[Dane]

BTW, jack, couldn't America be considered the original "third world" nation. Afterall America took in all the dregs and rejects from Europe(dirty Irish, wop Italians etc.etc.) and prospered beyond their wildest dreams.

[ClintonBeGone]

You know, I would rather see the US implement a policy whereby they expel their dregs and welcome with open arms those from other countries that are willing to put in an honest day's work. Sometimes it seems to me that folks like Jack would rather have in his country a crack smoking welfare queen than a hard working Mexican bus boy. It makes no sense to me.

[jackbenimble]

BTW, jack, couldn't America be considered the original "third world" nation. Afterall America took in all the dregs and rejects from Europe(dirty Irish, wop Italians etc.etc.) and prospered beyond their wildest dreams.

Dane, I can do without the implication that my views are racist. I am half Cuban.

As I said before, the defining characteristic of a first world country is labor scarcity. During most of our history we have had a vast unsettled and undeveloped continent to occupy so labor has almost always been scarce and by that definition the answer to your question is: no.

There have been periods in our history where we have had labor greatly in excess of our capacity to create jobs. Once such period was the era in the late 1800s which is referred to as "The Gilded Age" which was characterized by sweatshops, labor exploitation and what came very close to a two-tiered society with the ultra rich industrialists living like royalty. We came close to a third world system then and the result was a backlash and the rise of populist politics, trust busting, inheritance taxes and other similar things and it culminated in the mid-1920s with almost a complete termination of immigration.

Immigration has ebbed and flowed in our history and right now it is at a historical highpoint. I think the backlash is in progress.