[extropy-chat] Economic consensus on immigration

[Samantha Atkins]

I don't see how an illegal immigrant especially can extract much  
wealth from the system without working for it.  Last time I checked  
valid id, address and so on were required to get on most welfare  
programs or to enroll in most largely tax subsidized programs.   An  
exception may be K-12 education.  Also many things are closed to non- 
citizens.  So I am not sure I buy that immigrants are extracting more  
wealth due to the welfare state.  Even if they were this would seem  
to be an argument against the welfare state more than against  
immigrants.

- samantha


On May 17, 2006, at 9:50 PM, J. Andrew Rogers wrote:

>
> On May 17, 2006, at 9:11 PM, spike wrote:
>> If any country existed that had no
>> border restrictions, I could imagine the entire world using it as a
>> prison,
>> a dumping ground for welfare cases, a place of exile for the very
>> poor or
>> very sick, anyone the world's governments wanted gone would get a
>> one-way
>> ticket there.  Come to think of it, the US and Australia were both
>> used for
>> that purpose before border restrictions were put in place.
>
>
> I would point out that at the point in time the US (as well as pre-US
> colonies) and Australia were used for this purpose, there was very
> little cost to the average resident (ignoring the usual xenophobic
> rationalizations) because there was very little government to speak
> of, and at least in the US, no taxes to speak of either.  Immigrants
> prospered or withered with relatively little negative consequence to
> those around them, and most prospered in that environment in the way
> that humans tend to.  The argument in modern times for a country like
> Sweden and even the US is that an immigrant has the ability to
> extract a significant amount of resources from the residents by
> default, which increases the risk to residents.  The risk has
> increased, but the benefit has stayed the same.
>
> J. Andrew Rogers
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat