Progressive Politics

I'll add a tangentially connected piece of my own opinion - immigration is clearly beneficial, following a few simple rules:

0. No labor migration, unless it's a wider agreement meaning citizens another country can freely cross the border. Otherwise a labor migrant can be threatened by deportation, thus becoming legally disadvantaged de-facto. The points further describe immigration, a one-way ticket.

1. No legal disadvantage, an immigrant should be certain that if they get robbed\killed\bullied, there's a legal mechanism that will work to get some kind of justice (until they get citizenship).

2. No filters other than quota, sufficient language knowledge and personal crime history. Filters can be easily abused. Except one - they must have a plan on how do they intend to make their living. Needed in most countries even for long-term visas, so not much to ask. A crowd of third-world country peasants trying to sneak somehow speaking worse English than me (not in text) is not going to pass that. Or if some will - it's for the better even. The rest can look for some other way.

3. Advanced language, basic history (high school level), law (same), economics (same) and culture (the things that natives usually take for given, like not using your left hand for a handshake in an Arab country, or pop culture references, or the general perception of this and that idea, say, ex-Soviet immigrants in many countries, like some my relatives, seem to think they get to be conservative and racist to "brown" immigrants purely due to skin color and that they themselves are perceived as civilized people, well, LOL, why did you immigrate then) courses for immigrants, with exams mandatory to pass very well to get citizenship. However, their children get citizenship due to being born in the country (and receiving the mandatory education and going through other necessary procedures making them, well, not very different from anyone else in the country).

4. No special support nets for immigrants. No tolerance to, say, crowds of illiterate Afghan people who've moved through a few countries, call them shit, but expect to get unemployment payments and social support and live like in heaven once they reach, say, Germany (in this example Germany will be called shit too once the person sees that there it's too expected that they find a job and work for themselves).

5. Maybe programs to help new immigrants with finding a job are fine.

I generally think that citizenship of some countries being an unachievable dream for some who don't have it is a wrong situation. Horizontal mobility has been historically a source of good things. Just have to make sure the rule #3 is followed. And rule #4 - people in some countries live so differently from the west, that their perception of it is as of some magic land where white people give them candy and free stuff, some heaven they have to only get into. Rule #2 too - because we don't know which governments will put which rules into policy, affecting the composition of immigration. Some might prefer ex-Soviet idiots because they vote for people like Trump. Some might prefer Muslims because they vote for the more authoritarian kind of Democrats no questions asked. Some might prefer to let in a wave of poor Afghanis, because it'd be both a good scarecrow for something like sundown towns and a source of cheap labor, affecting labor rights of everyone else and the ability of protests to paralyze economy, for example.

OK, I'm talking about this from Russia, where the problem with Central Asian and other immigrants is that they are basically legally disadvantaged. It's very hard for them to get citizenship, but as a source of cheap labor they work very well. At the same time they won't do anything if the employer, say, takes half of their formal pay, or does something else illegal. Without Russian citizenship they in practice can't do it. All this while technically CIS and EAEU rules forbid all such stuff, but, eh, who can prevent Russia from doing what it can in its own toy integration projects.