# Immigration Reform **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 7, 2013, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-reform/646323 "2013-01-07T06:50:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2013, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-reform/646323/41 "2013-01-09T16:48:18Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > And our country (along with, as far as I can tell, all the other developed nations) is backward and barbaric for thinking otherwise. It’s good that you at least acknowledge you are waaaay out in left field on this one. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2013, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-reform/646323/42 "2013-01-09T16:49:39Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > I think it has something to do with the apparent fact that everything south of the Rio Grande is rather less, you know, white. > > If the illegal-immigration pressure were coming from Canada instead of Mexico – all economic factors held constant – then the Minutemen would not exist. You know it, I know it, Lou Dobbs knows it, and **Debaser** knows it. …the racism card. How predictable. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2013, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-reform/646323/43 "2013-01-09T18:12:54Z")
> [@Debaser](#): > > It’s good that you at least acknowledge you are waaaay out in left field on this one. Continue to make moral judgements based on popularity and see how far that gets you. We shouldn’t treat human beings like pests, even if our buddies in the UK and Europe do it too. Right and wrong aren’t subject to a vote. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2013, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-reform/646323/44 "2013-01-09T18:36:24Z")
> [@Debaser](#): > > …the racism card. How predictable. > > :rolleyes: See post #31. So what, if not “race,” do **you** think distinguishes Latin American civilization from Western civilization? ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2013, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-reform/646323/45 "2013-01-09T18:39:31Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > See post #31. So what, if not “race,” do **you** think distinguishes Latin American civilization from Western civilization? So you want what, exactly? Evidence that our civilization in America isn’t exactly the same as that of Mexico? Language. We speak English. Mexicans speak Spanish. Tell me please… What do I win? ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2013, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-reform/646323/46 "2013-01-09T19:08:04Z")
So Spain isn’t part of Western Civilization anymore either? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2013, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-reform/646323/47 "2013-01-09T19:14:29Z")
> [@Debaser](#): > > So you want what, exactly? Evidence that our civilization in America isn’t exactly the same as that of Mexico? > > Language. We speak English. Mexicans speak Spanish. > > Tell me please… What do I win? Nothing. A **nation** is not a **civilization.** France and Germany don’t speak the same language, but they don’t belong to different civilizations. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2013, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-reform/646323/48 "2013-01-09T20:17:15Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Nothing. A **nation** is not a **civilization.** France and Germany don’t speak the same language, but they don’t belong to different civilizations. I gave one example. I could give more. Here’s a good one. America is a stable democracy run by an elected government. Mexico is a lawless country basically run by narcotics cartels. Want more? What would be the point? If you can’t see how America and Mexico are different civilizations than I don’t think any post of mine will sway you. Wikipedia has a decent page on it if you want more info. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2013, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-reform/646323/49 "2013-01-09T20:22:09Z")
> [@Debaser](#): > > I gave one example. I could give more. > > Here’s a good one. America is a stable democracy run by an elected government. Mexico is a lawless country basically run by narcotics cartels. 1. That does not make Mexican immigrants, legal or illegal, any sort of threat to our “civilization”. In fact, they’re just trying to get **away** from all that. 2. That does not make us different civilizations. Nazi Germany and democratic Britain belonged to the same civilization. And German immigrants at the time were no threat to civilization in Britain. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2013, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-reform/646323/50 "2013-01-09T20:24:18Z")
> [@Debaser](#): > > Wikipedia has a decent page on it if you want more info. [I already linked it](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clash_of_Civilizations) and explained why it’s bullshit. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2013, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-reform/646323/51 "2013-01-09T20:43:12Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > [I already linked it](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clash_of_Civilizations) and explained why it’s bullshit. You linked to the wiki page for some book. I would refer you to the actual page on civilizations which clearly shows that America and Mexico are different. [Wiki page on civilizations](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization) [Map in wiki showing different civilizations](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Clash_of_Civilizations_map.png) ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2013, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-reform/646323/52 "2013-01-09T20:53:06Z")
> [@Debaser](#): > > You linked to the wiki page for some book. > > I would refer you to the actual page on civilizations which clearly shows that America and Mexico are different. > > [Wiki page on civilizations](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization) > > [Map in wiki showing different civilizations](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Clash_of_Civilizations_map.png) Amusingly, that map is from the book **BrainGlutton** is talking about. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2013, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-reform/646323/53 "2013-01-09T21:10:50Z")
Ha! So it is. Even **Brainglutton** ’s own author has them as separate civilizations. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2013, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-reform/646323/54 "2013-01-09T22:16:03Z")
> [@Debaser](#): > > Ha! So it is. Even **Brainglutton** ’s own author has them as separate civilizations. You mean the author he refuted in post #31? ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2013, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-reform/646323/55 "2013-01-10T03:21:42Z")
Right. **Debaser** , **BrainGlutton** already laid out his rejection of the map you’re using, so you may need to address that. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2013, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-reform/646323/56 "2013-01-10T05:30:10Z")
And do you, **Debaser,** seriously believe that if the illegal-immigration pressure were coming from Canada instead of Mexico, all economic factors held constant, the Minutemen would exist? No, you do not. Half-French white-trash you could deal with. Meskins is another matter. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2013, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-reform/646323/57 "2013-01-10T05:39:04Z")
From [Blood, Class and Nostalgia: Anglo-American Ironies,](http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Class-Nostalgia-Anglo-American-Ironies/dp/0374114439) by Christopher Hitchens, discussing the “official English” movement of 1988: > [@](#): > > U.S. English, it emerged, was a project of “U.S. Inc.,” a tax-exempt body which underwrote a number of other groups, such as the Center for Immigration Studies, Americans for Border Control, and Californians for Population Stabilization. There was no mistaking the timbre of this joint output, which had little to do with the teaching of “the Queen’s English” except as this bore upon the connection between that English and certain inherited conceptions of race and tribal security. Dr. John Tanton, the originating author of this cluster of groups and initiatives, was himself in no doubt that “the question of bilingualism grows out of U.S. immigration policy.” > > So much might have seemed obvious, at least until Dr. Tanton wrote a paper which, phrased in the poor and affected English which is often found among the language’s more ostentatious upholders, created a crisis for his hitherto blue-chip WASP and Jewish campaign. As he coarsely put it: > > > [@](#): > > > > _“Gobernar es poblar”_ translates as “to govern is to populate.” In this society, will the present majority peaceably hand over its political power to a group that is simply more fertile? Can _homo contraceptivus_ compete with _homo progenitiva_ if borders aren’t controlled? > > Having rather clumsily Latinized or Romanized his argument, Tanton moved to a more demotic style. He warned sternly of such alarming cultural imports as "the tradition of the _mordida_ (bribe), the lack of involvement in public affairs, and Roman Catholicism with its tendency to “pitch out the separation of church and state.” He continued to skirt around these aspects of the problem – the most conspicuous opponents of church-state separation in the 1980s have been fundamentalist Protestants – making an excursion through allegedly low “educability” before returning with relish to his main theme, which was, as ever, sex and fertility: > > > [@](#): > > > > Perhaps this is the first instance in which those with their pants up are going to get caught by those with their pants down. As whites see their power and control over their lives declining, will they simply go quietly into the night? Or will there be an explosion? > > This piece of inadvertence – the shift to “white” as the key word speaks volumes in the extract above, as well as showing the secondary significance of ideas like “culture” and “language” – led to the resignation of many of the U.S. English board members, among them Walter Cronkite and the neoconservative Hispanic Linda Chavez. It also led to closer scrutiny of the network of which Dr. Tanton was the convenor. The chairman of the Florida English campaign, for example, had advocated the elimination of emergency telephone services in Spanish in order to supply what he called an “incentive” to the learning of the tongue of Shakespeare and Dickens. His Dade County equivalent had warned that “the United States is not a mongrel nation.” Rusty Butler, an aide to Senator Steven Symms of Idaho, had forwarded the senator’s call for an English-language amendment to the Constitution by saying that “the language issue could feed and guide terrorism in the U.S.” Finally, it was discovered that among the donors to Dr. Tanton’s network was the Pioneer Fund, established in the unpropitious year of 1937 to proselytize for what it then called “applied genetics in present-day Germany.” [Pioneer Fund](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Fund) [John Tanton](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tanton) Of course, the United States **is** a mongrel nation if ever there was one, and that from long, long before Independence. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2013, 7:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-reform/646323/58 "2013-01-10T07:07:54Z")
Huntington’s map is wack. He makes nitpicky distinctions in some regions, and overly broad definitions in others. He carefully subdivides some countries (just look at the Philippines, I don’t know what’s going on there) then uses political boundaries to make sweeping categorical claims in others. If Latin America is a civilization, it certainly crosses into the USA. And it’s bizarre to claim that Mauritania, Indonesia, and Turkey are one civilization, but that Poland and Ukraine are in two different ones. Or, indeed, to treat “Western” and “Orthodox” as separate while lumping Protestants and Catholics together and while lumping all Muslims together. I haven’t read the book, but I suspect the basic thesis is some kind of argument that we should fight for the supremacy of “US” over “THEM.” This would be toxic nonsense, nationalism with a nonsensical international definition. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2013, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-reform/646323/59 "2013-01-10T15:09:00Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > Right. **Debaser** , **BrainGlutton** already laid out his rejection of the map you’re using, so you may need to address that. Yep. I walked right into that one. It’s funny because I usually try to avoid arguing for the various things that **BrainGlutton** likes to bring up to argue against. This one is a good example. He brings up in the thread a book that I haven’t read by an author I’ve never heard of. He then argues against it. I usually try to ignore such things because I have no interest in defending someone who I don’t know anything about. But I was reading the wiki page on civilizations and found it interesting, so I linked to it and to the map on it not knowing that the map was from the same author he brought up. :smack: Whatever. Either way, I don’t know what that guys exact theories are so I’m not going to defend them. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2013, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-reform/646323/60 "2013-01-10T15:13:18Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > And do you, **Debaser,** seriously believe that if the illegal-immigration pressure were coming from Canada instead of Mexico, all economic factors held constant, the Minutemen would exist? No, you do not. Half-French white-trash you could deal with. Meskins is another matter. Here’s another example. I never said anything about the minutemen. Neither did anyone else. **BrainGlutton** randomly brings them up in post #38, which I didn’t respond to because his thinly veiled accusations of racism aren’t worth responding to. Now he’s demanding that I explain whether they would exist in some hypothetical. Who knows? I don’t know any of them. I haven’t ever talked to one of them. Who knows what they think? I’ll tell you what I think. If there was tens of millions of people, of any color, swarming over the boarder from Canada that didn’t speak English, didn’t have college degrees or specialized skills and seemed to have no regard at all for our laws? Yes, I would have a problem with that. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-reform/646323.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/immigration-reform/646323.md?page=4)