
Sell the Right to Immigrate - mhb
http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/archives/2005/02/sell_the_right.html
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patrickg-zill
Canada did/does this sometimes.

It is part of the reason that Vancouver is nicknamed "Hongcouver" - lots of
rich Hong Kong residents got worried over the handover from the British to
China, and bought themselves a guarantee of being able to live in Canada,
should something bad happen.

~~~
msie
Ah yes, racism with a little "r". I shake my head at the "witty" folks of my
home town. :(

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wheels
This sounds like a horrible idea. I think it would tip the scales even further
towards only allowing the rich in (for which the current system is already
biased).

You want the best and brightest. It seems he's using this money as a metric
for determination, but I suspect it'd be more a discriminator for wealth. I
think Paul's idea of allowing founders in and his terms suggested sound like a
better predictor of determination.

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thingie
50.000 dollars (or any similar number) is an unimaginable amount of money
outside US, EU and few other happy countries. No one can afford that, no
matter how hard he would try, even a plane ticket is worth savings of whole
family for just one person.

I guess only organized crime would profit -- provide the money and then
blackmail everyone. The immigrant whose whole family is in giant debt, the
family... For US it would mean communities of hopeless immigrants from poor
countries, entrapped by a vision of better life, held as captives by a mafia.
This already happens, and it could only worsen.

~~~
byrneseyeview
Even in that case, we'd be more likely to get an electrical engineer with a
PhD than an illiterate farmer.

What would happen in a system like this is that the employers would pay for
it. If GE, IBM, or Microsoft got the chance to bring in people like this, they
would take it.

~~~
scott_s
These people probably already get H1-B Visas - which is one of the few (only?)
work visas that also implies intent to become a permanent resident, so they
can file for a green card if their company sponsors them.

H1-B Visas aren't exactly what's being proposed because there's still a
limited number of them each year, but there is a cost to the company for
sponsoring someone.

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Vivtek
I particularly like this quote: "For example, if skilled individuals could
earn $10 an hour in a country like India or China, and $40 an hour in the
United States, by moving they would gain $60,000 a year (before taxes and
assuming 2000 hours of work per year)." And also assuming that the cost of
living for said young person is equivalent in both Silicon Valley and, say,
India.

This guy is a loon.

~~~
andylei
this argument isn't that bad. he makes a bad assumption that living expenses
are the same in both countries, but this can easily be remedied.

say skilled individuals make $1 an hour in India or China, after expenses. say
those skilled individuals make $10 an hour in the United States, after
expenses. In one year, they'd gain about $18,000. If you set the fee lower,
that's not too bad for a skilled worker.

problem is, the bigger issue with immigration is unskilled labor. these people
wouldn't be able to pay back loans for entrance fees, and its there that most
of the issues with enforcement arise.

maybe this would work, but it seems like its solving only a small part of the
problem

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gamble
The US is already selling the right to immigrate, in the form of H1-B visa
holders who are willing to accept indentured servitude in the hope that
they'll eventually get a green card. The difference is that, unlike the scheme
proposed by this author, the benefits flow to a few private companies rather
than to the state.

