What's so bad about immigration?

Like I said, drug cartels are the least of the problem's we've given them (that said, such problems are pretty big, so the cartels are still quite bad.) Bigger ones, off the top of my head:

• Maquiladora exploiting Mexican workers without contributing one single thing to the long term health of Mexico's economy, since all the profits go straight back across the border.
• SOA trained, American lead death squads butchering southerners to force them to the cities and plunder their land.
• Subsidized imports that can't be halted due to free trade laws, forcing Mexican industry out of business (for example, corn from the USA subsidized so heavily it's undercutting Mexican growers.)

@Savage Heathen: I don't think American jobs are threatened by competing with other first world nations like Canada, western Europe, or Japan. That's basically the same as competing with other Americans, as they're economically on par with (or above!) us. What's bad is trying to compete with the dangerous working conditions, subpar production standards, and total lack of labor rights to be found in the 3rd world.

Looking in the opposite direction, “brain drain” from 1st world-trained 3rd world students and professionals staying with their new hosts rather than going back to contribute to their society is also a problem, feeding a vicious cycle of no local entrepreneurs or expert personnel to kickstart things there. On top of that, even these better educated émigrés tend to have lower expectations so far as labor rights and pay are concerned than similarly qualified 1st world natives raised with less economic abuse, so they still harm our standard of living, just in white rather than blue collar jobs.

Not that I blame the individuals, it's the rational thing to do, and they probably don't even realize how much good they're capable of or the harm they're doing. Few small tragedies are sometimes needed to prevent many greater ones, enforcing closed borders are one such case.

edited 12th Mar '11 12:51:40 PM by EricDVH

^Ah, but in a lot of instances we're talking about the last major Second World nation and India.

I don't really have any problems with draining China's brain, or India's, or South Korea's. I'll be attending at a school with CS, Robotics, and Engineering courses that are arguably the best in the world (I'm going there for creative writing though.) Many of the other students who are looking to go into those fields are from Japan, Korea, or India. If we can keep them stateside, I think we should.

@Rott: Even the 1970s I'd rather live in New York City than the Amish Country. I know you're not advocating that level of societal and cultural stasis, but, and yes I must invoke the dreaded YMMV on this, the matter is largely one of personal preference.

Why should someone stay under a dictatorship, or in a dirt poor country?

I'm all for immigration, and I find it incredibly stupid that people claim that I'm against immigration simply because I'm against illegal immigration. In fact, I think that the standards for legal immigration should be lowered-but I also think that people who illegally immigrate should be punished with the full force of the law.

Because their people need them to change those facts about their country.

Still, I would hope that a US trained doctor from say, Nigeria would feel the need to return home.

I have a personal objection to the idea that one's accident of birth in a crappy country obligates you to personally sacrifice to fix it, especially when the country's problems are far broader than poverty.

So do you think we should empty the entire third world into our borders, every single person (over 40% of Mexicans, for instance, according to a poll I vaguely recall) who wants in should get it? If not, where would you draw the line, and how would you enforce it? Just let it fill up till WE become the third world and they don't want to come here anymore? Tell me your alternative to the status quo, I'm absolutely all ears.

^I'm just saying that if somebody comes to the US and is educated in one of our universities it should be much easier to convert a student visa into resident status.

^^No, they don't have the obligation, but I would hope at the very least they'd agitate for help if they stateside. Besides, Nigeria isn't all that bad, compared to most African nations.

You have an obligation towards your friends, and towards your family. That's it, full stop. You don't owe anything to your country. Countries are not entitled to loyalty or service.

You owe "following the law" to your country, if you want public services from it.

Regardless of any obligations people have, countries have an obligation to make the world a better place for people in general. Allowing some slop in the enforcement of migration laws for the happiness of a few fortunate individuals at the cost of everyone else, including the long term viability of their new home, would be contrary to that obligation.

States hold obligations to their people, and nothing else, unless they accure debts or they directly harm or choose to help another state.

I don't want lax laws, I want rewritten laws. India won't have it's future decided by a few hundred buissnes majors and computer scientists, nor will the US economy be fixed by them. But long term the US could gain a lot by making a college education an easy road to citizenship.

I think we could gain a lot more by being able to offer our educational services to the third world without worrying about it being abused as an inroad to our labor market, especially if higher education was free for Americans, in which case there would be an excellent incentive to do so even at very low prices.

But it's not the third world these people are coming from, the kids from India can all pay for this, a third world nation yes, but not their part of it.

I like your idea, but I think we both know it's not too likely. Sorry for putting the US first but I want to see us get the direct benefits.

I don't think immigration reform (the enormous quota reduction I'm after… Or whatever exactly anyone else wants) is terribly likely either, so both of us are basically debating what angelic population can be supported by the head of a pin for all practical intents and purposes. Bleh.

edit: Regarding middle class (by American rather than Indian standards) 3rd worlders, isn't immigration for them about as easy as it would be for me to move to… England or something? I don't think they're affected by any of this.

edited 12th Mar '11 11:15:16 PM by EricDVH

I think I might have a shot, I can appeal to greed. You want people to do it solely out of the goodness of their hearts.

But yeah, this pinheads kinda crowded.

Fuck the law. The law is what the guys in power use to keep everybody else down.

I support unrestricted freedom of movement. Why should governments decide who gets to live where?

edited 13th Mar '11 7:24:38 AM by SavageHeathen

Nationalism is overrated, and the vast majority of the time in my experience an excuse for xenophobic bigotry. "I'm from here and don't want you...different people...with your "other values", "different skin colour" and tastes that aren't the same as mine living in my area".

Britain is absolutely full of it, and it sickens me. We're all people, and none of us can help where we were born. If one's own country sucks and doesn't provide the opportunities required for a better standard of life, why wouldn't you move? Seems like common sense to me, and from the other side of the coin, it seems like common sense to allow it. The problems associated with immigration are greatly overstated, and the benefits ignored entirely or written off as deluded idealism in these arguments in my experience.

What happens when multitudes of, say, Muslims move to the West en masse, bringing unwelcome aspects of their culture with them? It's always possible said Muslims would adopt traditions of their host nations and abandon much of their constrictive bullshit, but it ain't guaranteed.

I'm no Marxist, but the dialectic is of some use here.

Thesis: Western culture.

Antithesis: Muslim immigrants.

Synthesis: A Western culture that has adopted and accepted some elements of Muslim/Arab practices and has had an impact on the immigrants and their children.

Under ideal conditions of course, although in Europe both sides are being foolishly resistant to change. Not that all of the states in the US aren't setting a good example.

What benefits? A fresh supply of gullible bodies for employers to abuse and scab recalcitrant unions with? Overpopulation to keep squalor at historical levels in spite of 1st world birth rates finally shrinking? Oh, you mean the spiffy food you can buy at ethnic markets. Yeah, that's nice, but it seems a little lacking as compensation goes.

1) Not every Muslim is a fundamentalist who thinks that women who expose a lock of hair deserve to be beaten and raped. In fact, I would say the majority aren't.

2) There's just as much "constrictive bullshit" amongst the American populace (e.g. the Bible Belt). Why is it that, if native people do it, it's totally fine, but if foreigners do it, they're "unwelcome aspects of their culture"?

edited 13th Mar '11 10:52:22 PM by zoulza

Because they're used to it and they've developed a cultural callous?

Who said I approve of home-grown constriction?

on the issue of immigration i'm very skepticle of Ron Paul's stance on it. (I can'ta gree with him on ev3erythign) the problem with his issue is that he wants to remove birthright citizenship which is protected under the fourteenth ammendment of the US constitution.