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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   30703 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 19, 2024

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Should the United States switch to an explicitly pay-to-play immigration model? The twin axioms of immigration seem to be:

  1. Elite human capital immigrants entering the country is good.

  2. Low human capital immigrants entering the country is bad.

Much ink has been spilled on attempts to determine which specific groups of immigrants are good or bad, but isn't the most elegant solution simply to charge money for the privilege of immigrating to the United States? People who have acheived success in their home countries are more likely to be high human capital, and needless to say the unwashed hordes would be kept out by sheer inability to pay.

Ideally this would be a complete replacement of the current immigration regime, not an augmentation. I cannot think of any nessesary exceptions off the top of my head. Anyone worth bringing into the country is worth paying for. Passport bros can still exploit economic inequality to snag a mail-order bride, but they will be the ones footing the bill.

I propose a flat rate of $100,000 per green card. Why wouldn't this work?

I always thought Singapore's approach here was at minimum interesting and very in character from what I've read about Lee Kuan Yew. (Quoting from https://globalizationandhealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12992-023-00946-5)

Singapore adopts a bifurcated, two-pronged foreign labour policy in which unskilled and low-skilled workers are subject to different labour schemes compared to higher-skilled workers, who are typically better educated and in managerial positions. Under the Employment of Foreign Manpower Act (EFMA) that regulates the import of foreign labour into Singapore, unskilled and low-skilled workers (hereafter known as low-wage migrant workers) are employed under the Work Permit (WP) scheme while higher-skilled workers are employed under the Employment Pass (EP) scheme. The Work Permit scheme is a temporary foreign worker programme designed to employ low-wage migrant workers to fulfil labour shortages in Singapore. As such, workers admitted under the WP scheme are subject to stricter state control and differential protections under EFMA. The higher-skilled Employment Pass holders are entitled to minimum salaries (at least $5000 per month) with employment benefits such as paid annual leave and medical insurance. In addition, Employment Pass holders are also allowed to freely change jobs, bring dependents to Singapore and integrate into the community by applying for permanent residency in Singapore.

Migrant workers, employed under the Work Permit scheme, are bound to a restrictive sponsorship system known as “kafala” that prevents them from economic and social mobility unlike their higher skilled counterparts. Work Permit holders are tied to the employer, job type and sector they were hired for and are prohibited from changing their jobs or job sectors freely. Work Permit passes have a limited validity of 2 years, and employers have the power to terminate passes without consequence at any time. Additionally, low-wage migrant workers are not entitled to minimum wages, paid annual leave, or medical benefits and basic salary is determined by their skill level (i.e. median monthly salary of SGD 800. They are also disallowed from applying for permanent residency in Singapore or bringing their dependents to Singapore. As a result, low-wage workers are stuck in a cycle of job precarity and transience as they are prevented from establishing roots in Singapore.

Furthermore, while both Work Permit and Employment Pass holders are excluded from subsidized healthcare and social welfare in Singapore as foreigners, Work Permit holders face significant financial barriers to seeking healthcare due to low wages and job precarity.

I do wonder if the optics of being so open about treating people this differently would chafe too hard with the inclination towards some nebulous notion of equality that is almost instinctual for many Americans, including the politically moderate. We already do such things to some extent, but the people who are rejected entry and die in poverty or who break their backs for poverty wages under the table are largely out-of-sight-out-of-mind for American voters. I think being so obviously confronted with the image would make public support for such a scheme inviable.

Fully agree. Americans will absolutely tolerate that Taylor Swift or Warren Buffett are totally unequal to them, but they will not tolerate a formal legal system that deems them so.

Why not? The legal system of special privileges for a different social class already exists in the USA. 'Two-tier policing' in the UK is catching on as a catchphrase to encapsulate the phenomenon of high-frequency criminals being underprosecuted, and it frankly applies to the USA as well. This is somewhat countering the prevailing meta of 'its racist to prosecute minorities more often' because minorities are in fact committing crimes at a much higher frequency than even their incarceration rates confirm, but the prevailing meta is still 'black people are being arrested unfairly'.

The law is unevenly applied, but it hews to observable patterns: rich fucks abuse the tax code, repeat offenders abuse legal protections for minorities or the incarcerated.

Yes, but even they are not permitted to make such policies explicit and legible.

An unevenly applied law that notionally applies to all is still better than different laws for me and thee.

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