They can disagree, about 50 years ago UK was castrating gay people and even castrated Alan Turing and at the same time the black people were very limited on what can and can't do in the USA.

I simply don't see an argument here. Just because that's how it is now, doesn't mean it should continue to be the way it is. It's not even that old of a tradition, Some 100 years ago people were able to move and work wherever they like.

So you support particular kind of people come to your country, do you support deportation of people who are born in your country but don't meet the standards you impose on the immigrants?

I don’t support deporting citizens (and neither does US nor international law).

My support for high-skilled/highly-educated immigrants is based on a nakedly selfish desire to have those immigrants improve the global competitiveness of my country, in order to make it continue to be a great place for my children and grandchildren to live. I assume other countries are making the same selfish calculations, resulting in similar policies.

Feel free to call my policy preferences selfish; I already have and will agree with you.

> I don’t support deporting citizens

Why not? If they are substandard, why keep them there? What's the difference between them and the people you would like to keep out?

I'm not calling you anything. I'm trying to understand you.

Citizens have, by definition, a right to enter and reside in their country of citizenship.

I see a difference in kind between denying someone a right and failing to grant someone else a privilege.

(You are the only one calling them sub-standard, by the way.)

We can rewrite definitions, don't worry too much about.

I guess your motivation of keeping substandard immigrants out but substandard locals in doesn't come only from your desire to stick to the definitions, am I right? Because if that's your worry, it's very easy to resolve it by changing the definition through a legislative process.

The policies don’t emerge from the definitions, but rather the definitions emerge from the policies.

Changing the definitions and expecting the policies (which are the expressed will of the people in democracies or of the leaders in autocracies) to change is folly.

So, why do you want to keep the substandard immigrants out and substandard citizens in, if it's not about satisfying the definitions?

It’s a policy choice. I believe that people born in a country have a 100% right to live in that country while someone not born there does not have that same right.

We happen to call the former group “citizens” and there are other paths to citizenship in most countries, but that word is merely a shorthand for “a person with a non-revocable right to live in a country”. If you change citizen to mean something else or change non-citizen to mean that, new words will emerge to mean specifically the difference in that right and we’ll switch to using that word.

Separately, the decision of whom to extend the privilege of entry or working to non-citizens is based on whom the population (in democracies) thinks will make the country better. If you’re picking your team to compete on a global stage, why wouldn’t you allow the brightest and most educated to come join your team?

You appear to disagree on my initial premise that people born somewhere have more rights to be there than others who weren’t. I respect your right to hold your opinion. I also reserve my right to hold my opinion.

This is yet another "it is the way it is because it is the way it is" argument. I will leave it here.

It is the way it is because it is the way the citizens of countries want it to be.

That’s unsurprising that that would be stable over long periods of time.