An interesting look at immigration systems elsewhere in the world

[First]

Japan beats the US in many meaningful categories from economic to crime. Japan is an order of magnitude safer than America.

My statements have nothing to do with crime. Though if the economy were to get bad enough, frankly, I suppose you never really know. See my post above for more info.

 

[agent00f]

Immigration isn't the problem per se, it's the lawbreaking that occurs as a byproduct of keeping our immigration quotas too low. You can declare "build a wall" or "we're a sanctuary city" all day long but unless and until you agree to fix that basic disconnect between legal immigration supply and demand it's going to be an endless problem. For most voters who cite immigration as a concern it's about the lawbreaking aspect of illegal immigration that's a concern and much less about whether they're brown.

Yeah I'm sure their historic perpetual scapegoating of lower status minorities is always about something else.

 

[HeXen]

We have bleeding hearts here in Murica. We need to coddle everyone with big hugs, let them know we love them as we silently judge them and talk shit to our friends.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Population decline is never a good thing and there are, frankly, no particularly good examples of thriving countries with declining populations I can think of. More nominal mouths to feed isn't an issue if the same % of the population is still working. Basic income isn't really a population issue, it's a productivity issue, and is based on technological change which, frankly, is impossible to predict. We could all be on basic incomes in 75 yrs or 100 yrs but if we're in flying cars and mining raw materials in space, I fail to see how basic incomes would be disastrous due to population increases.

There are few examples of population decline period in recorded history period, obviously excluding nations where war/genocide/famine/plague is occurring.

France has always averaged high single digits unemployment, not sure you're aware of that but it is indeed in line with their long-run average. Where is your data for ethic minorities and refugees, and is there evidence that is out of line with historic averages in France?

So is that supposed to be a good thing? France has a long-run average of slow decay.

Per the OECD, foreign-born residents in France see an unemployment rate of nearly 17%, compared to 10% for native-born citizens. For recent refugees, they are frequently less-educated/skilled (an important consideration for employment on its own), and the biggest take-home relevant to my argument is...

"On average, it takes refugees up to 20 years to have a similar employment rate as the native-born.
In the first 5 years after arrival, only one in four refugees is employed, the lowest of all migrant groups. After 10 years, their employment rate reaches 56% but it remains below the employment rate of native-born persons in most countries. A significant part of the difference in the employment rates between refugees and other migrants can be explained by differences in their education level, i.e. that refugees are more often found among the low-educated whose employment rate is far below average"

Um, Germany has been the most generous of the EU countries in refugee intake, yet your point is, uh, what exactly? They "benefit" from the EU? How do you explain their success "despite" massive immigration including most recently a ton of Syrians?

Your post I quoted was about how Germany benefits from EU monetary and trade policy, not refugees. Due to being an economic superpower within a large, relatively-free trade zone with many poorer nations to sell stuff too, it puts Germany in a great position to be a massive exporter of goods. They can use all the labor they can get, not necessarily true of other nations. Let's not forget that Germany is so successful, they can bail out other nations to the tune of a hundred billion dollars, and still come out ahead because of the goods those nations purchase from Germany. If every nation in the EU could just snap their fingers and be like Germany, I'm sure they'd love to be.

Huh? I don't think you understand what you're researching. "The west" (presumably, the US) has grown by leaps and bounds since 2007, which is far and away more than Japan. Per capita income for a country whose population is declining is a misleading statistic, what matters is total wealth, relative pay and wages, etc. None of that outstrips the U.S., Germany or France. See here and here.

I mean most of the West, particularly the European nations you're praising, not just the US. Germany, France, and the UK have all failed to significantly exceed their peak GDPs circa 2008. The pattern follows for most/all of the EU as far as I can tell (interestingly Switzerland has fully recovered and then some). The overall pattern isn't even that different compared to Japan except that they boomed and then busted particularly strongly in the mid-90s (they had their own massive bubble in the late 80s, followed by a tech nation like Japan especially affected by the dot-com bubble).

Also, your second link indicates that Japan beats both France and Germany in terms of whatever metric of income they're using. I was just looking at the OECD values for after-tax income on Wikipedia, where the gap between Germany and Japan is similar to that between Japan and France. By your link, Japan beats France in terms of "Jobs" too (I'm assuming some mixture of employment rate and other things).

With all due respect, you have it completely backwards. Their declining population is, in part, contributing to the labor shortages they have seen. Additionally, and I know it may seem counter-intuitive to you, but generally speaking a juiced-up immigration/population (and not all low-skilled, btw, you're making shit up) will inevitably create more demand, which creates more businesses, which creates more jobs, which would make Japan's labor shortage start to significantly tighten up. They have a real problem with young folks unable to get work, due to a very old population that continues to work, declining total population due to low birthrate (lack of interest in sex, ironic for such a porn capital) and to be fair their crazy regs on hiring/firing based on seniority.

Anyway, please review this labor paper on Japan for further clarity on why foreign labor is critical for them, including to address their labor shortages. I could link a thousand articles, but here's one from the WSJ on Japan I quickly found on Google.

I might have misrepresented you because I particularly meant immigration in the form intended citizenship, not just labor in general. I totally agree that Japan is screwing themselves and the data you've provided show that they need more skilled workers, absolutely. That doesn't mean they need more citizens though, particularly not refugees. As you've also indicated, there are also toxic cultural elements within Japan that overvalue seniority and hurt business in general. What happens when the next bubble of workers retires? Increasing population only works in the short run, but all populations will eventually reach a maximum, and in the case of the nation containing the sprawling, people-living-in-pods metropolis of Tokyo, I don't think that's too far away. I think Japan's worship of the elderly is bad, but if that's their culture, you can't really provide American or European solutions to fix those problems. In any case, I acknowledge that they've been stagnant for a while; my main original contention was that they'd suddenly collapse.

 

[agent00f]

There are few examples of population decline period in recorded history period, obviously excluding nations where war/genocide/famine/plague is occurring.



So is that supposed to be a good thing? France has a long-run average of slow decay.

Per the OECD, foreign-born residents in France see an unemployment rate of nearly 17%, compared to 10% for native-born citizens. For recent refugees, they are frequently less-educated/skilled (an important consideration for employment on its own), and the biggest take-home relevant to my argument is...

"On average, it takes refugees up to 20 years to have a similar employment rate as the native-born.
In the first 5 years after arrival, only one in four refugees is employed, the lowest of all migrant groups. After 10 years, their employment rate reaches 56% but it remains below the employment rate of native-born persons in most countries. A significant part of the difference in the employment rates between refugees and other migrants can be explained by differences in their education level, i.e. that refugees are more often found among the low-educated whose employment rate is far below average"



Your post I quoted was about how Germany benefits from EU monetary and trade policy, not refugees. Due to being an economic superpower within a large, relatively-free trade zone with many poorer nations to sell stuff too, it puts Germany in a great position to be a massive exporter of goods. They can use all the labor they can get, not necessarily true of other nations. Let's not forget that Germany is so successful, they can bail out other nations to the tune of a hundred billion dollars, and still come out ahead because of the goods those nations purchase from Germany. If every nation in the EU could just snap their fingers and be like Germany, I'm sure they'd love to be.



I mean most of the West, particularly the European nations you're praising, not just the US. Germany, France, and the UK have all failed to significantly exceed their peak GDPs circa 2008. The pattern follows for most/all of the EU as far as I can tell (interestingly Switzerland has fully recovered and then some). The overall pattern isn't even that different compared to Japan except that they boomed and then busted particularly strongly in the mid-90s (they had their own massive bubble in the late 80s, followed by a tech nation like Japan especially affected by the dot-com bubble).

Also, your second link indicates that Japan beats both France and Germany in terms of whatever metric of income they're using. I was just looking at the OECD values for after-tax income on Wikipedia, where the gap between Germany and Japan is similar to that between Japan and France. By your link, Japan beats France in terms of "Jobs" too (I'm assuming some mixture of employment rate and other things).



I might have misrepresented you because I particularly meant immigration in the form intended citizenship, not just labor in general. I totally agree that Japan is screwing themselves and the data you've provided show that they need more skilled workers, absolutely. That doesn't mean they need more citizens though, particularly not refugees. As you've also indicated, there are also toxic cultural elements within Japan that overvalue seniority and hurt business in general. What happens when the next bubble of workers retires? Increasing population only works in the short run, but all populations will eventually reach a maximum, and in the case of the nation containing the sprawling, people-living-in-pods metropolis of Tokyo, I don't think that's too far away. I think Japan's worship of the elderly is bad, but if that's their culture, you can't really provide American or European solutions to fix those problems. In any case, I acknowledge that they've been stagnant for a while; my main original contention was that they'd suddenly collapse.

As a matter from first principles, productivity increases are most effective on the lower classes often denied much opportunity. The problem here really are people already in a decent position concerned about their share of the pie which to some degree can be zero sum. Actually in some cases worse than "zero sum" since labor surplus in capitalist systems tend to drive wage down even more than linearly.

Regrettably we're constrained by backward belief systems, particularly the cargo cult surround economics which has little to do actual productivity but who gets paid whatever benefits/output, with very powerful interests guarding what they currently "own". It's also not quite a coincidence that conservatism is directly defined by adherence to backwardness.