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> your country will become more like the subcontinent You really do seem to view life through a very-narrow lens; you appear to be generalizing your own family

> your country will become more like the subcontinent You really do seem to view life through a very-narrow lens; you appear to be generalizing your own family's recent, one-generation experience as though immigrant culture somehow quickly alters the host culture in major ways without that happening to the immigrants themselves. To be sure, immigrant enclaves such as the Haredim in NYC or the heavily-Muslim banlieues in France can do that. But it's generally on a very-local basis. And on a national, long-term basis: Successive generations are born to immigrant families. They marry — often to spouses from other ancestral cultures — and have their own kids. Those kids are influenced in countless ways by their teachers; their friends and other peers; the media; and other facets of mainstream culture. That's how assimilation happens: The host culture absorbs immigrants — and influences them — while borrowing from their cultures, adding new ingredients to the "alloy" (or amalgam? I'm avoiding the Melting Pot metaphor). Or at least that's what happens when the host culture doesn't engage in knee-jerk exclusionary behavior out of pathological fear of The Other and an egotistical assumption that We Know Best About All Things For All Time. (Source: As I said in another thread recently, in various ancestral lines I'm descended from immigrant grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great grandparents, with ancestry in four different countries (possibly five; we're not sure). My kids have two more countries in their own ancestries from my wife's side, and their respective spouses have even more countries in the mix, so any kids they have will be even more of a blend.)

rayiner 3y ago
> You really do seem to view life through a very-narrow lens; you appear to be generalizing your own family's recent, one-generation experience as though immigrant culture somehow quickly alters the host culture in major ways without that happening to the immigrants themselves. I would say that, as a first generation immigrant, I'm viewing cultural change through a vantage point that most Americans lack. Most Americans have only arm's-length contact with immigrants; they aren't in a position to understand how their culture and values shape their behavior, including their political and civic behavior. I don't deny that the immigrants are also changed in the process--I simply reject the assumption that the resulting amalgam is better. If you're Google, a two-way cultural exchange with a bunch of former IBM people isn't going to make your organization better. And I also don't agree that the change we have had in America from prior generations of immigrants is a good thing. New York City, for example, would probably be much better run and more orderly if it was still mainly people from a culture that reflexively queue up even if they're unsure what they're standing in line for: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-tjgyWQ8nU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-tjgyWQ8nU. It would probably be even more orderly and well-run if it was still New Amsterdam and run by Dutch people.
- dctoedt 3y ago
  > And I also don't agree that the change we have had in America from prior generations of immigrants is a good thing. New York City, for example, would probably be much better run and more orderly if it was still mainly people from a culture that reflexively queue up even if they're unsure what they're standing in line for But then we have to wonder as well whether NYC and its surrounding environs would have evolved into the global capital of finance, culture, technology, etc., that it is. We'll never know, for example, whether Bell Labs would have arisen in a region populated "mainly [by] people from a culture that reflexively queue up even if they're unsure what they're standing in line for[.]" And more generally: We'd have to wonder whether the U.S. would have, for example, twice led the rescue of Europe from German fascism and provided nearly 80 years of relative peace that has been labeled Pax Americana — or would an isolationist U.S. instead have led to even more domination of various countries by aggressors (see: Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Stalin); warlords and their gangs (see: Somalia, Haiti, etc.); and xenophobic nationalists (see: Orbán, Modi, and their ilk). Bemoaning immigration is not unlike bemoaning bad weather. Immigration is gonna happen; trying to stop it, using our available means, would cost more financially — and perhaps morally, for some crimes-against-humanity measures that can be imagined — than decent societies are willing to pay.
  - rayiner 3y ago
    > But then we have to wonder as well whether NYC and its surrounding environs would have evolved into the global capital of finance, culture, technology, etc., that it is. I don’t dispute that immigration enables ambitious people from all over the world who are anti-social enough to leave their homelands to come to America and make a lot of money. How you can bill that as a good thing is what I don’t understand. Ordinary Americans would be better off if NYC wasn’t the global capital of finance and technology. The Netherlands seems to be doing just fine being modestly less rich than America. > Bemoaning immigration is not unlike bemoaning bad weather. Immigration isn’t an inevitability, especially when your country stretches from coast to coast with a relatively narrow land border on the south side. Between 1910 and 1970, the US foreign-born population shrank from 15% to under 5%, even with the advent of the aviation industry. The subsequent growth of that figure was entirely a policy choice.

rayiner 3y ago

> You really do seem to view life through a very-narrow lens; you appear to be generalizing your own family's recent, one-generation experience as though immigrant culture somehow quickly alters the host culture in major ways without that happening to the immigrants themselves. I would say that, as a first generation immigrant, I'm viewing cultural change through a vantage point that most Americans lack. Most Americans have only arm's-length contact with immigrants; they aren't in a position to understand how their culture and values shape their behavior, including their political and civic behavior. I don't deny that the immigrants are also changed in the process--I simply reject the assumption that the resulting amalgam is better. If you're Google, a two-way cultural exchange with a bunch of former IBM people isn't going to make your organization better. And I also don't agree that the change we have had in America from prior generations of immigrants is a good thing. New York City, for example, would probably be much better run and more orderly if it was still mainly people from a culture that reflexively queue up even if they're unsure what they're standing in line for: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-tjgyWQ8nU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-tjgyWQ8nU. It would probably be even more orderly and well-run if it was still New Amsterdam and run by Dutch people.

dctoedt 3y ago
> And I also don't agree that the change we have had in America from prior generations of immigrants is a good thing. New York City, for example, would probably be much better run and more orderly if it was still mainly people from a culture that reflexively queue up even if they're unsure what they're standing in line for But then we have to wonder as well whether NYC and its surrounding environs would have evolved into the global capital of finance, culture, technology, etc., that it is. We'll never know, for example, whether Bell Labs would have arisen in a region populated "mainly [by] people from a culture that reflexively queue up even if they're unsure what they're standing in line for[.]" And more generally: We'd have to wonder whether the U.S. would have, for example, twice led the rescue of Europe from German fascism and provided nearly 80 years of relative peace that has been labeled Pax Americana — or would an isolationist U.S. instead have led to even more domination of various countries by aggressors (see: Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Stalin); warlords and their gangs (see: Somalia, Haiti, etc.); and xenophobic nationalists (see: Orbán, Modi, and their ilk). Bemoaning immigration is not unlike bemoaning bad weather. Immigration is gonna happen; trying to stop it, using our available means, would cost more financially — and perhaps morally, for some crimes-against-humanity measures that can be imagined — than decent societies are willing to pay.
- rayiner 3y ago
  > But then we have to wonder as well whether NYC and its surrounding environs would have evolved into the global capital of finance, culture, technology, etc., that it is. I don’t dispute that immigration enables ambitious people from all over the world who are anti-social enough to leave their homelands to come to America and make a lot of money. How you can bill that as a good thing is what I don’t understand. Ordinary Americans would be better off if NYC wasn’t the global capital of finance and technology. The Netherlands seems to be doing just fine being modestly less rich than America. > Bemoaning immigration is not unlike bemoaning bad weather. Immigration isn’t an inevitability, especially when your country stretches from coast to coast with a relatively narrow land border on the south side. Between 1910 and 1970, the US foreign-born population shrank from 15% to under 5%, even with the advent of the aviation industry. The subsequent growth of that figure was entirely a policy choice.