8 ms·
Socialite Cordelia Scaife May Spent Her Fortune Trying to Keep Immigrants Out
- georgecmu 7y agopaywall breach: http://archive.is/RRKEH http://archive.is/RRKEH
- tlb 7y agoIt seems like many now-popular movements had deep-pocketed sponsors. Can a billion dollars always push an idea into the mainstream? Or are there counterexamples of groups who poured huge amounts of money into promoting something that never caught on?
- hnaccy 7y agoNativism is not new.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- harryh 7y agoPlenty of rich people have blown a lot of cash trying and failing to get elected to office. Of course, they succeed sometimes too, but it turns out that money is no guarantee.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- neetdeth 7y agoMoney does seem to be the only way to get even a hint of policy change from Washington, but the trend line of public opinion is opposite of what you suggest. Until around 1995, immigration restriction was overwhelmingly mainstream in the United States and still commands a strong plurality. https://news.gallup.com/poll/1660/immigration.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/1660/immigration.aspx I'd further point out that the overwhelming majority of the moneyed interests still stack up on the side of permissive immigration policies. It is, after all, capital that benefits from a global free market for labor and an expanded consumer base. It's just about the only thing the Koch brothers and Soros can agree on.
- Spooky23 7y agoThe difference is that traditional chamber of commerce GOP types would hold back the anti-immigration stuff because it killed unions and made their mainstream donors happy. Your chicken slaughterhouse in the middle of Nebraska prospers with underpaid illegals who don’t get workers compensation. The big money, big ideology people poured money into hard right conservatism. Investing in and advertising on talk radio being one key strategy. Your average blue collar worker/trucker/etc has been indoctrinated with conservative blather for 30 years.
- neetdeth 7y agoAll I have to say about that is if you think everyone's being indoctrinated except you, you're probably wrong.
- Spooky23 7y agoDidn’t say that. When I worked on the farm in the 90s, the classic rock in the barn was swapped out for Rush every afternoon. When I go back home, it’s pretty much the same, except most of the farms are out of business. If you’re from a white collar, suburban background, you just can’t understand. Most media is New York/LA centric, and conservative outlets reject that.
- neetdeth 7y agoI'm not, actually. My own father was one of those three hours a day dittoheads. It's easy to identify propaganda in microcosm, it's harder to see the same thing writ large. I find that most white collar suburbanites I meet have a great number of received opinions and rarely examine the sources of such. Could be I just misinterpreted your comment.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- audiometry 7y ago
- chrischen 7y agoThere are probably a few startups with multi-million dollars that weren't able to get themselves "caught on," and that's with initial traction, so the threshold is at least higher than that.
- blfr 7y agoSuccessful popular movements are almost always led by elite class traitors. It's been like that at least since the Populares.
- Mountain_Skies 7y agoDepends on what constitutes a group and how broadly you define "something". Does Google+ count? Any of the dozen or so spring football leagues? Plenty of movies. Jai-Alai? If we restrict "something" to politics and social movements, opposition to H1B visas has been going on since the program started but with a few minor hickups, it has become increasingly entrenched. Perhaps the grassroots money isn't in the same order of magnitude but it's also not big to sneeze at either.
- brightball 7y agoOnce you polarize people enough, all it takes is enough money to get an idea supported by a politician on one side. The “other” side will attack all of the points weaknesses and then, because people don’t have the ability to just say “yes, this idea associated with my party is both expensive and stupid” it will be defended instead. Often by just a few people who like to argue. But the defense makes it appear that people in the party support the idea, which then further solidifies the concept in the base as the back and forth continues. At best you will hope to work out the bad ideas via primaries and debates, but sometimes a bad idea that’s popular is going to hold on because voters often care more about how they feel than math.
- rdiddly 7y agoDon't like to see overpopulation being conflated with immigration again, because... Overpopulation is obviously a problem; immigration maybe or maybe not (case-by-case each country decides). Overpopulation is from people being born; not from people crossing borders. No humans are created or destroyed in the act of emigration or immigration. Overpopulation, nobody wants to talk about; immigration, everybody wants to talk about.
- Mountain_Skies 7y agoHow does that square with many western nations whose population would be declining due to low birthrates if not for immigration?
- Spooky23 7y agoProsperity reduces birth rates for a variety of reasons. One of the big drivers of population growth is being a poor farmer and preserving a legacy. Once you have some wealth, the incentives change. My grandparents grew up poor in rural Ireland, my grandmother was one of 12 children and at least 16 pregnancies, born in the WWI era. 9 of the siblings made it to adulthood. They needed people to milk cows and catch fish, and needed living sons to inherit the land and take care of the elders. Immigration in modern western countries fills the gap between productivity gains and the dearth of workers. It keeps salaries lower to reduce inflation and preserves the status quo. Remember that behind of all of these crazy debates is a need for certain stakeholders to maintain power.
- pm90 7y ago> It keeps salaries lower to reduce inflation and preserves the status quo. That doesn’t seem correct. Waves of Hispanic and Asian immigration has reshaped California from Conservative to _the_ most liberal state. CA also has high minimum wages and much better worker protections than most other states, due to the liberal leaning politicians that got elected.
- 7y ago
- chkaloon 7y agoOn a recent Vox Weeds episode there was mention made of the environmental movement's early connections to eugenics, sterilization and population control, and how national parks weren't so altruistic when it came to native populations and local population subsistence. I have also heard opinions in the past that environmentalism in its 20th century forms was really just a white culture concept of aesthetics. I can imagine that if you scratch deep enough there's lots of dark stuff there.
- mc32 7y agoUp until the green revolution population control was of great concern. The PRC took that to heart and introduced the 1CPF policy. It’s arguable that this policy while very cruel and unjustly applied and which resulted in skewed gender demographics, had allowed China to prosper quicker than otherwise. On the other hand, in 20-30 years they will face a severe shortage of working age people. But they are autocrats so they may be able to manage that via central policies.
- pm90 7y agoIf you sincerely believe that the earth cannot support a large population of humans that live unsustainable lifestyles, your most logical conclusion will probably be to find ways to reduce it. However, we know now that as a country gets wealthier, it’s fertility rate also decreases rapidly. So perhaps instead of trying to fix the problem by eliminating humans we can try to make other societies prosper and let socioeconomic factors take care of the problem.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- nyolfen 7y ago>I have also heard opinions in the past that environmentalism in its 20th century forms was really just a white culture concept of aesthetics this is phrased so strangely that i can't tell what it's supposed to mean. environmentalism was long intertwined with romantic thought and philosophy, and obviously until the second half of the 20th century did not carry the eschatological urgency of climate change. environmentalism as we've inherited it is largely a european and american development so it perhaps shouldn't be surprising that it is associated with white people, but i can't tell if the implication is supposed to be some kind of indictment of it.
- stevespang 7y agoGod bless her soul . . .
- romaaeterna 7y agoWhen someone moves from the 3rd world to the US, their CO2 footprint grows enormously. Mass immigration is hugely disruptive to stable job and family formulation. It seems to be supported by mainly by two groups in the US, one that wants cheap exploitable labor, and one that wants to shift American politics by changing the demographics.
- jonstewart 7y agoThere’s also a third group, who believes that if someone’s country has become unlivable (e.g., Honduras today), the United States of America would be honored to have them. /s/, descendant of Potato Famine Irish Immigrants
- romaaeterna 7y agoWhat quantity of people are you talking about exactly, and what price are you willing for poor black/Hispanic/white people with only high school degrees to pay in low-skilled labor competition, in order to assuage your racial guilt? Do you have any idea what has happened to the wages for non-skilled labor since the 1970s? While you and I may have nice cushy jobs and live in nice houses, the largest employer in this country is Walmart. Most people in this country don't have college degrees. They are poor, and mass immigration has made them poorer, and continues to make them poorer. A lot of the "Abolish ICE" support comes from people in highly gentrifying areas of the country, living in cities that are in the process of driving out their historic minority residents from their homes to go live in the Midwest, all to make way for wealthier white people. Not that this would be your situation, of course! But it can make that sort of person's cheap grace very cheap indeed.
- fzeroracer 7y agoI don't think 'mass immigration' is to blame for wage depression post-1970s, considering that era also consisted in the destruction of workers rights, unionization and considerable increase in corporate bargaining power. This also ignore two other big parts of the picture: The fact that in the pre-1970s America still had historically high immigration with the same complaints you bring up now (that the 'dirty' Irish for example were poor, uneducated and a drain on society) just with different color slapped on top. New York was quite literally a city of immigrants. And then you have automation, which means even if you were to completely stop all immigration would mean the loss of jobs as companies further reduce their bottom line. I'm not a fan of this sort of historical revisionism where the history of immigration in the US is sort of paved over to make way for new fears of immigrants destroying the fabric of society somehow.
- inflatableDodo 7y agoA billionaire worrying about the possibility of global ecological collapse due to overpopulation and then deciding that their preferred reaction to this is to spend their vast wealth keeping people out of the particular corner of the planet that they personally spend most time in, is some of the laziest thinking I have encountered in quite a while. edit - Also, I am not entirely sure that her partners in this battle she was fighting against immigration, have really got the memo on the whole ecology/overpopulation thing. They strike me as more the sort to either be siring their quiverfull ready for the coming eschaton, or to leave a trail of illegitimate children from a series of messy affairs with employees.
- oh_sigh 7y agoI assume this article was written because of proposed changes to the green card system hinted at earlier this week. It may be my own bias showing, but is there ever a reason to offer some person permanent residency in the country when you know they will need to go on public assistance right away?
- jakelazaroff 7y agoBecause permanent residency shouldn't be a privilege granted only to the relatively wealthy.
- ap3 7y agoDo you have to be wealthy to not need public assistance?
- oh_sigh 7y agoMost Americans aren't relatively wealthy, but also aren't on food stamps or other public programs.
- dragonwriter 7y agoAs of July 1, 2016, over 80 million Americans, nearly a quarter of the population, was enrolled in Medicaid. [0] (Because someone qualified for other means-tested assistance will almost always also qualify for Medicaid, that's a pretty good rough estimate, though still a lower bound, for the total aid-receiving population at that point in time.) [0] https://data.medicaid.gov/widgets/x3sw-xby3 https://data.medicaid.gov/widgets/x3sw-xby3
- oh_sigh 7y agoOkay, so most Americans are not on public assistance. That seems to agree with what I said.
- dragonwriter 7y ago> It may be my own bias showing, but is there ever a reason to offer some person permanent residency in the country when you know they will need to go on public assistance right away? Every single immigrant visa category in the US immigration system is based on something that has been specifically deemed by the Congress as a reason to offer people admission, permanent residency, and ultimately citizenship in the United States. So, yes.
- egypturnash 7y agoThis is your occasional reminder that a lot of the “Mexican” “Immigrants” our president hates so much are the descendants of the people who were already here when Europeans came here.