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Earlier quoted context omitted.
What a novel, insightful conclusion. Thanks for sharing.
Funny, how the anti ICE crowd wants people to immigrate illegally. What about voting somebody to the office and changing the laws instead?
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Just tell me, have you ever gone through it? My guess? You haven't as you would think a little different of how easy it is.
And yes, I have.
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Immigrants account for ~98% of the American population.
It's self-evident that this difference between settlers and immigrants has a huge impact. Australia, Canada, and the United States are very similar to each other in terms of language, law, economics, etc. But the U.S. separated from the parent society, Britain, 250 years ago. Subsequently, those countries underwent completely different immigration patterns. So why are those countries so similar? It's because of the difference between settlers and immigrants.
My family came to the US via Ellis Island. Compared to what people have to do today, their legal path to US citizenship was relatively easy. I see no reason that becoming a citizen today should be any more difficult today than it was in the early 20th century. Open a 21st century equivalent of Ellis Island, and let people become citizens.
People today get a 50$ plane ticket and move straight to the Bay Area.
You don't see why things need to change?
He is a US citizen? Three nationalities? His reasons for leaving the UK make interesting reading in current circumstances: > The USA is putting curbs on surveillance, expanding its national healthcare, and there are mass parental boycotts of standardised testing in its public schools. The UK just elected a Tory majority government that's going to continue to slash and burn the welfare state, attack schools, health, l…
If I was an acolyte of Freud or Jung I would say that this dichotomy between "easygration" and "immigration" (im is for impossible, right?) is because easygration is the result of sex and being born in a country (yes yes pedants, that's changing now and not universal, but swallow your pedantry presently and persist with this a moment), and the "STATE" in its everquest to control all aspects of human existence, necessarily seeks to control and intermediate sex and all its analogs (as sex is the intimacy of individuals it seeks to control, it must get between there, too). So if sex-migration (by being born) is easy (as some concessions must be made), then the corresponding path must be a gauntlet gated by the difficulty proportional to how much the state wants to intermediate the individual's intimate affairs. The hard path of immigration, is then a mirror of the control the state ultimately seeks to exercise over every aspect of existence, but which for now, it is constrained by the modesty and norms of its people to resist.
TL;DR - immigration is hard because states can't control yet sex and intimacy as much as they want, so they control the next best thing, that thing which is accepted to arise from the result of sex and intimacy - citizenship or right of abode by birth.
Also one can make the obvious metaphors with borders, porosity, and penetration. One might be inclined to say: the state must currently tolerate the annoying promiscuity of its individuals, so it, in spite and compensation, becomes ultrachaste in turn, wrt its own intimate borders.
But I am not an acolyte of Freud or Jung. Tho sometimes I think as above.
He is a US citizen? Three nationalities? His reasons for leaving the UK make interesting reading in current circumstances: > The USA is putting curbs on surveillance, expanding its national healthcare, and there are mass parental boycotts of standardised testing in its public schools. The UK just elected a Tory majority government that's going to continue to slash and burn the welfare state, attack schools, health, l…
Your comment is a bit confusing. Did you mean everything except the part you quoted only applies to London? The part you quoted is about the UK not London and seems to contain all that is necessary for someone to understand why a person like Doctorow would have considered leaving at that point in time.
Here in the real world, every American I know knows that the only way for "normal" (non-rich, non-connected, non-extraordinary) person to legally immigrate is to marry an American citizen and have them sponsor you. Literally everyone knows the average "illegal immigrant" living in the US isn't eligible for citizenship and couldn't obtain citizenship legally. Exactly zero people think that any (let alone most) "illegal immigrants" could have just "followed the rules" and been able to live here legally. The reason they are "illegal immigrants" is because there's no legal way, other than marrying an American.
A lot of people would prefer if even family sponsorships didn't exist. Many people think of that as "gaming the system" because they allow "average" people to be immigrants. I assume Republicans want to get rid of this.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funny, how the anti ICE crowd wants people to immigrate illegally. What about voting somebody to the office and changing the laws instead?
Are you stupid? Where does Doctorow's post advocate for illegal immigration?