Quote:
Originally Posted by someone123
A reason to do this would be that maybe the flows in and out would roughly balance. In the best case there wouldn't be a lot of demographic drawbacks but more people would get to live where they want. I am not sure I'd permanently move away but the idea of easily working in the UK or Australia for a couple years seems neat.
It's not a guarantee that this is how it would play out though. I think it has the most chance of success currently with Australia and New Zealand. I don't think it's a great idea with the US because of proximity, the huge size imbalance, and differences in income distribution and quality of life between the two countries. Unless other things change, your proposal amounts to us agreeing to pay for healthcare for the poorest X% of Americans.
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While I would like to see more open borders down the line, what I'm proposing would be a unilateral exemption from the annual cap in respect of specified countries. They would still need to "earn" immigration through the points system for economic immigrants (or qualify for refugee status or arrive as an international student or on a work visa etc.) It wouldn't be conditioned on reciprocity -- e.g., Canadians don't need to be cap-exempt for immigration to the US (or any other country) (although to be clear Canadians are effectively cap-exempt for immigration to the US if they were born in Canada).
All cap-exempt means is that they won't be counted against the 500K target. They still have to meet whatever criteria applicable to the existing channels of immigration.