Immigration on Mars and Earth
So, in this imaginary scenario we’re going to discuss, there’s good news and there’s bad news. We’re going to start with the bad news.
Earth is being destroyed.
In about six months, the sun is going supernova and a black hole caused by quantum tunneling thingamajigs (insert more scientific sounding words here), and Earth will be wiped out. In other words, the whole human race is about to disappear from the universe, and as you’d expect, most people aren’t taking the news very well.
However, there is one ray of sunshine cutting through this dark, dark scenario.
A future version of Elon Musk, using a time-traveling, quantum locking, reciprocity beam (Don’t ask. Your 21st-century human mind couldn’t comprehend it.), appears and drops off a spaceship capable of carrying 1,000 human beings to a new planet.
Some people thought it might just be an alien pretending to be Elon Musk until he told everyone the ship was called “Enterprise 69” and that its top speed was “420 warp units per hour,” which pretty much alleviated everyone’s doubts about him being an impostor. Unfortunately, he tells us, Mars didn’t work out, but he has found a planet, just like Earth, that the ship can reach. It’s the same size and just as survivable as our current planet. It’s essentially almost exactly like a second Earth. Of course, he calls it “Mars 2.”
There’s a planet-wide raffle and improbably (since there were several billion entries), YOU get to choose the 1,000 human beings that get sent to Mars. This is not as great as it sounds because the rules say that neither you, nor anyone you PERSONALLY KNOW can be on the ship (Sorry mom! Sorry friends! Sorry kids!).
But still, YOU get to be the person who chooses the 1,000 human beings that will either guarantee the human race survives or doom it to failure. The resumes are coming in by the BILLIONS, and it’s your call as to who goes. The survival of the human race depends on you, and you have carte blanche authority to choose ANYONE you want, for ANY REASON you want, with the only goal being to ensure the long-term survival and success of the human race for thousands of years.
Last but not least, before we get started, keep in mind that the amount of equipment that will fit in the ship is somewhat limited, you will have very minimal input or control of what people do on the new planet, AND that 1,000 people really isn’t that many to populate it. There have been several hundred natural disasters that have killed that many humans, and thousands of wars that have, so every pick you make REALLY MATTERS.
So, who would you pick for the mission? To answer that, there are a lot of questions you’d need to answer to help sort through all your potential choices.
For example:
* If people can’t understand each other, it obviously creates a lot of problems, so should all the people on the ship speak the same language?
* Religious strife has been a source of problems on earth, so should everyone be the same religion, or perhaps even of no religion?
* Racial strife has been another big problem, so should everyone be the same race?
* What about ages? The older people get, the less likely they are to have kids, and you’ll need every new baby you can get on Mars 2. Does that mean you should only want people in their twenties?
* What about skills? Do you pick people with the expertise to fill roles the community will need, like doctors, farmers, or engineers, or do you just not worry about that?
* What about IQ? Do you want people who are at least average? Smarter than average? Who’s most likely to survive and thrive?
* What about criminal records? Would a bank robber be out? What about a mugger? How about someone who was in a gang or was convicted of drunk driving?
* How about medical problems? Would you want someone who has a serious illness or is just plain old mentally unwell?
* Would you want high achievers or low achievers? Do you want people who built their own businesses or someone on welfare? Would you want the most successful people you can find or a 26-year-old sleeping in mom’s basement?
* Would you rather have the best people available, or would you rather have family units? Would you want the 7 best people available, or say Jim, his wife, his smart kid, his dumb kid, his wife’s grandma, their uncle with a third-grade education, and their cousin who sleeps in Jim’s garage?
We can go on and on with these, but did you notice it? The thing we SHOULD ALL BE talking about in great detail, but aren’t? The thing that almost no one writes about?
Well, no worries if you didn’t, because I’m going to tell you what that is.
Just as we should be considering questions like this if we were sending 1,000 people to another planet, we should also be considering them NOW as we decide what people we allow to immigrate into our country. In fact, I would go so far as to say that most of the controversy around immigration in America today is because we DO NOT ask the relevant questions about who we should and should not allow to immigrate here.
Because we don’t ask those questions, we have a family-based immigration system. That means we end up with some great immigrants mixed in with a large number of criminals, bums, losers, radicals, welfare queens, and dead weight that no person who cares about America would want here in the first place. This makes immigration an incredibly controversial subject.
On the other hand, as the top destination for immigrants on earth, if we actually took the time to qualify people who came here, immigration would be a huge positive. Who’s likely to get upset about people who respect America, fit in with the culture, keep their noses clean, fill vital roles, and add to the tax base?
Not many people at all.
Alternatively, people SHOULD BE upset when they hear about immigrants talk about what America is doing wrong (Well then, why are you here?), breaking the law (Why would we need more criminals?), and drawing welfare (Why would we need more welfare cases? Why we need more poverty?).
Why in the world would we want to dramatically change the racial or religious composition of the country with immigration? Where is that a recipe for success and harmony anywhere in the world?
The ONE AND ONLY purpose of immigration is to BENEFIT AMERICANS WHO ALREADY LIVE HERE. We would be better off with NO IMMIGRATION AT ALL than a system that doesn’t serve the American people.
America may not be the top destination on the planet forever, but today, we are. In other words, we’re sort of in the same position as a major league team on draft day. Can you imagine them saying, “We don’t really care who we take. When our time to choose comes around, just pick a player at random, ideally someone related to a player that’s already on our team and give them to us.” They don’t do that because one player isn’t just as good as another, just like one immigrant isn’t as good as another.
It’s time for the United States to choose “merit or nothing.” Either we switch to a merit-based system, or we should allow NO IMMIGRATION TO AMERICA other than people who fill out the right paperwork and marry American citizens. Our LEGAL IMMIGRATION SYSTEM in America is completely broken, and it’s time to ask some smart questions that will fix it.
Nicely done. I like the way you set the table. Of course, all immigration should be based on who will contribute to and make America better. When did we decide (and who made that decision) to let in basically anyone whether they are a net negative or net plus provided they came from, let’s be honest, predominantly third world countries?
It’s as if they decided we would try to bring people who would, by and large, dependent on the American taxpayer (and vote accordingly). That so many of those immigrants have worked hard and become self sufficient (and now vote Republican) surely has made the heads of the George Soros’ of the world explode.
I don't know how far back it goes, but the purpose of unmitigated and non-merit based illegal immigration is for vote harvesting by the leftists. They want low IQ deadbeats whose only purpose is to leach off the country they've invaded and to be used as mail-in voters and to beef up the blue state populations to add more seats in congress.