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A lot here makes sense. E.g. since the Syrian war ended recently, in Germany there is now a discussion about sending Syrian refugees back. This is in accord with laws. And it was even a precondition to the policy 10 years ago. However, now you have some interest groups saying that there are, I think, 200k Syrian doctors and nurses employed here in Germany. So sending them back suddenly leaves Germany worse off? Am I opposed to them being employed? Not at all. I also don‘t mind them continuing to be here either. I also don‘t mind them privately. But what Yarvin says here makes a great deal of sense for future political decision making: If you see immigration as a talent recruiting program, then you are obviously not focusing on „extracting talent from your national pool of human resources.“ This means, you‘ll focus state capacity on immigration/integration. Not on properly educating and preparing your nation of serving the state. A straw man is to say that Yarvin‘s argument is also a white supremacists dog whistle. But is it in Germany? We have tons of economic stagnation in East Germany, where coincidentally, most people vote far right. Imagine we had spent the same amount of money on training these people instead of immigration/integration of foreigners. The AFD has a good chance to win in this election. Their rise came, among other things, from a failing of the liberal established parties on the immigration question. This is those people‘s answer. And now it‘s unclear whether these people go home or stay here, which will be their personal choice, not a political one. In fact, the AFD wants to send them home forcefully. Even that seem economically unwise. To me, after a decade of these politics playing out, I think optimizing for a state‘s (human) capital can make more sense than temporarily pumping the GDP by letting in guest workers. In the end nobody wins if the far right comes to power. I think you can even accept this argument against immigration if you identify as a liberal. It‘s just realistic
One advantage of having your citizens educated, compared to inviting people from other countries, is that they typically have roots in your country. So, if you "train a citizen," they will probably work (and pay taxes) in your country for their whole lives. And the stronger the roots and the higher the quality of living in the country, the less likely they are to leave. It kind of works even if you educate them and they do leave. When Poland joined the EU in 2004, millions of our citizens went to England to work. Most of these jobs were pretty simple, at construction sites, restaurants and so on. Some stayed in the UK for years, some stayed for good. In the meantime, many of these workers have been sending money to their families in Poland. This money has been spent here, allowing our local companies to prosper and increasing our VAT revenue. Probably the UK wasn't happy about it, but it was good for Poland. Today, we see the other side of the coin. We welcomed millions of Ukrainians because of the war. Our government has spent billions to help them build their new lives here. And in our particular case, it doesn't feel zero-sum. We had huge labor shortages - both in simple jobs as well as IT jobs - and we need more people to work. Plus they all pay taxes which means that it's probably net positive. But what would happen if we welcomed so many people every few years for two to three decades? I imagine it might become problematic because with all these qualified people wanting to come to our country, the incentive to invest in our citizens would be much weaker.