5 ms·

Canada is far more restrictive about non-skilled immigration than the U.S. It's the political decision to turn America half-hispanic by the next century -- desp

by thras 17y ago

Canada is far more restrictive about non-skilled immigration than the U.S. It's the political decision to turn America half-hispanic by the next century -- despite what anybody here actually wants -- that has killed enthusiasm for skilled immigration in America. If we want more and better skilled immigrants, we need more xenophobes, not less. Limit unskilled immigration, and Americans will be happy about skilled immigration.

davidw 17y ago
> It's the political decision to turn America half-hispanic by the next century Part of the reason I dislike seeing political articles here is that they invariably draw out some seriously uninformed, inane, hand-waving types of comments that would be completely unacceptable when attached to technical articles. Do you have any evidence that there has been a "political decision to turn America half hispanic"? Not 60%? Not 40%? Who took it - the Obama Death Panels? > If we want more and better skilled immigrants, we need more xenophobes, not less. "More xenophobes" would not like the "brown people" from India, "slanty eyed" eastern Asians, or most Europeans either for that matter (they're probably communists), even if they're qualified. After all, they are xenophobes, right?
- thras 17y ago
  ...they invariably draw out some seriously uninformed, inane, hand-waving types of comments that would be completely unacceptable when attached to technical articles... And I dislike seeing these articles because they brings out the kooks who believe that it's more important to think happy thoughts than look at the numbers. The U.S. Census estimates are always the first place to go: http://www.census.gov/population/www/projections/index.html http://www.census.gov/population/www/projections/index.html You'll find the 1990 projections for 2100 there, which suggest a 1/3rd Hispanic population. The 2004 revisions only published projections for 2050, but I saw information at the time that suggested similar revisions to the 2100 projections would lead to a U.S. that is about 1/2 Hispanic by 2100. Who took the decision to do this to America? Well, the most important piece of legislation in this regard was the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. So I blame Ted Kennedy :). I won't cheapen the debate by replying to your last paragraph. And I'd appreciate an apology for the suggestion that I was the one uniformed about population projections here.
  - davidw 17y ago
    > I dislike seeing these arguments because it brings out the kooks who believe that it's more important to think happy thoughts than look at the numbers. What is "unhappy" about Hispanics? Nothing, in my book. The US managed to absorb plenty of poor immigrants from places like Ireland and Italy and you know what? We've done just fine. If you look that piece of legislation up, it was about liberalizing immigration quotas, not a "political decision to turn American half Hispanic". That's conspiracy talk. Also, projections include births, deaths and migrations, and if you look at the methodology document, Hispanic birth rates are far higher than the other categories (Ted Kennedy connection: he's a Catholic, they're mostly Catholics. Coincidence, or all part of the master plan?). Enough to account for those numbers without immigration? Not sure. Still, I'm not worried about it. People blend in, in the US, if they want to go anywhere. It has happened before, and it will happen with immigrants now. http://www.census.gov/population/www/projections/methodstatement.html http://www.census.gov/population/www/projections/methodstate... > I won't cheapen the debate by replying to your last paragraph. You brought up xenophobes, who are pretty much by definition people who dislike foreigners or people who are 'different'. Xenophobia isn't "people who dislike foreigners except for the ones in PhD engineering and science programs".
- joe_the_user 17y ago
  I agree the political articles bring out some screwy ideas. Is your "solution" that you want a situation where you won't to experience what other peopl, even other hackers, think about these issues. I mean, if this is a community, then we should respectfully debunk racist ideas rather than just shutting them. Otherwise, the same discussion happens in more screwy venue. (Agreed, there should be limit to how much of this discussion happens here BUT the limit should not be zero).
  - davidw 17y ago
    > I agree the political articles bring out some screwy ideas. Is your "solution" that you want a situation where you won't to experience what other peopl, even other hackers, think about these issues. Yes, that's my solution. There are way too many issues that even reasonable people will simply agree to disagree on. And these discussions often tend to attract plenty of people who aren't reasonable.
  - mynameishere 17y ago
    respectfully debunk racist ideas The problem, of course, is that not every idea can be debunked, because some of them are true. And when you start with the conviction that you're bound to "debunk" everything, and can't, it gets ugly. Here's a racist comment: Africans are, on average, less intelligent than Japanese. Now, you're just not going to want to get into that argument, because it's unwinnable. The only way to win it is to avoid it, or to start throwing imprecations around. This is a serious dilemma for the anti-racist side of the argument, because they are believers in equality--and when you believe in something that doesn't exist, it's religion.
    - gommm 17y ago
      hmm... I could understand how you could defend something like Africans are, on average, less educated than Japanese or something like Africans have less opportunity from their environment to educate themselves and thus have less knowledge and intelligence (but then which type of intelligence?) than Japanese... But defending your original quote, you would have to prove me that african kids raised in the same conditions as japanese kids are less intelligent than the japanese kids... And I don't believe there is any studies proving this... In our world there is no equality of circumstances and we are pretty much a product of our environment so how could the produce of wildly varying environment be equal? So I don't think you can single out a 'race' as being more or less intelligent, you have to consider the political environment, the culture, the natural environment... and so on
- ijnouibiu 17y ago
  Shouldn't there be a decent English word for hating foreigners instead of having to use some damn greek term!
Locke1689 17y ago
What's wrong with us turning half-Hispanic? Hell, I'm a white male -- we've had our... thousand or so years; let someone else have their day. I'd be far more worried about the education level of the future generations than the racial make-up.
- mynameishere 17y ago
  we've had our... thousand or so years; let someone else have their day. I'm sure you formulated that opinion of an independent mind, and you're certainly entitled to it, but...can you imagine that it is not your place (or anybody's place) to advocate the ethnic cleansing of any group, even your own?
  - wildwood 17y ago
    Nothing in his post came anywhere close to talking about 'ethnic cleansing'. He was only talking about letting some other group be the majority, and letting caucasians become a minority in the country. Of course, that projection is for 90+ years from now, so if it happens at all, it won't be happening to most of us.
    - mynameishere 17y ago
      Nothing in his post came anywhere close to talking about 'ethnic cleansing'. Umm, except the part that involved replacing one ethnicity with another, viz, ethnic cleansing. I don't know where you're getting your numbers from, but the census bureau projects the total population to be 405m in 2040 http://www.census.gov/population/www/projections/files/nation/summary/np2008-t1.xls http://www.census.gov/population/www/projections/files/natio... And the nhw population to be half that at the time, http://www.census.gov/population/www/projections/files/nation/summary/np2008-t14.xls http://www.census.gov/population/www/projections/files/natio... ...so, I'd say 30 years, but it's probably less than that because illegals generally avoid census workers, and a lot of people are counted as "white" when they and no one else typically do in practice. Anyway, the actual replacement of one group with another is not an overnight thing. Rather, neighborhoods, then cities, then regions, then states, one by one by one are overrun. Only then, when reversal is impossible is the actual country gone.

by thras 17y ago

davidw 17y ago

> It's the political decision to turn America half-hispanic by the next century Part of the reason I dislike seeing political articles here is that they invariably draw out some seriously uninformed, inane, hand-waving types of comments that would be completely unacceptable when attached to technical articles. Do you have any evidence that there has been a "political decision to turn America half hispanic"? Not 60%? Not 40%? Who took it - the Obama Death Panels? > If we want more and better skilled immigrants, we need more xenophobes, not less. "More xenophobes" would not like the "brown people" from India, "slanty eyed" eastern Asians, or most Europeans either for that matter (they're probably communists), even if they're qualified. After all, they are xenophobes, right?

thras 17y ago
...they invariably draw out some seriously uninformed, inane, hand-waving types of comments that would be completely unacceptable when attached to technical articles... And I dislike seeing these articles because they brings out the kooks who believe that it's more important to think happy thoughts than look at the numbers. The U.S. Census estimates are always the first place to go: http://www.census.gov/population/www/projections/index.html http://www.census.gov/population/www/projections/index.html You'll find the 1990 projections for 2100 there, which suggest a 1/3rd Hispanic population. The 2004 revisions only published projections for 2050, but I saw information at the time that suggested similar revisions to the 2100 projections would lead to a U.S. that is about 1/2 Hispanic by 2100. Who took the decision to do this to America? Well, the most important piece of legislation in this regard was the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. So I blame Ted Kennedy :). I won't cheapen the debate by replying to your last paragraph. And I'd appreciate an apology for the suggestion that I was the one uniformed about population projections here.
- davidw 17y ago
  > I dislike seeing these arguments because it brings out the kooks who believe that it's more important to think happy thoughts than look at the numbers. What is "unhappy" about Hispanics? Nothing, in my book. The US managed to absorb plenty of poor immigrants from places like Ireland and Italy and you know what? We've done just fine. If you look that piece of legislation up, it was about liberalizing immigration quotas, not a "political decision to turn American half Hispanic". That's conspiracy talk. Also, projections include births, deaths and migrations, and if you look at the methodology document, Hispanic birth rates are far higher than the other categories (Ted Kennedy connection: he's a Catholic, they're mostly Catholics. Coincidence, or all part of the master plan?). Enough to account for those numbers without immigration? Not sure. Still, I'm not worried about it. People blend in, in the US, if they want to go anywhere. It has happened before, and it will happen with immigrants now. http://www.census.gov/population/www/projections/methodstatement.html http://www.census.gov/population/www/projections/methodstate... > I won't cheapen the debate by replying to your last paragraph. You brought up xenophobes, who are pretty much by definition people who dislike foreigners or people who are 'different'. Xenophobia isn't "people who dislike foreigners except for the ones in PhD engineering and science programs".
joe_the_user 17y ago
I agree the political articles bring out some screwy ideas. Is your "solution" that you want a situation where you won't to experience what other peopl, even other hackers, think about these issues. I mean, if this is a community, then we should respectfully debunk racist ideas rather than just shutting them. Otherwise, the same discussion happens in more screwy venue. (Agreed, there should be limit to how much of this discussion happens here BUT the limit should not be zero).
- davidw 17y ago
  > I agree the political articles bring out some screwy ideas. Is your "solution" that you want a situation where you won't to experience what other peopl, even other hackers, think about these issues. Yes, that's my solution. There are way too many issues that even reasonable people will simply agree to disagree on. And these discussions often tend to attract plenty of people who aren't reasonable.
- mynameishere 17y ago
  respectfully debunk racist ideas The problem, of course, is that not every idea can be debunked, because some of them are true. And when you start with the conviction that you're bound to "debunk" everything, and can't, it gets ugly. Here's a racist comment: Africans are, on average, less intelligent than Japanese. Now, you're just not going to want to get into that argument, because it's unwinnable. The only way to win it is to avoid it, or to start throwing imprecations around. This is a serious dilemma for the anti-racist side of the argument, because they are believers in equality--and when you believe in something that doesn't exist, it's religion.
  - gommm 17y ago
    hmm... I could understand how you could defend something like Africans are, on average, less educated than Japanese or something like Africans have less opportunity from their environment to educate themselves and thus have less knowledge and intelligence (but then which type of intelligence?) than Japanese... But defending your original quote, you would have to prove me that african kids raised in the same conditions as japanese kids are less intelligent than the japanese kids... And I don't believe there is any studies proving this... In our world there is no equality of circumstances and we are pretty much a product of our environment so how could the produce of wildly varying environment be equal? So I don't think you can single out a 'race' as being more or less intelligent, you have to consider the political environment, the culture, the natural environment... and so on
ijnouibiu 17y ago
Shouldn't there be a decent English word for hating foreigners instead of having to use some damn greek term!

Locke1689 17y ago

What's wrong with us turning half-Hispanic? Hell, I'm a white male -- we've had our... thousand or so years; let someone else have their day. I'd be far more worried about the education level of the future generations than the racial make-up.

mynameishere 17y ago
we've had our... thousand or so years; let someone else have their day. I'm sure you formulated that opinion of an independent mind, and you're certainly entitled to it, but...can you imagine that it is not your place (or anybody's place) to advocate the ethnic cleansing of any group, even your own?
- wildwood 17y ago
  Nothing in his post came anywhere close to talking about 'ethnic cleansing'. He was only talking about letting some other group be the majority, and letting caucasians become a minority in the country. Of course, that projection is for 90+ years from now, so if it happens at all, it won't be happening to most of us.
  - mynameishere 17y ago
    Nothing in his post came anywhere close to talking about 'ethnic cleansing'. Umm, except the part that involved replacing one ethnicity with another, viz, ethnic cleansing. I don't know where you're getting your numbers from, but the census bureau projects the total population to be 405m in 2040 http://www.census.gov/population/www/projections/files/nation/summary/np2008-t1.xls http://www.census.gov/population/www/projections/files/natio... And the nhw population to be half that at the time, http://www.census.gov/population/www/projections/files/nation/summary/np2008-t14.xls http://www.census.gov/population/www/projections/files/natio... ...so, I'd say 30 years, but it's probably less than that because illegals generally avoid census workers, and a lot of people are counted as "white" when they and no one else typically do in practice. Anyway, the actual replacement of one group with another is not an overnight thing. Rather, neighborhoods, then cities, then regions, then states, one by one by one are overrun. Only then, when reversal is impossible is the actual country gone.