Posted on 09/02/2007 10:38:37 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
That’s the beauty of state’s rights. The original concept of the United States was to have seperate states with strong powers, not this federalized government they have, for the same exact reason. A group of men in a far flung place CANNOT govern a large nation effectivley. Of course, we won’t even have this problem anyways if illegal immigration was hampered.
And you actually believe we can
A.) Keep this country economically competitive with our native citizen birthrate (which is around 2.0, bare replacement level)
B.) Be competitive in the world market without importing workers from other countries.
Both are impossible without immigration. In the global market we have today, you have to start importing other workers. There aren’t enough American workers for the industries we are involved in. Either that, or the American workers have been spoiled by our liberal lead schools who have pretty much made the American student and worker into a biological wasteland.
So what if our demographics change. Live with it. 200 years ago, we were mostly made up of Anglo-Saxon decendants, 150 years ago, we were made up of mostly northern European white Americans. Now an Italian American has a shot of becoming president.
(By the way, vote in your local primaries so that doesn’t happen)
If you lived 100 years ago, you wouldn’t have bagels for breakfast. If you lived 80 years ago, you wouldn’t have pizza for lunch. If you lived 50 years ago, you wouldn’t have fried rice for dinner. And yesterday, I had tofu, curry and sushi for brunch. 20 years ago, you would find none of those anywhere.
See, demographic changes are sort of a good thing.
The important thing in all of those demographic changes was how American culture stayed mostly the same. We spoke the same language, play the same sports and view the same media.
The reason why UNCONTROLLED immigration is bad is because there is a flood of a different demographic coming in who feel no ned to assimilate, and since they’re not being invited in, they feel no allegience to the country.
Controlled immigration does nothing to change the demographics other than maybe adding a few loanwords or introducing new cusine to the culture. So what? If we were a homogonized country without an influx of new ideas from all over the world, we’d end up like another India.
In fact, if it wasn’t for our importation of new ideas, India would still be a 3rd world country.
Ever lived in a place where everything is the same and people used the same methods to solve the same problems instead of thinking out of the box?
No. And if everything was according to you, our country would end up like how India was in the 80’s.
Personally, I see your anti-legal immigration stance as a veneer for other issues, but I don’t want the Anti-PC nazis down my throat on this board, so I’ll keep it to myself.
A.) Keep this country economically competitive with our native citizen birthrate (which is around 2.0, bare replacement level)
I have never said that I want to stop all immigration. Rather, I would like to see the numbers lowered per the Jordan Commission recommendations and that we change our policies so we can bring in the people with the skills and talents we need. Around 300,000 legal immigrants a year would work. That said, there are ways to deal with worker shortages in an aging population with just replacement level fertility rates. It is also worth noting that the population of the US would increase by 62 million by 2060 even if all immigration were stopped tomorrow.
At the current level of net immigration (1.25 million a year), 61 percent of the nation’s population will be of working age (15-66) in 2060, compared to 60 percent if net immigration were reduced to 300,000 a year.
If net immigration was doubled to 2.5 million a year it would raise the working-age share of the population by one additional percentage point, to 62 percent, by 2060. But at that level of immigration, the U.S. population would reach 573 million, double its size in the 2000 Census.
Changes to the retirement age tend to have a larger impact on the problem of a declining working-age population than does the level of immigration. The change in the retirement age from 65 to 68 increases the working-age share from 57.2 to 60.2 percent in 2060 — three percentage points. This is equal to net immigration of three million a year. Changing the retirement age has a much larger effect than does any realistic level of immigration.
B.) Be competitive in the world market without importing workers from other countries.
You are setting up another phony strawman. I am not against immigration. It should also be remembered that we already have guest worker programs in the form of various visas such as H1B, H2B, TN Nafta Work visa, L-1 Intra-company Transfer Work visa, Nurse Work visa, O-1 Visa, P Visa, R-1 visa, etc. We already have millions of people working here LEGALLY as guest workers under those programs. We also don't need to import millions of high school dropouts from Latin America to keep our economy competitive.
So what if our demographics change. Live with it. 200 years ago, we were mostly made up of Anglo-Saxon decendants, 150 years ago, we were made up of mostly northern European white Americans. Now an Italian American has a shot of becoming president.
You miss the point. Harvard historian Samuel Huntington has done an excellent job of describing why the current demographic changes are unprecedented in our history and threaten to Balkanize our country along cultural and lingusitic lines. Read the Hispanic Challenge and we can discuss it.
you lived 100 years ago, you wouldn’t have bagels for breakfast. If you lived 80 years ago, you wouldn’t have pizza for lunch. If you lived 50 years ago, you wouldn’t have fried rice for dinner. And yesterday, I had tofu, curry and sushi for brunch. 20 years ago, you would find none of those anywhere. See, demographic changes are sort of a good thing.
Spare me the silly multiculturalist crap. I grew up in an Italian immigrant neighborhood. I have lived 25 years of my adult life in nine different countries. I am not a nativist or a xenophobe. My wife is an immigrant as was my grandmother. I have every race and many ethnic groups in my extended family.
This isn't about pizzas and bagels and fried rice. It is about assimilating unprecedented numbers of immigrants, legal and illegal, and still maintaining our national identity and shared sense of endeavor. It is about the economic impact of depressed wages and huge burdens on our schools, hospitals, penal and social systems. If we maintain the same level of immigration our population is going to increase from 301 million today to 468 million in 2060 — a 167 million (56 percent) increase. Immigrants plus their descendents will account for 105 million (63 percent) of the increase.
Controlled immigration does nothing to change the demographics other than maybe adding a few loanwords or introducing new cusine to the culture. So what? If we were a homogonized country without an influx of new ideas from all over the world, we’d end up like another India.
I have no idea what you mean by controlled immigration. Define what you mean in terms of numbers and what you would change.
Personally, I see your anti-legal immigration stance as a veneer for other issues, but I don’t want the Anti-PC nazis down my throat on this board, so I’ll keep it to myself.
When you don't have the facts and argue from emotion and anecdotes, you fall back on name calling. Let's discuss substance. I am not against immigration and have never said that I wanted to stop all immigration. I do know that if we do not gain control over immigration, legal and illegal, we are headed for a major train wreck. America is the world's lifeboat, the best hope of Man, but there are limits to the numbers we can bring onboard without swamping us. We already take in more legal immigrants than the rest of the world combined. We need, as a country, a public policy debate on this issue--a debate not marked by demagoguery and name calling.
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