mopgoblin on 27/6/2006 at 13:05
Quote Posted by Phydeaux
I say "illegals" for the sake of brevity. It has nothing to do with dehumanising or anything like that.
Actually, I reckon the sake-of-brevity thing might one of the things that make it dehumanising (or at least disrespectful). "Chink" and "Paki" seem to follow the same pattern, being derived from longer and non-offensive terms. It's still the use of a noun instead of an adjective which has the greater dehumanising effect, though. I suspect it's because nouns define while adjectives describe. A noun puts you in a category, adjectives just list your attributes.
SlyFoxx on 27/6/2006 at 13:42
1) I think my country (USA) needs to take a hard look at legal immigration. There are good people who would contribute a lot to my country who need to be allowed in. But for goodnes sake you've got to be able to speak English! That said, there does need to be a yearly limit. I don't know what that number is....maybe 1/2% of total population?
2) We need to protect our boarders. A nation without boarder control might as well not have boarders.
3) We need to address the people who hire people knowingly hire those who are here illegally. Part of that is establishing some kind of system so employers can determine a candidates status without undue bother. This way folks who want to comply can do so easily and those who don't won't have a leg to stand on when authorities come knocking at their door.
4) The reasons why so many people risk possible death to reach the USA needs to be addressed. Let's face it. The reason so many Mexicans seek to enter this country at any cost has mostly to do with how crappy their lives are in Mexico. Hey Mr. Fox! Could you clean up your own house! Don't threaten to sue us for sending troops to our boarder. If you are so worried about your citizens who are dying by the hundreds trying to reach the USA then start doing something about the conditions in your own country that are causing them to want to leave. Twat!
5) If we had been controlling our boarders better over the years we would not be having the problems we have now. I don't see how you can just "ship them back." If they are here, it's more our fault than theirs so we are going to have to deal with the situation.
Convict on 27/6/2006 at 14:02
Quote Posted by Lazarus411
You know I was just looking at the population figures for the US and I found that the US has a total pop. of roughly 300 million, which is a lot but when you look at the pop. density it's only about 30/sq.km. Contrast this with your average european country (i.e. UK, France, Germany etc.) which typically has a few hundred per sq.km.
This needs to be based not on some arbitary comparison figure but rather on environmental and other impact considerations. For example Australia is (
http://geography.about.com/od/populationgeography/a/popdensity.htm) the 2nd least densely populated country in the world and yet we have almost constant water restrictions in NSW and SE Queensland (states of Australia) - we even have water control police enforcing the restrictions! Clearly Australia cannot support an equal population density to Europe. Additionally it may be unreasonable to include e.g. Alaska in the population density of America for comparisons with Europe because it may be relatively uninhabitable.
Quote Posted by Lazarus411
So my question is, do you think America could take in a few hundred million more migrants from poorer countries around the world? There's no reason why it should an adverse effect on the economy as long as the economy grows to match the influx of migrants which in theory it should.
Economically:
This would be good for e.g. the manufacturing sector as it will drive down the price of labour and can help the economy certainly. However it will have the effect of increasing the disparity of wealth distribution (i.e. making the rich richer and the poor poorer). The increased wealth disparity in turn may increase crime levels, as has been suggested by some left wing thinkers (e.g. Milton Mankoff).
Environmental issues:
There has been much debate in recent years over the concept of "ecological footprint" and the environmental impact of increasing numbers of people living "Western" style lives. The potential cost of hundreds of millions more people living the American ecological footprint could very possibly be disastrous.
Gang-activity/drugs/prison issues:
This may relate to a number of issues. An obvious possibility is that with increasing disparity of wealth crime may well rise. Another possibility is that with increasing urbanisation of many more people, crime may again rise (although the evidence for this is not watertight). Additionally, large social change may lead to isolation and possibly increase gangs and related crime.
Hospitals:
I am not familiar with the American model of hospitals and therefore the possible effects of a large influx of unskilled immigrants is not necessarily clear.
Schools:
If a large body of unskilled workers entered the USA and the plan was to provide schooling, this would obviously require a massive amount of resource input which would have to be public schooling (since their earnings would be very low). However perhaps this could be provided due to taxation from the economic growth corporations might make (particularly by being able to compete with other low wage countries). I am however dubious as to whether there will be the government willingness to tax the wealthy and the business sector adequately and even whether enough wealth could be generated from such revenue to the government (you have to consider that other basic services need to be provided also and there is likely to be unemployment).
Employment:
Immigrants who don't speak the local language tend to have a harder time gaining employment and this may cause a poverty/crime trap for future generations. Additionally there may not be adequate growth in employment opportunities for unskilled labour even if the price of labour reduces enough to encourage e.g. manufacturing investement in America such that America can compete with China etc on manufacturing costs.
Homelessness:
Largely associated with unemployment and social problems which may arise under this scenario (e.g. despair leading to alcoholism etc). Some families may simply not be able to afford housing and as discussed in the schooling section the government may simply not be able to make enough revenue from increased economic growth to provide welfare for these people.
Welfare:
As stated previously, an important question is whether the government revenue from increased economic growth be able to provide welfare, housing, schooling, etc for large numbers of poor and potentially unemployed people?
Terrorism:
The common thought of people in this thread is of illegal immigrants of (largely) Mexican origin. Although I am not an expert on terrorism, it is my opinion that there is not a terrorism threat from Mexican immigrants. However some concern must be raised about a porous border which could potentially allow terrorists to enter America via the Mexican border (although they may be from anywhere in the world).
Social Concerns:
Some people in America may feel that their culture would change rapidly and the increased, and in some cases dominant, speaking of Spanish may be evidence of this when sudden population changes occur.
TheGreatGodPan on 27/6/2006 at 21:09
I tried to post yesterday, but right when I hit preview ttlg stopped responding. A sign from God? Perhaps, but I'll try again anyways.
The reason we were upset about the National Anthem is that it wasn't a translation, they changed the lyrics not just in language but meaning to advocate a position on a current political topic.
As to what crappy country my ancestors came from, I am most knowledgeable about the first in with my surname, who lived briefly in Canada before moving onto Minnesota, but lived for a significantly longer period in Ireland, before which he lived in Scotland. The rest of my family is predominately Irish but I'm not sure on the specifics of when they got in and any other countries that might have contributed. I am not aware of any immigrant ancestors coming after the 1800s, and assume all of them came during that time or possibly earlier. During that time the situation was much better for assimilation, partly because hostility to immigrants demanded it, partly because the diversity of sources of immigration and their greater seperation from their home country and their greater dispersal made not assimilating much harder on immigrants and partly because the Catholic Church, to which many immigrants belonged, was more concerned with bettering their constituents than simply filling pews to replace a drain as it is today. I don't view any of those conditions as necessary for immigration to be considered permissible, but I think they are often overlooked.
The biggest change in my eyes is the role of government. In the 1800s there was plenty of corruption, and immigration certainly made things worse, but it was mostly relegated to city bosses handing out jobs. Today immigration is like a large (
http://www.vdare.com/fulford/subsidies.htm) subsidized government program. One of the most harmful things our government has done was to destroy the social structure of inner-city African Americans, resulting in an angry dependent underclass that reacted with each attempt by the government to assist it with regression in most social indicators considered desirable. Some progress was made in the 90s, but we still have a large social problem that the government has proven itself not competent to deal with. It is to this social norm that Mexican immigrants are assimilating. Illegitimacy, crime and other such problematic indicators are higher for second and third generations than the first. The system needs to be fixed before we chuck more waves of people into it.
While it would probably seem like a plus to Stronts, I am not too pleased about politicians "electing a new people" as Bertol Brecht put it, considering how (
http://inductivist.blogspot.com/2006/05/mexicans-love-government-reader.html) pro-government Mexican immigrants are and how much (
http://inductivist.blogspot.com/2006/05/immigrants-are-liberal-and-their-kids.html) further to the left their children move. The only places where the (
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=050506I) idea that we should "give socialism another try" are in vogue are in Latin America (except Nepal I suppose), a region that has been practically synonymous with political dysfunction. Fortunately Mexico, where most of our immigrants are from, has averted full-blown socialism for some time now and settled on a system of omnipresent corruption that is still attractive enough to bring in Central Americans across their southern border despite the government reacting much more harshly than ours, so it's not a worst-case scenario right now. "It could be worse" doesn't equal "good" to me though. Even before the immigrants form a politically powerful enough bloc to demand more and more public money, when the majority attempt to cut them off of public benefits as several California propositions did, the Supreme Court ruled them unconstitutional. In the face of this, high-immigration blue states are seeing net interstate out-migration as people vote with their feet that immigration has made their lives worse. Gerrymandering has made Congress complacent enough to ignore this issue for the most part which polls show to be the one they diverge the most with the majority of the American people on.
America was not "founded" on the principle of mass immigration. In the Federalist papers one of the reasons (
http://www.vdare.com/zmirak/050621_guide.htm) given for the prospectives for the American experiment's success was the homogeneity of the people. As explained in Albion's Seed, the effect of England (where the bulk of the colonists came from) on American institutions and culture was immense. We really lucked out there, as the Anglosphere seems to have done a better job than anyone else in running a country, and the republic-not-a-democracy system in the past minimized damage the potential damage to be caused by people who hadn't had that kind of political culture ingrained in them. Even people who were more "enlightened" for the time like Ben Franklin were upset with assimilation-resisting people's like the "(
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2006/03/my-new-vdarecom-column.html) Palatine Boors".
I think there are two countries the U.S should imitate. The first is Israel in building a wall. Enough of this wink-wink under-the-table deal where the Mexican government uses us as a steam valve to avoid dealing with its problems while La Raza gains constituents and employers get artificially-cheap-for-them labor (but they're oh-so (
http://inductivist.blogspot.com/2006/04/mexican-work-ethic-aint-so-hot-if-i.html) hardworking!). The second is Canada. They don't have any "family reunification" bullshit. They're more like an employer giving a job interview. They ask, "Is this person going to be a good addition?". If so, welcome in, if not, we can get better. They are also more genuinely "multicultural" as a result, which is better than "bicultural" (although Anglo vs French Canada is sort of bicultural, and hence antagonistic).
OnionBob on 27/6/2006 at 21:25
Quote Posted by SlyFoxx
2) We need to protect our boarders. A nation without boarder control might as well not have boarders.
Surfers must be protected at all costs
Epos Nix on 27/6/2006 at 21:35
Quote:
But I think it's been explained often enough already in this thread how "illegals" carries inherent and implicit undertones that leave a bitter taste in the mouth.
Then how about we choose something a bit more appropriate when describing illegal immigrants that is both easy on the tongue and straight to the point. My vote goes to 'vermin'.
metal dawn on 27/6/2006 at 21:37
Quote Posted by OnionBob
Surfers must be protected at all costs
Does that mean foreigners are sharks?
Or perhaps beached whales?
Microwave Oven on 27/6/2006 at 21:41
I think one solution to the immigration problems is to institute a millitary enlistment program for potential immigrants. Have 'em serve four years, and give 'em training and skills that will benefit them in the job market, teaching them also to respect authority and the laws of the nation. This would also help weed-out any undesirables and those not willing to serve the country they wish to live in. I think it could work.
It seems to me that all of the effort that my great-grandparents put in to immigrating legally into this country is cheapened by those who would waltz across the border and be welcomed with opened arms by certain groups. I'm sure other legal immigrants feel the same way. Something stolen is seldom valued as much as something earned.
Chimpy Chompy on 27/6/2006 at 22:14
Haha yeah, then you'll have a ready supply of cannon fodder to send to Iraq!
JACKofTrades on 27/6/2006 at 22:18
Quote Posted by Strontium Dog
What? And indeed, why?
Put your money where your mouth is. Isn't that what you suggested
we do?
