind where the workers get guns and force all the whites off the rigs, sometimes killing them in the process), large-scale theft of tools and supplies, and wholesale destruction of the equipment as punishment against white management.

At some point, the Congolese might figure out that they can evict by force the multinational corporations and completely control their own drilling and refining efforts, at which time people who invest in the oil companies will make less (or even lose a little) on their investment.  Really, it'll just be a re-distribution of wealth from the overly rich to the overly poor.

[Thorin]

One last thing to mention about the high birth rates in some of these countries - there are lots of countries where a large percentage of babies die before their first birthday.  In these countries, it's common to have more babies in the hope that a decent number of them survive.  With the introduction of better health care, the infant mortality rate has been dropping but the population at large hasn't changed their ages-old habits of procreation.

Now, if we could get them all on the web and addicted to blogging, maybe they'd be making less babies.