29 Jul 2014

“Pull the Ladder up, Captain, I’m Aboard!”

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BoardingLadder

Eugene Volokh (who arrived in America in 1975) warns against letting in those dirty immigrants who may change America and the way things are in this country at the present time.

[F]or all the good that immigration can do (and I’m an immigrant to the U.S., who is very glad that America let me in, and who generally supports immigration), unregulated immigration can dramatically change the nature of the target society. It makes a lot of sense for those who live there to think hard about how those changes can be managed, and in some situations to restrict the flow of immigrants — who, after all, will soon be entitled to affect their new countrymen’s rights and lives, through the vote if not through force. …

Letting in immigrants means letting in your future rulers. It may be selfish to worry about that, but it’s foolish not to. … [E]ven for America, the influx of millions of new citizens — both the potentially legalized current illegal immigrants and the many others who are likely to come in the wake of the legalization — can affect the society and the political system in considerable ways. It seems to me eminently sensible to be concerned about the illegal immigrants who may well change (in some measure) your country even if your ancestors were themselves illegal immigrants who changed the country as it once was.

Via Clarice Feldman.

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But America has always been a country determined to occupy a new continent and build a new country, and America has always had a shortage of affordable labor. That’s why they imported criminals and slaves to Colonial America, and that’s why –until the 1920s– we had essentially unlimited immigration.

After hundreds of years and the influx of countless unrelated groups of people, the United States, I would argue, has a tradition of pluralism and assimilation of immigrants central to its own identity. America previously allowed in all sorts of groups with conspicuously undesirable characteristics, all of whom definitely changed the culture of the country in significant ways.

Native-born Americans in generations gone by endured the Scots Irish lawlessness and propensity toward violence, German-speaking religious extremists’ refusal to assimilate or to use modern technologies, Irish drunkenness and talent for political corruption, the popery and beer garden culture of Bavarian Germans, Italian criminal conspiracies, Jewish enthusiasm for radical politics and bad art, and the general barbarism and illiteracy of representatives of essentially every variety of rural European peasantry. Previous waves of immigration brought crime and violence, political corruption, poverty and illiteracy, and enormous cultural change to America, but immigrants typically rapidly prospered and assimilated, climbing out of poverty while, in the meantime, doing all the disagreeable, dangerous, and low-paying jobs native-born Americans wouldn’t do. Their children filled the ranks of the American Armed Forces and won America’s wars.

As a grandson of turn-of-the-last-century immigrants, I strongly disagree with Mr. Volokh. I think that, as Americans and as the descendants of immigrants, we have an obligation to affirm and defend our national tradition of welcoming and assimilating other immigrants succeeding our own ancestors in turn. The “I’m aboard, Captain, pull the ladder up!” position is simply disgraceful for an American.

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JKB

We certainly don’t need to pull up the ladder, but Volokh was correct in noting that a large influx does change the nature of the nation. (he was way off on his Israel example). The big issue now is what happens with this influx with the methods of assimilation usurped such as the anti-American bias in history education and the promotion of maintaining cultural separateness.

I’m reading Alan MacFarlane’s ‘The Invention of the Modern World’. Based on a series of lectures he gave in China on how England quite by accident developed the traits of modernity, i.e., individualism. America is also used as an example.

However, as I read, I can’t help but see that many of the “problems” the DemProgs lament, come not from the terrible white men from England but are habits introduced by Continental Europeans, among others, with their decided non-modern cultural traits. Granted, many of the first English settlers in America were seeking to stave off modernity as well. Many of the issues continue from many wanting to retain the familial/clan vice individual focus of society, or retain the absolutist Church (of one religion or another) as a controlling interest in society and the economy, and let’s not forget the constant proponents of the absolutist State, now wearing the face of the regulatory state.

Really, we are still in the process of transitioning to modernity, but so many, so called moderns, seek to pull America back to a pre-modern condition, with their emphasis on group/tribal identity, ideology, where formally religion, controlling the economy, society, politics.

As for the current influx, it seems to me to be futile to “oppose” what is already done. The goal now should be to undermine those with political plans for the influx by recruiting the new arrivals to be Americans and not just United States (future) citizens. That means teaching the basic tenets this country was founded on and promoting self-reliance as the pinnacle of freedom.



SDD

In a 2013 report professors John Logan and Brian Stults of Brown University and Florida State University analyzed 2010 Census data for major cities using a dissimilarity index. The dissimilarity index measures the percentage of one group that would have to move to a different neighborhood to put an end to segregation. Here are the top 10 US cities based on that index.

1. Milwaukee
2. New York
3. Chicago
4. Detroit
5. Cleveland
6. Buffalo
7. St. Louis
8. Cincinnati
9. Philadelphia
10. Los Angeles

Note that all of these cities are hotbeds of Progressivism where local government has been controlled by Democrats for decades. If Progressives actually (as opposed to rhetorically) abhor segregation, why would they not have done something in the places they already run — far from the influences of those evil conservatives? Actions speak louder than words. Especially in places like Milwaukee, New York, Chicago and Detroit.



Chris

Oddly enough, you’ve been relatively silent as our borders are swarmed with “refugees”. I figured it was only a matter of time before you swung back to give the old horse another beating.

What we are seeing is not immigration. It is invasion. Pure, simple, clear.

On D-day, Allied troops put 160,000 men ashore. Yearly, 500,000 illegals arrive in the US. If Patton were in charge of the illegals, the Canadians would have already surrendered too.

Immigration is a nice idea but with unemployment being what it is, with household net worth dropping by 1/3 in the last 6 years, American Citizens don’t NEED immigration.



Chris

[F]or all the good that immigration can do (and I’m an immigrant to the U.S., who is very glad that America let me in, and who generally supports immigration), UNREGULATED immigration can dramatically change the nature of the target society.

Note the word in CAPS. Since you omitted it in your counter argument, I’m not sure there’s much that you said that Eugene wouldn’t agree with.



Steve Gregg

While it’s true that America has absorbed wave upon wave of wretched refuse from teeming shores abroad, but the overwhelming bulk of that was done before FDR created the welfare state. When Irish ruffians landed at the New York docks, the political hacks found them jobs. Now, immigrants get welfare checks and an array of benefits.

If you land on America’s shores, looking for work, rather than a handout, that makes a world of difference in the kind of citizen you will be and your children will be and so on. Right now, most of the illegal aliens crossing our southern border are telling the border patrol that Obama will take care of them, that they want their kids in US schools and free medical care. They are coming for free stuff, not work. They are not asking what they can do for America, but what can America do for them.

That hastens America down the road to socialism and dependence. They remake America into something lesser.



GoneWithTheWind

There really are only two questions to answer to solve this problem:
1. Does a majority (perhaps a super majority is in order for something as important as this) want immigration? Consider illegal, rufugee and legal separately.
2. Do we even need more people? We are the third largest populated country in the world after all. Maybe Mexico needs those Somalis or Chinese.
This issue should be decided by the people/citizens/voters. Not by politicians, special interests like La Raza, the UN or Mexico.
So put it to a vote, a national referendum. Three questions: Should we agressively stop illegal immigration and deport those already here illegally? Should we stop taking refugees (most of them aren’t really refugees anyway)? Should we end all legal immigration? After all isn’t there some point where we no longer need poor ignorant uneducated overly fecund immigrants?
Let the people vote. Let it be known that if we allow immigration then we must end welfare. Actually we should end welfare either way but the voters should know that if we intend to suck in all the worlds poor and lazy that it will destroy our middle class and shortly after that destroy our precious democratic republic. If we are going to commit suicide then lets do it by consensus.



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