this post was submitted on 02 May 2024
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In terms of raw numbers thee US has a huge population so it has more of everything, whether that's immigrants or murderers or doctors or pedophiles.
In perms of the percentage of its population tho, 15% is somewhere in the middle of the pack, well behind countries like Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Switzerland etc.
Boasting that you have more immigration than random countries like Japan is just odd.
He's not boasting; he's saying that immigration would do a lot to solve their problems; and he's correct. I hate Biden's guts but he's correct here. For context Japan is a notoriously xenophobic country and currently sits at a 2%. They're not "a random country".
I mean people deciding to come to your country isn't proportional to your population, or really related at all. It'd be like expecting China to have the same 15% as the US (for context that'd be about 250 million people). That's just not how that works.
There are also different immigration rates for different states, some of which are as big as major countries. There are many states in the US driving the national average down because they have such a low percentage.
Edit: added some stats.
I agree he specifically called out Japan to contrast with the US because its immigration was weaker.
Are you saying fewer people decide to come to the US than to those other countries?
Seems unlikely. Pretty sure the US could let in a lot more immigrants if it wanted to.
I mean yes that's the case for everyone. I'm saying the number of people applying to immigration to the US isn't four times that of Germany, for example, so even if they accept people according to the exact same criteria Germany will have a bigger percentage.
Are you sure? I'd expect the number applying to the US would be hundreds of times higher than the number applying to New Zealand.
I don't especially love or hate Biden btw, I mean I can't stand US foriegn policy on the Gaza Genocide but it's not like their other mainstream politicians wouldn't have done more or less the same. It's a real pity the US hadn't been able to elect someone like Bernie Sanders.
How so? Western, and especially Anglosphere, countries all get ridiculous amounts of immigrants. Also remember that New Zealand is a stone's toss away from South East Asia. It's a very attractive immigration destination for pacific islanders and Asians.
For the same reason we can’t take 15min without the context of the US’s size, smaller countries having larger percentages also need to be contextualized. The raw number does have some meaning here. It’s also about annual rate of immigration.
The US has been wavering between 16% and 15% for about a decade which is when I started taking an interest in this stuff. It's a fairly steady state.
My country has risen from 25% to 27% first generation migrants in that timeframe.
Per capita is a much more useful for comparing effects on total workforce etc.
It's not necessarily good or bad per se. I think there are so many variables at play, everything from type of migration, underlying birth rate of host country through to effect on housing stock and whether taxes and infrastructure can keep pace.
But yeah Biden's speech was just strange given that context.
It would be much more useful to look at it state-by-state as a few states are doing the heavy lifting. I say this as someone is decidedly pro-immigration. The logistics are no small matter
I live in Louisiana. Our only major experience with immigration was hurricane Katrina and they basically rebuilt our communities. I am eternally grateful.