People immigrated there because it was needed at the time. What was good centuries ago may not apply today.

Yes permanent residents in the US/Iceland/Australia/Spain/whatever should get priority over temporary visa holders in their respective country.

This is the whole point of countries.

No, people immigrated here because it was better here, and it was better here because people immigrated.

And no, permanent residents do not have anything about them that is inherently more deserving of anything. That is in no way what a country is for.

A country provides social services to people in exchange for some control, so as to keep order. If you give control, you get services.

Land borders are not an important aspect of a country’s decision of who to provide services to, who that country can provide order to is.

Once we reach level 4 or 5 of replies I think it's not really worth pursuing so I'll just give my take on this one and leave it there. That's probably a case where principles/values or whatever you want to call it differ too much for anything to come out of it.

People were allowed and welcome to immigrate because there was a gigantic country to fill. Now this policy makes no sense so rules have changed. It's just common sense. The way a country was built/populated doesn't need to persist forever and should adapt to whatever works best at a given time.

Otherwise let's push the logic: mostly white people immigrated at the beginning, should we stick to this? It makes no sense.

It's not about "deserving". It's about the common good of the population. I believe in helping people who are already here better their life instead of relocating someone.

One could argue that having access to good jobs is part of the nebulous "social services" you mention.

As a side note, it's interesting how the interest of the immigrant seems to always be superficially taken into consideration. Immigrants don't all want to move. I would bet a lot of them would much prefer to have a better life where they are to begin with.

You keep getting stuck in the bureaucracy, presuming it results in just outcomes. It doesn’t.

If the concept of citizenship was simply an agreement to the social contract, open to all, you could start to favor those who’ve agreed over those who haven’t, though even then you can’t say from a moral perspective the lives of those who’ve agreed are superior.

However you seem overly attached to the concept of soil and citizenship, both of which can be manipulated by bigots to hurt the people they’re hateful towards. This is why “Americans” can’t be considered first; what even qualifies is set based on a wildly racist past, riddled with hateful people making nationalistic laws that remain in effect today.

If the contract is this simple then is it surprising that existing control givers (aka permanent residents) may have a sense that as long as they're still 'giving' they should still be 'getting' or at least have a place in line to 'get' ahead of a prospective 'giver' (h1b).

Existing control givers are corrupt and selfish, possibly evil.