People are fleeing collapsed or collapsing countries, where, quite literally, a death defying trek through forbidding terrain drops them into the clutches of smugglers who will happily leave migrants to die once they’ve been paid. There is no rational process going on where people come here for opportunity. They are coming here to escape hopelessness and utter poverty, anarchic street violence and almost medieval, warlord centric chaos. They will happily take their chances with nothing in the US.

So, homelessness on the streets of the US is preferable to current circumstances for the vast majority of these people making perilous journeys from Haiti, Venezuela, Ecuador, all the way out to Syria and Afghanistan. You’re engaging in magical thinking, imagining a world with incentives aligned to magically cause order if America opens its doors but closes its wallets.

It’s nonsense. The real world incentives for migrants here and in crises across the developed world are the exact opposite of the utopia you’re imagining. Barriers need to be so high and strong (not necessarily physically, but that should be in the mix), so that people see the perilous migration as even less attractive than the misery imposed on them at home. Then, as people discuss, asylum rules can be clarified, and apparatus for applying set up in the home countries, rather than after the dangerous journey. Guest worker programs can and should be enhanced. Employers ability to lure qualified workers can and should be enhanced.

But your pie in the sky, “if you open the door but close your wallet, only the fully self sufficient will come” fantasy should be left to “Field of Dreams” type fantasy movies, not in the real world.
[Post edited by hoolstoptheheels at 02/01/2024 11:49AM]