I can't even begin to imagine what could fix the immigration system at this point, even with legal immigrants the US has far and away the greatest volume of immigration in the world. It'll take an entirely new conception of how to process immigrants to even have a chance.
... y'know, I had to actually check that statement, 'cause I figured... well. The states say a lot of stuff like that. And there seems to be a sorta' pattern to 'em, some days.
Turns out it's sorta' right! Also sorta' wrong. As more or less expected, s'the charity thing again, except even more exaggerated. The US does indeed have the highest raw number of immigrants.* Per capita? Per capita we're sixty something spots down, going by the
2015 numbers listed here (we do a bit better by the '05 data, being only 40-ish down). There's over
sixty countries in the world with higher immigrant to non-immigrant population ratios. Sixteen if you only include those with an immigrant population over a million. Still second (germany beats us by ~.5% by 2015 numbers -- goddamnit germany, it's the charity thing again, you bastards) if you include those with an immigrant population over ten million.
Of perhaps particular interest is that we're apparently one of the
very few countries (one of only six, of those included in those linked numbers) that has a larger portion of the world's immigrant population than we do immigrants compared to our own -- most countries seem to have more of their population be immigrants than their total immigrant population is compared to the world immigrant population, than the US does. Considering it's before six AM right now and I'm barely awake, I'm not entirely sure what it means, but it definitely stands out.
... really, it looks a lot like our "entirely new conception of how to process immigrants" roughly boils down to "throw at least as big a chunk of our country at it as several dozen other countries seem to manage." Again. Maybe a side order of be as efficient about the process as who knows how many other places.
Again.Noooot going to lie, as noted above I kinda' expected something like that when I went looking. Our country seems to like making statements along those lines, using the sheer weight of being the third most populous single country and having a fuckhuge economy to conceal relative underperformance...
Though hey, I guess we
are doing better than china or india, the two countries with an even larger population! I, uh. I'unno 'bout y'all, but the words damning with faint praise come to mind >_>
*The rate was a bit more of a bitch to find... seems like everyone prefers to keep the numbers as a net
migration rate than provide it separated in any format that's easily accessible and trivially findable. Still, on that metric,
our own cia numbers put us at rank 34 (since their website apparently doesn't allow for direct links to the data, look under people and society, net migration). 33 other countries that have more people coming in than leaving, per capita, than we do. Canada's got us beat. Also on all the other per capita metrics I checked regarding the stuff above. Damnit canada, hats aren't supposed to be smug!
E: It's just... is it really so much to bloody ask that for once, when you go and check the data it actually agrees we're
unequivocally kicking ass? Gets annoying to keep seeing us say we're the best at X and then it turns out fifty other goddamn countries or some shite like that are actually better at X per person. I don't just want to outweigh these blighters, I wanna' outlift 'em, too!
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Topic: Murrican Politics Megathread 2016: There Will Be Hell Toupée (Read 1570685 times)