Ask Lemmy

Well the population itself is not even 1/100th 'at capacity' in the US. The distribution of the population is certainly a cause for concern, and infrastructure is sorely in need of upgrade, but those are management problems. These are arguably exacerbated by the the fear of 'who' the increased infrastructure would be for, but it is in no way driven by lack of resources or space. We have huge swathes of crop land subsidized into non-food crops, crazy amounts of unoccupied land, ready access to transportation if we had drivers. Maybe the most restrictive resource is water and workforce. No magic fix for the former, but immigration would directly fix the later.

You may not want more towns/cities, and additional building should be done with pollution in mind, but it really comes down to 'not in my backyard'-ism. There are a lot of people that exist, through no fault of their own, and to say they should live in even more cramped and dangerous environments than you just so you can afford more elbow room is exactly my point. It's not legal or logistics reasons the US doesn't want more immigration, it's primarily culture and racism. Good or bad, i'd be willing to bet when someone moves in down the street with a German accent most people will think, at worst, it's kind of interesting, but if they are dark skinned or speak Spanish, a whole bunch of people that didn't bat an eye at the German immigrant, legal or otherwise, will suddenly have concerns about 'over population'.