How's this: immigration keeps wages nailed at the international wage level. Insofar as there are places in the world where poverty and Malthusian traps exist, open immigration is not sustainable. This is where the bulk of resentment is generated, actually
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well there's an easy answer to that question! Singapore is a city-state that aspires to higher and higher levels of GDP. Such is ideology in Singapore. Any government that is prepared to have a 26% foreigner population in the first place - more than a quarter - is not nationalist to begin with. You with the pink card don't look too different from the other guy with the blue card
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Of course the solution to such a indifferent govt is to hold a blue card =p.
I mean, the only difference is that
1. You can't be a taxi driver 2. You can't buy more than one HDB flat 3. You lose out on a few hundred dollars of "Progress Packages" 4. You can't rent those hawker stalls 5. You can't vote (hahaha)
I feel obliged to point out that Milton Friedman argued that liberal immigration policies and a welfare state could not coexist. What he had in mind was to keep the immigration and ditch the welfare state, but the economic argument applies just as well the other way around.
And there are solid economic arguments for a welfare state, so there you go. Most countries have kept the welfare state and in practice have highly restrictive immigration (compared to what open immigration would intuitively be like, given massive international income disparities).
i can't remember where this argument is from but it states that we should all have closed societies, and not allow influences/ contact with the external world (it sounds vaguely ron paulian). societies have an ideal size that they shouldn't exceed, else the government won't be able to govern well. for democracies especially, the larger the countries get, the less people care about the wellbeing of the whole country - and the more they become individualistic.
(of course i understand that this is entirely impractical, and this has less to do with immigration than "what the state of the world should be like", but well - it is a rational defense of conservative/ no immigration policy :P)
your case as you put it is not persuasive. for one, its too simplistic and doesnt take into account the complexity of the whole immigration issue. any account that fails to explore all social/economic/political/cultural dimensions cannot be taken seriously. secondly, what is the 'ideal size' of singapore society? is there an ideal size/is an ideal size important? mm lee recently talked about how singapore should always have at least 60% locals to retain its singaporean character. you could read that as 'ideal constitution'. thirdly, singapore is small and boasts tight security --> it's easy to govern. are you suggesting that the govt cannot govern 5 million people effectively? lastly, there's no simple relationship between the size of the country and the amount people care for their country. for instance, are chinese citizens less patriotic than singaporean citizens?
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I mean, the only difference is that
1. You can't be a taxi driver
2. You can't buy more than one HDB flat
3. You lose out on a few hundred dollars of "Progress Packages"
4. You can't rent those hawker stalls
5. You can't vote (hahaha)
Reply
Reply
And there are solid economic arguments for a welfare state, so there you go. Most countries have kept the welfare state and in practice have highly restrictive immigration (compared to what open immigration would intuitively be like, given massive international income disparities).
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i can't remember where this argument is from but it states that we should all have closed societies, and not allow influences/ contact with the external world (it sounds vaguely ron paulian). societies have an ideal size that they shouldn't exceed, else the government won't be able to govern well. for democracies especially, the larger the countries get, the less people care about the wellbeing of the whole country - and the more they become individualistic.
(of course i understand that this is entirely impractical, and this has less to do with immigration than "what the state of the world should be like", but well - it is a rational defense of conservative/ no immigration policy :P)
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