Some fun old LewRockwell.com posts from a while back—which I was reminded of by this recent article: Malta Offers Citizenship and All Its Perks for a Price: “But the residency requirements, meant to make the program more palatable, are only increasing the consternation among critics, who say the program has resulted in the sale of citizenship to the global 0.1 percent.”
Immigration Idea
How about this compromise: we remove all barriers to immigration except one: we charge a fee. I propose we charge somewhere between $1 million and $10 million per family. That way you guarantee you get fairly decent (non-criminal, educated, successful, civil, etc.) quality immigrants.
If, say, 100,000 families (about 400,000 people, say) immigrate per year and pay $1 million each, that’s $100 billion per year.
5:20 pm on September 22, 2004
No Treason’s Chattering Punks
9:52 pm on September 24, 2004
Stephan Kinsella Ought To Shut His Stupid Cake Hole, which rants and raves over my post(2) suggesting selling citizenship rights.
Apparently this has been seriously contemplated before: Study finds Americans against selling citizenship rights discusses a proposal to do this, apparently at about $50,000 per immigrant. Some advocates maintain that: “Selling citizenship or permanent residency would attract ambitious, skilled and energetic people confident in recuperating their investment in citizenship rights within a reasonable period of time….” “The cost of getting a green card would raise about $40 billion a year if 800,000 people paid to enter the country [presumably at a cost of $50K each].”Apparently this was provoked by an article by Shaheen Borna & James M. Stearns, two professors of marketing in Ohio, “The ethics and efficacy of selling national citizenship,” JOURNAL OF BUSINESS ETHICS, 2002 (vol. 37, pp. 193-207).
Who knows, maybe $50K would be more reasonable than the $1million I mentioned. Even $50K would be high enough to help select high-quality immigrants, and restrict numbers to reasonable levels.
I have heard some other countries do sell citizenship rights, but find only spotty stuff on the web about it: e.g., the Kingdom of Tonga; Dominica, Grenada and the four South Pacific nations (Kiribati, Nauru, Tuvalu and Vanuatu); Cyprus; and some libertarians apparently have proposed it before.
Re: Immigration Idea
Look, it’s simple. If we have open borders America will be devastated in a matter of years. Therefore there have to be restrictions based on some criteria. Why not one like this, that improve the quality of, and reduces the number of, immigrants, and helps lower my overall tax bill.
12:36 am on September 23, 2004
I have just received my third copy of my first ever MacLean’s sucsrbiption. I am a senior. I haven’t read this third copy yet. The past two issues are smack full of information. So much that it is difficult for a busy person to absorb. I made the sucsrbiption purchase, to support the magazine’s unrequested effort to support freedom of speech against the over zealous Human Rights Commission.I feel that this is the most important issue in Canada today. It is not only current events it is future events. If the Human Rights Commissions are not revamped the consequences will be truly Orwellian. I am devastated and amazed that noted commentators such as Warren Kinsella can try to dupe us into such a preposterous future to spin a political party. As a former card carrying Liberal and as a personal friend of candidates and as a former activist I KNOW that Warren Kinsella’s spin is pure counterproductive to the true meaning of liberalism. I didn’t leave the party. It left me. (Emphasis on left)Strangely, the only truly (small L)liberal party remaining is the current Canadian Conservative Party of Canada.