191–200 of 434 posts
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The Chinese immigrated to the US at a similar time as the Irish and Italians. The more than 3 million Chinese living in the US today seem plenty well integrated and I don’t think China and America are particular close in terms of culture.
And the Chinese immigrants were met with the same fierce racism that meets Hispanics and Arabs and Africans today.
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> I hope we can move to a much more sensible immigration system, similar to Canada's, for example. We have a decent immigration system in terms of getting the right kinds of advanced folks. The problem is we are also unwilling to do what needs to be done to stem the tide of unskilled illegal labor that flows into the nation.
The biggest counter argument I hear, regularly, is that the "tide" of illegal labor you speak of is NECESSARY. Who will pick strawberries? Who will clean your hotel room? Etc. It's the classic who will do "X" dirty job argument.
There is a seasonal / migrant worker visa for this reason. For instance, near me, Kiawah Island's resorts are partly staffed with Jamaican guest workers because the seasonal nature of the job. In high school I worked as a bagger at a grocery store on another island that was incredibly seasonal, so we had Russian guest workers during the summers.
Some jobs probably just wouldn't get done without either A) a wage increase or B) guest workers, e.g. particularly brutal agricultural tasks. We can allow the necessary workforce in for these tasks if need be.
> It's the classic who will do "X" dirty job argument.
The poor.
Having grown up in an area with a large Hispanic influx, they did. I currently live in an area with little to no Hispanics, but we do have a lot of poor African-Americans. They do the jobs I grew up seeing Central and South Americans work.
The problem with the illegal influx from southern nations, is they can also crowd out native blue collar markets by working for less, and are willing to live an impoverished standard of living. We should not be forsaking our own countrymen so we can get cheap lawn care from a wage-slave underclass living in third-world conditions on American soil.
Not true at all. Turns out that the poor people who actually cant afford to have kids are having more kids. Hispanic and Black growth is much higher than whites and asians. Asians with the highest income level have lowest birth rate. Given that it is mostly whites who have been leading in STEM there is a high chance that US will lose its competitive advantage in these fields.
I wonder if the poor are having more children because they feel like they have less to lose? I desperately want to have kids and my girlfriend is on board, but she makes next to nothing and I make quite a lot of money. I tried an online calculator and if things go awry between us, I'll be paying her roughly a quarter of my post-tax income for the next two decades here in California. That's just too big a gamble for m…
Once you have them and have fallen in love with them, you'll find that their happiness is worth working things out with their mother, rather than breaking up. If you can't man up enough to put up with her shit (assuming there is any) and you do break up, the money will be going to your kids, who you'll love, and giving that money won't be as objectionable as you imagine.
For me, I used to break up with women over silly arguments that embarrass me now to think about. Now, when such emotions surface, it always leads to me thinking about my kids and what a break-up would do to them. When you have kids, you're in a relationship with their mother and with them also. When you're mad at her, you're still having fun with them, and that lets you work through your issues with her, as their happiness includes her presence. The same applies to her, if you're being an asshole for awhile. So breaking up after kids is not as likely as you fear.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Italians, Irish, and most of the other immigrants from that time were Europeans who had a lot in common with Americans culturally.
The Chinese immigrated to the US at a similar time as the Irish and Italians. The more than 3 million Chinese living in the US today seem plenty well integrated and I don’t think China and America are particular close in terms of culture.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Italians, Irish, and most of the other immigrants from that time were Europeans who had a lot in common with Americans culturally.
The Chinese immigrated to the US at a similar time as the Irish and Italians. The more than 3 million Chinese living in the US today seem plenty well integrated and I don’t think China and America are particular close in terms of culture.
The fundamental problem, as I see it, is religion.
> "The rate has generally been below replacement since 1971" And yet population has grown by 120 million [1]. There are a lot of problems in the world, but I don't think low fertility rates is one of them. http://www.multpl.com/united-states-population/table
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I don't see the value in large numbers of unskilled workers entering the US every year. With a potentially large wave of automation coming, the US shouldn't straddled itself with lots of unemployable drivers, farm workers, etc. I hope we can move to a much more sensible immigration system, similar to Canada's, for example.
What some people don't realize is that the person emptying your trash bin in the evenings might very well be college educated. Not that they stand a chance of using that education in the US without the appropriate level of English.
Not true at all. Turns out that the poor people who actually cant afford to have kids are having more kids. Hispanic and Black growth is much higher than whites and asians. Asians with the highest income level have lowest birth rate. Given that it is mostly whites who have been leading in STEM there is a high chance that US will lose its competitive advantage in these fields.
I'm not sure that low income Hispanic and Black birth rates says anything about their ability to afford those children. In other words, just because they're having more children doesn't mean it's a financially wise decision, or even one they can technically afford. Many middle class white and asian families are putting off children because of the cost of living. Just to make a decent 2-earner income, you need both to…
For decades, the US birth rate has been held up by immigration. American values have been to regard the country as a nation of immigrants, who not only act as a source of youthful workers, but also have more kids than Americans who have been here longer. So the US has avoided workforce aging, as has happened in parts of Europe and especially Japan, through immigration. With the recent reduction in immigration, accele…
we're full-on protectionists now. immigrants threaten what we got (a high-status nation dominated by wealthy white people), so they got to go, despite being the primary driver of our properity.
as a bonus, wealth disparity will only accelerate as the economic pie stops growing, because the existing capital holders have great advantage in capturing the remaining income streams, further driving down birth rates.
meanwhile, countries like china and india have tons of economic headroom because their populations are 4-5 times that of the US, but at lower economic levels. those countries will eventually eclipse the US if we stay on this path.
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Cheap produce is awesome. :) But working people not being able to find jobs because they're competing with dirt-cheap no-benefit laborers is not. :(
Every time agriculture-heavy states crack down on illegal immigration, crops rot on the vine because nobody else wants those jobs, even in periods of high unemployment. Here's the story from Georgia, there are identical ones from the Southwest as well: https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/05/17/the-law-of-... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-06/crops-rot... . Your choice is not between illegal im…
And it makes sense. We pay for everyone to go to 12 years of public school, learning calculus, history, chemistry, literature, etc.., only to work picking strawberries for the rest of their lives?
Fuck that.
The American labor force isn't designed for these kinds of jobs. I can't imagine any smartphone addicted millennial to do manual labor. In fact, we'd be more honest about our economy if we actually banned these jobs for Americans, and only allowed unskilled immigrants to do them, and deal with it from there.