Stephan Kinsella Ought To Shut His Stupid Cake Hole, which rants and raves over my post (2) suggesting selling citizenship rights.
Apparently this has been seriously contemplated before: Study finds Americans against selling citizenship rights discusses a proposal to do this, apparently at about $50,000 per immigrant. Some advocates maintain that: “Selling citizenship or permanent residency would attract ambitious, skilled and energetic people confident in recuperating their investment in citizenship rights within a reasonable period of time….” “The cost of getting a green card would raise about $40 billion a year if 800,000 people paid to enter the country [presumably at a cost of $50K each].”Apparently this was provoked by an article by Shaheen Borna & James M. Stearns, two professors of marketing in Ohio, “The ethics and efficacy of selling national citizenship,” JOURNAL OF BUSINESS ETHICS, 2002 (vol. 37, pp. 193-207).
Who knows, maybe $50K would be more reasonable than the $1million I mentioned. Even $50K would be high enough to help select high-quality immigrants, and restrict numbers to reasonable levels.
I have heard some other countries do sell citizenship rights, but find only spotty stuff on the web about it: e.g., the Kingdom of Tonga; Dominica, Grenada and the four South Pacific nations (Kiribati, Nauru, Tuvalu and Vanuatu); Cyprus; and some libertarians apparently have proposed it before.
9:52 pm on September 24, 2004
