“Also, most of our Arab population is Christian and most of our Muslim population isn’t Arab.”
@PurpleTitan – see, this is why I love this forum: I did not realize this. Thank you! Food for thought.
“They knew they had to know English. They knew they had to assimilate.” –
@TatinG who isn’t assimilating today? The Latino kids in Colorado certainly are, even though they don’t necessarily have to (they are the majority in Denver Public Schools, for example.) In fact, I spoke with a veteran ESL teacher and she thinks today’s immigrant kids assimilate faster than previous generations because of the ever-present social media – all media – that surrounds them.
I’m not aware of any hispanic migrants to the US waging jihad. The hispanics migrants may be poor, but they do not have intrinsically different values or world view.
@zoosermom, any specifics? How are they different?
BTW, I’m not sure you realize how violent the Mafia and related organizations were. The homicide rate by Italian-Americans around 1900 was several times higher than the overall homicide rate; up to 10 times as high in some locales and times.
They are – at least where I live – THE HARDEST working people around.
GMTplus7, it used to be true that the illegals coming across were older people with families who really did want to make better lives. Over the years I have even had several families living in my home for periods of time because I am that committed to helping, and for the most part they took the helping hand and moved on and up in a wonderful way. But about a dozen years or so ago, the demographic changed. Instead of being Spanish speaking people, they are in some places much more likely to be indigenous people from parts of Mexico and Central America where There is no English, but they don’t speak Spanish either, and there is no history of literacy in any language. I can tell you from personal experience that even with the best of intentions and the hardest work, they are not assimilable into productive members of US society in the first or second generations, and at the third generation it is going to be shaky. Literacy is that critical. And statistics bear out the fact that the immigrants commit low levels of crime, but that’s not the same story for their kids. Additionally, back to that point of about a dozen years ago, the number of gang members exploded. As you can see from the statistics from homeland security which have been posted here countless times, the large majority of the unaccompanied minors are actually young men in the late teens to middle twenties demographic, which is disproportionally filled with gang members. Large numbers of rootless young men is never a good thing for any society. The question is why the home countries are allowed to ethnically cleanse their own people, send them on dangerous journeys, destroy their families, deprive them of their futures and profit from it. That is so grotesque on so many levels.
@zoosermom, how are they “sending” them? Is anyone buying them tickets? My understanding is that payment for transport on the dangerous journey north is self-funded or by their families.
It hasn’t escaped my notice that, from the media news broadcasts, the middle eastern migrants are overwhelmingly men. Is life in syria somehow better for women & children?
I’m interested in what you’re saying, zoos – do you have any sources for your insight that the demographics of Latino immigration have changed? From what I hear, our immigration “centers” hold plenty women and fairly young children. Doesn’t jive with your description of angry young men.
@GMTplus7, that’s a fairly common pattern.
The younger men make the dangerous journey abroad to a strange unknown land to work to send money back to their families. If they establish themselves in their new homeland, they may bring their families over.
Katliamom, as I posted, the homeland security info has been posted here at least several times, and the discussion of the change in demographics is a pretty common one generally, and that information is easily found. I’ll dig some things up since I appreciate your interest. PurpleTitan, I have to be careful to remember that things I know from personal experience working with the immigrant community may not be as familiar to people who aren’t so closely involved. The Mexican government funds programs, bureaucrats and facilities on a very large scale to help their citizens come north and the money they earn working here to move back north without them. It is a very big, well-run, expensive machine. Never for a minute think that it’s all about poor people doing this themselves. It isn’t.
That’s the typical path for ECONOMIC migrants. But the syrians are being granted REFUGEE status on acct of civil war.
"The Mexican government funds programs, bureaucrats and facilities on a very large scale to help their citizens come north "
Please source this. I know that’s what Donald Trump claims, but I haven’t seen it confirmed anywhere.
Also, how does your theory square with studies that show crime among first-generation immigrants is lower than that of the overall population?
(sources: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/reality-check/2015/jul/07/fact-checking-donald-trump;
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2015/07/08/donald-trumps-false-comments-connecting-mexican-immigrants-and-crime/)
@GMTplus7, even refugees don’t pull up all roots all at once unless they’ve lost their homeland and can’t go back.
And some/many of them are economic migrants, regardless of what status they are granted.
Except we’ve been denying visas to Christians fleeing violence and granting them to Muslims who may be fleeing violence or may be economic refugees. It’s undeniable the Christians are fleeing violent persecution. The numbers for the US aren’t large but people who track persecution of Christians in Muslim lands are worried.
BTW, Christians are the largest percentage of US Arabs because they came from a) Lebanon - Maronites mostly, b) Egypt - Copts mostly, c) Syria - mostly Greek Orthodox and d) Iraq - mostly Chaldean. I note this because 4 countries, 4 different sects. Those numbers in a way define much of the issue within the Arab Middle East: lots of sects, lots of ways people can be divided.
Katliamom, here are some links that might be interesting to you. (Possibly not, because some of this is very dry, but as you can tell, this is a topic that I am very passionate about, and I thank you for your interest!)
http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/mexican-immigrants-united-states-0
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2931355/
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/11/nyregion/immigrants-who-speak-indigenous-mexican-languages-encounter-isolation.html?_r=0
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/07/22/children-12-and-under-are-fastest-growing-group-of-unaccompanied-minors-at-u-s-border/
I am genuinely surprised that so many are so unfamiliar with this issue. Do you not have regular contact with illegal immigrants? It’s not even a question of opinion that the Mexican government strongly facilitates such immigration, nor is it a secret. Remittances are a massive part of Mexico’s economy http://geo-mexico.com/?p=3028.
Katliamom, I don’t know if it is coming through to you, but I know the things I know personally because I have chosen to work with and help immigrants, mostly from Mexico , for more than 25 years. I would say that the people I have helped learn to read number in the hundreds, but it’s not all a pretty picture, and from getting to know so many, I have learned that they are resentful of being tossed away like trash by their own governments. People who oppose indiscriminate, thoughtless illegal immigration sometimes do so from a place of caring, experience and knowledge.
Great stuff, thanks.
But I still don’t see anything here to confirm the claims that the Mexican government is sending people – criminals or not – to the US.
In fact, these articles say that illegal immigration from Mexico is down, and that there are growing numbers of children from Central/Latin America coming to the US – again, in contrast to the claims of the hordes of “angry young men.”
And that link that you sent about crime rising with the second generation.
First, it says that within the first generation, crime is lower than in native-born population. It’s only with assimilation that crime rates among immigrants rise.
So is assimilation wrong?
Or maybe assimilation means you feel more confident in the given society and therefore more likely to act like the population as a whole – crime included?
And of course the Mexican government likes the $$ remittances. Who wouldn’t?
But where’s the evidence it’s SENDING people to the US? When confronted, Trump said something about “secret sources.” Yea, right.
The US will turn around Mexican children and adults if caught at the border. That is not the case for Central Americans coming across-if they make, it they are in. Mexico drug lords are very involved in bringing these kids/families into the US. The human smugglers pay big bucks to these drug king pins to allow safe passage across Mexico. Mexico did tighten up the border with Central America for awhile, but the belief is that the Obama administration was paying them to do this after all the bad press with our detention centers overflowing with Hispanics coming across illegally.