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The immigrants I know who become US citizens know this to be true. Many of natural born citizens I grew up with either aren't aware of this reality or are misin

• slowmovintarget 3y ago
  Many of the problems are the result of active attempts to dismantle or dilute the foundational systems America is built on.
• IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
  systems change over time, which i think is part of the issue. Trends matter. I think the US is today the best place in the world to be born in. I have far less certainty for americans 2 generations away
  • arrowsmith 3y ago
    I say the same of the UK. Maybe not the #1 best possible place to be born, but definitely in the top 10. I'm extremely lucky and privileged to have been born in the United Kingdom. Will that still be true for people born here fifty years from now? I have my doubts.
• boeingUH60 3y ago
  Not surprising that immigrants aware of this fact come to the US and largely do better than the whining, natural-born citizens.
  • RankingMember 3y ago
    This is one of many reasons that my head hurts when I hear people espouse anti-immigrant sentiment, often on the basis of made-up nonsense about "them" being freeloaders/tax burdens.
    • zeroCalories 3y ago
      Immigrants are extremely valuable for a country like the U.S. You basically get a free adult that that another country paid to raise and educate. Even a poorly educated immigrant is a net positive on average. Of course, the best immigrants are illegal immigrants because they can be maximally exploited and can make minimal claims to the services they pay for with their taxes.
      • Clubber 3y ago
        I think most Americans are fine with immigration, it's the illegal immigration many take issue with. That nuance is clouded in most media takes on it.
        • eropple 3y ago
          A large proportion of the people I know who fulminate about "illegal immigration" had relatives who came here under at best cattle-call circumstances, if not outright "illegal" ones themselves. A nontrivial portion of my generation's Boston Irish grandmothers, great-grandmothers, and great-great-grandmothers did not necessarily have all their papers in order; it's just far enough back to somehow legitimate it. Also, they're white, and that plays a role--even today there's a surprising number of undocumented Irish immigrants to the United States but nobody's out there asking for reactionary measures to that. It's not always racism...but it is mostly ladder-pulling, and economically unrealistic ladder-pulling at that. (Ask a farmer.)
        • jghn 3y ago
          That's what shows up on the surface, but go down the rabbit hole. *Why* do they care? Is it really just a moral stand on right/wrong? I doubt that given how few Americans live a 100% law abiding life. Or is it that they feel those immigrants are unfairly taking something from them? And if so, is that really true or just FUD? How much of the sentiment boils down to "those illegals are taking our jobs!"? How many people who hold that sentiment would actually want & take the job being filled by one of those immigrants? If their argument is instead that the illegal immigrant labor depresses wages for that set of jobs, how many of those people are willing to pay the extra cost for the products once the company paid fair market wages?
  • wing-_-nuts 3y ago
    So you're comparing skilled immigrants that not only have enough money to immigrate, but also enough money to often seek higher education at 'out of state' rates, vs the average US citizen? Does that seem fair to you?
    • anon291 3y ago
      America is famous for not just having skilled immigrants though. Despite the castigation of Latin American immigrants as un American, Hispanics are quite patriotic and successful, even the ones who's families came here without documents
  • bandyaboot 3y ago
    Put more charitably, it’s not surprising that a particularly driven and motivated subset of people tend to do better than the average population.
• danans 3y ago
  > Many of natural born citizens I grew up with either aren't aware of this reality or are misinformed about it. The natural born citizens dissatisfied with the US are generally not comparing the US to a developing country or a country with an ongoing war on their soil, which is where most immigrants come from. Instead, they are comparing it to other developed countries and focused on specific conditions that matter to them, like housing, transportation, environment, violence, etc. > Yes there are problems in America, but how many of those problems are the result of an apathetic, nihilistic American population and not the foundational systems America is built on? The criticism of these problems is far from apathetic, and it's an important part of how we begin to remedy them. For example, we aren't going to wish away gun violence by ignoring it. The biggest current threat to the US isn't this criticism, but rather the attack on its democratic foundations happening now. However even that is not coming from apathy, though its goals are very nihilistic in the short term and oligarchic and theocratic in the long term.
  • tonmoy 3y ago
    On top of that, when we immigrants also compare against other developed countries, we see how immigrant friendly the US is. The natural born citizens wouldn’t necessarily care about that
    • danans 3y ago
      > we see how immigrant friendly the US is. The natural born citizens wouldn’t necessarily care about that To the contrary, plenty do care about it in the sense of being opposed to further immigration from developing countries. "Demographic anxiety" is a term often used to describe this. Also, both natural born citizens of recent immigrant ancestry and those natural born for many generations care because anti-immigrant sentiment is a canary for a broader xenophobic trends. When pressed, almost everyone has an opinion on immigration policy.
  • andrewmutz 3y ago
    > Instead, they are comparing it to other developed countries and focused on specific conditions that matter to them, like housing, transportation, environment, violence, etc. When I hear people complain online about the US, it is very common for them to have a deep understanding of problems in the US, but very superficial understanding of problems in other developed nations. European countries also have lots of problems with housing, healthcare, the environment, racism, the rise of the far right, etc. There are some problems that are uniquely american, like mass shootings. Being an informed citizen isn't just understanding the problems in your country. If you wan't to be a part of positive change, you need to understand what's working and what's not working in other comparable countries as well.
• soderfoo 3y ago
  One difference for natural born citizens is the number of debt traps along the way.
• snowpid 3y ago
  ' any natural born US citizens don't know what makes America so special. ' Can you clearify what makes more special than e.g. Germany where I live now.
  • jocaal 3y ago
    The US has enormous amounts of capital and the capital owning class aren't just sitting on their fortunes, but are actually investing in fresh blood. The US has a large, rich homogenous market making it comparatively easier to grow new businesses. The US has some of the worlds best educational institutions making it easy to find world class talent. Lastly, the entire population has democracy as a core value, so you'll never see a single person in power for longer than 8 years. There aren't many places in the world that have such a complete package.
  • dauertewigkeit 3y ago
    Germans are extremely pessimistic and risk-averse for one.
    • FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      They're very innovative at Diesel engines.
      • wing-_-nuts 3y ago
        Yes, they are rather creative when it comes to cheating emission regulations
      • deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  • asow92 3y ago
    Germany is also a special country that many people would want to immigrate to for many reasons, although I have a worry about Germany. Specially demographics: if we compare the demographics between the US and Germany we see that the US has a larger number of younger people to help support its aging population whereas Germany has less. This will mean that entitlement programs in Germany will likely face a great deal of stress in the decades ahead. This is less of a problem if Germany embraces policy that encourages immigration, but it needs to enact policy that makes it friendly to external capital investment to make it attractive to foreign business and workers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany The US is one of the most attractive places for capital in the world, which encourages a great deal of immigration to the US.
• solardev 3y ago
  > how many of those problems are the result of an apathetic, nihilistic American population and not the foundational systems America is built on? "Apathetic" is not really a word I'd use to describe most Americans I know, especially the working class. "Informed but powerless" is more like it. Nihilism is the likely result of this sort of learned helplessness from a lifetime growing up in an unresponsive democracy. From the get-go, our foundational systems emphasized wealth over democracy. It was a system designed to empower a certain type and class of people, to liberate them from the English Crown's influence, but not really a democracy for all. Through our history, we've consistently encouraged wealth creation and resource exploitation/monopolization over democratic participation, and where democratic advances were made, they happened against strong headwinds and strong oppression from the wealthy. Slave owners, robber barons, industrialists, tech owners... this has never been a society friendly to the common person.
  • ativzzz 3y ago
    > this has never been a society friendly to the common person. Nope, and in fact the American Dream is exactly this - it's saying that if you work hard / are lucky / have talents / have connections / have resources (the more you have the higher chances you have), you too can rise above the common person and join the ruling class of > Slave owners, robber barons, industrialists, tech owners Of course this is out of reach for most people, and for the vast majority of people, as soon as they climb out of the common class, they immediately look down upon the common people, since they are now above the peasants. This is human nature. Everyone who complains about the rich will do the same thing as the rich as soon as they become rich
    • asow92 3y ago
      It can take generations of working hard to break out. It took five generations for my family to break out of deep poverty into the upper middle class.
      • ativzzz 3y ago
        Note that I also listed > are lucky / have talents / have connections / have resources The more of these you have, the higher your odds of success. Just hard work on its own, like you see, is not necessarily enough
• hn72774 3y ago
  > nihilistic I don't really see this though replace nihilistic with narcissistic and you may be on to something. It's not a belief in nothing, it's a belief in "I." We are losing the ability to disagree and still keep it civil for one because of identities being so tied to the -ism of the day and no one accepting that they may be wrong about something every once in a while. The same drive to be independent and "self-made" is becoming a weakness. It's going to an extreme where every man is an island.
• onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
  > Yes there are problems in America, We live in a world where a large subset of people have fooled themselves into believing that there's some other place without problems. If where you live has any problems, then it must be an awful place to live - so their thinking goes. This group, for whatever reason, don't seem to weigh the pros and cons of every other place and see that most places are either hardly any better or MUCH worse. Italy, Spain, France, and England were great for hundreds of years before the US, and they're still pretty damn good - all things considered. The odds that the US goes from the global leader for two hundred years and turns to a sh*t-hole in our lifetimes is pretty unlikely. But somehow ~40% of the country convinces themselves this is true based on who the current president is - and, honestly, it seems like not much else.
  • rewmie 3y ago
    > We live in a world where a large subset of people have fooled themselves into believing that there's some other place without problems. If where you live has any problems, then it must be an awful place to live - so their thinking goes. This reads like a straw man. Just because some place arguably has issues that does not mean that it it just as bad as the one you're living on, or that your life won't improve your life by adopting or emulating the good examples. Healthcare is a great example. I'm convinced that the average US citizen has absolutely no idea of the critical positive impact on quality of life and well-being that socialized healthcare has on all citizens, directly and indirectly. It goes way deeper than not risking going bankrupt for being in a car accident, or being able to treat your nagging minor health issue without having to tap a credit line. It affects things like being confident that your loved ones will have all the care they need if something bad and unfortunate happens to them, regardless of who you are ir where your career is at the moment.
    • onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
      > Just because some place arguably has issues that does not mean that it it just as bad as the one you're living on, or that your life won't improve your life by adopting or emulating the good examples. Just because you adopt a change doesn't mean you'll adopt an outcome. Proposing sweeping changes is easy - making them work is hard and prone to making things even worse instead.
• jancsika 3y ago
  > Yes there are problems in America, but how many of those problems are the result of an apathetic, nihilistic American population and not the foundational systems America is built on? Excepting refugees, AFAICT U.S. immigration policy purposely selects for people who have the ability, aspiration, and often wealth to be able to be able to successfully pass through the process. So for any other given country, you could just as easily rephrase your question to ask whether that given country's problems are the result of apathy/nihilism/etc. of the majority of people who don't end up emigrating to the U.S. To me that seems like a fatuous question. If you think the same, then realize it's no less fatuous than the one you asked. Edit: Hm... maybe "fatuous" is the wrong word. To me it just seems like a very general question about human civilization masquerading as a question about a specific country's population. I think there's a name for this when it comes up in say, a debate, but I can't remember what it is.
• Gibbon1 3y ago
  I worked with a Filipino friend. He mentioned in the town he grew up in someone tried to open a market that competed with the other two markets in town and they burned his store down and ran him out of town. He said that's the reality in a lot of the world. Some places the means to do that aren't as overt but they still exist and are effective.
  • gosub100 3y ago
    this happened in mafia-controlled areas as recently as the '80s. I dont mean this as a rebuttal, but more in support of the US being great, because after decades (or more, I dont know or care about the history of criminals) of this bs, we tackled it through RICO and a focused campaign.