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Sure, I wouldn't want ancestry rules applied in a professional context, but I think there should also be some amount of loyalty to your fellow countrymen. I don't have a strong opinion over how much precisely that would be. The way I see it, countries should follow a general "[insert country here] first" framework, and people with deep roots should have relative priority over newcomers. Though even the latter I wouldn't want to go too far, so it won't turn into a dick-measuring contest over who's ancestors were here the longest.
Do you mind clarifying or giving a justification for why things should be like this? Specifically, what does "deep roots" mean? Is that things like like involvement with local community wherever they live and civic engagement or is it more like having ancestry in the country going far back? I would totally agree with you if its the first and vehemently disagree with the second---for the same reason that personal connection is what's important, not ancestry (see again the comparison between a close childhood friend vs. cousin you've never met before).
Sure, personally I meant both, and while I'm aware that means vehement disagreement, I do want to stress I'd like to avoid some of the wankery that would come with taking the latter too seriously.
As for a justification, it's going to be hard to explain, as there's a certain "you wouldn't get it" quality about the whole thing. Though maybe that's a good starting point, because a concise way to explain it, is that I want to preserve the things an outsider wouldn't get.
It's probably a cultural thing, one if the things that struck me when visiting America was how open everyone was, how strangers would constantly strike up a conversation with you, randoms on the bus would tell you the story of their life. Later on I read somewhere that this has to do with their roots as pioneers, how the country was founded by people from all sorts of places, and even later on there was lots of people moving around, constantly recreating their support networks.
Maybe it's all a fanciful story for why their culture is the way it is, but either way the fact remains they seem to have a knack for that kind of community involvement / civic engagement. Someone moves to a new place, and they make a point to get to know all the neighbors, learns the local culture, tries to integrate, it all sounds lovely, I can't help but think what happens if you increase the numbers. Send a couple thousand Americans to my home town, and they'll probably be running the place within a year, and even if they learn the language and local customs perfectly, it will all be rather superficial. There will be things they don't get, and whether they'll be doing it deliberately or not, they'll start changing the character of the place.
Have complaints about gentrification ever made any sense to you? If not, or if you think they boil down to material factors like "I can't afford to live where I grew up", then maybe none of what I'm saying makes any sense to you. But if they did, then I'm talking about a very similar process.
On the other hand I'm not saying this should be a terminal value, or that no immigration should ever happen, or no refugees should ever be accepted. But I do think it should be recognized that acceptance for even this "model immigration" can be pretty big concession.
Thanks for the excellent reply, this helps a ton with understanding the other point of view---and maybe the way you describe it isn't too costly to values of fairness and meritocracy anyways.
Specifically, I guess we're in a world where the countries with most lucrative opportunities people would want to immigrate for are also the ones where ancestry might matter the least. As long as this is true (well, it's not perfect given how hard legal immigration is to the US), then it's really not a big deal if other places stay the way you want in case that's necessary to preserve these ineffable other values. So maybe I'll have vehement disagreements with other Americans asking for things to be more ancestry-dependent but not people elsewhere.
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