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Thanks for posting this. I had posted it with another thread earlier but it needed its own thread. This looks good.

This is from Session's website and also needs discussing.

Another flaw in the legislation prevents the benefits of merit-based immigration from taking full effect until 2016. Until then, chain migration into the U.S. will actually triple, compared to a disproportionately low increase in skill-based immigration. As a result, the merit-based system in the bill is only a shell of what it should have been.

More than half of South America and Latin America will be crowded in the U.S. by 2016. Our environment nor children have a chance for a decent life.

I haven’t found one single thing in this bill that isn’t a “shell of what it should be”. It seems as if EVERY provision has some HUGE loophole. This is one of the worst pieces of of legislation ever introduced in the Senate. (Except maybe for the Dem push to de-fund the War on Terror. That was a real clinker too!)

Can one speak of 'white culture' with as much validity as one speaks of, say, 'chinese culture'?

Maybe 'chinese culture' is more specific (of a particular country, even among chinese emigres), but even if 'white culture' has a greater variety, can one refer to it meaningfully? If so, can one favor 'white culture' without disparaging others?

I think so. Even as one can favor the culture of one's own family without denigrating others.

If so, can a nation adopt and identify with a particular culture while allowing some legal immigration from citizens of other cultures? I would suppose so, to whatever extent doesn't harm a nation's chosen and identified culture.

One crucial problem seems to be that our country doesn't seem to have yet explicitly chosen any particular culture. Rather, we seem to have an ever-changing marketplace of normative values,practices and standards, dependent on whoever happens to be here in greatest or growing and active numbers, an/or has positional influence.

If China cares much about 'chinese culture', then its immigration policies would recognize the difference between those national cultures of potential immigrants most consistent with chinese culture, versus those national cultures most incompatible with chinese culture. That probably couldn't reasonably be regarded as "wrong", unless one disliked chinese culture or preferred something else for China.

Although the American semi-open marketplace of culture has largely resulted in a predominantly 'white culture' traditionally, it might not remain so. It depends on birthrates and other demographic changes, as well as our choices in cultural identification and coherence, and what cultural elements our families and other institutions choose to transmit to posterity.

Any 'value judgement' to be derived from that? Again, as with the above Chinese example, it depends on whether or not one dislikes 'white culture' or would prefer something else for America.

I invite help in reasonably defining the term. While I, like many, am not as clear and informed as I'd like to be as to what 'white culture' is, I think I like it. I suppose I associate it with Classical inquiry into Logic and Ethics,... and mostly European science and empirical method,... and the objective legitimacy of democratic Republics and anglo-saxon common law,...and ethical economic development including fair trade,...and the basic theological way of Christ which both encourages virtue, is based on actual historical events, and offers a real way for transgressors and 'the lost' to repent and be reconciled to God.