Writing for The Atlantic, Howard W. French makes an interesting point having a direct bearing on the U.S. immigration debate. Let me summarize his thinking for you.
Highly developed, as well as moderately developed nations are experiencing falling birth rates, to well below the 2.1 children per woman required for replacement. China especially faces this dilemma. The consequent falling ratio of workers to retirees will be a serious problem as nations grapple with soaring eldercare costs.
Oddly, the U.S. does not much share the problem because immigration adds to our population and recent immigrants bring higher birth rates. It is possible population shrinkage was one motive of Chancellor Angela Merkel for allowing Germany to be overrun by immigrants from MENA.
French believes he's made an ironclad argument against the Trump approach to illegal immigrants, I totally disagree. Trump, you'll recall, favors legal immigration. The U.S. can get all the legal immigrants it needs by being selective, as the Australians are.
It will still be important to exclude most unskilled economic migrants. They add far more to our welfare and criminal justice costs than they do to our human capital.
Perhaps we could recruit unskilled migrants into a Foreign Legion, from which 20 year veterans could retire with a pension and U.S. citizenship. It's handy for a nation to have troops who, if killed, are mourned in another country,
