Nobody's Poor Anymore:

Per Capita GDP around the world:

Pakistan: $5,400
Moldova, the poorest white country: $5,700
India: $7,200
Ukraine: $8,700
El Salvador: $8,900
Kosovo: $10,400
Cuba: $11,900
Venezuela: $12,400
Indonesia: $12,400
Egypt: $13,000
Brazil: $15,500
China: $16,600
Iraq: $17,000
Mexico: $19,500
Iran: $20,000
Argentina: $20,700
Romania: $24,000
Greece: $27,800
Russia: $27,900
Poland: $29,300
Israel: $36,200
Italy: $38,000
South Korea: $39,400
Japan: $42,700
UK: $43,600
France: $43,600
Canada: $48,100
Taiwan: $49,800
Australia: $49,900
Germany: $50,200
USA: $59,500
Qatar: $124,900

Worldwide average: $17,300

I only need $5,000 or so to live by a year, and I have every modern convenience I could ever need.  Air conditioning and heating.  Electricity, water and sewage.  High speed internet, a powerful computer and a big screen tv.  A Playstation 4.  A car.  Trash pickup.  A phone.  All the tasty food and drink I want.

You can live the high life at $5,000 a year.  If not for taxes it could even be lower.  (why do the poor have to pay so damn much in taxes?)  Every single one of the countries listed above makes more than $5,000 a year per capita.  Even countries we historically think of as slums are overflowing with the money necessary to purchase all of life's luxuries.  America is a few months of economic growth away from making $60,000 a year per capita, an unthinkable amount of money.  That would mean a normal family of four would be making $240,000 a year.  What do you do, buy a mansion every year just to get rid of the excess?

Even countries portrayed in the news as absolutely misbegotten are in fact rich.  Iraq, Iran, Mexico, China and Brazil are about even with Eastern Europe.  The evil communist countries of Venezuela and Cuba are in fact richer than Kosovo.  El Salvador, murder capital of the world, has more money than Moldova, a sleepy agricultural center with absolutely no problems.

It's not lack of money holding people back.  It could be wealth inequality.  If the top 1% have all the money you can have great per capita GDP but everyone still starving.  In that case, though, these people shouldn't be 'fleeing poverty to find opportunity in the United States,' they should just be reforming their own government to share the wealth more.

If crime is holding people back, they should crack down on crime.  If corruption is holding a country back, they should crack down on corruption.  And so on.  Everyone could start living the high life, just like me, with the money they already make.  It's just their government's incompetence that's the issue from here.  If they need help getting good governance, why don't they invite westerners who know a thing or two about good governance to run their countries for them?  Denmark, Iceland, etc seem to have their wits about them.  Just hand all power over to them and watch your people thrive.

There is no reason to pity the world.  The world average is $17,300, more than the USA used to make in 1976.  It's ludicrous to talk about 'crushing poverty' in America circa 1976, so it's ludicrous to consider the world poor anymore.

Some countries, like Mozambique, are just utterly hopeless and degraded, and for them I suggest conquest and purges, so that real people can take over the land and make use of the resources, because their level of poverty is testament to a complete failure as a living organism with absolutely no excuses left.  But the vast majority of the world's population lives well above the $5,000 poverty line.  And all of their economies are still growing.  Where does it stop?  If the world is, on average, as rich as 1990's America, will people still be wringing their hands about the need to help economic migrants?  What level of ludicrousness can we ratchet things up to?

No one has to live a bad life anymore.  People living off of $1,000 a year should just be rounded up and killed.  People making over $5,000 a year but are unhappy with their governments should be handed over to France and Germany to run.  And people who are making $20,000 a year and really have no complaints shouldn't have to move to the USA or Europe to achieve their 'dreams.'  Open borders is a solution searching for a problem.  It is completely inefficient to just transplant a bunch of criminals and terrorists into the middle of rich countries to solve poverty.  It would be far better to unlock these people's potentials by giving them good governance and letting them grow just as naturally as the people of India or China have.  Rather than taking down the first world, we could elevate the third world.  Immigration is not a humanitarian necessity.  These people are filthy rich.  The only thing they need is rule of law and property rights, which is not a physical object or dependent on geography.  It's just an idea that can be extended anywhere and everywhere.  If the people of your country don't 'get' this idea, then invite in colonialists to execute the program for you.  They can move there a lot more easily than billions of people moving to us.