There is media mayhem is over the re-establishment of control of our borders. The idea that WE have a vested interest in the possible hostile intentions, the ability to function in our society, and the legality of those who want to enter our country is . . . unacceptable to those screaming on Facebook and rioting in the streets. Further, the idea that we can take steps to keep out those who we do not want in [you cannot deport criminals if they can just walk back across the border] seems to be a matter of controversy; even as we are starting the process of doing just that.
But maybe this would be a good time to get ahead of the game. Let us say that all the measures discussed by the administration work, illegal immigration is cut drastically, and illegal invaders here now leave. Then what? The current “immigration system” does not work. It has not worked for generations. What should replace it?
We are a nation of immigrants. Our freedoms draw the best and brightest from around the world. We also draw everybody else. In keeping with the sudden realization by a majority of Americans that the purpose of the American government is to protect and work for the American people; the government has to find a way to make sure that the immigrants allowed in are going to be in the best interest of OUR country.
Up until now, the Federal government has been working to make sure that our immigrant intake is mostly uneducated and untrained Mexican and Central American peasants, and Islamic terrorists. I can see how a certain number of those peasants could be of some national utility. But not in the numbers we are getting. And I am sorry; we already have enough people here who want to destroy the country.
And it is insanity to import them alone, while turning our back on the rest of the world. Time for some pro-American sanity.
I would recommend what I call the “Ellis Island Tests” as a beginning.
1) Do you have, or are you a carrier of, any loathsome disease that we do not want in our country infecting our own people? Especially if the disease is one that we have successfully worked to eradicate inside our own borders. TB and diphtheria come to mind, but there is a whole list of other diseases, some of which we NEVER have had here, that are a reasonable reason to say, “try the country next door”.
2) Are you a member of, a relative of a member of, or affiliated in any way with political, criminal, or religious organizations that have declared hostility to the US, or who have sponsored or committed terrorist acts against Americans? If so, you can stay in a country where that point of view predominates. We don’t need you.
3) Are you a convicted criminal, or are you affiliated with an organization, syndicate, or cartel that operates in violation of the law; then you get to play the home game and not come here. Unless your crime was to tell your home country’s dictator what to place where, with what amount of force, and at what angle. In which case you should probably get bonus points.
Now note that these are proscriptive tests. If you fail, you are out. This is not a matter of quotas, participant trophies, or the employees of the Immigration system feeling good about how generous they are at the expense of the country. There is no constitutional right to pass, because these are foreigners, not in our country. This is a case of them asking for our indulgence to be let in. It is totally our choice whether to do so. And we have to place our own safety and our own interests above their wishes. Many will try, a relative few will be chosen. To continue the tests in a more positive sense:
4) Does the applicant have a skill that we want or need in this country? Has he or she been trained in a skill we need and are not producing enough of in this country? And if trained to standards not the same as ours, can they achieve our standards? Doctors, nurses, engineers; any profession we are in need of. And I note that we have a superabundance of lawyers and bureaucrats, to the point where we may have to open a season on them to prevent them from destroying the country.
5) Fluency in English would be considered a plus. And it would cover one of the requirements below.
6) If you are a spouse, child, or parent of an American citizen you would get a preference, but the relationships for immigration preference will not be extended further.
7) Immigrants will need a sponsor, who is an American citizen, who will be responsible for aiding in the acclimation to the American culture, society, and mores; and who will ensure that from the time of their arrival and granting of resident alien status until they file their application for naturalization [residency time of 5 years in most cases] that they do not go on public assistance in any way other than declared states of disaster. The sponsor may not be a corporation, nor may a sponsor be an employee of any company that the resident alien is employed by. Resident aliens are covered and protected by all employment laws and standards that apply to US citizens. Sponsors will be liable as accessories if the resident alien is illegally exploited due to their lack of citizenship status. The laws of the country and the Constitution protect all those who legally reside here. Resident aliens who are illegally exploited due to their status and whose sponsorship arrangements are broken due to court action shall be allowed a period of 6 months to seek and arrange a new sponsorship.
8) Before naturalization, all applicants will be tested and must demonstrate a fluency in English. This is not to disparage the use of other languages in private life. Officially, we do not care what language is spoken in the home or on the street. However, it is a fact that our country’s history, commerce, and culture are primarily in English. In order to fully participate, in order to not be exploited, in order not to be ghettoized and abused by the unscrupulous; it is vital that new citizens be able to understand the world around them.
9) As currently, applicants for naturalization will be required to pass an examination on American Civics, Government, History, and the political process prior to being naturalized. And as currently, they will be required to swear the Oath to the Constitution prior to being granted citizenship.
Now that is a quick outline of the selection process for individuals. Note that nowhere in there is there any hint of discrimination on a racial, ethnic, religious, gender, or other basis. It is a matter of objectively meeting requirements to become an American.
But there is a larger view. We need immigrants. We need their drive, their ambition, their desire to build a better life for their offspring. And we need to draw on the talents of the wide world in order to be the City on the Hill. But we don’t need everybody. The last year we have full figures for is fiscal 2015. We legally admitted a hair over 1 million [actually 1,051,000] legal immigrants from all over the world. In fiscal year 2016 we caught 407,000 trying to sneak into our country, mostly on the border with Mexico. Given the not unreasonable assumption that for every one caught, 10 don’t get caught [remember, the Border Patrol has been ordered to encourage illegal invaders for the last 8 years], that gives a projected 4 million illegals, or 4 for every legal immigrant.
We must stop illegal immigration. But we must not stop immigration. We must encourage legal immigration. In 2015 the Census Bureau estimates that we had a population of about 321.5 million. So annual legal immigration was about 3/10 of 1% of our population. That 3/10 of 1% of our population has not caused any significant problems. We have had during the same period about 1.2% of our population coming in illegally per year. And it has been a major pain in the Tuchus, and a deadly threat, for the country.
So, let’s say that 3/10 of 1% of our problem becomes an immigration floor for the number we admit LEGALLY each year. And since LEGAL immigrants are actual net assets to the country, we can absorb more. So let us say as a guesstimate that we put a ceiling, adjustable as needed by statute, of 1% of our current population per year as the number of LEGAL immigrants we can take.
That gives us a range to work with, once we’ve secured our borders and removed illegal invaders. With that, I suggest the following process or something close to it be adopted:
a) Every year, along with the budget [and definitely tied to the ICE or successor organization budget] the Congress of the United States will pick a number inside that range as the number of LEGAL immigrants that the US will allow in.
b) That number will divided among 6 of the 7 Continents [North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia], Antarctica being excluded because penguins are too addicted to the thug life to be let in. I note Greenland is governed by Denmark and has so few people that it can be counted as Europe. It will have to be decided, for our purposes, where the exact boundaries between continents are; but that is what we are paying all those paper-pushers for, and all that matters is that they are consistent. The division will be proportional based on the population of the continent.
c) Once the number for each continent has been determined for the year, a joint committee of representatives from the Department of Defense, the Department of State, and the Department of Homeland Security will meet chaired by a representative appointed by the President.
d) The joint committee will go through the list of countries on each continent and evaluate them based on their diplomatic, military, and trade actions towards the United States in the previous year and current actions. Such deliberations and the reasons for the decisions shall be classified and not released. If a country is determined to have posed or to pose a threat to the US and its interests based on those actions, they will be denied an immigration quota for that year. Those countries that are deemed not to be or to have posed a threat to the US or its interests shall divide the continent’s immigration quota proportionally based on population. As an example Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, Iran, Libya, and the Sudan have been the source of most of the terrorist attacks on ourselves and our allies. Why, right now, do we have a desperate need to import more of them? If the attacks stop, and give signs of staying stopped, we might reconsider in a later year.
e) The recommendations will be forwarded to the President, and if he approves the numbers will be the basis of the immigration quotas for the coming year.
f) This quota does not include the emergency admission of refugees or disaster victims, which as always is within the power of the President to approve or deny.
You know, of course, that the Democrats and their allies even further to the Left will be screaming like a cacophony of goosed coloraturas if anything like this is enacted. Illegal vote farms destroyed? Check. American people protected from two-legged predators? Check. Rule of law reinstated? Check. Welfare fraud, spending, deficits, and eventually taxes reduced? Check and double check.
We lock the door at night, not because we hate everybody outside, but to protect our loved ones inside. It does not mean that we do not open that door for invited guests.
Up until now, the Federal government has been working to make sure that our immigrant intake is mostly uneducated and untrained Mexican and Central American peasants,
That began with Teddy Kennedy’s law in 1965 that we would change our traditional preference for European immigrants.
I have no problem with Chinese or Japanese immigrants. The principle export of the Philippines are doctors and nurses who are welcome.
Decades ago, there were many Mexican immigrants. Some were the parents of my closest friend in medical school. His mother did not speak English and still made her own tortillas. His father had a wrought iron business in east Los Angeles and he and his wife had raised ten children. The oldest had died in an industrial accident. The other nine all had not only college degrees but graduate degrees.
My friend went to medical school on a scholarship provided by Dr Francisco Bravo, who had established a clinic in east LA and who paid for Mexican-American kids to get an education. If those who graduated from medical school practiced in a community with 25% Hispanic surnames, they did not have to repay the scholarship.
Times have changed. I reviewed workers comp cases for ten years, About a third of all cases were Hispanics and a large share were illegals. Of those who I assumed were illegal, few spoke or read Spanish, let alone English. Most spoke languages of Indian villages in central Mexico and were illiterate.
On the other hand, I have personal friends who spent years waiting for their application for an immigration visa to come up in a lottery. They are German and fluent English speakers. He is a master plumber and his wife is a nurse midwife. They had saved 60,000 Euros while waiting. He told me there was no chance to have his own business in Germany. They are here in Tucson and thriving at last.
The Muslims are, in my opinion, incompatible with a modern society if they are still devout Muslims.
“Our freedoms draw the best and brightest from around the world.” Judging from the people I’ve known, it’s more accurate to say that your wealth has attracted many bright people. The wealth has some association with the freedoms, of course, but without the wealth many of those bright people will look elsewhere however much your freedoms survive.
Our wealth lately has attracted connivers and opportunists
Stating that by and large Indian mindset is always to take the “soft option”, Murthy — one of the pioneers of India’s IT outsourcing industry — said becoming multi- cultural is not easy and is a “very, very hard option”.
The soft option in this case really means unethical corruption, and the hard option is competing on a fair and level playing field.
The US contributes nearly 62 per cent of the exports. Analysts are of the opinion that Indian tech companies could easily witness around 60-70 per cent rise in salaries of H-1B visa dependent workforce, leading to a 5-10 per cent hit on the margins, depending on the total base of employees currently on H-1B visas.
The next few years may be a real test as to what attracts foreign enterprise, easy money or liberty, because the easy money will be become ‘very, very hard’.
This is a sensible, workable and pragmatic plan. It might actually solve the problem. It’s too bad that the majority of our politicians don’t value these attributes.
Would it be possible to get some countries to ‘self police’ their emigrants by the US ICE accounting for illegal immigrants along with proposed legal immigrants in the allocation of the immigrant quotas?
If you are ‘in line’ you would be interested in those trying to illegally immigrate from your current home country if the illegal immigrants had a negative effect on the your immigration progress.
IOW, if you are trying to immigrate, you will have more interest in illegals if you are both competing for the same quota.
tom
I actually have to disagree with #4. I would rather have a poor Mexican immigrant who wants to open his own store than a doctor or engineer, since I maintain the former is actually more likely to value individual freedom over government intervention. We can train people to be anything, but inculcating American ideals has somehow become more difficult.
The main thing is to get back to an immigration system where the rules are clear and are enforced, and where assimilation is a major priority.
” We can train people to be anything, but inculcating American ideals has somehow become more difficult.”
Not if they are illiterate in Spanish, as well as English.
Mike K:
Option A: Let in the illiterate immigrant who opens his own store and teaches his kids the value of hard work and individual initiative, and then they grow up to become doctors, engineers, etc., who vote for a system where hard work and personal liberty are protected and valued.
Option B: Import doctors and engineers from other countries, who in general seem to vote for a system of overbearing government regulation and interference, because that’s the system they’re used to wherever they came from, and they thrived in such a system and want to recreate it here.
I don’t see any sign that there is an Option C where we let in high educated foreigners and they vote for freedom.
As I said before, Option A only works if we have a system that assimilates immigrants properly into Americanism, and unfortunately we don’t have that anymore.
“et in the illiterate immigrant who opens his own store and teaches his kids the value of hard work ”
Do you actually have any contact with these people ?
They speak Indian dialects from central Mexico. They learn enough Spanish to do low skill manual labor.
Cambodian immigrants open donut shops using funding from more established Cambodians. The kids work in the shop and learn to succeed.
The Mexican illegals are men who live in dormitory settings in crowded houses. They have families, if any, that stay in Mexico, They send money home. It is about 50% of Mexican GDP.
Older generation Mexican immigrants were literate and work hard but the recent ones are from further south and have no skills.
The notion that there are skills that are in demand and not possessed by enough Americans is nonsense. If that were really to be the case it is a market signal to pay more and to train more who will have those skills. Killing the market by immediately damping price signals does what? It makes sure there are NEVER enough Americans with those skills. Cut immigration to a trickle for a generation. It isn’t necessary or wise. Let those who are already in country assimilate and after that process, consider opening the doors a bit wider for a little while. But constant, steady immigration will eventually erode any host nations culture as the dominant culture is slowly made a minority and then all but disappears. Is America just a land mass, or is it the culture and the people who built it? Is it still America with 10 or 15 minority cultures all pushing for their own view of things to be made into law to trample the rest? Observe how hostile multi-ethnic places are around the world. America is not immune from that.
Mike K: You don’t appear to have read my comments very carefully. I’m not defending the current disaster of a failed system at all. What I want is to import Americans. I don’t think the best proxy for who would be a good American is how much education they obtained in their home countries. I think it’s probably pretty much inversely related, to be honest.
Among the reforms I’d push if you put me in charge, I’d eliminate dual citizenship, ban most benefits, enforce assimilation through language and history training, ban immigrants from being able to travel back to their home country as well as send back money. When you come to America, you’re either all in or you can’t come.
I don’t think the best proxy for who would be a good American is how much education they obtained in their home countries. I think it’s probably pretty much inversely related, to be honest.
I did read your comment and I disagree. Illiterate illegal immigrants are a drain on the country. Remember “A welfare state and open borders cannot coexist.”
There are thousands of people who want to come here and who would be positive citizens.
I examine military recruits. In LA, about 20% of recruits are Chinese kids who are joining the Army in a program to get citizenship after a successful term of service. They are legal residents now.
Their ASVAB scores are sky high. I have talked to African kids who are legal immigrants who plan to get citizenship from military service, then go to college on the GI Bill. One even had plans to go to medical school.
It’s not education; it’s potential. The illegals we get now are very low IQ peasants. They will never make a contribution.
I didn’t say we should import illiterate peasants, not even once. Never even suggested it. I said we should import potential shopkeepers. Said it multiple times.
:I didn’t say we should import illiterate peasants, not even once.”
“Option A: Let in the illiterate immigrant who opens his own store”
How many illiterate shopkeepers do you know ?
I know these people. Do you ?
Yeah, the illiterate immigrant immigrant who is capable of opening his own store can come. I’m fairly certain plenty of Italians who came over 100 years ago were illiterate. So what? I’m sure plenty of Vietnamese who came in the 70s and 80s were too. I’m sure plenty of current immigrants who work 20 hours a day in a donut shop were too. Unless they are mentally deficient, they can learn, if they want to.
The illiterate who can’t do anything at all can’t come. Most of the illegals wouldn’t get to come under my system.
I lived in LA for two stints totaling more than a decade during and after college, in the late nineties, then for most of the Obama years. So I know how laughable it is that people say that illegals are “living in the shadows” and other nonsense. Go to any hardware store parking lot in the morning and you can find hundreds of them.
I still don’t know who you’re arguing against.
The problem is that Europe is likely to fall to the Muslims in 20 years, so the US will have almost 40 million refugees. Before that, there is likely to be a civil war between the Leftists and Muslims against the original citizens. Break up of the European Union might prevent that conflict, but I’m not holding my breath.
The Europeans are more compatible with our culture, but almost all of them have been trained to be socialists. If they are allowed to vote, they could swamp America.
In the coming collapse of the US Dollar, the government will be unable to pay welfare payments. Many illegals will be without jobs so they will go home. The US is likely to lose millions in population when we no longer have welfare.
I’m sure everyone knows who Linda Ronstadt is. As a fan, I paid money for her music and occasionally heard interviews. I always figured she was American, for obvious reasons. Imagine my surprise when I suddenly discovered she was Hispanic, by her own words, and thus somehow wasn’t American or something.
It seems to me this is an indication of yet another problem the United States has managed to develop. We have people who are American by any rational definition- but who identify as something else, for one reason or another.
This is a sign of a deeper failure- the country is failing to teach its own people about their country, and failing to assimilate them. In effect, we have an education system and a pop culture controlled by people who hate America, and seek to fundamentally transform the country into something other than a free country.
Unless and until that changes, we’re going to have a rough time assimilating immigrants, period. We cannot continue to allow untold millions of foreigners to come here, and allow them to be assimilated into a leftist grievance cult that blames the United States and the American people for every bad thing that happens, anywhere.
End that, or the country is on a path to a savage civil war which will make the last one look like a Sunday picnic.
The current immigration crises remind me of summer 1914, when the British cabinet debated the county borders of Ireland as if it were the most significant problem in the world. A force majeur interrupted. The greatest immigration crisis of the next decade may be the flight on millions of Europeans from the collapse of the EU.
If politics is the art of the practical, the USA will never be able to implement EU- or Canadian- or Australian-immigration policies. Our factions are too strongly divided. Immigration is likely to be all or nothing at all.
Many of the proposals (are you diseased? Are you uneducated? Are you a terrorist?) won’t be answered honestly, as if they could be, but instead serve as excuses for revoking citizenship years later. The root problem—aside from the numbers of immigrants—is that the current elite of the USA has zero interest in creating more American citizens instead preferring “American” subjects.
“I still don’t know who you’re arguing against.”
I’m not really arguing but I am questioning a couple of your premises.
Illiterate Italians 100 years ago were coming to a country where most children ended their education at high school.
Literacy was quite good for those in school, if you read the California 6th grade reader from 1914. Still there were lots of illiterates still around.
The Vietnamese may not have known English but they were literate. I knew many of them.
In 1965, the Mass General hospital in Boston had an Italian interpreter in the Emergency Ward like LA County has Spanish interpreters. People could live their lives as American bon in that North End neighborhood of Boston and not learn English. That’s no longer true.
I’m sure plenty of current immigrants who work 20 hours a day in a donut shop were too.
Illiterate ? I doubt it. Non-English speaking ? Probably.
The premises are what we disagree on.
When I formulated the criteria, I based it on the experiences in my family of the previous immigration system before we threw the doors wide open. As it happens, this last weekend I got some confirmation of the current LEGAL system, which is ignored in the breach more than it is observed.
First, y’all have to understand that my extended family; by blood, marriage, and choice [formal or informal adoption], has more true diversity than any college administrator’s wet dream. Except we all have adopted American culture as our own. The Chinese part is actually by now very much a minority. So much so that a 4 year old grand-nephew, whose Irish background shows in bright red hair and freckles, was at our family party last weekend and asked his aunt [mom couldn’t come because she had to work] who brought him, “Are we Chinese, because we always celebrate Chinese New Years?”. Said aunt said, “No, we all aren’t, but the Patriarch [meaning Uncle “Subotai”, that old guy across the room, me] of our family, is.”. We have Chinese, Whites of various flavors, Hispanics of various flavors, Blacks, Christians of various flavors, Buddhists, Muslims [who have served in the Marines], straights primarily, but with a couple of gays of both sorts of plumbing. Old farts like me down to infants. We have seen each other through hard times, love and care for each other, and stand by each other. We had maybe 70 show up for the party, and there are a bunch out of state or deployed who could not make it. We ARE the American dream.
By the way, every one of our family is here legally if an immigrant.
I have a brother in law, who is a White, middle American from Kansas, who was able to make it this year. He brought his new wife, who is a legal immigrant from Guatamala. She confirmed that the criteria I listed about background and health was checked. Background was searched through criminal background checks and databases, health through an extremely thorough physical exam by a doctor working for the American Embassy that included tests for all those diseases. Lying was possible, but could be caught before she left, since she did it legally. She also learned English in school in Guatamala, well enough so that she picked it up fairly easily once here. She has been here 4-5 years and is now managing a Kroger store.
For my own family, I remember the books in Chinese and English [including phonetics] to help Chinese immigrants answer the questions asked by INS and to study for the citizenship test.
Literacy in one language helps learn English and cope with the new society.
There is, of course, a cultural factor. I had a Chinese half-brother [now deceased]. He legally immigrated from Hong Kong, and neither he nor his also legal immigrant wife learned English and never went beyond being legal permanent residents. Their children were born and grew up here. One of their daughters is a housewife and mother, two own their own businesses, and their son is a doctor. Incidentally, each in turn was the valedictorian of their high school class. Because as personally lazy as my half-brother is, the culture drives them to push their children to excel.
That culture can exist in any country. And that is what we need to import.
Subotai Bahadur
There is 0 reason to bring in non-white immigrants. Stop pretending like you have to signal how non-racist you are. In the end, it doesn’t matter if people come here legally or not. Non-whites vote at about 80% rates for big government, gun control, etc. etc. Whites vote about 70% for small government and gun rights. Africans have been here for 100s of years, yet a vast majority are still behaviorally African due to biology. If you value a traditional America, you need to stop wringing your hands over appearing racist. Racism is the only thing that will save America.
” If you value a traditional America, you need to stop wringing your hands over appearing racist. Racism is the only thing that will save America.”
I’m not sure about that. I grew up in the 1940s with a black nursemaid who came when my sister came home from the hospital as an infant in 1941.
I have no idea about her politics but she did convert to Catholicism because we were. She lived another 55 years and we stayed close until her death.
The blacks are suffering from the 1965 “War on Poverty” more than any “African” characteristic except race which does shift the IQ mean down one standard deviation.
The left end of that IQ distribution may well be the feral children we see in the inner city. That is part of what Charles Murray was worried about in “The Bell Curve.”
The immigration of whites is less important than the cultural survival. A year or so ago, I interviewed a kid from East Africa who was joining the US Army (It’s what I do). He had his plans all made. He would do his tour in the Army, get his citizenship in the program he was joining, go to college on the GI Bill, then he thought he wanted to go to medical school.
He had the next 12 to 14 years all planned. That kind of immigrant, I’m fine with, For the last 20 years I have taught medical students. Quite a few have been foreign born blacks, because of course, they get an advantage by being black. Several were African. One was from Eritrea and had escaped with her family as a child. She was living with a grandmother in Los Angeles and was too poor to buy a laptop, which medical students now use instead of a microscope. She could not even afford the physical exam instruments so I loaned her mine.
One year, we had an American black student in the same group. The foreign born kids don’t understand American blacks. It’s like they are starving in the presence of a feast. He flunked out in spite of the others attempts to help. Two of the others in the group were black. They could not help as he just got more depressed.
The girl from Eritrea graduated and is now in practice,
Racism is the only thing that will save America.
Can you give any examples of successful modern govt policies, in the USA or elsewhere, that include explicit racial preferences?
Mike K:
Your examples are of individuals which is not relevant in a discussion of statistics. Of course there are outliers, as in most things. We get the best of the best from Africa now, but google “regression to the mean” in the context of genetics.
Its not socio-economic either. Black students have to come from a family making $200k+ before their SAT scores (closely correlated w/ IQ) beat those of white students from families that make under $20k.
https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-144cb0f881e8c41ce6d2cb3ac40e41a1-c
Also high trust societies are virtually required for advanced civilizations, which cannot exist in a multicultural nation.
http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/the_downside_of_diversity/
Jonathan:
Israel excludes people who are not jewish, and most of the problems in that country are due to people who aren’t jewish who are already living there. Ditto for Japan and Japanese, China and Chinese, etc. etc. South Africa under apartheid was far better for everyone including blacks than the current “egalitarian” system. Ditto Rhodesia/ Zimbabwe.
Both:
Please try to refute my argument. Restated: if only whites vote in the majority for conservative/ libertarian issues, explain how a democratic nation w/ whites as a minority can maintain conservative/ libertarian ideals?
For extra reading on the problems of race (and a clue as to why certain groups have been forcing non-white immigration against the will of the people), check out the book “civil war 2” by thomas chittum, free pdfs can be found on the internet.
Zorost:
Israel doesn’t exclude non-Jews, and Judaism isn’t a race. Your strongest example is South Africa, but apartheid SA was a dysfunctional tribal society run by whites that has been replaced by a dysfunctional tribal society run by blacks. It was better run by the Afrikaners but that is more an argument for better types of govt than for putting different tribes in charge. People who want to privilege one group over another always assume that the political power balance they favor will continue indefinitely. This is not a prudent bet as Afrikaners and former members of the Obama administration have learned.
There are differences between mean test scores and achievement levels for different ethnic and racial groups, but there is also more variability between individuals within groups than there is between group means, and culture overpowers many other variables. Black West Indian descendants of slaves who come to the USA tend to be more achievement oriented than are black American descendants of slaves. Do these West Indians have different “biology” (I assume you mean genotypes) than the Americans? Would your immigration policy favor uneducated whites from Latin America and uneducated white Muslims from tribal Middle Eastern societies over West Indian professionals and businesspeople who are descended from black African slaves and dark-skinned Indians? I’d say we’d be better off screening immigrants by markers of achievement and values and leaving physical appearance out of it. Racial tribalism is part of the problem, not a solution.
Many Mexicans are returning home, discouraged and even afraid of the anti-immigrant rhetoric of these last years, and specially of the anti-American rhetoric that has now become the normality in political parties and the media. Most Mexicans coming back home are people who were undocumented in the USA, but many other were permanent residents who are making a decision to come back. Many left when they were young, unskilled, inexperienced, and now come back as mechanics, painters, carpenters and so on. Some come back with enough funds to open their own little business. Many of them come back with strong American values and traditions. I have a feeling most of them will do well here one way or another. My perception it´s that less and less Mexicans choose to emigrate to the US, and instead decide to move to more industrial cities in the country, I have read some studies, from the Pew Research Center and other which also indicate Mexican are no longer migrating in massive numbers to the US. Mexicans have less children now, the country has industrialised and there are many companies here, Mexican companies, American companies, from Canada, Japan, Germany, etc. But there still are some trying to get to the border and we also have hundreds of thousands of Central Americans passing through our territories as they try to reach the US-Mexico border. Mexico deported some 150 thousand Central and South Americans in 2016, most of them arrested in the southern states bordering Guatemala, and refugee applications to Mexico have increased 1000% now, as many people fleeing the humanitarian crisis in Central America try to settle in Mexico, first because they find it too difficult to be enter the US, and secondly because Mexico is far better off than most countries in Central America. Which is one of my points in this comment, because we have a great country here, more than a million Americans live here, and there are millions of people from around the world living in many Mexican towns and cities. My town used to be only Mexicans years ago, now I see Americans, Caribbean, Korean, Chinese, Central and South Americans. I have visited the US many times and I really like the US, and have family and many friends there. At some point in my life I thought about moving there, I grew up on a diet of american literature, from Dickinson, Faulkner, Allan Poe and Walt Whitman to Miller and Hemingway, but I decided love this country I and this culture, and it also has its own exceptionality, and for all its problems, more than a 120 million of us prefer to stay home, there´s work, salaries aren´t as high as in the US, but Mexico is a free and beautiful country with lots of opportunities for economic and social mobility and great beaches and weather and fantastic cousin and music and natural and ancient sites to spend time and enjoy and make a decent life. Now having said all this, for as much as many of us Mexicans love our great and beautiful country, believe me when I tell you that the last thing we would like is to have another Mexico next to our borders (we dread that indeed). So there has to be control on US borders, and though there must be solidarity with people fleeing from countries mired with wars and violence, Americans must be careful not to turn their country into an undeveloped one in the process of helping and reaching out to help others.
Subotai, I am glad you are here and an American, but one of your key premises is wrong. American does not NEED immigrants. We are clearly worse off in the current system, and perhaps a better system, and proper enforcement could be a net benefit, but we absolutely do NOT NEED immigration. If America slammed its door to all immigration, we could and would survive. It may not be optimal, but it is absolutely within the scope of possible, and would absolutely preferable to the current non-system.
Two points: First, similar to Zorost, there is a tremendous social cost to liberty to becoming multicultural and multiracial. You have described yourself as culturally American, and that is the exception. I would be narrower than Zorost, I would favor those who come from high trust and collaboration cultures with low corruption. Singapore’s Lee Kwan Yew was correct when he said,”In multiracial societies, you don’t vote in accordance with your economic interests and social interests, you vote in accordance with race and religion.” I want our politics to be an ideological debate about the proper size and scope of government, but that requires an overwhelmingly white society, one that is already gone.
Second: In even the recent past, population was a source of national strength. In the increasingly automated future, that will be less and less true and become a weakness. Population, especially from the left half of the IQ bell curve, will be a costly drain from societal potential. We do not need immigrants, but the potential benefit of high IQ individuals, especially on a multigenerational basis, is significantly better than below normal IQ. I would be far more willing to bear the societal friction costs for a 145 IQ illiterate peasant from central America than an 79-81 IQ, but given that range is the statistical mean for Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua, the 145s will be few and far between. They, and their offspring, will make us weaker, not stronger.
We (America) have also stupidly commingled immigration with guest workers. They should be treated and discussed differently, and they are not.
There is another factor. Politics is downstream of culture. Culture is downstream of demographics. Replacement rate is 2.1 surviving children per female; there being some some lost in childhood and some that will not reproduce. The US is below that.
There are severe problems, economic and cultural, when that happens. Look at Japan or the EU. Controlled immigration, taking the best and brightest [who will almost surely have a higher birth rate to balance out the current lack, based on experience] prevents those problems. Taking immigrants from around the world and assimilating them means we get the benefit, and the other cultures from around the world enrich us but none are here in sufficient numbers to threaten to take us over.
Subotai, the implicit assumption of growth is necessary is also a flawed premise.
The 1940 census of the America that won WWII was significantly less than half of what our known population is now. It would be far better to have a 0.2% per year decline in a cohesive population nation that endures, than a 1% growth in a political entity ripped by turmoil and ethnic block voting.
It is already apparent to me, and will be apparent to everyone within 30 years that the Japanese model of shrinking population, but staying Japanese is materially better than the German growth model at the expense of a Germany that is no longer German.
To your point that demographics is destiny, there should be a Germany for Germans, and an America for heritage Americans.
Or said another way more simply, the economic challenges of modest population decline are much smaller and more manageable than the problems of demographic transformation and associated cultural and political disruption.