"Robert J. Bradbury" <bradbury@aeiveos.com> wrote:
Rafal wrote:
> I would imagine that the proper immigration law
> would, among other measures, do the following: eliminate
> family-based immigration, sell citizenship to anybody able to pay
> [snip]
Sorry Rafal, I have to disagree here. A few years ago the U.S.
added the 2nd part of your policy [wealth based tickets].
I think you have to demonstrate a net worth of around $1M.
The problem is that leaves the door wide open for people
who have accumulated that wealth through illegal means,
Russian mafia members or Columbian druglords for example.
#### One of the measures in my concept of immigration law that I didn't
mention is filtering all persons who cannot prove a legitimate source of
their money or who have a criminal (felony) record (not necessarily all
types of crimes would be filtered, though). I shouldn't have used the word
"anybody" in my statement.
-----
In contrast, since members of my family did arrive in this
country where one sister worked as a servent to bring over
other sisters and brothers from Ireland I'm not so sure
that revoking that criteria is a good idea (unless one can
make the case that there is just cause for changing a policy
that has historically worked fairly successfully).
#### I am here also on a family-type basis, and I do not have a snotty
attitude towards persons using this method to get here but I still think it
should be abolished. If you want your family members to come over, you can
pay for them. If they are young, speak English, have at least high-school
education, the price might be quite affordable. If they are none of the
above, you have to work harder and give more money if you want to have them
here. The case for dropping the policy is economical - you want to have
immigrant at least equivalent to the average American in terms of their
economic potential, if they are not, you demand additional compensation.
----Mike has the right idea, "How do you determine who is going to be a positive contributing member of the crew and who is going to be a detriment?". Randy is trying to apply the filter of education, Rafal is trying to apply the filter of wealth (or more properly the demonstrated ability to function productively in a capitalist economy).
### Since the social world is very complicated, the methods used to achieve good outcomes in social policy frequently need to take many factors into account - in this case, education, age, health, previous records of functioning in the society - all of them make for good crew members.
Allowing essentially unlimited immigration of young, highly intelligent persons, who could significantly contribute within a short period of time to research in computer science, biotechnology, nanotechnology, would accelerate the development of the technologies so dear to Extropians. Blocking these persons' access to the unique opportunities available in the US will delay this progress.
Indiscriminate immigration (e.g. 25 000 000 people/year) would put a heavy burden on the US society and again delay progress.
Therefore, the middle course, well regulated but not restrictive immigration, is most likely to serve Extropian goals.
--- We do have concrete evidence that immigrants from Arab countries have a negative trust quotient while immigrants from Canada or Mexico would seem to have a positive trust quotient. While I hate to say it due to its political uncorrectness should we not use that evidence to protect ourselves?
#### I don't like this idea - since 99+ % in Arab immigrants are not terrorist material, protecting this country by a blanket denial of access, without individual consideration (as in educational or financial testing) would be IMHO rather unjust.
Rafal
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