I'm not sure what you mean when you say that the rate "is not that good of a guide." Do you mean that you feel the rate of 1.2-1.8 million a year isn't as high as it sounds because the population density of the US is still relatively low?
Keep in mind, Australia also has a very low population density, but you'd have trouble populating the interior.
New Zealand has a very low population density, and is essentially a large national park. Certainly they could up that population density of 16.4/km^2. Should New Zealand aim to increase its population five to ten fold over the next 50 years to catch up? Is New Zealand an "anti-immigrant" country for not allowing this kind of growth through immigration?
You can say "yes", but then you'd have a tough time identifying a country that isn't "anti-immigrant", and I think the US would come off as one of the more immigrant-friendly nations out there. Not the most so, but pretty high up on the list.
I'm not sure what you mean when you say that the rate "is not that good of a guide." Do you mean that you feel the rate of 1.2-1.8 million a year isn't as high as it sounds because the population density of the US is still relatively low?
Yes. I do think the US is one of the more immigrant-friendly nations, but the numbers admitted can't be divorced from their context.
I think what you are replying to was attempting to address the fact that America has a lot of land that is either parks (Yosemite), uninhabitable (Death Valley, Great Plains) or simply unestablished.
No immigrant is going to move into the middle of nowhere; they are going to move to cities or towns. People vs. total area is a misleading number.
So? It's not like we are never going to build any more cities or that none of the existing towns are going to grow into cities in the future. Nor am I claiming that this is the only statistic that matters.
In any case, this is a curious objection to raise in a thread about a story documenting the inability of rural farmers to hire a productive labor force following a change in the law. Quite a lot of immigrants work in the agricultural sector and live a good way away from major cities.
I'm not saying I'm afraid cities will overflow; I'm just attempting to further expand on the point that the people/land ratio is not as transparent and directly comparable between countries as it is sometimes assumed to be.
Keep in mind, Australia also has a very low population density, but you'd have trouble populating the interior.
New Zealand has a very low population density, and is essentially a large national park. Certainly they could up that population density of 16.4/km^2. Should New Zealand aim to increase its population five to ten fold over the next 50 years to catch up? Is New Zealand an "anti-immigrant" country for not allowing this kind of growth through immigration?
You can say "yes", but then you'd have a tough time identifying a country that isn't "anti-immigrant", and I think the US would come off as one of the more immigrant-friendly nations out there. Not the most so, but pretty high up on the list.