Person A: I support high levels of immigration.
Person B: Weren't you complaining about wages being too low? High levels of immigration directly impact wage growth in a negative way.
Person A: Yeah, but we don't have enough people to care for and replace baby boomers, so we need those immigrants.
Besides telling boomers to get rekt, what's your initial response?
Obviously, it's hypocritical to dissuade citizens from having children, and then turning around and saying we don't have enough people so we need more immigrants.
But I feel like I'm missing something here and can't quite put my finger on it.
I like living around people who look kinda like me, speak the same language as me, and generally see the world the same way as me.
I also like the idea that my neighbors' kids (and mine if I had them) when they grow up jobs available to them. And I don't think they should have to lower their expectations for wages and quality of life because they're competing for those jobs with people used to a drastically lower quality of life. Because if we aren't trying to give our kids a better quality of life than we ourselves have, then what the hell are we doing this all for?
Honestly I think what you're missing is these questions aren't hard. Group and territory formation is one of the very first things humans must have done, because it's something that other primates do. And records of large cities go back a very long time in human history, so it can't be hard.
We're told it has to be hard, but the people telling us this don't have our best interests in mind.
Not only living a lower quality of life but sending money back home. They're effectively supporting a bigger family, more cheaply than you can. They can come to the US, birth some children, and retire to the old country when they get old.
There's always a poorer person somewhere in the world. Borders are how you keep being a rich country.