If we put conditions on immigration such as prosposed and namely education, language proficiency and means to self support then we will end up with an immigration system that caters to the world elite. Most Americans have a family history of a poor immigrant that worked a low skill job, maybe two, as their ancestor. It’s who we are. That’s the American character. We’re proud of it. Most of our families improved through the generations to get where we are and to get where this country is. I get that it might seem like America is just this massive land of prosperity where all of this happened magically but it was built by people pulling themselves up and working hard. We should not trade that because it’s easy to import the world’s elite. This country will turn into a mass of wusses if we lose that identity and it will leave the poor and working class with less opportunity to work themselves into the middle class. I will say it again, for the most part immigration should be based on people who want freedom and opportunity, not as a means to import those who can afford English classes and college degrees.
We should bring in lots of immigrants. We need them. I’d bet dollars to donuts you’re ancestry goes back to a poor immigrant that had little work skills and lived in some slum in a city somewhere on the east coast. Now you think those of us that made it through that are somehow better than the new waves of immigrants. I don’t think so. The Lazarus poem tells the story of our nation. The values inscribed there is who we are, where we come from and what we are capable of.
How much would you like to bet? Whatever, I know you are just talking crap. My ancestry was here when King George still ruled the colonies and I have the paperwork to prove it. You do have a minor point. We don't want to turn into Vancouver, a province of china. We don't want to be an extension of Latin America either, not if we value our country. Immigration has gone too far, too fast and anyone can see it. The public certainly sees it, as poll after poll confirms. Our leaders are bought off on one side and traitorous political hacks on the other, so they ignore the public and we end up with Trump out of frustration.
That's not the issue, that is a value judgment. The issue is what is best for the country. People have a perfectly legitimate right not to expect their country to turn into some corrupt third world shithole through immigration, which is obviously what is happening. Liberals went from denying that was the objective to gloating about it and dreaming of the day when whites become a minority in the country they built. The obvious point here is that the left despise America. Their immigration plans are not designed to benefit the country but to destroy it.
Perhaps you are living in a dream world? A world of the American dream? The American dream never existed, never worked for the masses. It's like saying "the American dream is alive and kicking because hey look, all the opportunities are there for the hard working if you buy lottery tickets and wait long enough then eventually you will be rich." For most this will remain a dream forever. America was from the ground on designed to benefit a very few who rule the rest. If you are Jewish or member of one of the white shoe families or are extraordinarily smart and hardworking (perhaps 1% of the population) then you are part of the winners. If you are part of the rest then you are made believe that you are on a path to riches and happiness. In reality you will drive a Toyota Camry for life, hardly ever travel to see the world for lack of time and available funds, you will always be a serious sickness away from bankruptcy due to poor health insurance coverage, your parents will tell you what a great boy and talent you are even though you just finished in the bottom third of the local baseball league and graduated from a mediocre high school. You gonna indulge in alcohol and recreational drugs to make life livable, you think your 1 hour commute to work and back through the shanty towns of New Jersey or Queens and Brooklyn to get to work in Manhattan is an awesome part of your work day. You treat yourself with consumer products on labor day and the other few sales events when the real gods decide to give you a discount so to make you believe what a smart little boy you are to catch those unheard savings. You wake up every morning for another day of grind and pain but you do so happily because your parents taught you to be eternally thankful to live in the land of stars and stripes because it's such a better life than back in shitty Ireland or Poland or Russia. That in short is the life of the average grinder. Manipulated minions who like the Duracell bunny are made to do what the ruling class wants them to do but making them believe it's the ultimate freedom and life they live. In effect America is made and ruled by a 1% elite that has throughout the ages managed to create a mediocre utopia for the masses and make the masses pay for each and every fuckup that is socialized while accrued profits remain privatized. That is America. Land of the brave. The America that really works for the top 1% and provides a perfect environment for the extremely smart and hard working to peddle their shit to the mediocre masses. It sounds like your family worked hard starting from poor immigrant grand grand daddy. And by now you reached a middle class life style. Yet you display a lot of hatred and jealousy towards those who do better and who might be ahead of you especially if they are not deserving but got a head start. Everyone according to you has to start as poor immigrant to qualify to enter the holy land. Well I hate to break it to you but that is exactly what the elite wants you to believe and the lifestyle they want you to live. Serve proudly in the wars and send your descendants into totally meaningless and useless wars to serve the elite. It seems the brain wash is perfectly working. Yes, you and your family is the greatest, you will achieve anything if you just believe strongly and work hard. All the opportunities are just there for you to grab them. The American life is better than anything else in the outside world (while in fact on most metrics that is absolutely factually false, unless you compare yourself with Honduras or the Philippines). It is indeed the big American dream followed by a huge hangover when little Joe wakes up each day and before he drugs himself again with a huge dose of American optimism derived from a long line of hard working immigrants, each generation rising above the horizon by improving living standards just a little more. Grand grand daddy on foot grand daddy on a horse, daddy on a Buik, and now you on a Camry. Congrats, America is working for you........ Or perhaps you were made to believe something that is factually untrue. PS: the "you" is not to be meant personal, I am not personally talking about you but the average Joe.
You have, in all probability, masterfully opined as Hillary Clinton would, if indeed she could bring herself to be completely candid. Well done!
What does this say about Bernie's pragmatism, and manners? I think it say a lot. I admire someone who can accept the current reality, make what they can out of it, and keep pressing on.
It’s not immigration that’s causing the decline of the middle class in this country, it’s right wing economic policies. Blaming immigrants is just a distraction to move more and more wealth from the middle class to the owner and investor class. I always laugh when people say things like the country whites built. As if they have some claim on what other people did because they have the same skin color, never mind all the slavery. This country was built by lots of different people and excluding them because of their race is a fallacy. There’s exclusively white areas in states like Idaho and parts of Northern California and Kentucky by design. These places are shot holes because people that have big impacts on where they live don’t want to live there because they are smart enough to know it’s not skin color that makes great civilizations, it’s opportunity.
This is a very jaundiced view of the United States but you are correct in that America has fallen behind in recent decades. The Europeans now have better opportunity to move into the middle class but it really is not so different that you can’t replace everything you wrote in the above with any Western European country. What I will say is those lives you so callously took a shit have meaning. They are filled with people who love each other and have traditions and take pride in their work. My fighting for their ability to achieve some comfort in life with a fair paying job and education for their children is not out my own interest but because I know those lives have meaning and assholes who shitnon them don’t.
Nobody shits on anyone. You just stubbornly refuse to accept the fact that the American dream is a myth and the concept of equal opportunity is non existent in the US. You stubbornly refuse that a well entrenched class system is alive and kicking and doing well. I guess we both fight that and want to bring about change we just starkly differ on the right approach. Bringing in more low skilled immigrants might tip the scales towards more democratic voters but we differ on the utility of those low skilled immigrants.