I guarantee that people would complain if the immigrants were European. Because they did in the past! In the past a huge number of immigrants were from Ireland and other countries, and there was lots of hatred and anti immigration movements. It has literally nothing to do with race. People fear immigrants because they take their jobs, and see them as competition. They are also concerned about crime and increased population density, or worried about their culture being replaced, or the immigrants political influence, etc. But mainly it's economic, and I think the concern is genuine.
>"most Americans saying no immigration are here because their families immigrated in the last 200 years"
That's a nice soundbite, but a poor argument. All countries are descended from immigrants. Human beings have migrated and conquered other lands since the beginning of time.
That's totally irrelevant to whether an immigration policy in 2016 would have a positive or negative effect on current US residents. And if they believe it has a negative effect, why would they vote for it? Because their ancestors would? So what?
They were sub-human, ape-like, violent alcoholics. Many English viewed them as such, and brought that viewpoint with them to the US.
... Racism doesn't have to make sense.
And 1 in 8 is super-low for a settler nation. It's also only slightly higher then the average European state.
You can't use "racism" as a fully general insult against anyone that disagrees with you.
Europe may or may not have higher rates of immigration. It's irrelevant to US policy. And it certainly seems like they are starting to have their own problems with immigrants the last few years.
This is pile of nonsense. The elected representatives from the Democratic Party don't show hate towards immigrants and have generally fought their betterment, and the Democratic Party won the popular vote in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2008, and 2012. That's five out the last six elections.
There was a huge amount of European immigration in the 1800s , and the early 1900s. Just as there was anti-Irish sentiment, I'm sure there were people back then who believed deeply in the Lump of Labor Fallacy[1], but their will was never put into effect as law.
If people freaking out about jobs had put the same limits we have on immigration today back in 1800, the U.S. population would likely be the same as Canada's, and our total GDP less than one-tenth of what it is today. We probably also wouldn't have had the economic might to win World War I and World War II, or the Cold War (e.g. Marshall Plan[2]).
Instead it was white-on-white racism, and the Nordic/Aryan supremacy[3] theories of Madison Grant[4] that actually led to the first major immigration restriction legislation in the U.S., the Emergency Quota Act[5] and the Immigration Act of 1924[6], which limited immigration to people from North-Western Europe, as a majority of the Congressmen back then believed that Southern and Eastern Europeans were a lower, less worthy breed of people.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Passing_of_the_Great_Race
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madison_Grant
Because the democrats 1) benefit from immigrants since they tend to vote democrat and 2) represent Northerners and the upper middle class, who aren't threatened by immigrants economically.
>There was a huge amount of European immigration in the 1800s , and the early 1900s. Just as there was anti-Irish sentiment, I'm sure there were people back then who believed deeply in the Lump of Labor Fallacy[1], but their will was never put into effect as law.
The economy was totally different then. It was much more agricultural based, which isn't as threatened by immigrant labor. Unemployment was nowhere near as high as today. There was a general trend of economic progress that could support the immigrants, and even benefited from their labor.
>If people freaking out about jobs had put the same limits we have on immigration today back in 1800, the U.S. population would likely be the same as Canada's, and our total GDP less than one-tenth of what it is today. We probably also wouldn't have had the economic might to win World War I and World War II, or the Cold War (e.g. Marshall Plan[2]).
Possibly. The US population growth was pretty high until recent times. Much higher than in Europe. And population size alone is not the only factor in GDP. Especially today in the age of automation.
I say that as an Irish person. We've made considerable progress since in the late 20th century to the present, and now we are better in most metrics than the British (and perhaps they have also fallen), but don't imagine we were all sweetness and light in the past. Present day Irish have undergone a terrific cultural shift, evidence of which would be a supposed Catholic majority country voting in gay marriage.
We're still Irish, but we're mostly better than we were. Now if we could only resuscitate the courage of our grandparents we'd be in better shape yet.
It is probably correct but very difficult to solve for, it can take centuries, which is not what most people want to hear. Cultural shifts are faster than biological evolution but are not always as fast as many people suppose.
Personally I believe in the use of eugenics for both blacks and whites in order to create an improved type of human. We know high IQ has, among others, the side affect of sharply declining propensity for violent crime. We know people with good health are able to think longer term than the sickly.
This goes way beyond the usual discussions but I think it is on the table whether people like it or not. I realize that the majority of people think this issue was laid to rest mid-twentieth century, but it is obvious those questions were always going to come back and it is only a matter of time. We've already been doing moderated forms of eugenics for decades except we've given it a hundred other names.
Maybe they are angry because people are coming illegally.
After all, his great-grandparents legally entered the country... At the time when undesirables, like Chinese, Indians, and the Polish were barred from entry.
But at least the Frenchmen came legally! Sure, entry was granted under an extremely racist immigration law, but the legality is what gives him the moral high ground to stand on.
Build the wall and regulate immigration so more Indians and Chinese come relative to their world population.
"Hurr, durr, build a wall to keep them out", and "Keep America Christian" does nothing to resolve it. If you actually give a shit about either, then backing Trump (Or the other big names from the 2016 Republican line) is backing the wrong horse.
Even more ironically, two of the other candidates (Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio) are the descendants of Cuban refugees... And any Cuban entering the US can immediately apply for permanent residency. No questions asked.
Strangely, they oppose the same privilege to people fleeing repression/drug cartels/terrible poverty in the rest of Central America.
If all our illegal immigrants were from Germany and Ireland, I am certain that there would be far less complaining.
In fact most of the angry people today would not be fighting to keep them out -- they'd be fighting for visas for them.
Very curious, on what do you base this certainty? Is it just a feeling based on personal experience?
The truth is that the people behind most of this anti-immigrant rhetoric can't see the humanity of someone who is not of their same skin color. When they call a human being "an illegal" -- it's dehumanizing, and it plainly reveals they don't see their common shared humanity. I've noticed it in the language they use, and they way they talk about other people -- and not just immigrants, but black Americans as well. They simply do not see other races as people like themselves.
I absolutely do not think that Luis Gutierrez is someone that is just looking out for "his own people", as you seem to be implying.
No, it's an accurate, dry, legal characterisation of someone present in the country illegally, much like referring to someone who has murdered someone else as 'a murderer,' or to someone who has shoplifted as 'a shoplifter.'
I'm actually philosophically inclined towards completely open borders (although I have some deep concerns about what that does to community & culture), but an alien who is present illegally is truly an illegal alien. Words mean things, and that's what those words mean.
I want to put this on the biggest billboard I can find, or put it in Nazca lines across the surface of the moon, so maybe we'll remember. Language lawyering is profoundly useless, and I've no patience with it.
There is a lot of implied sub-communication that comes with word choice in human languages. Only an idiot or a robot would take everything by its literal meaning.
If everyone is free to redefine words to mean whatever they damn well please, then it is impossible to have clear, effective discussions, because you get wound up wrangling about definitions - as we do habitually here, talking past each other.
It's truly extreme xenophobia and racism that these liars who falsely claim "mass immigration" can't tolerate the tiny 0.38% that comes to the U.S. every year. They see a few immigrants in their neighborhoods, and their blood immediately starts to boil, and they get filled up with loathing and hatred.
They are total hypocrites, who ignore that most of their ancestors came here in the last 200 years[2], and a disgrace to this country and its immigrant heritage. I hypothesize that there would no complaining if 100% of the immigrants who came here were white Europeans. At the root, it's not about immigration -- it's just plain racism.
[1] As Sam Altman of Y Combinator aptly put it: "most Americans saying no immigration are here because their families immigrated in the last 200 years", c.f. https://twitter.com/sama/status/550110475199848448