Apr 13, 2006 04:16
(Note - originally a forum post, so there might be a few terms which seem out of place here.)
We're not better or worse than anyone because of where we or they were born, any more than skin color dictates such things. Someone from South Africa has the same potential, or rather the same chance of having potential, as someone from Canada.
Further, due partly to increasing global communications, we are becoming far less aligned by nationality than we used to be, and we're becoming far more aligned by ideologies. For a very simple example, look at pretty much any forum you care to. I know Steph holds reasonably similar views to me on this issue, but we live in different countries. At the same time, I know there are people who live in both England and America who take a diametrically opposed view to mine. By the same token, if you take any issue from abortion to the death penalty, you're going to find people in every country on earth on every side of the issue. Division along national lines is becoming increasing irrelevant - the reality is that it is an entirely arbitrary barrier which serves no purpose other than inciting division, and this reality is becoming incerasingly obvious.
The United States is in absolutely no danger of being overpopulated. With current technologies, it would be possible to house, manufacture for, and feed every single Human being on Earth in an area the size of Texas. Second; the US is one of the least densely populated countries on Earth, and only countries which are predominately inhospitable like Australia are actually much less densely populated. By the argument that nations should have as low a population density as possible, it would be necessary to disperse the Human race equally over all habitable land.
The world's average land population density is 43 people per square kilometer. The United States' is 30 people per sq km. Ergo, the US would have to bring in a significant number of people to be in line, and have a population density of 43 people per square kilometer. That would be about 414,150,000 people in total, or about 115,000,000 immigrants.
Finally, I would contest that the matter of resources should be determined by a free market - in a free market, there is absolutely no grounding whatsoever to preventing immigration, indeed one could reasonably conjecture that without free flow of people in and out, it's not a free market. Now if you don't think a free market system is the best, then my other arguments continue to hold, but that particular debate would be for another thread.
At any rate, without dividing people into 'us' and 'them' there is no particularly strong argument against immigration (It helps the economies of both the original country and the destination. If you can pull up a good set of studies which prove otherwise, we can talk, until then I'll go with what every single study I've ever seen has said.), there is no argument whatsoever for cultural matters (If your culture needs legal protection it doesn't deserve to be on top.), and the arguments for security, whilst valid, are easily remedied by a few security checks for immigrants.
If, on the other hand, you do divide people into 'us' and 'them', I think you should probably get off the internet in case you come across one of those 'forum' things where people from the same country express opposing ideologies, or people from differeng countries express similar ideologies, because if that happens it would necessarily force a re-evaluation of your consideration of people in the same geographical boundries as you as the same, and your consideration of people in different geographical boundries as different from you.