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A thought experiment that is somewhat too large for the small scale questions thread.
Picture for a moment that a first world, rich, western nation decides to implement an open borders policy. Anyone who lives in a foreign nation can, at any time, apply for and receive permanent residency visa and be entitled to work and live in this country. There are no upper limits on the numbers of the people that may settle in the country using this method of entry.
However, there is one restriction. Only women and girls are permitted entry. Y chromosome owners are not permitted entry through this system and the fullest force of the law will be unleashed against any man who is found to be illegally within the country.
This approach should, theoretically, neutralise right wing arguments against open borders. These arguments either have an economic basis (a vast surfeit of labour will decrease pay and bargaining power for domestic workers) or a social basis (large amounts of unmarried, low skill men will cause unrest, violence and buggery). While the labour disruptions remain, a critical mass of unsettled women is unlikely to fuck shit up in the way that a critical mass of unsettled men are. Indeed, if we look to the current debate around migration in europe, there is an undercurrent of violence and hostility present in predominantly male migrants that wouldn't be the case if they were mostly female. The Ukranian migrants generated no such disruption because they were majority women and children.
Assume for the purposes of this argument that the male only border control is fullproof and has no workarounds. What are the effects of this open borders system? Are there any consequences I have not forseen?
They do not, in fact, accomplish this. I will still think the median Somali woman has a net-negative fiscal position, that her children have a net-negative fiscal position, and that the family's expected impact on culture, institutions, and politics is not to my liking (regardless of their merits). Violence and crime have never been my primary complaints about mass immigration, they're a couple factors.
In practice violence and crime is the primary complaint that the public have with mass immigration to the West and long has been. Taking our jerbs is secondary and largely confined to the US (both on the h1B Indian and Mexican laborer sides); Swedes aren’t worried about Somalis taking their jobs. Even Brits weren’t as worried about Poles taking their jobs as some Brexit-related commentary suggested.
It seems relevant that the US maintains consistently lower unemployment rates anyways, though.
Life on welfare is probably worse in the US than in much of Northern Europe.
Relative to the median? Or overall? I can buy that greater social equality in Denmark or Germany puts welfare recipients closer to the average standard of living, but that’s probably as much because the US standard of living is much higher as it is about more generous benefits.
Edit: a quick google suggests Texas'(one of the stingier states relative to income) unemployment payments are something like four times Germany's, and disability is 40% more. I could have inaccurate information and there could be other programs making up the difference, but that points strongly to "Germany has greater social equality between the middle and welfare classes than Texas because the middle class has a lower standard of living, not because welfare pays more".
Does the middle class actually have a lower standard of living in those countries? From the way I see it, I don't think that's the case at all. Sure, relatively speaking obviously it's lower, compared to their own lower classes. I would make the argument that it's possible that prices are going to adjust to whatever the middle class can afford to pay, so all you're doing with lower class/middle class inequality is making life worse for the lower classes with little actual benefit for the middle classes. (And I really don't care about relative benefit, as I think that's not a healthy way to view things)
Based on apartment/house sizes, yes. I’ll grant that Germans have fewer cars partly because they don’t need them, but they also just generally have less stuff in smaller houses.
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