this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2026
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I mean, I'm fairly liberal with immigration but I literally do not understand how it would even be possible to have completely open borders.
What happens when 100 million people try to immigrate in less than ten years? Where would they live? Where would their children go to school?
When Germany reunified about 2 million people (about 10% of the population) moved west. This is for a situation where they spoke the same language, had mostly the same shared traditions and culture , visiting family was a short car ride away and West Germany offered all the social services and workers rights one expects.
In what world would 100 million people abandon their whole lives to move to the US where they might not speak the language or understand the culture, to get bankrupt by a cold, having your kids killed in schools and working 51 weeks of the year?
Canada had an annual immigration rate of 1.4 million per year and the population is 40 million and that's still with a limited non-open door policy, and it was way too much which Canada realized and started to restrict it, which would be the equivalent of America bringing in 14 million a year.
I absolutely wouldn't be surprised if 100 mil wanted to immigrate to America over ten years if there was an open door policy.
There are countries with 100 million people. This means the percentage of construction workers, teachers, and real estate agents from 100 million people would be enough to build enough housing for 100 million people.
Also aren't virtually all roads, schools, and houses built by immigrants currently? More coming means we can build more. Hell, imagine we paid them enough to open their own universities and construction companies.
Infrastructure isn't tied directly to labour available.
There needs to be enough time to construct, enough money to invest, enough space to have proper city layouts etc.
You can't just build a water treatment plant anywhere.
You also can only build housing and schools and hospitals so fast, an extra 100 million people in America in less than ten years would mean and extra 25% or everything needing to be built in less than ten years.
At the moment government doesn't fund construction of housing, so that's an entire system that needs to put in place before letting everyone in.
Plus a bunch of other issues that I can't even think about I imagine.
You can't envision it because you live in a country that is currently incapable of maintaining basic infrastructure and providing the most bare minimum housing for its populace, much less expanding it.
That's not true for elsewhere in the world, nor is it true historically.
10 million dedicated laborers (10%) is an insane amount of manpower.
In houses.
In schools.
Historically speaking passports and border controls have been the exception, not the rule. The reason you can't conceive of it possibly working is you've only ever lived in a world where you need a passport to go somewhere.
The scenario of 100 million people suddenly arriving is FUD. Apart from not being likely even on purely logistical grounds, the questions you're asking are ones that are eminently answerable: Where do they live? In houses that they build. Where would their children go to school? At schools that they build and staff. It's from the same fearmongering stable as "theytookerrrjaawwwbs".
You know border control and passports were never a thing not long ago right and it was never an issue?
When large enough number of people immigrate they start building new communities or expand existing ones and with the increase of human resources and demand new houses, infrastructure, and cities get built providing more jobs, money, and services. It's how America was built after all.
If the development rate can't keep up with the immigration rate then there would be less jobs and less services which makes prospect immigrants either find better opportunities at home or look for a different destination.
The only case where this rule wouldn't apply would be with refugees whether it's war or natural disasters. And even then after a few years they seem to mostly integrate well with society and the economy.
Open borders is more like 'Come to the window, take an application, open to anybody' and not 'Only for people with corporate sponsors (H-1B)' or 'Willing to work in terrible conditions for shit pay and abuse, then go back home (H-2B)' or 'Be Rich (EB-5)'
There is still control over entry, but anybody who can pass screening and meets minimum requirements (has money to support themselves or has a sponsor/job waiting) will be allowed entry and a path to citizenship.
We're a country of immigrants, it is hypocritical to attack the very system that is responsible for most of us being here.
Is there still a limit on how many people are accepted then?
Yes, a program like this wouldn't have unlimited funding and could be overloaded so there would have to be practical limits set.
Ideally, in a system with a working government, the usage/funding would be monitored to ensure that immigration is being handled safely and at levels where there are not multi-year wait time or lottery.
In my opinion, the goal is to create a system where we can screen for border security issues while not hampering people who want to come here, work and pay taxes. This same service should also provide immigrant services to help them with their relocation by providing education and information in order to ease the process.
They would live at Amazon Warehouses and the kids would be in the mines.
Open borders doesn't necessarily mean anyone can come at any time. It's about changing the process to be more equitable.