Singapore treats high-skill and low-skill immigrants quite differently. That's the centerpiece of their policy, and entirely relevant to the West. Compare Canada/Australia/NZ's race-blind (and high-volume, especially relative to their population sizes!) but points-based immigration systems, and much lower severity of populist revolt in those countries, with the problems in the US and European countries that had been executing less selective policies against the wishes of their citizens.
Also, how is any of that relevant to a country that has so much more space and resources for people? The US is geographically and economically gigantic compared to Singapore, proportionally we can take on orders of magnitude more people than Singapore, so why would we try to apply the same policy?
At 35 people per km^2 vs 8,100 per km^2, how on Earth could you possibly try to compare?
To make the country as nice a place to live as possible.
Here is a concrete example. Look at the outmigration of California -- if there had been way less immigration, more people (that aren't descended from recent immigrants) would get to enjoy living in California, but instead it's too expensive and polluted, houses are really packed in together. Imagine how much nicer a place to live California would be if we had only admitted immigrants that can solve basic math problems.
California is not too expensive and polluted due to immigration, it's too expensive and polluted due to Americans. It's also neither polluted nor expensive, when you consider the entire state. Some of the most barren places in the US are in California, as are some very poor areas. It's a big state, which is my whole point, the US is huge.
But I get it, you want nice things and you don't want others to have them. Too bad.
The US has a far better track record than any other leading power in history when it comes to facilitating the development of other countries into nice places. See e.g. http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2009/11/how-americans-spent-th... , or consider the motivation behind the Optional Practical Training student visa provision. As a US citizen, I personally spent three years working in China for a Chinese company, on salaries in line with those of local PhD staff, and nobody lifted a finger to stop me from developing cutting-edge technology for them; this may be slightly more restricted today in the specific case of China, but a younger analogue of me interested in applying what they learned from US grad school to problems in India/Indonesia/etc. faces few barriers from the US side, beyond unusual income tax and other financial considerations that only really kick in if you're already making enough to live like a king.
Yes, I want nice things. And I want as many other people as possible to have them as well, which is why I'll remain opposed to US-weakening policies until we have a #2 power that's even better at helping foreigners than the US.
You can be opposed, but that doesn't make your position correct. In fact, based on your steadfast commitment to your position despite the glaring evidence I've put directly in front of you, that... kind of makes you stubbornly closed minded.
The fact that you're not even talking about the things I mentioned in my earlier comments should be a red flag for you; why won't you talk about the facts related to immigration into the US? I wonder, maybe it's because the facts won't support your position?
1. How relevant is open space when a majority of prospective low-skilled immigrants want to live in already-heavily-populated areas, not North Dakota?
2. I already mentioned that the other countries most comparable to the US (Canada and Australia), including on the open space dimension, make the same hard distinction between high-skill and low-skill immigrants... and they are doing conspicuously better than other Western democracies at simultaneously maintaining high immigration volume and avoiding populist revolt. It is not my problem that you failed to parse this. New Zealand did see a political turn in favor of more restriction recently, but it was from the left. If anything, it's Singapore's lack of space that makes it practical for the Singaporean government to enforce the conditions under which they can keep so many guest workers around to mutual benefit, such as no pregnancies.
