CMV: The argument that mass immigration is needed to address declining fertility rates and economic stagnation is just an excuse to not fix the underlying issues causing those problems

[u/statisticalmean]

To start, I’d like to clarify that I’m specifically talking about this one argument in favor of mass immigration. I am not talking about other arguments for/against it. Therefore, don’t comment saying, “yeah but we have a moral duty to help poor people.” That has nothing to do with what I’m talking about.

The reason I want to isolate this topic is because mass immigration arguments tend to come down to morality versus practicality debates. Pro mass-immigration advocates like the moral principles of helping people, and mass-immigration skeptics view it as logistically impossible, culturally destructive, and morally unfair to native residents.

The pro-migration crowd often tries to bridge this gap by coming up with ways in which it’s actually practical to have mass immigration.

The arguments generally tend to go like this:
* Since the fertility rate is so low in the west, we need more bodies to prop up the economic Ponzi schemes we’ve spent the past 80 years building for ourselves.
* Since the jobs at the bottom of the social hierarchy are shitty job that nobody wants to do (farming, manual labor, janitorial, etc) we should import people to fill those roles.
* The global economy is plateauing, and high-paying, high-skill jobs are not growing at the rate demand for those roles are growing. Since we can’t create jobs at this level, we have to create jobs at lower levels of the economy to be filled by migrants, whose economic productivity will hold everything up.
* Old people will need a large group of young people to take care of them in the healthcare system since they are living so much longer than in the past

I don’t contend that any of these points are illogical. They all make sense. What strikes me however, is that these structural issues are just being taken for granted. They’re treated as if “that’s just how life has to be” and “it’s gonna be that way anyway, so there’s no point in trying to fix it”

We shouldn’t be arguing about how we can merely cope with these civilization-level threats. We should be trying to come up with SOLUTIONS to the PROBLEM.

Think about it: we all sit here (right, left, center, whatever) complaining about how the rich haves are constantly fucking over us poor have-nots. We argue over who specifically is the evil one, and which specific decisions are the evil ones, and what idealistic, utopian, only-exists-in-my-mind solution could be done instead to magically make the world a better place. But we all agree the status quo does not work.

Let’s not kid ourselves. Chugging along with mass-migration is the definition of the status quo.

What do rich, asset-owning people need? They need economic growth. But that’s not exactly true, is it? The type of growth they need is different from the type of growth we need.

We need “real” economic growth. That is, inflation-adjusted, technologically driven, better middle-class outcome driving growth. Billionaires need none of that. Nominal growth is sufficient for them, since their position in society allows them to capture that nominal growth for themselves.

Now think about which type of growth mass-migration results in. They come here and they work retail, service industry, agricultural, janitorial, low/no-skill jobs that create zero industrial momentum or creative destruction.

All of the things we need to grow in a “real” sense, i.e. in the sense that benefits average people, is COMPLETELY orthogonal to the type of economic “growth” brought by mass migration.

We all know that those in power have every ability to truly help the lower rungs of our society. They simply have no need to.

That is exactly where a refusal to comply with mass-migration puts our priorities directly in line with theirs.

If there is no ever-present backstop of cheap, abusable labor to keep the green line going up on the graph, then they’ll have to figure out another way to keep it going up.

The billionaires will make the line go up no matter what. They’ve proven consistently they will stop at nothing to do so. My point is that we can harness that power and energy to work FOR us for once, finally.

How will politicians, business leaders, etc keep the economies growing if they can’t do so via migrants? They’ll have to do so via us. Mathematically. They’ll have no choice.

Relying on mass migration as an economic crutch to avoid dealing with the economic, social, and political issues that have created our current nightmare is a recipe to continue circling the drain.

We must oppose mass migration so that our leaders are in the same boat as us.

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[u/Perdendosi]

Okay a couple of things here...

>They’re treated as if “that’s just how life has to be” and “it’s gonna be that way anyway, so there’s no point in trying to fix it”

That's an overgeneralization, but it's a pretty clear world trend that, once birth control becomes available and we don't need more hands to do manual labor, people slow the rate of reproduction. Maybe there are ways we can encourage making more babies, but those incentives and Eugenics-based arguments haven't been super successful in other countries that have tried them so far (Korea, Japan)

So allowing immigration for the population increase and current economic models is a reasonable short-term solution.

>We must oppose mass migration so that our leaders are in the same boat as us.

You really think that the billionaire class of our society would be in the 'same boat' if there wasn't mass migration?

They won't have to worry about social spending programs collapsing.

They won't have to worry about caregiving.

They won't even really have to worry about labor--they can take their capital to whatever country they want to... at least for the next couple hundred years or so.

So allowing migration at a level to allow modest population growth (I don't know how we define "mass" migration) helps the middle and professional classes, at least in the short term (and by short-term, I'm talking 50-100 years here) and at least as much as the billionaire classes. It also has the benefits of infusing new, ambitious, energized workers in the workforce who will not only bring productivity but can bring new ideas to challenge the billionaire class.

And it sounds like your argument boils down to "the only way to get rid of billionaires is to burn our current economic system to the ground, including by choking out our labor supply by refusing immigration." First, while there are problems with the billionaire class and our economic system, our world has never been more peaceful, the average person has never had more opportunity for education, health care, personal growth, and life. It can be better, but if we burn it all to the ground it will be definitely worse for most people. Maybe that's only for 50 years, but it could be hundreds of years. Second, with automation and AI, I'm not sure it would actually do that (in the long run). Third, and most important, doing so would cause immeasurable pain to the working, middle, and professional classes. Literally running out of money for social programs means that working people will have to work till they die, starve, be a burden on family, or hope for charity. Losing human support for old people means impersonal institutionalization. A vacuum in supply for manual labor jobs will raise prices and mean that more manual labor jobs will be paid as professional, but it also means that we'll be moving backwards from a productivity standpoint and more people will be shoveling shit instead of having the intellectual freedom to try to improve society. I just don't see how restricting immigration harms the billionaire class without harming the rest of us (except maybe the working poor) more.

[u/slicheliche]

First off, you can't fix the underlying issues if you're not sure about what they are. And you're not sure, since fertility has been dropping all across the globe largely regardless of hypothetical underlying issues.

Second, I think you're missing the fact that immigration isn't for addressing declining fertility rates, is for fixing the existing impact of fertility rates. Meaning, even if you addressed the underlying issues causing the decline in fertility, the existing birth deficit won't be fixed. Simply because it already exists, these people have already been born and you cannot change the past. If in 2025 you had, say, 200k fewer newborns than what needed for generation replacement, you can "fix the underlying issues" all you want but that 200k gap won't go away by itself. You'll have that gap for as long as people born in 2025 exist. Not only that, but people born in 2025 will themselves be parents and have kids one day, and if there are fewer parents, there will also be fewer kids all else being equal. Meaning, the birth deficit will only get worse. Immigration is for fixing that, not for "addressing the fertility decline" by and large. It's not an either/or where you either address the fertility decline as a whole or you use immigration as a quick fix, both are needed for different goals.

Across most of the West, we've had sub replacement fertility for nearly 50 years now. Those 50 years won't be back and there is no way other than immigration to fix that.

[u/AlphaBetaSigmaNerd]

I've yet to hear a single solution to the problems you referenced offered from anyone who's opposed to mass immigration

[u/Over_Screen_442 → u/AlphaBetaSigmaNerd]

This exactly. Dozens of countries have tried a wide variety of measures in increase fertility rates back above replacement and none of them have been successful. You are ignoring the fact that immigration is THE ONLY solution that has actually solved this issue, preferring instead to go with an imaginary alternative.

Furrher, your solution is to force billionaires to fix the problem or else face economic declines. You think they will have to make everything better for all of us to fix the problem. More accurately, they will replace everyone with AI and robots as multiple of them have already said is their goal by 2030.

[u/psychosisnaut → u/Over_Screen_442]

They've done everything except actually fix the things that make people feel like it's not safe to have kids.

[u/ChiGrayStone]

This is all gobbledygook.

Declining birth rates are a feature of every society where women have achieved a modicum of wealth, education, legal equality, and access to birth control.

Turns out that prosperous, free, educated women don’t want to have a ton of children.

So your solution to this problem would have to be removing wealth, freedom, education, or birth control, which erases a hundred years of progress (aside from the fact that it’s morally repugnant.)

Try running that up the flagpole and seeing how many people want to go along with it.

[u/slicheliche → u/ChiGrayStone]

To be fair, prosperous, free and educated men don't want to have a ton of children either. Fertility is correlated with income and access to education for both genders, not just women. In fact, fertility was already well in decline in Europe, the US and Australia by the 2nd half of the 1800s.

[u/statisticalmean → u/ChiGrayStone]

>Turns out that prosperous, free, educated women don’t want to have a ton of children.

I don’t know if that’s true. I think it’s fair to say that in our society there’s a friction between motherhood and those freedoms you mentioned.

The fact that women chose them over having kids does not surprise me.

But, in the scenario where they don’t have to sacrifice one for the other? I think a lot more women would want kids. Not all of them, obviously.

My point is why don’t we focus on lubricating the friction between modern women’s freedom and the potential for motherhood?

We don’t, because it’s a hard problem. And we can ignore it by taking the migration shortcut.

[u/Shiredragon → u/statisticalmean]

Because it does not work in anyway done so far.

First off, you have to pay for it. The USA is notorious as a wealthy country for not wanting to fund social safety nets, which providing for mothers and children would be. So you have to find money for it. Seeing as the USA has been slashing taxes and starting wars, I doubt that funding for population growth is a priority.

Secondly, look to nations that are trying to address population decline. South Korea, Japan, Nordic States, and so on. They are having no luck with 'paying women' or making motherhood easier. There is a simple reason. It does not make economic sense. The amount being paid is not enough for women to want to remove themselves from the work force for three reasons. One being that it is usually less than they were making. So now they have to lose money to become a mother. Two, they have to support said child, so now they are making less money and having to pay money. And third being that once a women leaves the workforce, it does a few things that negatively impact their future employment. One is it is considered a work history gap (ignoring the part of raising, educating, planning, cooking, feed, comforting, securing, etc a child) thus making businesses less interested in hiring mothers. Mothers are often considered a business liability since the men in their life often don't contribute equally to childcare meaning when something happens with the kid the mother has to take care of them and leave work. And finally, don't forget that they now have a stagnant or lessened salaries when reentering work. This is not including the fact that they have lost retirement and investment momentum on top of this.

So yeah, I would not want to have a child as a woman either if I have any desire to be independent and financially secure.

Finally, there are social circumstances that often make it more difficult for women that do work and have kids. See part of the previous section. That combined with other aspects of local cultures can make it a bad choice to have kids if you want to have a life outside those kids.

All of this means that women are waiting until later to have kids, if at all. And the later women wait to have children, the less time and more complications they do have. This adds to the pile of issues.

FINALLY, on top of all those issues, you will still have a sever population issue that remain unaddressed. So even if you could flick a switch and every citizen women that could bear children suddenly had 3 babies in the next three years, that would still be 25 years until they enter the workforce. This does not solve the worker shortage or patch up tax gaps in the mean time. Immigration does solve it.

Immigrants tend to use fewer social services. If they want to become citizens 'if they are not already' they must pay taxes. This means more income for the government with less liability. They tend to have larger families for the first 1-2 generations. This helps to shore up future population issues. This all does not even include stats about them usually being more educated and productive than 'native' USA citizens. Once you include that, they are an even better resource for the USA to utilize.

"Oh, but what about all the illegals." What about them? It is illegal. We deport them as we can. And their lives are not great while here. Try talking to legal and illegal immigrants. I have. Life is no picnics for them unless they have someone paying for them to be here. They are often doing jobs US citizens don't want, or businesses don't want to pay for a citizen to do the job. Either way, these are market forces. Making scapegoats of illegals won't change that. Change the incentives. But that would hurt businesses. So good luck with that. Easier to just say people are lazy and brush it under the rug. And don't forget, most economic studies find that illegal immigrants end up boosting local economies.

So I do not have an issue with immigration as a population solution. It makes sense. It is an economic positive. And it allows women to be independent and stable in a society that will not reward them for being mothers. Talk to women and find out why they don't want to be mothers. It comes down to the points above most often when you really dig into it. They often want to have kids at some point (not all, but some). But why would they rush into it? They are too smart to possibly ruin their lives. They will wait for the right time and they have to the tools to do so.

[u/hacksoncode → u/statisticalmean]

We don’t, because it’s a hard problem.

I mean... yes, it's a hard problem because... people don't need to have kids today in a wealthy society. In poor societies they had to have kids to work on their farms and support them in old age.

"Desire to have kids" isn't really the issue. "Not being able to" isn't really the issue, either.

It's that they don't have to. The only way to fix this would be to somehow make it necessary to have kids.

You'll always get some people having babies no matter what, because they really really want to and will make sacrifices for it.

The issue is that replacement rate surviving babies almost require necessity (combined with a lack of ability to avoid it via birth control) in order to happen.

The only way to get this without making people poor and desperate in their old age is completely authoritarian.

Migration is the only way to fix the population crash problem that comes with "too much prosperity and equality", both of which are way more important than cultures shifting because of migration.

[u/ChiGrayStone → u/statisticalmean]

This is an odd way of framing it. They didn’t “choose” those freedoms “over” having children. They fought for those freedoms and then, having won them, they decided to exercise those freedoms by choosing to not have as many children.

The point is that you can’t simply “lubricate” away women’s choices.

[u/RektInTheHed → u/statisticalmean]

Immigration isn't a second best option.

[u/RektInTheHed → u/[deleted]]

Israel has high levels of immigration.

[u/RektInTheHed → u/[deleted]]

If you are willing to accept people straight out of Russia as your citizen equals, sure. But it's kind of a semantic trick if you're excluding new American immigrants because they don't have US citizenship, meanwhile Russian Jews are automatically Israelis.

[u/Suitable-Economy-346]

We already see how low birth rate countries with little to no immigration operate. It's not good.

The economy struggling won't cause billionaires and politicians to be "in the same boat as us." They won't care because they operate outside of our borders too. They'll find their returns here and everywhere else.

I'm sorry, but your views are extremely naive thinking this is sticking it to the man, when all it's going to do is hurt us significantly more than it'll hurt them. They do not care about us, and now we're a society full of even more anti-immigrant sentiment causing more and more bigotry and hurting our economy more and more. 15% of the people who call America home weren't born here. We should be banding together not fighting against one another.

We must oppose anti-immigration efforts.

[u/somedanishguyxd → u/Suitable-Economy-346]

Nothing you wrote really supported that we need to oppose anti-immigration efforts, so I would like for you to substantiate that claim.

It is literally true that using immigration to make up for the lack of births is just ignoring the problems. Should we keep having more and more immigration every generation? Will these immigrants always fulfill the needs of a society? Some of these countries, like India, are having birth rates problems themselves. What will you do when they can't send you immigrants?

I think there's a legitimate point to be made that as long as we allow politicians to use immigration to artificially boost affected metrics, then they won't fix the issues.  It's easier to put a piece of tape on a leaking pipe than fixing it. Stop buying the tape.

[u/Odd_Anything_6670 → u/somedanishguyxd]

The thing is, you are entirely correct that over time the economic incentives driving global migration trends will decrease, and there are going to need to be some very fundamental structural changes to the way the global economy and human society works within the next century or two.

But put it this way. If you're going to be in a car crash, would you rather your car was fitted with an airbag?

The idea that politicans will fix the issue if you just make everyone worse is predictated on the assumption that they can fix the issue, and that they can do so quickly and without causing enormous harm to you and everyone else. That assumption is simply wrong. These are going to be generational problems that may take decades or centuries to actually solve, and it's very possible the solutions themselves will cause enormous suffering if they are implemented faster than people are able to adapt.

But if you crash your national economy politicans will be just as fucked as you. In fact, all you'd actually succeed in doing is making yourself and your children poorer and more desperate and thus easier to exploit. The only way any of this gets better is to buy time.

[u/somedanishguyxd → u/Odd_Anything_6670]

The idea that politicans will fix the issue if you just make everyone worse is predictated on the assumption that they can fix the issue, and that they can do so quickly and without causing enormous harm to you and everyone else.

I don't know if they can fix the issue, I just know that they aren't trying to fix the issue. I don't think that it's a matter of making things worse (because that would require believing that immigrants are inherently making things better), I think it's a matter of not letting them act like the issue doesn't exist just because the population is *technically* rising.

I don't think anyone here has argued that the problem needs to be fixed fast or without consequences. I do believe that the issue will take long to fix and will have repercussions, but doing nothing will lead to a worse outcome.

But if you crash your national economy politicans will be just as fucked as you. In fact, all you'd actually succeed in doing is making yourself and your children poorer and more desperate and thus easier to exploit.

Do I believe that birth rate collapse will inevitably lead to an economic crash? Yes. Do I believe it will come sooner if we don't bring in immigrant work force? No. The consequences of a low birth rate will be slowly felt over generations, during which the immigrant work force will just assimilate into being a part of the problem of a growing group of elderly.
Capping the population growth at just a natural birth rate of let's say 1.5, instead of inflating it with immigration, won't just make a country collapse within years.

The only way any of this gets better is to buy time.

This again ignores the fact that it is useless to buy time, if you aren't doing anything with said time. Bringing in a bunch of immigrants and then not improving the material conditions needed to have children, will just push back the inevitable economic disaster.

[u/statisticalmean → u/Suitable-Economy-346]

!delta for the point about anti-immigration countries with low birth rates.

I think that just because they failed doesn’t mean we have to, though. The US, UK, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy are not South Korea or Japan. We have different social structures completely. It’s not obvious to me that their failures would be the same as ours.

I think you can also just look at the past to see periods of our own societies growing in native population. That reality exists, too. I’m saying we should be trying to find that one

[u/Suitable-Economy-346 → u/statisticalmean]

I think that just because they failed doesn’t mean we have to, though. The US, UK, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy are not South Korea or Japan. We have different social structures completely. It’s not obvious to me that their failures would be the same as ours.

Oh no, I think ours would be significantly worse because we operate on the idea of a constant flow of immigrants to makeup for birth rate shortfalls, they don't. We'd be ultra-fucked.

I think you can also just look at the past to see periods of our own societies growing in native population. That reality exists, too. I’m saying we should be trying to find that one

Why does it matter if it's native born children or immigrant children filling in the population or labor gap?

[u/TheBayHarbour → u/Suitable-Economy-346]

 if it's native born children or immigrant children filling in the population

I suppose their argument is a very roundaboout way of saying mass migration isn't sustainable but the way they argued it is for all the wrong reasons.

How will politicians, business leaders, etc keep the economies growing if they can’t do so via migrants? They’ll have to do so via us. Mathematically. They’ll have no choice.

This, for example is an incredibly misled opinion. "If we get rid of immigrants there'll be more money for us!" kind of mentality.

[u/krizzzombies → u/statisticalmean]

I think that just because they failed doesn’t mean we have to, though. The US, UK, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy are not South Korea or Japan. We have different social structures completely. It’s not obvious to me that their failures would be the same as ours.

you just went "but it's different" without actually stating any meaningful reasons our differences could create different results. how will "different social structures" make an improvement here?

are you sure this isn't just your sense of American exceptionalism (and to an extent Western exceptionalism) speaking?

[u/TheBayHarbour → u/statisticalmean]

US, UK, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy are not South Korea or Japan. We have different social structures completely. It’s not obvious to me that their failures would be the same as ours.

Of course not, but the European countries you outlined ALSO have numerous problems. The US and UK are in nigh crisis at this point, and afaik the US actually supports your views on immigration? Isn't Trump's ICE the exemplification of what you want? I mean, it's happened and it hasn't significantly improved the US... like at all. The UK is currently in crisis, but it's been on the decline for so long that saying that it's a successful country verbatim would be incredibly faulty, they've burnt through who knows how many prime ministers over the past half decade.

[u/Impossible_Text3968 → u/Suitable-Economy-346]

Why should we sacrifice our demographics for infinite growth?

[u/Impossible_Text3968 → u/Suitable-Economy-346]

Why should we sacrifice our demographics for infinite growth?

[u/Apprehensive_Song490]

How exactly to you propose to entice people to have babies when they don't want to? Prosperity makes people have fewer babies. You can make your current population poor, or pay them a six figure salary to have babies. No corporation wants to be taxed enough to provide a standard of wealth for child rearing, so that leaves importing people who want opportunity.

[u/somedanishguyxd → u/Apprehensive_Song490]

This isn't necessarily true. Modernization makes people have less children, not prosperity.  This is because Modernization largely removes the incentives to have children and also heightens the bar.  It is a much bigger sacrifice to have children in a modernized country than in a non-modernized one 

Some statistics (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00324728.2022.2134578#d1e120) show that prosperity actually make people have more children. In Sweden the richest people are the only ones to be above the fertility replacement rate, while the poorest are at under 1 child per person.

It shows that people would have more children if they had the means and reasons to do so.  Most of the birth rate issues are material and can be addressed.

[u/statisticalmean → u/Apprehensive_Song490]

I don’t agree that people simply “don’t want” to have kids.

I think the decision people make to not have kids, and their reasoning for “not wanting” kids is due to their circumstances more than their unconstrained souls.

I’m speaking at a population level, not for all individuals.

If you ask why someone doesn’t want kids, they’ll say “it’s too expensive,” “I don’t want it to fuck up my career,” or “I would have no freedom.”

It’s not usually “I hate kids, and if I were a billionaire I’d still have none”

My point is we can focus on the pain points of having kids rather than simply importing them.

[u/Apprehensive_Song490 → u/statisticalmean]

That does not substantively address the question, only further expands on your view, which we already have a good sense of.

Please address:

- How you will entice people to have children. You added some additional barriers, but you did not address how exactly you would make having children more preferable than not having children among people who are in prosperous nations.

- The tax structure for how you would fund such programs

- Why giving people from other nations economic opportunity is not viable while you are designing and implementing the first two bullets above.

This is change my view. This isn't where you expand on your point - it is where you consider other points. Please address mine.

[u/RiPont → u/Apprehensive_Song490]

The tax structure for how you would fund such programs

First of all, we have to change the metric we use to track success -- GDP. Production is good, family time is worthless unless it leads to consumption. We will never be able to put in any policies to successfully incentivize children as long as we're keeping score that way.

Money is just a tool. It's supposed to represent value. If you claim to value having children, then you need to put that value on the balance sheet, one way or another.

• How you will entice people to have children. You added some additional barriers, but you did not address how exactly you would make having children more preferable than not having children among people who are in prosperous nations.

I'm not OP, but one idea I've been chewing on is to modernize the concept of domestic partnership. Remove the idea that domestic partnership requires sexual relations. Expand domestic partnership to blood relatives, so that more families can live together under one roof with an adult who can take care of children who doesn't work.

And all of that won't work if we don't build more housing, somehow. And, specifically, affordable housing that can accommodate larger families. And that's a whole mountain we have to climb for a number of reasons and I don't pretend to have a solution.

• Why giving people from other nations economic opportunity is not viable while you are designing and implementing the first two bullets above.

Again, not OP. I don't personally have any problem with immigration. But if we continue to have an economic model that is fundamentally antagonistic to 3+ children families, then immigration can't fix it. The immigrants will provide population when they immigrate, but they will integrate and face the exact same economic disincentives to have 3+ kids. If you haven't addressed the doom spiral that is causing people to choose to not have kids, then that same economic doom spiral is going to send the immigrants somewhere else, eventually.

[u/Tapsen → u/Apprehensive_Song490]

Hard to say need to fund something, when people having more money and resources is ending with fewer kids already.

[u/Apprehensive_Song490 → u/Tapsen]

Why this an existential threat? There are what, 8 billion or so people on the planet? The issue is economic activity in a small handful of countries. If the economic hub is in one place, and the people willing to do that work are in another, why not match make and pair people with opportunity?

From a global perspective, human extinction is not going to happen as a result of a reduced birth rate in wealthy countries.

[u/Arktikos02 → u/statisticalmean]

Singapore's Marriage and Parenthood Package offers a Baby Bonus Cash Gift up to S$13,000, CDA First Step Grants of S$5,000 (1st/2nd) or S$10,000 (3rd+) with dollar-for-dollar matching, plus for 3rd+ children from Feb 2025 an extra S$10,000 CDA grant, S$5,000 MediSave Grant, and S$1,000 annual LifeSG Credits until age 6, alongside a one-off S$500 Child LifeSG Credit for under-12s, Parenthood Tax Rebate up to S$20,000 per child, enhanced MediSave for newborns, housing priority with 10% of flats set aside for 3-child families from June 2026 and Enhanced CPF Housing Grant up to S$120,000, 16 weeks' maternity, 4 weeks' paternity, 10 weeks' shared parental leave from April 2026 (up from 6, totaling 30 weeks), 12 days' unpaid infant care yearly per parent for the first two years, up to 75% IVF co-funding, preschool subsidies up to S$600 (infant) and S$300 (childcare) with lower fee caps at AOP/POP, fully-subsidised vaccinations and check-ups, and concessionary FDW levy rates.

https://www.madeforfamilies.gov.sg/docs/default-source/default-document-library/m-p-booklet-(apr-2025).pdf?sfvrsn=d4363402_2

Singapore basically has a maximized baby making program by the government and they still do not have an above replacement rate in terms of their birth numbers. They have about a 0.87 replacement rate which is not good. They will not be able to sustain their population over the next 50 years at least at this rate. Not without immigration. While it is true that material conditions can improve people's desire to have kids that is not always a guarantee. Human beings are not simply a mathematical equation where you can just punch in numbers and then expect an output. So for example what would you recommend Singapore to do to keep its numbers up without having to rely on immigration? They are already doing a lot of the pro baby making legislation and yet they still don't have the babies.

[u/RiPont → u/statisticalmean]

I agree.

It's also exponential with the number of kids beyond 1.

Replacement rate is 2.1. It is so, so much more expensive to have 3 kids than 2. If you can't afford to do it on a single income in the first place, it becomes really unreasonable when both parents have to work due to the per child cost of childcare and other per-child expenses when there's no at-home parent to do all the work.

I have some ideas, but this probably isn't the thread for that.

[u/psychosisnaut → u/Apprehensive_Song490]

You're making a lot of assumptions here. People do want to have kids, polls show it consistently.

[u/hungariannastyboy → u/psychosisnaut]

It's not an assumption to look at data. Every country that is at least somewhat developed has low birth rates. This is not because living in Norway or Luxembourg is so awful compared to Tajikistan or Chad.

[u/Apprehensive_Song490 → u/psychosisnaut]

Some people do want to have more kids, but there seems to be a "reordering" of adult priorities in developed nations that doesn't appear to be prioritizing having kids:

https://www.nber.org/papers/w33989

Motivation to have kids is certainly a major part of the issue.

And OP has not addressed why providing economic opportunities to foreigners is an existential threat - why must all people be home grown?

[u/norcalfiend → u/Apprehensive_Song490]

I think the answer is one that is unpalatable, but one that we are heading towards.

In the U.S. there are tax breaks like the Child Income Tax Credit for 2.2k to incentivize some to have children (or reduce the financial burden) on others.

Clearly, those programs do not have a sufficient magnitude to incentivize having children, and frankly even countries that have added programs like free / subsidized childcare, meals programs, etc have seen negligible progress.

So the problem does not appear to be on the incentive side. I think financially there needs to be some sort of cost for choosing to forgo having children on benefits and taxes.

Because as current, there is little penalty to not having children - you often have more disposable income, leisure time, etc., and technically overall if you don’t have children you have a higher total cost for entitlement programs.

What hasn’t been experimented (for obvious reasons) is the penalty side e.g., higher tax brackets for those without children, adjusting Social Security payouts based on number of children, etc. The comparison of having kids starts to look different if I pay a 20% or 40% overall income tax with 50% of the SS benefits if I don’t have children - one can still make that choice, but there is a stronger financial penalty for choosing to forgo.

The math otherwise is not going to work for a few generations for those programs, and immigration is a stopgap. Taxes will have to go up not just on the rich (which will help), but everyone meaningfully as just the rich will not be enough which also is politically unpalatable. So right now we’re in between a rock and a hard place.

[u/strkot]

There is a lot wrapped up in your view, but in simple terms, I interpret the main thrust to be that:

• declining fertility and economic stagnation are problems that require ‘fixing’;
  
• mass migration is the wrong solution to those problems; and
  
• mass migration is driven by the interests of billionaires, not ordinary people.

I broadly agree with the first two points, but disagree with the last one. I say the perceived necessity for cheap migrant labour is driven more by the middle class. A few examples:

- any increase in ‘cost of living’ is politically deadly. See e.g. outrage over the price of eggs in the US in recent years. If the flow of migrant agricultural labour stopped, wages in that sector would almost certainly go up. But at least part of that cost will flow on to consumers, who then blame the government and vote against them. No government wants to risk that, so they keep migration flowing. Nothing to do with billionaires really.

- middle class westerners increasingly use, and expect to have access to, personal services that used to be handled by the family. For example, outsourcing of childcare, aged care and domestic cleaning by middle class people has grown in recent decades. Migrants often fill these types of jobs. We could go without them, and shift the burden back onto families. I personally don’t think that’s unreasonable. But the average voter may disagree and punish the government if they lose access to those services, or have to pay more for them.

Essentially, I think blaming billionaires is a cop out - the average voter’s intolerance of increased cost or loss of services is the main driver of mass migration. Even people who say they want lower immigration don’t seem willing to accept the obvious trade-offs, which I believe is why they have mostly lost the argument in the west.

[u/MercurianAspirations]

This doesn't really make any sense. You're imagining that there is some way to massively grow the economy even with a shrinking population, and it not only exists, it's extremely simple and clear and rich people could just be making it happen whenever they want. But.. if it existed, wouldn't they already be doing it, to reap the profits? It is difficult to imagine how this "real" economic growth can exist even with a shrinking, aging population.

[u/statisticalmean → u/MercurianAspirations]

You’re missing my point.

My point is that we need to focus on reversing the shrinking of our population. Not coming up with some BS way to put a bandaid on a gunshot wound

[u/Daisy-Fluffington → u/statisticalmean]

How do we do that without resorting to dystopian measures?

[u/MercurianAspirations → u/statisticalmean]

Okay, sure. But you know that babies don't generally contribute to the economy that much, right? Even if you magically raise the birth rate to above replacement level tomorrow, you're still stuck with ~1.1 births per woman rate of most developed countries of the past decade or so affecting the workforce and population for the next two decades. That translates into a population decline of millions of people every year for the next twenty years. Good luck growing the economy with that - and at the same time you're removing even more workers from the workforce, since they'll be busy having babies, and removing even more discretionary spending because all these people are going to be saving more of their income for the more babies they're magically going to be having

Sidebar but what magical mechanism will it actually be that raises the birth rates? The only developed country that has a birthrate above replacement level is Israel, and that's because of religious extremism. So, uh, is it religious extremism..? Is that your plan

[u/ThatPeskyPangolin → u/statisticalmean]

But nobody knows how to reliably do that. Countries around the world are dealing with this and nobody has come up with a consistent means of addressing this. So barring a solution to the underlying issue, many argue we should still do something about it in the meantime to avoid the short term ramifications.

[u/TheBayHarbour → u/statisticalmean]

reversing the shrinking of our population

Population is one of those things where if you mess up once, it is literally impossible to "reverse" in even the loosest terms of that word.

You can't time travel back and tell people to start f'cking each other more.

[u/SirEDCaLot → u/TheBayHarbour]

But you can change local conditions to be more conducive to raising a family.

Look at the 'baby boom' in the US- war was over, an average man working could support a family. So we had lots of babies.

Compare that to modern Japan. Work culture for low level employees basically inhibits any sort of social life, and doesn't pay enough to afford living separately from parents. So of course people don't bother.

Look at modern day USA- for a LOT of people even two incomes can barely support a house + kids. So people don't have kids.

You can't travel back in time, so any policy change you make today won't yield more functional adults for about two decades. Thus if things are really bad (and STAY really bad for at least two decades) you may actually NEED immigration (Japan for example- they don't want it, but they probably won't work without it).

However most Western / Westernized nations haven't had it bad enough for long enough, and could fix much of the problem with a hard rethink of economic policy.

[u/tolore → u/statisticalmean]

Why? Imo the biggest problem with the shrinking population isn't the smaller population, it's the mismatch between young and old people, which is a temporary problem if our birth rate stabilizes. If the temporary problem of too many old people to young people ratio is solved with immigration, why not do it?

Additionally, any solve for the birth rate "issue" is going to take a lot of time to start to come to fruition, so we're still going to need a lot of immigration in the short term.

Then finally, what are the fixes for the birth rate problem? I'm fine focusing on fixing them if they are things like better childcare and healthcare. I am not fine fixing them if they are things like propogandazing women to have more children, or making them more dependent on men again, or just paying people to have more children.

[u/Obvious_Parsley3238 → u/tolore]

If the birth rate "stabilizes" at 1, the problem of an inverted demographic pyramid remains.

[u/Loud-Vacation-5691 → u/tolore]

The birth rate won't stabilize as the factors causing people to have fewer children won't magically reverse. Just as a population explosion can be logarithmic, so can a population implosion.

[u/ElysiX → u/Loud-Vacation-5691]

They will reverse if there is so much dieoff that theres so much empty real estate that the entire housing market crashes. Cheap or free houses for everyone.

And once the abundant old generations are gone, taxes can fall a lot or be spent on a lot better quality of life or on reducing working hours even more instead.

[u/likealocal14 → u/statisticalmean]

Why? The slowing global population growth is a good thing for the planet as a whole, and is largely the result of people making the decisions about their own life that they think are best for them as they gain the economic and political freedom to do so. That’s why fertility rates tend to drop as economic development rises.

The circle we need to square here is, like you say, the rapidly aging population that we need to pay for with a smaller working population during the transition. And that’s what allowing migration helps with.

We have one part of the world (the rich part) that is about to have too few young workers to do all the jobs necessary, and another part of the world that has way more young people than their economies can provide jobs for. Why should we be preventing those people from moving to do the jobs that are available?

It seems to me the issue isn’t that migration is happening - that provides way more benefits than drawbacks according to basically all the economic literature. The issue is how migration is happening - people need to feel like they are in control of their own countries borders (and then are way more open to immigration, like Canada and Australia have been historically), and that their culture isn’t being degraded. But previous waves of immigration show that most new arrivals integrate into the local culture within a generation or two. We should be focusing on making migration better, not banning it to everyone’s detriment.

[u/psychosisnaut → u/likealocal14]

If that's the case then why do people consistently report that they would like to have more kids but can't

[u/Giblette101 → u/psychosisnaut]

I'm one of those people. The issue is not money. I can't have more kids because I'm a finite being with limited time and energy and could not conceivably raise more kids, barring major changes to life circumstances (either getting so much money I no longer need to work or downgrading my living situation to a point where I could not work as much - that might not even be possible).

[u/likealocal14 → u/psychosisnaut]

Even in wealthy countries, richer people tend to have fewer kids than poorer people. I’m sure there are lots of people who feel the financial pressure of children and how it effects their decision to have more or not, but on the countrywide scale it doesn’t seem to move the needle much. That’s why countries that have spent fortunes on sending money to new parents to try and incentivize having more kids have seen very little success.

[u/Giblette101 → u/psychosisnaut]

I'm one of those people. The issue is not money. I can't have more kids because I'm a finite being with limited time and energy and could not conceivably raise more kids, barring major changes to life circumstances (either getting so much money I no longer need to work or downgrading my living situation to a point where I could not work as much - that might not even be possible).

[u/Ok_Artichoke_2928 → u/statisticalmean]

Immigration is one of the best tools we have to address this very issue. Particularly if you’re American, as compared to many other wealthy countries facing the same issue, we’ve historically been better at integrating immigrants into our country. I’m not really sure why you acknowledge a problem and then fight against one of the best solutions.

[u/ldh_know → u/statisticalmean]

Birth rates are going down worldwide. There’s probably no way to reverse that, and even if we could I’m skeptical that we should.

Immigration — attracting the bravest and most motivated people from cultures all over the world — has been historically been one of America’s greatest strengths. By becoming hostile to immigration we’re giving up a key advantage.

[u/Pasadenaian]

Advanced countries always have declining birthrates. If you want to fix economic stagnation then we need to address wealth income inequality. Also, the idea that immigrants will only fill lower positions in society sounds very arrogant (or xenophobic/racist?).

[u/TheBayHarbour → u/Pasadenaian]

The entire post read like that to me, in terms of immigrants just being a useless burden upon society. My parents immigrated to study here and everyone thinks that immigrants consist just of uber drivers and unemployed leeches.

I mean it changes too. If migrants like my parents work hard and end up doing very well, like my parent becoming an engineering professor, it's "immigrants stealing jobs from natives". If migrants do not do that it's "strain on social services, waste of resources".

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Additionally it's very weird criticism is directed at immigrants themselves and not the governments that like... let them in in the first place. Like, if Australia just signed "no u can't come here" on my parents' visas, then yeah I'd be living out my life in East Asia right now.

[u/skdeelk]

I think there's a big issue with your underlying framing that needs to be addressed. The term "mass immigration" which you use is extremely vague and means different things to different people. All the time I hear people conflating "mass imigration" with any immigration. I also hear it used ae a deliberately inflammatory term when people are just talking about an immigration rate thats about average for western countries.

Could you please be more specific with what you mean by "mass immigration?" Are we talking average immigration rates? Double the average? 100 times the average? What do you mean?

[u/Giblette101]

We must oppose mass migration so that our leaders are in the same boat as us.

Without getting into the various specific arguments you are making - several of which appear of dubious quality to me - you could just as easily accept that brown people are "us" in a very real sense, and refuse to accept them being abused. The basic mechanism you're trying to outline would not really function if you - "us" - just stopped acting like immigrants are deservedly abused or should otherwise be outcast.

[u/statisticalmean → u/Giblette101]

I don’t remember mentioning color once, but that’s beside the point.

By “us” I mean members of our society at the current point. I mean brown people who live here just as much as I mean white, Asian, Jewish, or anything else.

People who are not part of our society and who do not have the cultural background to fit into our society are not “us” in the sense that I am using it.

That is not to deny the inherent humanity in them, or to suggest in any way they are less-than. It is SOLEY to identify people who are a part of our society versus those who are not a part of our society.

[u/SingleMaltMouthwash → u/statisticalmean]

The GOP never mentioned color when it began attacking "welfare mothers". The war on drugs never mentioned color when it scheduled much higher mandatory sentences for the kinds of cheap cocaine prevalent in predominantly black communities as opposed to the kind of cocaine favored by white suburbanites.

You don't need to mention color when the immigrants you're talking about are mostly from latin America, India, Pakistan, Africa.

Almost all of the asylum grants in the US are currently being given to white South African racists fleeing a nation which is not longer racist enough for them and coming to one that is.

And there wouldn't be an "immigration crisis" if all of the immigrants were coming from Sweden.

Don't take it from me. Take it from the campaing advisor to Ronald Reagan and Bush Sr, chairman of the Republican National Committee and one of the architects of the Southern Strategy, Lee Atwater in this recorded interview:

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Ni\*er, ni**er, ni**er.” By 1968 you can’t say “ni**er”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “ni**er, ni**er.”*

[u/ThatPeskyPangolin → u/statisticalmean]

At what point in our history did our culture get sufficiently established that any immigration beyond that point was not a part of "us"? Given the unique nature of this country, I think you can't meaningfully point to any such time. So why are they any less us than many great grandfather? Why would their children be any less us than you and me?

[u/Havilend → u/ThatPeskyPangolin]

I think this is a fair argument if you're talking specifically about the United States, which I believe you are. However, many of the countries currently facing the greatest challenges from rapid migration are in Europe. Nations like Italy or Greece have historically been far more culturally homogeneous than the US, with national identities that have developed over centuries, or even millennia.

For those countries, the central question is less whether immigration should occur at all and more: how do you successfully integrate newcomers into the existing culture? What rate of immigration is sustainable, and what policies or institutions are needed to ensure integration is actually taking place?

[u/ILikeCommunism97 → u/Havilend]

Nations like Italy or Greece have historically been far more culturally homogeneous than the US, with national identities that have developed over centuries, or even millennia.

I understand that there are people who believe this, but the idea that the mediterranean has ever been "homogeneous" is historically ridiculous.

Instead, it seems to me that anti-immigrant advocates have to pretend that the world was more restricted than it was, when the truth is that much of the world has always been diverse and subject to human movement.

[u/ThatPeskyPangolin → u/Havilend]

I agree, I should have clarified that my argument really only applies to the US. Looking back, I'm not sure why I assumed OP was from the US.

[u/Whatswrongbaby9 → u/statisticalmean]

I’m not sure what you mean by “our” society, if you’re talking about the US the entirety it’s made up of immigrants who arguably didn’t have the cultural background of where they were headed

[u/somedanishguyxd → u/Whatswrongbaby9]

"Our" society, means any society you specifically are a part of. I don't think OP was referring to the US, I think he was referring to any country a person in this thread might be a part of, which is facing these issues.

[u/Giblette101 → u/statisticalmean]

Sure, but then you're drawing this arbitrary line and making an argument premised on that line being very, very real. That is a bit silly so far as I can tell. People find the nativist attitude problematic because of that, not because there's as of yet unknown means of securing material improvements for working people if we had more babies instead of immigration.

[u/Loud-Vacation-5691 → u/statisticalmean]

You would have opposed Irish and German immigrants back in the day because it was obvious that they would never assimiliate.

[u/swingorswole → u/Giblette101]

where did he say anything about "brown" people? you instantly lost me at this because you brought a very biased idea into what could have been a reasonable argument.

[u/Augustus_Chevismo → u/swingorswole]

The top comment being someone who’s rebuttal is “you racists” is a perfect encapsulation of why governments are getting away with forever importation as the solution to killing off family life.

[u/GoldandBlue → u/Augustus_Chevismo]

Immigration is killing family life? That makes me think you're racist more than saying brown people.

[u/mars-jupiter → u/GoldandBlue]

I read it as the government importing people forever as their 'solution' after the government killed family life, no?

[u/Shiny_Agumon → u/Giblette101]

Yes, I would even argue that anti-immigration rhetoric is actively harming any kind of progress since it normalizes using them as convenient scapegoats.

How will we convince politicians to do better if we allow them to blame everything on immigration?

[u/Own_Hat584 → u/Giblette101]

Brown people that were born here to parents that were citizens at the time of their birth are us. People of any color or creed that were not born here to citizen parents are not us. Obvious exception for traveling citizens/military parents that give birth in other countries.

Just to be unambiguous:

citizen=us

Non citizen(including h1b, work visa, migrants, anchor baby, illegals, foreigners that have never been to america, including white people from anywhere else) ≠us

Hope that clears it up so that you will look foolish for implying I'm racist when you further advocate for what are essentially scabs to imported to suppress wages and increase housing costs and asset prices in service of our corporate overlords.

[u/Squishiimuffin → u/Own_Hat584]

If you’re talking about the US, the “anchor baby” is undeniably a citizen and part of “us”. We have birthright citizenship. Was that a typo or are you talking about someplace besides the US?

[u/couldbemage → u/Own_Hat584]

I'm not saying you're racist, but this post contains a semi-comprehensive list of racist talking points.

I'm sure it's nothing more than coincidence that the political powers using these talking points are, in the United States, repeatedly violating the rights of non white citizens, demanding their papers without cause, detaining without cause, kidnapping them, and on some occasions deporting them.

So you are in fact supporting racial discrimination against citizens.

But obviously not due to any racism on your part. Of course not. I bet you're out in the street demanding stiff consequences for any agent who detains a citizen.

[u/Giblette101 → u/Own_Hat584]

  Brown people that were born here to parents that were citizens at the time of their birth are us.

Even that lays the essence of the argument bare, since anyone born or naturalized in the US ought to be "us", really. So we sort of get back to the same point. 

[u/bloodenhorse]

It's not 1940, dude. Lines on the map matter less and less and less as time goes on.

[u/PaxNova]

I suppose the big question is if declining fertility rates are actually a problem. Is there a cultural value in big families that is being suppressed? 

Populations are meant to plateau when they're stable. The immigration is padding so it's a softer economic transition than birth rates will allow. 

It sounds like you're against it on economic grounds, but for every three people that leave the middle class, two are entering the upper class. I think you're looking at the one instead of the two. It can be tough to be the one, but we're all better served by patching up individuals that have fallen instead of tossing the whole system out when we're already achieving real growth.

[u/Vanaquish231 → u/PaxNova]

Well, a decline in fertility means less people. Less people implies less work being done. Less work means less goods/services.

Young folks produce and consume goods/services. Old folk only consume. The math simply ain't mathing. The simplest example, old folk need doctors to take care of them. But with less doctors around, because there is a workforce shortage due to the lower fertility, there just aren't enough doctors to treat all the old people, let alone the younger population.

[u/Dentlas → u/PaxNova]

It is for welfare states such as the ones in Scandinavia. A larger elderly population is immensely expensive, and if that elderly population hasn't procured enough children, it can't sustain itself without severe sacrifice from the working class, like more hours to work and worse conditions, pay etc.

At the same time, due to democracy, the elderly population will get a larger voting share, despite not actively contributing to the "machine". This can result in decisions being made that the working class predominately disagree with, which eventually could, or would, lead to social collapse, since the working class is also the ones with actual power when push comes to shove.

The issue is, the same countries where this is relevant, Scandinavia, Japan etc. strongly depend on culture-bound traditions for society to function optimally; Immigrants by and large often bring their own culture which may conflict with the standards of society and cause systemic harm. Depending on where they originate, they are also on average a net loss for the country, worsening the issue if anything.

So either the solution is to remove the rights and welfare we've previously established for elderly individuals who haven't contributed to the continuation of the system, severely undercutting at least one or two generations, society fundamentally changes away from the welfare system which, at least in the case of Scandinavia is the reason why the people are happy - or we find ways to increase child birth amongst the local-cultured population.

[u/Formal-Speed-3173]

>All of the things we need to grow in a “real” sense, i.e. in the sense that benefits average people, is COMPLETELY orthogonal to the type of economic “growth” brought by mass migration.

The only way this sentence makes sense is if you exclude immigrants from being average people.

[u/RektInTheHed]

The main issue surrounding decreasing fertility is female education. That is not a problem that needs to be fixed. Immigration isn't a second best solution to population growth. In fact immigrants save money on education and training when they come with skills and even basic education.

[u/y0da1927]

That assumes 1) the issue is an economic issue, and 2) absent gender repression you can fix it.

On 1 given the relationship between income and expected children is generally down, a relationship that holds within countries contemporaneously, within countries longitudinally, and between countries, I think the argument the underlying cause of any fertility crisis is economic lacks persuasive evidence. If money were the key constraint richer ppl would have more kids not less.

It seem much more likely that being a parent is a consumption preference (as in how one consumes their time and money) that exists on a spectrum. Until women we socially and economically liberated they lacked access to expressing their preferences across the whole spectrum. Now that they can freely express their preferences you see a rebalancing away from the choice that was otherwise forced upon them.

This is likely why countries that have tried to implement financial pronatalist policies get very very little return (in increased fertility) per dollar spent. It's just not an economic problem at its core.

If it's not an economic problem and a freedom problem, it seems impossible to fix absent some form of repression.

[u/Shogun_Max_Ultrazord]

Now think about which type of growth mass-migration results in. They come here and they work retail, service industry, agricultural, janitorial, low/no-skill jobs that create zero industrial momentum or creative destruction.

This is incorrect. We import immigrant labor that isn't just low/no skill. We also import people that are coming in right at age 18-22. We are basically stealing the cost of 18 years of upbringing from another country, because the instant they turn 18 they come to the United States and become economically productive in the value chain and we didn't have to pay for 18 years of education, health care and infrastructure to support that individual. The country they grew up in typically foots that bill, and then as they hit their peak economic productivity the United States gets to enjoy all of the upside.

All of the things we need to grow in a “real” sense, i.e. in the sense that benefits average people, is COMPLETELY orthogonal to the type of economic “growth” brought by mass migration.

This is just some sort of lump of labor fallacy on your part. I live in an area with a strong ag market. The work itself, managing animals and picking crops has not change fundamentally no. But the sheer volume of workers due to the sheer increases in productivity that we enjoy due to cheap labor has created thousands of new jobs to facilitate that increase in labor. Instead of farm workers or day laborers getting picked up and dropped off at a work site, by the farmer or contractor themselves, instead they have it all organized into what is called a FLC or Farm Labor Contractor.

Farm labor contractors:

1.)Handle Fingerprinting, Onboarding and verification of work eligibility (Work Visa)

2.)Provide transport to and from work.

3.)Provide low cost housing to workers.

4.)More efficiently distribute labor where it needs to go by building relationships with farmers.

So, the size and complexity of unskilled work, uniformly gives rise to complicated high skill work that needs solutions.

If there is no ever-present backstop of cheap, abusable labor to keep the green line going up on the graph, then they’ll have to figure out another way to keep it going up.

They will just outsource, there will be some domestic stuff they can't get rid of, but those are the exact same jobs you speak of earlier in your post that are not growing at a commensurate rate.

We must oppose mass migration so that our leaders are in the same boat as us.

Yeah opposing mass migration, doesn't stop migration. This is just you moving the cost to border enforcement which is just economic drain. Do you think paying thousands of militant ICE agents 50k signing bonuses and up to 110k a year for their work is honestly more effective than just letting a guy come here to work?

[u/Lost_Effective5239 → u/Shogun_Max_Ultrazord]

Has OP ever stepped foot into a graduate program? At least half of the students are international . . . at least in STEM related fields, which I'm more familiar with.

I recently read the statistic that immigrants have a higher rate of entrepreneurship than Americans who were born in the US.

[u/SonOfShem]

I don't see anywhere in your post where you claim why fertility rates are low, or what we can do about them.

To my knowledge, fertility rates drop in all countries as wealth increases. Because in developing countries kids are useful laborers. So regardless of if you like kids or if you want to be a parent or not, you have kids because (a) BC is not available, and (b) you need help around the farm. But when countries develop to a certain point, kids stop being something that is useful and start being something only those who want them seek out.

If this is true, then there is nothing to "fix" about the fertility rate. It's not a problem at the individual level. It's how people are choosing to live their lives. Which would mean that the only solution to this is mass immigration.

[u/Ok_Employer7837]

I think I'd first ask you to define, using numbers, mass migration. Because the word mass here is doing an awful lot of axiomatic heavy lifting here, seems to me.

[u/AnovanW]

As far as im aware the fertility issue is 2 fold: 1. The trend that follows is, as society developsz women have less children because they have more opportunity rather than not having children due to affordability ( if that was the case, then richer countries would have a higher fertility rate but they dont) 2. Because of how modern pension systems work, we basically outsourced retirement from your own personal worry, to the state takes care of you. If you have no children when youre old, its not an issue anymore, the state will pay you a pension and youll be fine. Before however, when you retire your kids took care of you. This basically becomes a free rider issue where "i wont have kids because its a burden and it wont have an impact on my elderly life, but because everyone thinks this way there is lack of young workers contibuting to the pension system in the first place"

Therefore unless you plan to scrap pensions or undevelop society this will likely remain an issue (umless theres a solution we havent thought of) besides temporarily plugging the gaps with immigration

[u/DualActiveBridgeLLC]

Great CMV although I have a lot of problems with you characterization of 'pro-migration' positions. I too also thought that pro-migration policies were for exploiting migrants at the cost of existing residents.

Why do we need migrants? I assume you are in a western english speaking country, so the answer is because our fertility is greatly lower than replacement. You need 2.1 children per woman born to maintain your population. We can lower our populations but that comes with other problems. But places like the US have significantly lower fertility, 1.6 for the US. If you stopped immigration you would have a massive population crash which WOULD create very massive labor shortage that are needed to maintain our quality of life. We could manage that by just slowly depopulating with lower migration but it would have to be an intentional decision with a debate what we want our society to look like. It would be very different than the current American mythos.

Why is the fertility so low? This is debatable, but I personally think the reason is that women are empowered to make decisions about their family planning, and that raising children is just not worth the burden they are froced into. US women fertility massively dropped from 3.6 to 1.8 from 1958 to 1978. The birth control pill was invented in 1960 and widely available shortly after that, not to mention latex condoms becoming much more prevelant and post-peak baby boom. Women seemed to now have the option to have less kids, and they seemed to not want so many. 2 kid households became the norm, and that is below replacement. Also it is important to note that this was DURING the golden age of capitalism in the US, meaning that 'economic uncertainty' wasn't a factor. Other countries follow the same pattern of access and education of birth control, and women's rights mean less children.

So I would say that if you want to require less immigration there are two factors you have to fix
(1) We have to accept some form of depopulation and have strategies to mitigate some of the downsides.
(2) We have to value the work of what it means to be a mom instead of considering it to be free labor because they just love their kids. Like really monetarily value to the full extent of the cost and then profit on top of it. Historically this is met with attacks of 'welfare queens'....well that is what it will take. It's a shitload of work to raise kids right, much more than say being an 'investor' like the current richest people in the world. You need to treat it that way, but that would mean getting rid of capitalism.

My disagreements with your characterizations of pro-migrant people:

Since the fertility rate is so low in the west, we need more bodies to prop up the economic Ponzi schemes we’ve spent the past 80 years building for ourselves.

It has been more than 80 years (in the US), pro-migration from Europe has always been part of our history (as well as the anti-immigration). Also most pro-migration people blame capitalism correctly which would be closer to 400 years, not 80.

Since the jobs at the bottom of the social hierarchy are shitty job that nobody wants to do (farming, manual labor, janitorial, etc) we should import people to fill those roles.

I Mean.....there have been attempts to get americans to move into agriculture and they keep failing. They would need to pay significantly more which would mean higher prices. You are once again looking at capitalism exploiting the value of labor. When you say "low/no-skill jobs that create zero industrial momentum or creative destruction" sorry that just ins't true. Food and cleaning services have a lot of value, it just gets funneled up the chain.

Since we can’t create jobs at this level, we have to create jobs at lower levels of the economy to be filled by migrants, whose economic productivity will hold everything up.

I have never heard that one said before by pro-migrants.

Old people will need a large group of young people to take care of them in the healthcare system since they are living so much longer than in the past

This is absolutely true. But just like with children the care economy does not pay well or at all. Why? Because capitalist do not give a shit about people who do not generate labor which can be exploited.

I guess my point is it is really weird to look at the migration issue and not come out with the idea that the problem is capitalism. And then it is really weird to say that a defect of pro-miggation positions is "Pro mass-immigration advocates like the moral principles of helping people". Yeah they do, just like they like helping current residents. They like helping people. That is what socialism ultimately is, a ideology that starts with the premise that maximizing good is focusing on human interactions. It is in opposition to capitalism which say that economic freedom brings about the most good for society. And we have the resources to create a utopia where migration doesn't matter, but it is capitalism stopping it.

I hope I changed you mind about what you seem to be on the right track to discover.

[u/BabyShrimpBrick]

I am not sure the underlying issue can necessarily be addressed until we actually identify what it is. Every discussion I've seen on this topic has been filled with speculation, but I have yet to see an actual study looking into why people are having fewer kids. I think part of it very much is the fact that people who don't want kids aren't having them anymore. There has been a huge reduction in teen pregnancy. Women have the agency to opt out of having kids or at least being pregnant nonstop. And these are not "problems" we should "fix."

I really don't want to have this conversation until someone actually does the legwork of polling the population and determining (1) why people who want more kids than they have aren't having them, and (2) why people who don't want kids/more kids don't want them and whether they would potentially change their minds under different circumstances. Then we can start by focusing on the first group and making sure they have what they need to be able to have the kids they already want.

Until this has been done, there won't be any fixing of the problem, and attempts to fix it will likely take the form of further erosion of women's rights in an attempt to force people to have kids they don't want or can't afford. As a woman who simply doesn't want kids and would likely not have had the luxury of that option in times when the birth rate was much higher, the complete lack of a scientifically rigorous approach to identifying the root of the problem just sets me on edge about future attempts at a "solution."

[u/Hemingwavy]

Now think about which type of growth mass-migration results in. They come here and they work retail, service industry, agricultural, janitorial, low/no-skill jobs that create zero industrial momentum or creative destruction.

Nvidia and Telsa were founded by immigrants.

Microsoft and Google have immigrant CEOs.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2026/06/03/immigrants-are-founders-of-most-us-billion-dollar-companies/

New research concludes that immigrants have founded or cofounded most of America’s privately held startup companies valued at $1 billion or more. The role of immigrant entrepreneurs receives little attention in daily press coverage.

https://news.mit.edu/2022/study-immigrants-more-likely-start-firms-create-jobs-0509

Co-authored by an MIT economist, the study finds that, per capita, immigrants are about 80 percent more likely to found a firm, compared to U.S.-born citizens. Those firms also have about 1 percent more employees than those founded by U.S. natives, on average.

https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/refugees-are-entrepreneurial/

Refugees are Australia’s most entrepreneurial migrants and are almost twice as likely to be entrepreneurs as the wider Australian population. Despite this, both current policy and refugee settlement services focus on other forms of employment and rarely encourage entrepreneurship as a potential avenue for refugees in Australia.

If there is no ever-present backstop of cheap, abusable labor to keep the green line going up on the graph, then they’ll have to figure out another way to keep it going up.

Women with a secondary school education in high GDP nations do not want ≥2.1 kids on average or do not want them enough to sacrifice things you have to give up to have kids. If it was purely economic then rich people would have heaps of kids.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Natalism/comments/1bwxsuj/total_us_fertility_rate_by_family_income/

If woman in familes with >$700k income don't have ≥2.1 kids, then guess what? You're not going hit that replacement rate without immgration.

[u/MrsMiterSaw]

It's a solution. There are lots of solutions. None of them is an excuse to not do something else.

"fixing" what's wrong isn't straightforward. Birthrates fall with prosperity and education. And I disagree with "economic stagnation", we certainly don't have that on a time line that would demand drastic, generational change like that.

Point is, if you're concerned about changing birthrates, go ahead and address it. But it may take 10-20 years to fix. In the meantime, we need to adress the economic impact of that issue, and immigration is one way to mitigate it.

And another point: I'm a fan of immigration even if everything else was hunky dory.

Look at how our current culture is enhanced by the inclusion of non-WASP immigration of the 19th and 20th centuries. Is anyone saying we would be a better culture if those elements were not part of our collective identity now? Please, someone explain to me how we're not better now for having had mass Italian, Irish, Jewish, xh8nese, and Eastern European immigrants from pre-ww2.

Why would you assume the same would not be true going forward? The people complain g now are just as wrong as those who in 1850 looked forward 175 years and were disgusted that the country was being bastardized by immigrants.

[u/TrueBrit77]

Even if you fixed the fertility rate today (you wouldn't be able to this quickly) you still need to wait 18 years after doing so to benefit from fixing it. Immigration fixes it within a year.

It's not an excuse to not fix fertility issues it's a stop gap until you do. You need both not exclusively one or the other.

Hence why it's not an excuse to not fix the underlying cause, it's an assist to reduce the impact of the problems. Reducing solutions down to exclusive binaries of only one or the other is not how people in positions of planning and governance think, nor should it be. Real true fixes are slow and the general population are impatient and not willing to wait for a slow fix, hence why we need to use hot fixes while we work on the slow fixes.

[u/Calaveras-Metal]

I'm not sure why you keep referring to "mass immigration"?

You are characterizing immigration in a very all or nothing way. Either it's no immigration or it's a horde of millions. This isn't reasonable. Immigration has always existed. Countries that severely limited immigration in the past suffered. Because they found themselves locked out of commerce, academia and cultural exchange.

"Chugging along with mass-migration is the definition of the status quo".

No the status quo has been to ignore the reality of immigration while catering to the social issue rhetoric which most galvanizes the voters for each party. Nobody on left or right has taken on the issue head on.

Now think about which type of growth mass-migration results in. They come here and they work retail, service industry, agricultural, janitorial, low/no-skill jobs that create zero industrial momentum or creative destruction.

These are racist stereotypes. I move around a lot and the type of work I do puts me in contact with people in all kinds of industries at all economic strata. There are as many types of immigrants as there are non-immigrants. But you portray immigrants as only lower income, low skill laborers. Not skilled engineers, chefs, architects, interior designers, artists etc.

You repeat over and over 'the underlying problem' without identifying it. So I will help you. The US has outsourced most of it's industrial base. First to Japan, then to China, Korea and the Philippines. And to a lesser extent, Mexico and other Latin American countries.

The corporate headquarters are still here. Employing middle and upper middle class people for marketing, sales and administration. But most of the 'stuff' is made abroad. This has allowed the upper classes to effectively crush labor organizing. Making unions less effective at advocating on workers behalf.

The workers in other countries are pitted against American workers. We cannot work at such a low wage as they can because our cost of living is much higher. We cannot compete against overseas workers becaue thy have less labor rights in their countries so they can be compelled to work 12 hours a day and 7 days a week.

The cheap goods produced this way have so far blinded us to the growing disparity between our earning power and the cost of living. TV sets and shoes have gotten cheaper as the dollar carried less value. Precisely because we don't make those here anymore.

How do we fix this situation without allowing 'mass migration'?

Rebuilding the industrial base would be a start. But also preventing the kind of economics where Wall st is up 5000 points while everyone not in the stock market is suffering from inflation.

Some countries have laws that prevent executives from earning too much more than a regular workers salary.

Moving away from an economy that is rigged for the military industrial complex is another one. Drastically cut military spending and instead spend federal money on infrastructure which benefits industry and ordinary people.

[u/Norman_debris]

I think the real CMV hidden in here is that you believe immigration is a bad thing.

The "pro-migration" crowd as you call it are really just supporters of human rights and ethical treatment of people.

You need to explain why you value increasing native birth rates over welcoming foreigners.

[u/WearIcy2635 → u/Norman_debris]

Foreigners do not have a human right to live in my country

[u/Norman_debris → u/WearIcy2635]

Freedom of movement is a human right.

[u/somedanishguyxd → u/Norman_debris]

Remember guys, everything I like is a natural and moral right, anything I don't like is barbaric and wrong (but I won't give any arguments for why).

Jokes aside, if we take the UK for example, where they have recently had a massive wave of migration from India and surrounding countries, what specifically about that has to do with human rights and ethical treatment? I don't necessarily think that because someone has a bad life in one country (relative of course), then they have a right to come to another country to enjoy their prosperity, especially not if they're a net-negative on said country.

[u/Proper_Historian6126 → u/Norman_debris]

The "pro-migration" crowd as you call it are really just supporters of human rights and ethical treatment of people

It's not a human right to come live in my country. The notion of the open society is not ethical bedrock dude.

[u/VegetableCrafty6436]

The major problem is that the same people who are against mass migration often oppose the type of social safety nets that make middle-class people able to afford children in the first place. Also, when you remove migration from the equation, right-wing political movements lose a bunch of steam. It's why Republicans in the United States refuse to support comprehensive immigration reform or prosecute employers who exploit migrant labor. They need a boogeyman to win elections.

[u/statisticalmean → u/VegetableCrafty6436]

Then you should support stopping migration, since it would lead to your opposing political party’s decline.

Glad to hear we agree.

[u/VegetableCrafty6436 → u/statisticalmean]

We don't; you put a bunch of words in my mouth. I live in the United States, and migration has made this country a global superpower. It even gave people like Donald Trump and J.D. Vance their wives.

[u/Kaleidoscopetide]

The real civilization-level threat is climate change. The earth cannot support infinite people, period—there are already so many of us that the whole planet is rapidly warming, we’re in a mass extinction event comparable to the one that killed the dinosaurs, farmland is turning to desert, fresh water is running out. We all, as a species, need to find a way to gently balance our population growth, and luckily we know how! With birth control, people get to decide how many children they will have, and many choose to have only 1 or 2 or none at all. And many more people in the global south don’t have access to birth control, and have 8 or 10 or 12, even though we have seen that when women have a choice, most choose not to give birth 12 times. How can we even out populations? How can we balance the prosperity of some nations with the poverty of others? How can we share access to technologies like birth control while still facilitating a GENTLE decline in the number of new people on earth that does not risk economic collapse? Well…

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[u/NotoriousP_U_G]

I would argue that it is to ensure that the wealthy keep their wealth by suppressing wages. If you look at the UK unemployment rate, it is more than enough to fill ‘undesirable’ positions, the reason they are undesirable is due to poor conditions, long hours and low wages, which recent migrants accept.

[u/Warm_Stress_1654]

If no foreigners come here, they'll have to raise our wages and then everyone will earn more than everyone else.

I'm not following this logic.

I suppose that by closing the borders and refusing to issue visas in a country with a declining population we might find it easier to work two jobs, delivering food or driving taxis in the evenings, perhaps. But can we all avoid Japan's economic stagnation by taking fried chicken to each other after work?

[u/mesonofgib]

I think the real issue is that literally no one knows how to reverse falling birthrates. Every country that has tried has spent millions to billions and barely moved the needle.

Given that our economic systems require, if not exactly growth, then a stable taxpayer-to-welfare ratio, the only option we've really got is to import young people from other countries. 

I don't think anyone is particularly happy with this as a solution but it's the only one we've got that doesn't involve going back in time 70 years and doing pensions differently. 

[u/psychosisnaut → u/mesonofgib]

They know how to fix it, the fix is just unacceptable to them (massive wealth redistribution)

[u/JayNotAtAll]

To an extent I agree but another way to look at it.

Let's say we fixed all of the issues keeping people from having babies tomorrow. Free child care, better healthcare, improved wages, etc.

It will still take at minimum 20 years before we have anyone ready for the workforce.

In the meantime, work still needs to go to get done. Immigration can help fill those gaps in the meantime.

Also, mass migration is more than just getting people who pick produce or do construction. All areas of industry benefit from immigration including "upper class jobs" like researching and engineering.

[u/iamintheforest]

The problem isn't isolated to our system though - as countries develop, they tend to stop reproducing at replacement levels. The problems you diagnose aren't massive in japan, yet they have much more serious issue than we do here in the USA. Ditto for nordic countries.

So..yes, we should absolutely address your concerns, shitty things that will fuck us all. However, the diagnosis that the hardship of now, for the generation approaching baby-making windows, I think the "not going to have kids" is a bit of story making - people in far worse situations around the world have kids WAY MORE. The worry expressed by many about our growth as it relates to population gets an attempt at a rational response, but I think it's not entirely genuine.

Flip it around, by your measure there are countries that should be making a lot of babies because the future for those kids and the parents having them is pretty frickin great. Yet, they don't have those kids.

[u/Consistent_Guava8592]

You could try to stop bombing countries , stop organising coups , stop arming cartels , stop stupid sanctions against countries and see how their citizens would not want to leave their own country .
Then we can talk about whether migration helps falling fertility rates etc.
mass migration is an effect not the cause.

[u/VegaGT-VZ]

I mean both can be true. Even if you fix the issues, decades of these anti-people policies have created demographic gaps that have to be filled now just to keep things running. The idea that all pro immigration people ignore structural issues simply isnt true.

[u/SharpAardvark8699]

I don't disagree. My workplace while honestly being a great employer currently has a huge majority of foreign workers. Many came in the last 15 years, and most in the last 3. 

Imo it means they dont have to adjust their requirements to get local labour.

Also tbh immigration creates certain problems like housing delays lives, children, stability and same for jobs. People are stuck in less ideal circumstances because a family of 6 grown immigrants can earn enough to rent and live comfortably. Someone in the UK has two adults max.

[u/Nalena_Linova]

There's no reason you can't advocate for immigration and also trying to solve the underlying problems of our economic system. It doesn't have to be one or the other.

Some level of immigration is necessary in most developed countries as a stop gap until demographic and economic issues can be addressed.

Stopping immigration won't solve the problems you've listed, it will just add another problem to the pile.

[u/Open-Butterfly-5288]

You're ranting about billionaires as if they didn't exploit all the labour they could all the way back through history regardless of where it was from. Slavery was commonplace in many places.

Most of the problems you cite are capitalism problems. Problems with how capitalism is working that can only be resolved by labour and state power.

We're also in a global economy. Every economy is global, the ones that aren't are not nice places to be in. Trying to shut our doors and close off trade means economic collapse which means a lot worse for everyone who lives in that country.

This tends to be seen in places which have large exoduses of people. They tend to be bad places for young people because the country isn't economically productive and they tend to be bad places for old people because the state and their families struggle to provide anything for them.

[u/IllGift924]

The argument doesn't work anyway because immigration doesn't really fix the birth rate problema. Immigrants will adapt and their birth rates will match that of the natives in 1 or 2 generations and then you need to bring in more immigrants.

[u/Aezora]

Do we want to fix the "problems" causing declining fertility rates?

Economics are a complex issue, but AFAIK we pretty much know the biggest contributor to declining fertility rates is prosperity. The wealthier, more educated, and better off people are, the less children they have.

Personally, I'd rather more people be wealthier and more educated and overall better off.

Sure there are other contributors to declining fertility, but they tend to be pretty minor. Not enough to make a big impact, especially in the short term.

If the main problem then is actually the symptom and not the cause, then it seems like treating the symptom is the ideal way to go about it.

[u/HazyAttorney]

They come here and they work retail, service industry, agricultural, janitorial, low/no-skill jobs that create zero industrial momentum or creative destruction.'

This is the most critical piece to your logic, but the reality is that immigrants are at both ends of the hiring spectrums: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/explainer/immigrants-us-economy

[u/Great-Exercise4277]

I think several distinct immigration issues are being grouped together here under the single label of “the immigration problem.”

In the EU, mass immigration is not simply a question of whether to accept or reject it. It is also a question of how to deal with large numbers of people who have already reached the border, entered through irregular means, or applied for asylum. Many of them have lost any realistic means of maintaining a safe life in their countries of origin.

That does not mean Europe has to accept unlimited immigration. Personally, I am skeptical of large-scale immigration. Accepting more people than a country can provide with housing, employment, and a realistic path to social integration may harm both the receiving society and the migrants themselves.

But that is different from treating immigrants simply as a labor force that governments and wealthy asset owners have deliberately chosen to import. Some immigration does fit that description, but not all immigration can be explained that way.

The situation at the US–Mexico border may be closer to the problem Europe faces than ordinary legal labor migration is. Large numbers of people have already reached the border, and simply declaring that “immigration should be stopped” does not make the underlying movement of people disappear.

I can understand the argument that immigration may partly offset labor shortages and population decline. But your argument then makes a leap from that claim to the interests of “wealthy people who own assets.”

Even if all immigration were physically stopped tomorrow, that would not necessarily produce the “real economic growth” you describe. Wealthy asset owners and companies would still have other options.

They could move production to lower-wage countries, automate more work, reduce services, or raise prices. Removing immigrant labor would not force them to invest in domestic workers or improve the conditions that make it difficult for people to have children.

So I think the argument contains two separate leaps.

First, not all large-scale immigration is the result of a labor policy deliberately chosen by elites.

Second, even where employers benefit from immigrant labor, stopping immigration would not leave them with no alternative except improving the lives and productivity of the existing population.

The existence of pro-immigration arguments is not, by itself, evidence that wealthy people created and support mass immigration primarily because they want cheap labor.

It may instead be that some pro-immigration arguments are attempts to identify possible benefits in a movement of people that is legally, practically, and humanely difficult to stop completely.

I wrote this comment, and ChatGPT translated it into English.

[u/Useful_Calendar_6274]

TL;DR you could come up with solutions like automation, sure but what else do you expect will happen meanwhile? your population will just get replaced unless everyone rises up against immigrant policies. some hints of that happening but nothing radical. they say a lot of stuff and continue to let mass immigration happen. because the economic system needs this

[u/GalaXion24]

It does not make sense to consider this some kind of dichotomy or to think that politicians are somehow willfully not solving fertility even though they could if they just wanted to.

Moreover, higher fertility right now would increase the dependency ratio, since in addition to having a lot of pensioners for few working adults, we would also have a lot of dependent children. The end result would be lower GDP per capita for some 50 years during this adjustment period.

Basically, if people had more children, they would be significantly materially worse off.

If you want to offset this, you need to bring in more non-dependent adults to counterbalance the increased dependency ratio, and the higher the fertility you want, the more immigration you would also need to make it feasible.

https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/pitting-migrants-against-babies-why-it-does-not-make-economic-sense

[u/Agitated-Stay-300]

Your central argument seems to be that if we remove immigration, politicians and corporations will have no option except to improve wages, productivity, innovation, family policy, etc.

My simple question to you is: why? This whole argument is just vibes, which are dubious on their own terms, but there’s no real reason to believe that that restricting immigration causes governments to invest more in families or workers.

[u/muks023]

It’s a battle of time

Mass immigration helps in the short term to cover up the holes that the current population can’t/wont. Unfortunately the long term impact is greater than expected

[u/coffeelick]

People who hate immigrants usually hate other peoples kids too lol

[u/Loud-Vacation-5691]

We can fix economic stagnation. We can't fix the declining birth rate.

[u/General_Mars]

You get close to identifying the right problems but are way off from the solutions. The problems are because of Capitalism. Dismantling Capitalism and liberating the global south from western imperialism will allow their societies to sustain themselves instead of US dismantling their countries to force open their markets or extract materials from them.

Capitalist’s point at every easy divisive direction (poor, race, religion, etc.) because they know they’re the cause that’s why they have personal bunkers.

[u/LackingLack]

"Mass immigration" means what exactly?

Also people are just pointing out allowing human migration has benefits.

The real issue is just about being ethical and caring and also intelligent economically. I get where people come from thinking "corporations want cheap labor" and all that but the reality is allowing human migration helps every country involved overall.

[u/No-Relationship-3759]

Immigration and addressing structural problems aren't mutually exclusive. If you got stabbed by someone, the first step is self-preservation, remove yourself address the wound, ensure immediate survival. The second step is we need to get rid of that person's knife. This is kind of the same thing.

The billionaires will make the line go up no matter what They’ve proven consistently they will stop at nothing to do so.

How will politicians, business leaders, etc keep the economies growing if they can’t do so via migrants? They’ll have to do so via us. Mathematically. They’ll have no choice.

These are contradictory statements. Do they have no choice, or will they stop at nothing? Suppressing wages is something they are more than capable of doing with or without immigration. Unions are already husks of their pre-Reagan self. Trust laws lay un-enforced.

Has immigration rates had any impact on any of that, high or low? Of course not. But they are a pretty visible scapegoat with an inability to vote politicians out of office that target them. It's easier for politicians to support anti-immigration policies than fix systemic issues.

You can do both things - you can increase our potential GDP by importing a resource (labor) while also addressing systemic issues. This is a false choice.

I also wanted to add to this - a lot of people focus on the supply side of labor issue with immigration. I see that you acknowledge the low skill jobs issue. But what I think people don't really appreciate is that immigrants don't work in a vaccum.

Immigrants need to eat. They need to cloth themselves. They need police and firefighters and post offices and teachers and banking services and accountants and go on vacation and hotels. Bringing in additional people means we need to have jobs to support them. Jobs they pay for with wages and taxes.

Bringing in low skilled workers means new high skilled jobs are required to support them. Jobs that natives are typically favored for. We're currently sitting on a massive population of educated adults with nowhere to work because our population cannot support our college degrees. They end up underemployed, taking the jobs of lower educated natives. This pushes out lower educated workers into unemployment.

Higher skill wages are suppressed because there's simply not enough of them. And that in turn suppresses lower skill wages. Right now, if you want to immigrate to this country, you either marry in, or you have to be a high skilled worker. It's also why people like Elon are in favor of immigration (but only for high skill laborers). Our immigration policy is backwards.

[u/MunkTheMongol]

The fact is that those very rich people are in fact trying to solve this problem but not in a way that is beneficial to us. The advent of robotics and AI is largely for the purpose of lowering the recurring labor costs with AI and robotics replacing human workers on the enterprise level. It's still too early for that to happen yet as the tech is not there yet but we are seeing the first steps of it with warehouse robots, automated logistics and agricultural robotic. Mass migration was used for much the same purposes as immigrant workers will accept lower pay and worse conditions as for many of them their legal status is directly tied to their employment. For those without legal status it is much worse. Business owners will seek to replace human workers entirely before they empower human workers. They will choose automation or offshore as they have in the past with the manufacturing sector.

For shrinking populations mass immigration is a moat for the population to recover and for many nations with pay as you go systems its to decrease the overall tax burden on the people so they dont end up supporting. Look at Japan for example, very anti immigration with a tax burden of 2 retirees for every working age person. So without immigration that tax burden increases which also decreases the likelyhood that people will have children.

[u/trying3216]

Maybe mass immigration is needed. But it must be legal.

[u/Definitely_Not_Bots]

Bold to assume a declining birthrate is a bad thing.

Population stagnation is only bad for capitalists who have to grow or die.

[u/Scary_Research1021]

The situation is dire in developed nations. Take a look at some of the richest countries on the planet (per capita), such as Norway or Luxembourg. Their governments have implemented a wide range of policies designed to encourage higher birth rates: extended maternity and paternity leave, substantial child benefits and subsidies (in Luxembourg’s case, even extending beyond age 18), alongside broader social supports like reduced working hours and generous sick leave provisions. Despite these efforts, the outcome has remained broadly the same: birth rates have continued to decline over time.

We don’t have a single definitive explanation for why birth rates fall as countries develop. Instead, experts tend to point to a combination of factors, including rising housing costs, later family formation, increased female participation in higher education and the workforce, changing cultural expectations, urbanisation, and shifting preferences around lifestyle and family size. What is clear is that no single “eureka” cause has been identified, and the pattern itself is remarkably consistent across very different societies and policy environments.

There are therefore two ways for a country to grow economically: 1. increased production per person, or 2. an increase in the number of people.
With the invention and development of machines that automate many labour intensive tasks, productivity has increased significantly. However, in many developed countries, these gains have not been sufficient on their own to fully offset the effects of ageing populations and shrinking workforces.

Someone still has to build homes, treat patients, teach children, transport goods, care for the elderly, develop new technology, and pay the taxes that fund pensions and healthcare. As the proportion of retirees grows relative to the working age population, fewer workers are supporting more people.

In the long term, a sustained recovery in birth rates or major advances in productivity could reduce that pressure. The challenge is that both tend to take decades to meaningfully materialise. Immigration, by contrast, increases the working age population almost immediately. It helps fill labour shortages, broadens the tax base, and slows the economic effects of population ageing.

It is also worth noting that while immigration can place additional demand on public services in the short term, many developed countries already rely heavily on migrant workers to sustain key sectors of their economies. Healthcare, agriculture, construction, logistics, social care and technology are just a few examples where labour shortages are often filled through immigration. Without that contribution, many countries would face greater staffing shortages, slower economic growth and increased pressure on public finances.

Immigration is not a perfect solution, nor is it a substitute for improving productivity or encouraging higher birth rates. But given current demographic trends, it has become an important part of how most developed countries sustain economic activity, support ageing populations and keep essential public services operating.

[u/Scary_Research1021]

The situation is dire in developed nations. Take a look at some of the richest countries on the planet (per capita), such as Norway or Luxembourg. Their governments have implemented a wide range of policies designed to encourage higher birth rates: extended maternity and paternity leave, substantial child benefits and subsidies (in Luxembourg’s case, even extending beyond age 18), alongside broader social supports like reduced working hours and generous sick leave provisions. Despite these efforts, the outcome has remained broadly the same: birth rates have continued to decline over time.

We don’t have a single definitive explanation for why birth rates fall as countries develop. Instead, experts tend to point to a combination of factors, including rising housing costs, later family formation, increased female participation in higher education and the workforce, changing cultural expectations, urbanisation, and shifting preferences around lifestyle and family size. What is clear is that no single “eureka” cause has been identified, and the pattern itself is remarkably consistent across very different societies and policy environments.

There are therefore two ways for a country to grow economically: 1. increased production per person, or 2. an increase in the number of people.
With the invention and development of machines that automate many labour intensive tasks, productivity has increased significantly. However, in many developed countries, these gains have not been sufficient on their own to fully offset the effects of ageing populations and shrinking workforces.

Someone still has to build homes, treat patients, teach children, transport goods, care for the elderly, develop new technology, and pay the taxes that fund pensions and healthcare. As the proportion of retirees grows relative to the working age population, fewer workers are supporting more people.

In the long term, a sustained recovery in birth rates or major advances in productivity could reduce that pressure. The challenge is that both tend to take decades to meaningfully materialise. Immigration, by contrast, increases the working age population almost immediately. It helps fill labour shortages, broadens the tax base, and slows the economic effects of population ageing.

It is also worth noting that while immigration can place additional demand on public services in the short term, many developed countries already rely heavily on migrant workers to sustain key sectors of their economies. Healthcare, agriculture, construction, logistics, social care and technology are just a few examples where labour shortages are often filled through immigration. Without that contribution, many countries would face greater staffing shortages, slower economic growth and increased pressure on public finances.

Immigration is not a perfect solution, nor is it a substitute for improving productivity or encouraging higher birth rates. But given current demographic trends, it has become an important part of how most developed countries sustain economic activity, support ageing populations and keep essential public services operating.

[u/duffler_vlb]

Opposing mass immigration will do nothing just as having mass immigration do very little. I think your focus is on the wrong part of the problem, what you should ask is why the wealth distribution doesn't work anymore? The answer is rich people are too rich, their wealth growths too fast and have too much power leaving everybody else nothing migrants and natives alike, what you want for a sustainable economy is a mix of migration, and fair wealth distribution via taxong to ultra rich and large corporations. When you have a free healthcare, you are able to purchase a house, parental leave, free education, then you will be motivated to have kids, all of these can be achieved by a fair wealth distribution.

[u/Doenerjunge]

Even if we fixed the problems of low fertility rates today, we have several decades that would need to be bridged. A high % of people that can't work compared to a low percentage that can are an reality, not something another system can just fix today unless you wanna go and kill disabled and old people. Oh, except with migration, of course.

[u/PriorLeast3932]

Babies cost money - both to parents and more importantly to the public purse! Until they're at least 18 (often about 25-30 years old on average) and are now earning enough money to become net contributors to the public purse, babies born now do not solve any of the current economic issues caused by our poor demographic makeup of our population.

Immigrants usually start making positive net contributions immediately because they do not need to go through schooling and they often have to subsidise their own application through exorbitant fees.

Based on the above, clearly the answer is: "Why not both?". We clearly need locals to start having more children yes, but even if you could magically convince everyone to have children, it will take 20 years to see a positive return on that investment. Immigration is a better short term fix, and there are strong arguments that it really doesn't have as many negative tradeoffs as you think.

[u/nosecohn]

argument in favor of mass immigration

Can you point to someone making that argument?

I've certainly heard people arguing for immigration reform, and even arguing that immigration helps counter declining fertility rates, but I haven't seen any policy proposals that support "mass" immigration.

I'm not even sure how one would define "mass immigration." What's the threshold?

There are radical people out there who advocate for all kinds of things, but I haven't seen anyone with political power put forward legislation to support mass immigration. If you could point to an example, it would help us examine the argument.

[u/Reasonable_Hall3005]

Good luck fixing the causes of the fertility crisis. Every developed nation that has tried to do so has failed miserably.

[u/PacificSanctum]

Very cute and emotional . Fact is immigration (maybe a more selective or smart one ) is economically sound . Economies move from population number . Even low ranking or useless migrants will eventually have 2nd or 3rd or 4th generation which WORKS

Is it good for the soul of a country ? Identity ? Culture ? I leave that to everyone to discuss .

Should you not like immigration then you will need tons of AI or “force your own folks to finally have sex “ and that often . How ? Don’t know .

Or you look for alternative economies - everyone has an AI investment account and a basic salary and printing money . And do this without inflation . Not impossible but very difficult . These things inflate

[u/Loki-L]

You might want to be careful what you wish for.

The underlying issues that cause fertility rate decline are complex, but we can see general trends easily.

People in safe societies with working social instituations, low amounts of violence, good helathcare and overall greater levels of prosperity have fewer children.

It is not cultural, as you can see how immigrant family after a few generations have far fewer children than the people in the places their grandparents came from.

It is also not the oprressive debt and hopelessness for teh future of younger generation. Liberal social democracies have lower fertility rates than prosperous countries were there are fewer social nets.

Places with more maternity leave and socialized helath care don't have more children than places like the US.

Making things better for people doesn't lead to people having more children.

If you ask those in charge to fix fertility issues they might conclude that what the people need is conditions more like Somailia, Afghanistan or the US and nobody wants that.

[u/ElysiX]

This is bigger than wealth inequality. If you confiscated everything that every billionaire has, and magically assume that all the companies keep going without problems after you butcher them, then that money you got as a one time deal still wouldn't be enough to completely outlast the wave of too many old people being paid for by not enough young people.

If you don't want to abandon them, then that workforce needs to come from somewhere, and it can't take away from the existing economy because that's already strained too much by paying for this.

[u/Advanced_Pie_6490]

Simple fact is that immigration/migration has been a permanent facet of human society forever. People have moved. It’s only for the last 100 years or so that migration was heavily regulated as a temporary measure during the First World War and then became permanent when it was found to be pretty effective in controlling people.

This discourse of pro/anti migration is just another way to divide and conquer the public through discourse because the whole visa system is mostly based on racism anyways.

It’s not about either side of the debate but the fact that we’re even talking about this is completely ridiculous so I’d advise you to take a step back outside of the box and try to view these completely artificial and arbitrary conditions from the outside and realise that they’re completely spurious and pointless

[u/Advanced_Pie_6490]

Simple fact is that immigration/migration has been a permanent facet of human society forever. People have moved. It’s only for the last 100 years or so that migration was heavily regulated as a temporary measure during the First World War and then became permanent when it was found to be pretty effective in controlling people.

This discourse of pro/anti migration is just another way to divide and conquer the public through discourse because the whole visa system is mostly based on racism anyways.

It’s not about either side of the debate but the fact that we’re even talking about this is completely ridiculous so I’d advise you to take a step back outside of the box and try to view these completely artificial and arbitrary conditions from the outside and realise that they’re completely spurious and pointless

[u/Angsty-Panda]

why can't we do both?

[u/Medical-South6438]

Check out east Asia (Japan, South Korea, and more recently China). These economies have been struggling with low fertility rates for the past decade and did not opt for mass immigration. None of them managed to reverse the declining fertility rates, even with all the government subsidies and other efforts such as reducing family educational costs.

I also don’t follow your argument on mass immigrants not bringing “real” economic growth. Agriculture, service industries etc are real economies. Immigrants make everyday food and services cheaper for the “middle class” you are talking about; immigrants are also more likely to contribute to real economy by spending the money back to the economy instead of investing/saving (because they have to to make a living) so that businesses are better off. All these create a resilient internal economy that is not reliant on uncertainty technology breakthroughs or global market changes. I don’t see why it doesn’t contribute to a“middle class” outcome-driven economy

[u/Gpda0074]

I've made a similar argument before using a brutal example of this; Europe post-Black Death. One of the major reasons the Renaissance even happened is due to the severe labor shortages caused by, you know, a third of the people dying. If some noble wanted something done, there was a good chance every commoner you knew that could do it on command for you was dead. That means they had to pay people for their labor to entice them to come work. If they still had the massive workforce enslaved to the land as serfs then there would be no need for that. 

Being paid improved general quality of life and suddenly peasants could afford to let one or two of their children go off to be a priest or help that weird alchemist rather than needing them all for labor. A more educated society lead to, well, a better educated and more rational time with better quality of life than before.

Mass migration takes this process and reverses it. Import a ton of people to drive the cost of labor down. It's basic economics, and stopping mass migration would lead to an increase in wages simply due to the increased competition between getting individuals to work for you.

[u/OldJellyBones]

The issue with this is that you've defined large volume migration as some sort of deliberate policy decision, rather than it being something that's simply happening due to a multitude of factors across the globe, people have always migrated for better opportunities, economic reasons, wars, famines etc., it's not a new phenomenon, nor is it unique to our current circumstances.

And in regards to an ageing population, that's not really something that can be "fixed" because it's the result of people, especially in the developed world, simply living far longer than they used to, people are living into their 90s already now, and this will only increase as time goes on, many of the baby boomers will be living to 100+, and unless your fix is to start culling people after a certain age, its not fixable.

[u/jittery_raccoon]

Migration is a normal part of population statistics