Ah, yes. Of course, in the wake of the fall of the United States, everywhere else on earth will immediately flourish. Just my 2 cents, but before you leave, you might want to talk to some immigrants about what brought them to the United States in the first place.
I assume you mean people who have immigrated from the Netherlands to the U.S. in the past year? It'd be interesting to hear their thoughts, for sure. I don't think the data is available yet, but I expect those numbers are sharply down, so it might not be easy to find anyone to talk to.
100%. I mean people that immigrated to the US from anywhere though. I was joking with a store clerk and mentioned Germany as a potential escape vector. The lady in line behind me says in a German accent, "You don't want to live in Germany."
As if immigrants fleeing Nazis in WWII 90 years ago or folk from less wealthy regions of the world today are a barometer for the state of the Netherlands?
The Netherlands is already doing well today, and don't have the grim outlooks of the current US. It's not perfect and the fall of the US would have enormous impacts, of course, but this seems like a total non sequitur.
I'm not sure I understand your point, nor you mine.
I'm not commenting about the Netherlands specifically, I'm commenting about people leaving the United States for anywhere because they feel similar to you about "the grim outlooks of the current US". It's a common narrative, but about 10x more people immigrate to the US every year as compared to the Netherlands. A lot of people in the US are like, "Trump sucks, I'm moving to Spain." Most of them never will, they just like saying they will. They don't speak Spanish, have no contacts anywhere outside of the US, have never been to Spain, etc. I'm just suggesting that the grass is not always greener on the other side, there are always trade-offs and some of the best ways to learn about those trade-offs is talking with people that have lived in both places.
> some immigrants about what brought them to the United States in the first place.
What brought them to the US is that if they have a kid, now their kid is a citizen. Green card etc waived - you wouldn't deport a family would you? Now they nominally have zero income so they qualify for full on super duper welfare - food, house, medical care. Of course find a job, too - but has to be under the table because no green card. Meaning no taxes either. So free food, free house no rent, free medicine, no taxes. Medical care legally requires accomodations for foreign languages - don't need to speak English either.
I mean, if Japan said, "if you have a kid here, live here on our dime, eat on our dime, free medical care, no taxes" yea I would take that deal!! Can't blame em
Irony of the whole thing? This actually kinda solves the population crisis. Forces people to have a kid. Actually an interesting finding but poorly explored since the powers that be like to bury their head in the sand and pretend 50 million people haven't exploited this.
Other point is well, why did this even happen? Well, the landlords are quite happy to see the feds paying for rent, they'll collect that check, as with the food suppliers and the medical care practitioners - a very nice niche. And the small businesses are more than happy to pay someone under the table untaxed, lower overhead. So the people coming in illegally, they benefit, the people collecting the taxes paying for them, they benefit, everybody else, welp, there goes your tax money
You missed the part where those workers power large sectors of the US economy.
You think produce gets picked, meat processed, and/or construction completed without immigrant labor?
If the plan is to clamp down on illegal immigration, then immigration reform to loosen the legal pathways for low wage labor needs to be passed at the same time.
