Nearly 55,000 Haitians have been approved for family visas but are on waiting lists to enter because Congress has set limits on how many may come each year, the State Department says.
There is more information on Haitian immigration here.
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The most basic concept would be to have something like a 10 year moving average for the quota which apparently stands at 25k/yr. Of course, if there are always more wanting to enter than the limit then that’s a problem.
Some day we will have an immigration tax, if we don’t already have one consisting of bribery. The immigration tax will be serviced by a vibrant lending service. Maybe there will be an emigration tax as well. I’m not proposing new taxes, but inasmuch as they are user fees they are an improvement.
Why should Haiti get special treatment?
Why not allow one million immigrants per year each from Haiti, Somalia, Afghanistan, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Mexico, Columbia, Rwanda, Congo, Liberia, …?
Let me say that I believe that “trade” is not limited to goods carried as cargo, but also services and labor, so free trade in my view requires not merely free movement of goods but also people. I believe most advocates of unlimited free trade are really advocates of restricted trade, but some trade goods get special treatment, ie, goods and doctors and engineers move freely when they are a transfer of wealth into the advocate’s nation, but all (perceived) liabilities must be prohibited from entering.
But how about putting it in terms of actual trade? For every US person who exits the US for Haiti, one Haitian can enter the US. Thus Haitians could be aided in the classical terms of comparative advantage – the US human capital – engineers and educators – moving to Haiti would allow the US to contribute what it has in surplus, while Haitian human capital – the illiterate farmer laborers – moving to the US would provide the excess farmers that the US has in short supply. Many rural areas of the US are being depopulated with food production being forced to virtually disappear and be replaced with production of industrial raw materials, all as a result of a lack of Americans willing and able to work on farms.
Immigration aside looking at the pure aid $ numbers
the US seems far far ahead of anyone else.
Maybe the rest of the world ought to help out with the emigration…..
Rahul,
You should instead consider the amount we’ve pledged per capita. Canada has outstripped us 7 to 1 on that front.
We should be certain to import as many corrupted immigrants as our nation can handle, and do it immediately, because our nation is way too honest today and it is harming our future prospects.
Smash:
You have a good point there!
I just re-normalized the visualization . It doesn’t look so good for the US anymore.
Lies, damned lies and visualizations? My bad.
Smash:
If I think about it more then your metric of “$ of aid per capita” is not so good. Let’s take china. They come super low on this metric but they can’t be expected to match this metric since the Chinese average person is poorer than the US average person.
I feel a better metric is then “$ of aid per capita GDP”. In this new chart the US looks much better again . And we actually beat Canada again.
This is more in tune with “rich people ought to donate more than poor people” logic.
In the last plot Ghana and Guyana seem suspicious outliers though. Are they really doing so well as donor nations?
I am thinking that my per capita GDP may not be accurate there…..
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