NumbersUSA
7 HN recommenders · recommended in 12 months, 2013–2024
6:08 · 6.8M views · Sep 10, 2010
Roy Beck's short gumball presentation using World Bank and Census data to argue that letting people immigrate to the US cannot solve world poverty because the numbers are so large. It is made by NumbersUSA, an immigration-restriction advocacy group.
HN commenters recommend it as a quick visualization of the scale of global poverty versus immigration capacity, though it is advocacy with a specific viewpoint.
12 comments from Hacker News
You didn't answer the question clearly. It seems your answer obliquely is that you don't want it for yourself, you want it because it'd benefit the immigrants. >They don't bite. I grew up in a class of around 50% children of immigrants. I'm aware that they don't bite. But, it's nice of you to instantly assume that I'm a xenophobic person just because I question your policy ideas on immigration. Of course the person who wants 20x immigration would assume the same thing about you, and then you're in the left-wing purity spiral. So let's just leave off the insinuations of personal flaws, okay? >the target should be, if someone wants to come here and make a better life for themselves, they should be able to. Please, please watch this 6 minute TED-style talk on immigration numbers: this video Your basic goal of helping the world is good. But your convictions have completely disconnected you from the strictures of reality. Your goal isn't coherent. If your target is 5x immigration, then you're not even close to your stated goal of accepting everyone who wants to come. 5x immigration would be about 5 million per year. Africa alone adds 30 million people per year via births over deaths. If 1/3 of those want to enter, then you haven't even absorbed most of the population growth of one continent, much less helped existing Africans, or anyone from anywhere else. The entire Western world (USA, Canada, Australia, Europe) is about 15% of the world population. It is simply impossible that 15%
Your points have all been addressed before. See this presentation about the growth in population in 3rd world countries and how immigration is completely incapable of addressing it in any meaningful way -- this video The growth rates and population amounts are simply too high for us to effectively solve the problems of population growth with massive, intercontinental migration. You also can't solve societal and cultural problems (of which the 3rd world and developing world has many) by massive migrations of those populations into first world countries. In effect, you end up simply importing those problems. There's plenty of history and evidence for this. There's never been a case in history where the population of a society is massively overtaken by foreigners and that society hasn't changed dramatically. Cultures and societies are not interchangeable. They aren't equal. It's not racist to say this. You can find undesirable beliefs and traditions among all races and cultures. You cannot fix problematic cultures and societies by trying to emigrate people out of those societies faster than they can produce them. It's far easier to import and export ideas and cultures than it is to migrate people.
Someone else on HN commented that the poor need to stop reproducing in order to improve equality. At first I found the comment kind of troubling, but the more I think about it the more it seems to make sense. Watching this video kind of backs up the point to a degree, even though the topic is immigration. this video Can someone come back with a decent counterargument? I haven't been able to yet. (It's worth remembering that a good percentage of people reading this will be in the top 1% despite not being "rich" by western standards).
He cannot, except some feel-good and virtue signalling slogans. The resources for social support in most developed countries are limited even for their own citizens; taking anyone would quickly overwhelm the system, that's a basic math, even without a napkin. For people, who do not have a good visualisation skills for numbers, there's this video: this video The point is, if you want to help the people in the rest of the world, you have to help them in their countries , which I wholeheartedly agree.
This video, although speaking only about allowing unrestricted immigration to the US, is worth watching for perspective. this video Unrestricted immigration would make the West's social safety nets and healthcare impossible to maintain. There would be corresponding civil unrest as a reaction. The obvious first thing to do about world poverty is provide free birth control and related education.