this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2026
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I have to admit that I never thought about that part of the argument. That's such a great point! There are no safe, protected, disabled friendly routes to take to even get in the position to claim asylum
Even not considering asylum. Many countries make harder, or impossible, for folks with certain medical conditions to immigrate through traditional/legal means under the rationale that they might be a drain on the public medical system.
This is one of the things I feel like I can't stand against.
Governments, by origin, were supposed to be for the citizens that they govern and not for anyone else. And ideally a government needs to first and foremost, justify the birthright citizens that are made to pledge fealty to the state.
In this case, immigration is something a government would use as a tool to meet their human resource demands. In turn providing temporary or permanent citizenship to the immigrant and maybe their dependants (family).
Any immigration accepted before knowing that said human resource is required, would essentially be charity.
Now of course, the above is based upon the assumption that the Government has the right to assert its borders. But undoing that would require changing the definition of a country, which will end up causing a lot more changes than just this one, which then need to be resolved in a proper way and only after we get to the complete final result, can we know if it is desirable.
This feels like it would make a nice thought experiment:
That could be the case without colonialism, pollution, foreign interventions, war or expansionism. Your argument is for the single country to do everything to enhance it's own citizens but that has never been a defensive measure. "Protecting the borders" now is a way to completely ignore any past actions that state has done to the world.
People don't choose where they're born. People don't choose what their ancestors have done. To deny the Western World has stolen wealth and caused pollution is madness though. Even now, we introduce environmental restrictions locally but want to buy cheap goods from Asia, so we have and continue to outsource our problems.
When they become uninhabitable, due to the historic wealth extraction, push to industrialise and us throwing money at them to do the things we don't want to do but still keeping the profit and high standard of living, is it any wonder people want to come here?!?
And considering govts are no longer really going by their original reason of existence and really only trying to extract value from citizens, while amassing power, the ideal scenario can't really be played out any more.
Still though, I don't see how accepting immigrants one cannot value, is going to do any good. The birthplace govts should be the ones making their place better for said citizens. It's not like they don't know what standards their people expect.
For those that are making the other countries worse, just accepting immigrants is hardly an acceptable answer. The mindless profiteering needs to be fixed in the first place. A duct tape measure to look charitable, won't really fix the underlying problem.
the problem with this is the assumption that disabled people are net drains on society that is buried in your argument.
From a purely government monetary income and cost perspective there are definitely disabled people who would be a net negative. But yeah sure it does depend on the type of disability and their ability to find work that is compatible.
that misunderstands economics, specifically money flow, and government though. which makes sense why a lot of people would oppose it. give new immigrants to your community some money and where are they most likely to spend it? in your community. give aid to someone who is disadvantaged (not necessarily disabled) and you (1) earn loyalty and (2) get money into your local economy. give aid to someone who doesn't need it and you build resentment. fortunately, right now pretty much 95% of people need help so you don't have to be picky.
Isn't it more that, govts have enough income (immigration) of disadvantaged people with high political value, that they don't really need those low political value immigrants?
For the ideal case: Let's say you have 2 people and only want 1 (you are not low in population). Which would you prefer?
xmoney. You pay Personx-ymoney. Person increases money circulation in community.For the real case:
My assumption is that immigrants are an additional cost to a country (one with an ideal government). The govts also need to worry about spies and political destabilisers sent from outside, which would increase the overhead, per immigrant. So it makes sense to expect a potential immigrant to be part of the workforce.
Whether they are disabled (from a workforce perspective) or not, would depend upon what type of work they do vs their specific disability. Ideally (because I don't know which country you are taking as a basis for your arguments) if someone has an ability specific to their occupation, that makes them a higher value human resource than the cost of offsetting their disability and puts them higher than the govt's expected bar, that would be a good enough reason to accept said immigrant.
Now unless the govt is classifying something that is not a real disability, as a disability, then placing the wrong cost onto it, there is no way I will be calling them wrong. And this very much depends upon the state of technology of the civilisation.