True, nothing beats free land.
Yes.
I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at, but I don’t think most Americans are “self-aware” in the same sense that I’d expect illegal immigrants to be “self-aware”. I mean, they are doing something quite significant by being here illegally, and all we’re doing is paying for produce. I don’t think those two actions rise to the same level int terms of how much introspection they would induce in an individual.
Again, please don’t misconstrue my intent. I have lots of sympathy for the folks coming here illegally. As I said, I could see myself doing the same thing. But let’s not kid ourselves. The statement was made that one problem with the situation is that there is no [practical] way for those here illegally to obtain a legal status. It’s unclear to me that giving them a way to legal status would reduce the number of folks here illegally since the very act of giving them such a way to legal status would incentives more folks to come here illegally.
Look at what happened the last time we did this. ~3M illegal immigrants turned into ~10M illegal immigrants. Maybe that’s an inevitable consequence of our economic situation viz a viz Mexico and Central American countries. And maybe net/net we’re still better off by granting a path to legal status to those here illegally now. But I’m not convinced that’s a way to solve the problem of lots and lots of illegal immigrants residing the US. If the goal is to solve that problem (that is, make it mostly go away), one might shoot for an equilibrium like we have today.
The immigrants of yesterday came to this country because they believed the streets were paved in gold.
The immigrants of today come to this country because they believe that their kids will get a good education, healthcare, and nutrition.
The immigrants of yesteryear knew they would have to work very hard. The immigrants of today also know they have to work very hard. And they do.
If immigrants are coming here because they think the government will take care of them, they are sadly mistaken. The government doesn’t do this even for its natural-born citizens.
Let’s see. A $50/month EBT card. Or 160 acres of land to leave behind to your children. If an immigrant was offered this deal today, I’m not guessing they’d go with the lousy EBT card. Even Lazy Smurf would jump at the chance to be landowner.
Mostly agree, but I think lots of immigrants come here today because they are scared shitless of continuing to live where they are living (drug gangs, corrupt government officials, what-have-you). The not only think their kids will get a better shot at things, but if they stay where they are, their kids may get shot at or lured/coerced into some gang or another. Those are the folks streaming across the border from Central America.
It doesn’t make much difference why immigrants came. What counts for this purpose is what behaviors are likely to be incentivized or disincentivized (on a group level) over time.
Would it affect your theory to learn that immigrant groups use welfare programs less than non-immigrants when controlling for income?
If not, is there any evidence that would affect your belief?
No. It also wouldn’t surprise me at all.
Besides for immigrant groups being not fully eligible for the full gamut of social programs (as above), a lot of these immigrants come from countries which have much weaker social safety nets and thus start off with a stronger work ethic than native-born Americans.
The issue is that once they’re here and entire communities have high levels of usage, then it becomes the social norm, and creates a self-perpetuating cycle of poverty.
“Controlling for income” is not relevant to this dynamic. If Community A has 80% poor enough for social programs and 70% actually living off them to some extent, and Community B has 20% poor enough for the programs and 19% actually living off them, then Community A uses the programs less after “controlling for income”, but people growing up in Community A are also more likely to grow up considering these programs part of the way of life, and less likely to claw their way out of poverty.
I need to know what counter-theory you’re proposing before considering what evidence might support it or whether such evidence might conceivably exist.
I mean, for example, if you could prove that people who grew up in communities where social programs are very common are not more likely to themselves be on these programs as people who grew up in other communities where it’s not common, then that would argue against what I’m saying. But I can’t imagine you’re actually suggesting this (if only because children of poor people are more likely to be poor, even independent of the impact of social program dependency).
Those two points together define the issue: the difference between today’s immigration and that in the early part of the 20th century is the combination of where they come from and the significant stratification in their socioeconomic status. The statement that I bolded in the quote from Richard Parker is very true and not well known.
My only slight dispute is that I wouldn’t categorize the refugee category as necessarily being “unusually low status” although it clearly depends on who they are as a demographic and where they’re coming from at any particular time. From what I know anecdotally of some of the Syrian refugees currently coming into Canada, many are in the trades or other blue-collar professions, driven out of their home country by ceaseless civil war.
And this, to me, represents the irony of some of the present raging xenophobia: many of these refugees are actually the closest of all modern immigrants to those of the 19th and early 20th century, anxious to work hard to make a better life for their families, and in the process, contributing to a productive economy. Yet they bear the brunt of the discrimination. Ironically, some of those at the top of the stratified immigration hierarchy (at least in Canada) have been the least economically productive. The concept of rich immigrants seeking to get richer through investment and the work of others rather than their own is a new phenomenon in the late 20th and the 21st century, and its influence is often malign – it’s driven detached house prices in Vancouver and Montreal into the millions and completely out of the reach of ordinary people, and it drives a Wall Street style of non-productive avarice.
But who could have a problem with the gentleman in the well-tailored suit tooling around in a high-end Mercedes? Let’s direct our anger, fear, and hostility toward all those people wearing funny-looking foreign outfits and maybe a head scarf or a hijab. Xenophobia is alive and well, as it always is, and it seems to me that it’s directed to the wrong targets.
There are many countries and cities that are extremely diverse and that celebrate that diversity to the benefit of everyone living there. Believe it or not, racism and homophobia are not the only “values” that immigrants can offer, and many of those values are very positive ones. Sure, diversity must end at accepting racism and homophobia, but racism and bigotry must end at directing hostility against people because of their culture or the way they’re dressed.
This would make sense if you were trying to explain some phenomenon with your theory, but you haven’t even identified a phenomenon to explain (since you concede that it wouldn’t affect your theory if immigrants used *less *welfare). Since your theory is just an idea unmoored to any facts (or at least none so far identified by you), the “counter theory” is just a null hypothesis–that the existence of a broader social safety net has no effect on immigrants as distinct from all Americans.
To put it more succinctly–are there any facts that cause you to believe that contemporary immigrants are more likely to see accepting welfare as “a way of life”?
Correction: In the above, I meant to say “… detached house prices in Vancouver and Toronto …”, not Montreal.
Mostly general knowledge of human nature. People tend to accept things which are common in their communities as a “way of life” more than they do things which are uncommon in their communities.
Please clarify whether you disagree with this as a general rule. And if you don’t disagree with the general rule, why you think accepting welfare would be an exception.
[Beyond that, I happen to have had (and still have) an enormous amount of direct exposure to people on various social programs - friends, relatives, aquaintances, etc. etc. - to one extent or another, and my experience is consistent with the idea that attitudes to these programs are heavily influenced by how common it is in their communities. But I’m only mentioning this in response to your question about “are there any facts that cause you to believe …”, and I’m not asking anyone to put any weight on my personal experience.]
You said “when controlling for income”. Don’t leave this clause out when restating, as it’s misleading without it.
You’re just preaching and your post does not speak to what I am saying - the concept is not that complicated.
Salad bowl vs. melting pot are two different things. The Borg don’t celebrate diversity.
The terms are too colloquial for me to agree or disagree, I think. I don’t know what a “way of life” means in the context of safety net programs, much less without that context. I speculate that what you mean is that people will stop making efforts to increase their income/wealth such that they are no longer eligible for welfare. If that’s what you mean, then I do not agree that this phenomenon is more likely as the result of widespread community participation in a program.
Widespread participation probably does marginally incentivize individual participation, if by no other mechanism than by higher likelihood of knowledge of the existence of the program. But my model of human nature tells me that most people try to improve their economic circumstances most of the time, and when they don’t, it’s not generally because they see that lots of other people in their cohort use EBT cards.
What I think I’m doing is clarifying, not preaching. Given the hostility we’ve seen in current politics and even in these forums directed against Muslims specifically (and identifiable minorities in general) I’d say the concept requires a good deal of clarification.
Any argument against Immigration is basically against Illegal immigration.
" Taking our jobs " - yes , there has been an outcry against H1b I.T workers primarily from southern India who supposedly are hired over americans because they can be paid lower. I think this is overblown to support a Xenophobic claim . Not saying that this has never happened , but to say this is the rule rather than the absolute exception is ludicrous.
Apart from this , the " taking our jobs " applies to blue collar , low paying , manual labour intensive jobs . Classical example is Landscaping or food industry jobs as we all know.
" Their culture is subversive/degradation of gene pool "- this is your far far right america talk here. To state a simple fact , virtually no immigrant group from the jews , italians to asians have escaped this accusation. This country was founded by the English, Germans and Dutch in a very obvious philosophy of " By us , for us ". Anybody who came after them was an outsider. There is a wonderful book the name of which I cannot recall right now that deals with how the Italians , Jews and Eastern, Southern Europeans gradually became “white” in America. There is in fact a whole thread on this site discussing how the Irish were not considered " white " at one point or the other.
Controlled immigration of the cream of the crop is probably one of the best things the U.S has going for it right now.
:D. " All men are created equal " buddy. Didn’t you know.
You know. The ones that give immigrants a free ride when they sneak into this country illegally!
As John Mace and Little Nemo already mentioned, that’s hardly new. There are even fellowships which encourage or require such behavior, as they require the recipient to spend two years outside the US after graduation (Fulbright) or to return to their home countries (lots of fellowships from those students’ countries). J1 and H1 visas (and their accompanying spousal visas) are temporary, non-immigrant visas.
Modern communications mean that people can visit home in between or call, rather than never give signs of life, or maybe send mail, and then suddenly return home asking “hey dudes, remember me?”