Dreamers

[Guest LiterateParakeet]

I  support DACA, Dreamers and organizations like KIND.

  https://supportkind.org

[mordorbund]

2 hours ago, NeuroTypical said:

I'm not familiar with those practices.  I'm generally in favor of efforts to assimilate.  America became great with the generations whose parents were born somewhere else, showed up, Americanized their last name, learned the language, sent their kids to school, worked incredibly hard, and thanked God every night for leading them to such a wonderful place full of freedom and opportunity.  That's where both my mom's and dad's family came from - and they were quite different lineages.  Chicken fighting horse racers on one side, heeders of the call to populate Zion on the other.  

I don't know what minority subculture dominance means.  But if that subculture curses America and does not agree with or believe in the constitution and rule of law, then there's a problem.  I can think of plenty of subcultures I wouldn't mind if they rose to dominance, replacing the WASPS - as long as they assimilate, work to protect all our rights, and catch the American dream.  

Two of the issues getting discussed with DACA is chain migration (the first half of my post) and lottery migration (the second half - brought up recently in the news because some lottery immigrants recently committed murder or something similarly heinous).

In previous immigration discussions, another poster (whose handle escapes me at the moment) would similar argue the necessity of cultural amalgamation of immigrants. He would go a step further than you have and suggest that the current immigration is broken because that assimilation isn't happening. Instead, immigrants move here and maintain their home culture by living in close proximity and maintaining the language of the original culture (Orange County, CA has a number of "Little ____" districts). Much like the Missouri Mormon problem, if these districts get large enough, they begin to substantially influence the majority culture, or supplant it altogether. This is what I mean by a "super-minority" or minority subculture dominating the majority culture.

@anatess2 says this isn't a problem because each subculture is fractious enough that it's inconsequential. Do you think it's inconsequential? Or do you think it poses a threat? Should the lottery system get scrapped because it unnecessary (or perhaps for other reasons? list yours)? Or is it a tool we should keep in our toolbox to prevent a "super-minority"?

[Traveler]

3 hours ago, NeuroTypical said:

Travelerism: A word or phrase used by Traveler that leaves you a tad smarter after googling it, but not exactly happier.

Proving once again that one does not have to use common swear words to put a point across of great or strong significances.

 

The Traveler

[person0]

What I would like to see happen:

1)  End the lottery

2)  End Chain Migration

3)  Merit based and faster immigration system

4)  E-Verify

5)  Build the wall - or an equally/more effective alternative

6)  Amnesty for the dreamers without citizenship.

Trump has 4.5 of those in his current plan.  Seem's like a reasonable compromise.

[Just_A_Guy]

22 hours ago, Godless said:

Half of that statement is arguably true. There are jobs in this country that are far more likely to attract illegal immigrants than US citizens. And yes, the work conditions and pay structure of some those jobs is criminal (or should be). And even on farms where the pay and benefits are better than most cushy office jobs, like Napa Valley grape fields, farmers still struggle to attract American-born workers. For the record, I'm not advocating for allowing undocumented workers to pick our crops. I'm merely pointing out that there is some ugly truth to the claim that there are jobs that natural-born Americans simply won't do, even for $19/hr plus benefits.

Yes and no.  It’s not an aversion to hard work per se; it’s that middle-class Americans are raised to expect a certain standard of living (house in the suburbs, two cars, 2.6 children, self-funded retirement at age 60, etc) and a consistent, as opposed to seasonal, income.  Agriculture is like door-to-door sales—you can do very well in it, with the right aptitudes and connections; but the simple fact is that most people who go into that business aren’t consistently earning enough to support the “American Dream” they’ve been brought up to accept as normal.  

In a closed system, labor shortages would eventually bring wages (and food prices) up; but a ready supply of migrants from third-world countries who are quite willing to forego the trappings of middle-class American life keeps labor prices artificially low.  As a person who buys food—I don’t mind that so much.  

What I DO mind are people who 1) artificially depress blue-collar wages by encouraging open unskilled labor markets with adjacent third-world countries, and then 2) look to raid my tax dollars to bring those unskilled workers’ incomes back up to what the first world considers a “living wage”.  

By the way, I grew up near Stockton and I knew kids who seasonally worked in the vineyards.  Race is technically irrelevant; but the reality is that if you don’t speak fluent Spanish, you aren’t getting hired.  (English fluency was appreciated but not necessary.)  I live in Utah now and I know fast-food restaurants that operate on the same linguistic principle:  non-Spanish-speakers need not apply.  So at this point, even if native-born middle-class Americans decided they *wanted* those jobs; a labor cartel (I mean that in the general economic sense, not a pejorative sense) has created an artificial barrier against native English-speakers competing in their market.

Edited January 26, 2018 by Just_A_Guy

[Guest Godless]

1 hour ago, Just_A_Guy said:

By the way, I grew up near Stockton and knew kids who seasonally worked in the vineyards.  Race is technically irrelevant; but the reality is that if you don’t speak fluent Spanish, you aren’t getting hired.  (English fluency was appreciated but not necessary.)  I live in Utah now and I know fast-food restaurants that operate on the same linguistic principle:  non-Spanish-speakers need not apply.  So at this point, even if native-born middle-class Americans decided they *wanted* those jobs; a labor cartel (I mean that in the general economic sense, not a pejorative sense) has created an artificial barrier against native English-speakers competing in their market.

My first "real" job in San Antonio was as a dishwasher in a chain seafood restaurant. As a white, non-Spanish speaking employee, I was very out of place in that work environment, and I found myself outnumbered by non-English speaking legal immigrants. That didn't bother me nearly as much as people's reactions to learning what I did for a living. "You do what and where???". I was sometimes temped to retort "You owe HOW MUCH in student loan debt???" 

[Just_A_Guy]

6 minutes ago, Godless said:

My first "real" job in San Antonio was as a dishwasher in a chain seafood restaurant. As a white, non-Spanish speaking employee, I was very out of place in that work environment, and I found myself outnumbered by non-English speaking legal immigrants. That didn't bother me nearly as much as people's reactions to learning what I did for a living. "You do what and where???". I was sometimes temped to retort "You owe HOW MUCH in student loan debt???" 

Yup.  Mike Rowe has a lot of wisdom on this issue—there is a stigma about blue collar work and vocational versus academic education in the US.

[Guest Godless]

25 minutes ago, Just_A_Guy said:

Yup.  Mike Rowe has a lot of wisdom on this issue—there is a stigma about blue collar work and vocational versus academic education in the US.

I think one of my biggest departures from mainstream liberal thought is my opinion of Mike Rowe. I don't always agree with him, but he has a lot of good things to say about the state of education and labor in the US.

[anatess2]

On 1/26/2018 at 2:57 PM, mordorbund said:

 

@anatess2 says this isn't a problem because each subculture is fractious enough that it's inconsequential. Do you think it's inconsequential? Or do you think it poses a threat? Should the lottery system get scrapped because it unnecessary (or perhaps for other reasons? list yours)? Or is it a tool we should keep in our toolbox to prevent a "super-minority"?

This is a misrepresentation of my statement.  I said that the differences between groups (e.g. Italians versus Chinese) is just as diverse if not even to a lesser degree than the differences between each individual in a group.  Little Italy and Little China, therefore, is not a problem if each Chinese and each Italian is treated as an INDIVIDUAL IDENTITY instead of a group identity.  Assimilation is, of course, how we do this.  I worked for a few years helping Bosnians assimilate into American life.  As a Filipino, my Filipino culture is still how I live my life even in America.  But that culture is BENEATH my love for the USA and my adherence to the Constitution.  Adherence to the Constitution is, of course, what makes Americans, Americans.  And that adherence comes with a certain THINKING and a certain culture - for example, the 1st and 2nd Amendments is a testament to inalienable freedoms which come with individual responsibility to protect it.  That's a culture unique to Americans.  Most other cultures hand over their freedoms to the tribe because they prefer to have the tribe protect such freedoms.  If you want to live in America, then you'll have to make your desire to hand over individual responsibility to a tribe secondary to the American culture of individual responsibility.

Unfortunately, the Democrat Party (and to a lesser extent the Republican Party) has made it their policy to treat GROUP IDENTITIES as the superior identity - blacks vote Democrat, Religious vote Republican, Hispanics want immigration, Whites are racists... etc.  They are not treated as INDIVIDUAL THINKERS within their groups.  This is the problem with American diversity.  They promote Diversity as their Strength instead of Diversity being the Weakness that has to be overcome by Unity.  They put a lot of stock on group Identity and do not consider diversity of thought within that group.  It even goes farther as to treat diversity of thought as a cancer that has to be stamped out within the group.

So, super-minority is irrelevant.  You can have Texas with the minority being the majority and still be unified as Americans if you treat the group as INDIVIDUAL THINKERS instead of the prejudice of their Group Identity using that identity to wage war against other groups.

Edited January 31, 2018 by anatess2