3 ms·

immigrants can do a lot of good/bad in the voting booth. Most definitely. Since a country's attractiveness to immigrants is most directly based upon that coun

by crusso 14y ago

immigrants can do a lot of good/bad in the voting booth. Most definitely. Since a country's attractiveness to immigrants is most directly based upon that country's perceived quality of life or value; it should be a given that the culture and political environment of that country are "successful" and worthy of protection. This article mostly ignores the enormously negative cultural and political impact that free migration would have. While free migration would be an interesting experiment and have some benefits - swamping the target countries' political environments with people from other cultures who probably don't have the understanding of how to sustain what made those target environments successful in the first place would be detrimental.

Symmetry 14y ago
I'm not sure why you think that cultural and political impact of free migration would be "enormously" negative. It's not like free migration is something that hasn't been tried, it was basically how the US was run until the 1920s. And I should say that it's much better that the most successful cultural/political environments expand rather than just be preserved, at least if you are interested in them as a means of advancing the welfare of people rather than just them in and of themselves.
- crusso 14y ago
  it was basically how the US was run until the 1920s Before the 1920s, there was little incentive to immigrate to the US if your motivation was to be a ward of the state. Since the 1920s, our welfare state has grown by leaps and bounds. The people coming illegally to this country are less likely to be the ones seeking to be producers. They're more likely to be the ones wanting services. The article barely gave a nod to it, but the numbers show that the recent waves of immigrants use several times the amount of social services as natives, but they offer very little productivity-wise or intellectual capital-wise. It's a bad deal for the US, made worse by the fact that the people we're most encouraging to immigrate from our corrupt neighbor to the south are the citizens least likely to care that they're breaking the law by being here. expand rather than just be preserved I'm not talking about rigidly maintaining the status quo. I'm talking about managed growth through accepting immigrants using a process that is fair to incoming immigrants from ALL countries and is respectful of the society that fostered something worth immigrating to.
  - mkr-hn 14y ago
    "The people coming illegally to this country are less likely to be the ones seeking to be producers. They're more likely to be the ones wanting services." That's a bold claim. Can you support it?
- eli_gottlieb 14y ago
  Mind, the US in the 1920s had quite a few measures that kept immigrants and most actual minorities from voting if they lived in the wrong places. Even then, they faced bloc-voting problems in the form of Tammany Hall.

by crusso 14y ago

Symmetry 14y ago

I'm not sure why you think that cultural and political impact of free migration would be "enormously" negative. It's not like free migration is something that hasn't been tried, it was basically how the US was run until the 1920s. And I should say that it's much better that the most successful cultural/political environments expand rather than just be preserved, at least if you are interested in them as a means of advancing the welfare of people rather than just them in and of themselves.

crusso 14y ago
it was basically how the US was run until the 1920s Before the 1920s, there was little incentive to immigrate to the US if your motivation was to be a ward of the state. Since the 1920s, our welfare state has grown by leaps and bounds. The people coming illegally to this country are less likely to be the ones seeking to be producers. They're more likely to be the ones wanting services. The article barely gave a nod to it, but the numbers show that the recent waves of immigrants use several times the amount of social services as natives, but they offer very little productivity-wise or intellectual capital-wise. It's a bad deal for the US, made worse by the fact that the people we're most encouraging to immigrate from our corrupt neighbor to the south are the citizens least likely to care that they're breaking the law by being here. expand rather than just be preserved I'm not talking about rigidly maintaining the status quo. I'm talking about managed growth through accepting immigrants using a process that is fair to incoming immigrants from ALL countries and is respectful of the society that fostered something worth immigrating to.
- mkr-hn 14y ago
  "The people coming illegally to this country are less likely to be the ones seeking to be producers. They're more likely to be the ones wanting services." That's a bold claim. Can you support it?
eli_gottlieb 14y ago
Mind, the US in the 1920s had quite a few measures that kept immigrants and most actual minorities from voting if they lived in the wrong places. Even then, they faced bloc-voting problems in the form of Tammany Hall.