Comments Elsewhere

Rikurzhen objects: “social engineering? any immigration policy could be called social engineering, even open borders.”

Only if you twist the word “social engineering” beyond any meaning whatsoever. “Social engineering” is usually meant to suggest the use of government intervention (that is, legally authorized force) to make the society in question achieve some set of desiderata they wouldn’t otherwise achieve. Since open borders means no use of government intervention whatsoever in the field of immigration, they do not qualify as social engineering any more than a free market in alcohol or tennis shoes does.

If you insist on adding situations where no government force is being applied to make society turn out in some way or another, then open borders will be included, but so will any human action or decision whatsoever. But that would just be to make “social engineering” useless as a term of analysis. A term which encompasses everything, means nothing.