Requiring proficiency in the language is reasonable, but requiring everyone to be richer than the average member of the population and have enough money banked to live off of for 30 years seems insane. That goes well beyond simply making sure that people are able to care for themselves.
The US has something like this, but the income threshold is lower.[1] US immigrants in most categories have to show that they will not become a "public charge", that is, need US welfare benefits.
Every single person who came through Ellis Island <<a href="https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-brooklyn-daily-eagle-precautions-tak/20781025/" rel="nofollow">https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-brooklyn-daily-eagle-...>
* was a legal immigrant
* had passed a medical inspection
* had proof of having enough resources to pay for their upkeep in the US, or a US financial sponsor guaranteeing same
* was turned away if failing any of the above tests, with no possibility of appeal
Shipping liner companies were charged to return ineligible passengers to their origin (the same is true with airlines today), so they had every incentive to verify ahead of time that they could enter the destination country. The "only 2% of immigrants were rejected at Ellis Island" statistic often bandied-about by the pro-open borders side elides the restrictions that caused the rate to be so low in the first place.
I, for one, am very much in favor of reinstating such barriers to entering the US.
Something like two thirds of the US federal budget is spent on some form of welfare. Assuming you want to keep that ratio you could spend more per person with fewer people withdrawing from that system.
This is a statistic that is technically true but has some hidden nuance.
Depending on what gets counted, "public assistance" stats like this usually include medicare and social security. (Social security gets debated because of how it's paid-in, but I'm not here to argue that. The fact is, it gets included in these stats). Those two make up the dominant consumption of public assistance to the point that things we hear about in the media like food stamps are kind of a rounding error.
Medicare and social security are collected primarily by older people. Foreign born populations have much lower numbers of people in that age bracket than the general popualtion.
Combine those two facts and it's not surprising that when you look at charts of foreign born vs native born, the foreign born population uses less public assistance.
It's a statistic that is more about age distribution than anything. Like when you one of those bad maps trying to prove a point but really just showing population density of big cities.
autoexec · · focus · HN ↗
Animats · · focus · HN ↗
[1] <a href="https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/alerts/uscis-issues-guidance-on-making-public-charge-inadmissibility-determination" rel="nofollow">https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/alerts/uscis-issues-guidance-...
TMWNN · · focus · HN ↗
* was a legal immigrant
* had passed a medical inspection
* had proof of having enough resources to pay for their upkeep in the US, or a US financial sponsor guaranteeing same
* was turned away if failing any of the above tests, with no possibility of appeal
Shipping liner companies were charged to return ineligible passengers to their origin (the same is true with airlines today), so they had every incentive to verify ahead of time that they could enter the destination country. The "only 2% of immigrants were rejected at Ellis Island" statistic often bandied-about by the pro-open borders side elides the restrictions that caused the rate to be so low in the first place.
I, for one, am very much in favor of reinstating such barriers to entering the US.
dgellow · · focus · HN ↗
cdot2 · · focus · HN ↗
lokar · · focus · HN ↗
Aurornis · · focus · HN ↗
Depending on what gets counted, "public assistance" stats like this usually include medicare and social security. (Social security gets debated because of how it's paid-in, but I'm not here to argue that. The fact is, it gets included in these stats). Those two make up the dominant consumption of public assistance to the point that things we hear about in the media like food stamps are kind of a rounding error.
Medicare and social security are collected primarily by older people. Foreign born populations have much lower numbers of people in that age bracket than the general popualtion.
Combine those two facts and it's not surprising that when you look at charts of foreign born vs native born, the foreign born population uses less public assistance.
It's a statistic that is more about age distribution than anything. Like when you one of those bad maps trying to prove a point but really just showing population density of big cities.
lokar · · focus · HN ↗