Oh look another bigot. Let’s let in the white people cause they assimilate better. Those brownies, they tend to stick together so we better not let them in. And let’s make up unemployment rates to justify our position.
OK. 16% unemployment rate in the Dominican Republic.
11.5% in France.
In the united states, while they don’t single out Domincans, the overall unemployment rate for hispanics is 5.4%
Mark, that same argument was used to deny blacks some of their rights. In the end, the question is not whether it costs more or less but whether it is the right thing to do.
OTOH I agree the immigration policies of this country are quite messed up with the result that you get a lot of poor and illiterate immigrants (Who have nothing to lose) and you make it difficult for the better educated.
Suddenly this thread has made a comeback and I see people realigning themselves and taking sides but I have such an awful memory I’ll recognize a name but I am not sure if I am supposed to be with him or against him and the thread is to darn long. So let me state my position clearly in the following terms: If I agreed with you in the past, I still fully support your position whatever it may be as I am sure it is right even if it has changed. And if I thought you were a twit, now I believe you make even less sense. I hope that clarifies my position on this issue.
>>Oh look another bigot. Let’s let in the white people cause they assimilate better. Those brownies, they tend to stick together so we better not let them in. And let’s make up unemployment rates to justify our position. <<
Sorry, but this is a perfect example of how this topic shuts off brains and dissolves into political correctness.
The bigotry is yours. You assume we have to be nice to everyone–including those for whom no earthly reason exists for that gesture, except for the fact that there skin color is different, and therefore we lack the honesty to say that they won’t contribute much here for fear of being called racist. This doublestandard in fact is racist.
As a matter of fact, again, it is your bigotry on display. I don’t believe I mentioned not accepting black or brown computer scientists. That was your interpretation. Race on the brain, huh? I would let in Indian computer engineers (of which there are quite a lot) too. What I won’t let is are the great, unwashed masses yearning to be on welfare and feed at the trough. They do nothing for US. If the only criterion for admission is yearning for entry and being poor…well, better get ready, because that’s half the impoverished world. We won’t survive the process as nation with common values and a high living standard. Deal with reality.
Re: hispanic poverty rate. You better get some new stats. But we’re not talking about hispanics, which includes Europeans of spanish descent and Cubans and other who are quite wealthy. I believe I mentioned Dominican Republicans, specifically. The rest of the Caribbean is pretty much of a mess, too. I hear a lot of rhetoric, but I notice nobody has explained yet how this “diversity” helped the United States.
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Ahhh I see. It all makes sense now. You haven’t read any of the other posts. If you had you would see many facts and figures and statistics on exactly how much they really do contribute.
Why had I better get new stats? You don’t like the most recent ones? Would you prefer if I made them up like you did? Sure no problem. The unemployment rate for educated white people is 35% for poor uneducated Domincans it is .5%. Obviously we need to stop letting in white people and let in more Dominicans. Ahhhh. It is much easier what you make up facts. I see why you do it Mark.
And as for how this diversity has helped the US. Obviously, once again you haven’t read the other posts, people have gone on at lengths on how this diversity has helped.
Jayron- AMEN!
Many illegal immigrants in my part of the country (SoCal) are working hard and making money, not because they “stole a job from a white person” (God I hate even typing that shit to quote rednecks…), but because they are WILLING TO DO THE WORK IN THE FIRST PLACE. How many “average white people” , if they needed a job, would go pick artichokes or strawberries? None. Would your sister or mom want to spend all day cleaning other people’s houses? Probably not.
The immigrant workers I have known here have been the hardest working, most honest people I have ever hired. They make sure their kids are learning English even if they find it difficult this late in life. Don’t get me started on my “real American” contractors, who should lose their licenses.
Ok, I think I can mellow out now…
I have to post because I actually am an immigrant. I am from the UK, and my family came over back in '82.
My mother was hired, along with a whole bunch of other Brits, to be a programmer-because they couldn’t find any Americans to do the job. It took 10 years before the company would sponser her for a greencard, but in return she had to take a huge paycut. By that time my Dad had remarried to an American, and he & us kids got our greencards.
My Mom still works at the same company which now hires Indians to do work she did back in ‘82. My Dad started his own pr firm and employs 12 people. My sister is in IT and my other sister is a nurse. I am the only one without a (paying) job. I am married to a Navy man and stay home to take care of him and our two kids. Don’t tell me my family is taking Americans’ jobs.
We have mostly ‘assimilated.’ I hate that term, we are humans not borgs for christsakes. You cannot expect people to become somrthing they are not. When you leave your family, friends and everything you know, you can’t be blamed for trying to hold on to some of your identity.
I love being a Brit just like the rest of my family, and I love living in America, but you can’t tell me that immigrants don’t have it hard here. You don’t know how many times I’ve been told to “go home” or how much England sucks or how you kicked our asses 200 years ago. I can’t imagine how bad it must be for people who are obviously foreign-born.
I am not a citizen yet but that is only because I don’t have the $220 to spare (Navy guys don’t get paid a whole lot,ya know) and its hard to have an interview with the rugrats running around.
Obviously I am in favor of immigration, but controlled. We can’t let every one in. This is one of those subjects with no easy answer.
A great source of news about immigration policy is the Latino USA radio show on NPR.
ps Sailor, I’m sorry you don’t feel comfortable sharing your story. I hope things are going okay for you.
You know, I’d be worried if I couldn’t think of a better model to be aspiring to than the Borg.
I have to say this or I’ll go nuts.
I live in Hawaii. Every ethicity represented here is here because their ancestors were brought here to work or came on their own volition. My own great grandparents came here from Japan and worked hard on pineapple and sugarcane plantations. I live, work, and play in places that are multicultural. That said, I think I’m qualified to say my piece on this.
Recently I started volunteering at Child and Family Services in Honolulu. My job was to help “teach English” to Chinese people wanting to get their citizenship. Though it is correct to call them immigrants, I cannot call them that. Some have lived in Hawaii for more than 20 years. Some have lived here longer than they lived in China. They have jobs and work hard, are married and have children, and are no different from you or me as far as lifestyle is concerned.
I put “teach English” in quotations for a reason. We have less than three months in which to “teach English” to these people. We meet only once a week (all that is possible, since a lot of them have full-time jobs) for grueling 3+ hour sessions. We work intensively with them, at a ratio of one tutor to roughly 4 students. I’d say most high schools and colleges cannot match this ratio of teachers to students.
How does one “teach English” in that limited amount of time? Simply put, one CAN’T. It does not and will not happen. Why not? I’ll tell you why not.
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We tutors are mostly under age 25. Most of us are in college or recent graduates, and our majors were not education, Chinese language, or linguistics. We are not paid. This is all CFS can afford to bring in. A couple of my fellow tutors are Chinese and can speak the language, or, like a friend of mine, grew up going to Asian language schools and is a Chinese language major, but I’d say over half of us do not know Chinese at all. How do non-Chinese speakers “teach English” to non-English speakers? Easy. We CAN’T. There are too many grammatical and phonetical differences between the two languages, and you need to grasp both well to teach them.
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We, in reality, are not there to “teach English”. We are there to help them pass the citizenship test, which is entirely in English. How does one learn enough of a language in only a few weeks in order to pass a test entirely in that language? Easy. One CAN’T. The failure rate for these people is fairly high, despite this “preparation”. Surprise, surprise.
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Because of the time limitations, we only have time to review the questions that will appear on the citizenship test with them. The problem is, you cannot review anything with someone who doesn’t understand the language. The handouts we give them have the questions neatly typed out and also written in Chinese. We read each question out loud, slowly, separating long words (anything more than one syllable) into syllables, spelling out words, writing them down again and again, repeating them ten, twenty times… whatever it takes. But it’s not enough. This is all we have the time and resources to do for them. We ALL wish we could make this a formal language class with less emphasis on the citizenship test, but it is just not possible.
Besides, the citizenship test is a joke. In day-to-day life, what does the Emancipation Proclamation or Declaration of Independence mean to the average person? Who here knows what the stripes on the flag stand for? I read in the paper that when given an exam about basic American history, the average high school senior flunked the exam. As little as these events and things mean to us, can you imagine what they mean to someone from another country? They mean squat. Yet session after session, we have to pound these facts into them. And I know as well as they do that as soon as the citizenship test is passed, these facts will be forgotten.
Who suffers as a result of this? It sure isn’t us tutors, though we are drained physically and mentally and frustrated. It is the people we are teaching. They learn little to no English at all. But I’ll tell you two things they do learn:
-How to imitate words phonetically without comprehension of their meanings. They also learn how to memorize whole answers based on sentence order rather than by comprehending the question itself asked.
-That the sample sentences and replies we teach them can be used as absolute answers. Questions like “Where do you work?” render answers such as “As a cook in a restaurant”. Soon, everyone in the entire class also works as a cook in a restaurant. It’s a little funny at first, but it’s also frustrating.
I love what I do for these people. I respect them. They work so hard to prepare for their citizenship test. They take it more seriously than many of my classmates took high school. It means more to them that it does for a lot of us who were born here and had citizenship automatically. I hate that I cannot do more or that the system seems resigned to not being able to do more. I think it’s all a big joke.
Now I know why they don’t know any English. The system that is supposed to teach it to them before they can be citizens sucks. It needs a reality check, and a swift kick in the pants.
Now I know why they rely on their English-language-schooled children to be their translators. That’s all they have.
Sure, they could pay to take English lessons, but not all can afford or find the time for it. Furthermore, in Hawaii, they can get away without speaking English. With such a relatively large Chinese population, they don’t need English to get around.
So when I hear people complaining that immigrants don’t speak English well, I get pissy. If it bothers you so much, why don’t you be a little more productive in setting this right?
Sorry for the rant. It’s not meant as a direct attack on something anyone has said. I do hope, though, that it’s given you insight into the system.
I was going to start a thread on US immigration policy, but upon doing a search I found many existing threads on the topic - this one seeming to be the latest.
It seems obvious to me that sovereign nations have the right to set and enforce laws and policy regarding immigration - anything from completely open borders to completely closed, but even that appears to be debatable. I am in favor of neither completely open nor completely closed borders, but there are so many options in between that it will be impossible to completely revise US policy. We can’t even agree on revision of any part of policy - see DACA.
I’ll concede that we’ll just have to muddle along trying to tweak details of current policy over a period of many years.