The U.S. Can No Longer Hide from Its Deep Poverty Problem

Re:The U.S. Can No Longer Hide from Its Deep Poverty Problem by xienze on Thursday January 25, 2018 @10:24AM (#16231352)

What I don’t understand are the people who simultaneously complain about poverty in America and see absolutely no reason to apply any kind of standards for the people emigrating to this country (like, “must have an advanced degree”), or even any kind of limits on immigration at all. We are undoubtedly importing more people destined to live in poverty. Save me the rhetoric about every immigrant being a future doctor or engineer, yes there are many success stories but there are also plenty that end up being net drains on society due to, well, not being skilled workers.

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Re:The U.S. Can No Longer Hide from Its Deep Poverty Problem by krapp on Thursday January 25, 2018 @11:16AM (#16231889)

Why should Americans hold new immigrants to such a strict standard, when they themselves can probably trace their own lineage back to someone who stepped off a boat on Ellis Island with barely a grasp on English or a penny to their (soon to be Anglicized) name? Why are low-skilled immigrants a net drain on society, but not the low-skilled children or grandchildren of immigrants? There are many, many more of the latter than the former.

The problem of poverty is systemic - trying to link it to immigration confuses correlation with cause.

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Re:The U.S. Can No Longer Hide from Its Deep Poverty Problem by xienze on Thursday January 25, 2018 @11:32AM (#16232043)

There was no welfare state for Ellis Island immigrants to fall back on. Indeed, about a third actually returned home[1]. And a large number were actually turned away after they had arrived here. Today, the situation is very different: if you can’t hack it here, why go back? The state will provide for you, probably much better than you could do if working at home (depending on where you came from). How many of today’s immigrants do you think actually go back?

> Why are low-skilled immigrants a net drain on society, but not the low-skilled children or grandchildren of immigrants?

Because those children are a sunk cost: they’re already here. Why compound the problem? The demand to come to the US is far too high to simply accept anyone who can make it here. And the fact that a greater percentage of immigrants are accepting welfare vs “natives”[2] indicates that we really are compounding the problem. We should be going almost exclusively for skilled immigration, like Australia does.

1: http://www.exodus2013.co.uk/immigrants-who-returned-home/ 2: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/09/01/immigr...

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Re:The U.S. Can No Longer Hide from Its Deep Poverty Problem by notyourday on Thursday January 25, 2018 @12:29PM (#16232631)

Because at the time America needed unskilled masses. Times changed. We no longer need millions of people to use shovels to build roads.

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