Oh, for crying out loud, @Bay – between us and these oh-so-scary-to-you refugees lies something called the Atlantic Ocean. You expect them to cross it on foot like the South Americans?
A significant number of undocumented immigrants enter the US on airplanes, and overstay their visas. Do some research. Having to fly here is not an impediment for many illegal immigrants.
These are legal immigrants, they will be entering as residents and registering with INS. They will have full background investigations before coming here. Coming in illegally would put them in the same limbo as our other $11M illegals.
Legal status makes it much easier to contribute to the economy, and you are not deporting people who you have spent money educating.
I don’t think anything has really changed as recently as 15 years … immigrants come here and slowly acclimate to life here and then become Americans with some differences in skin color, religion, and culture. This scares people, but honestly, the days of majority white Christian European immigration have been over for a long time.
I think it is shocking how hostile we have become to immigrants who continue to build our country and expand our economy. What, all these people came over on the Mayflower, and have no immigrant blood or experience anymore?
There are lots of areas in the US, outside of the NE corridor and the overly arid west and Cali, that can accommodate a lot more US citizens. Leave your strip mall suburbia and take a few week trip away from the congestion.
“I think it is shocking how hostile we have become to immigrants who continue to build our country and expand our economy. What, all these people came over on the Mayflower, and have no immigrant blood or experience anymore?”
Amen. It’s like the Statue of Liberty means nothing.
This is BS, our immigration numbers have increased over the years; there is no evidence of “hostility” towards immigrants by the US, other than what you read in the media per some peoples’ statements, which are largely irrelevant to what is actually happening.
Just 20 years ago there was open land between L. A. and San Diego. Now there’s only Camp Pendleton. Between LA and Ventura there used to be a two lane road lined with trees. Now (except for a few strawberry fields) its housing and outlet malls. It’s sad to see for me. When people came over on the Mayflower there were only a few coming and a whole continent of open land (although the Native Americans would vehemently disagree, I’m sure).
I wonder… we make foreign medical residents serve in less desirable hospital spots in order to fulfill an American residency. What about some sort of encouragement for new immigrants to fill out the abandoned parts of the country, say the Rust Belt? I’m not talking about virgin land, or unsustainably dry climates, but all those urban areas that already have roads and other infrastructure, without the numbers of people needed for economic vitality.
The anti-immigrant stance sells (look at the Republican party) and some people on here seem very hostile too (and that was what I was commenting on).
There are many well educated Syrians leaving Syria right now, so you may get higher education levels than ever from this group along with American capitalist values.
TatinG, if you leave the LA area and head north, the congestion ends after Santa Barbara (water may still be an issue for Cali and many of the western states). Check out the midwest, the south, Oregon/Washigton state other than Seattle, these folks don’t have to cram into the LA basin. Space is still wildly available in America, including a lot of rust belt cities that could double in population with minimal expansion of infrastructure (since they were built for 2x the residents they have now). The midwest has lots of towns that need residents and with high-speed data, living in a city is no longer required for many. Europe is very crowded by comparison, the only advantage they have is good public transportation.
LA area is blessed with great weather, good jobs, and great scenery, but probably has 2x the population to make it a nice area to live.
But we are going to have to inhabit all of those areas when the seas rise.
There is nothing xenophobic or hostile about looking toward the future and the quality of life for all of our citizens and residents of the US. It is very predictable that the name calling starts whenever anyone brings up the logistics of immigration.
I can attest to the congestion of traffic between LA and San Diego. Housing is a big problem too, not sure if the millennials who are born and raise here can afford housing either.
But the problem is you can’t restrict people to just the Midwest, eventually people will move to where they want to move and it could be California.
I consider myself an environmentalist. And keeping open spaces is a prime concern. More people also impacts our need for more electricity, more water, more waste disposal and on and on. That all has an environmental cost. It’s not xenophobic. It just so happens that almost all of our population growth is coming not from the birth rate of American citizens but from immigration.
Many of us in CA are very sensitive about increasing the population when we supposedly don’t have the water to maintain our way of life for those here now. It has nothing to do with xenophobia.
It is interesting that there are two “camps” here: one camp is more or less pro-immigration, and the other more or less anti-immigration. Adding the factors like pro or anti-environmentalist, pro or anti-business, fairness in the immigration policy, humane treatment of refugees, “true” refugees or just migrants looking for economic opportunity (who would not?!), immigrants being “burdens” or “contributors”, the whole thing becomes very convoluted very quickly.
The problem is that people from the opposite camps are unlikely to sit down and discuss it and potentially reach some conclusion or even just some mutually-agree-upon compromise.
I do not know the source, but my wife reads from somewhere that, in India, their government has 200-300 openings for unskilled government employees (no college degree requirement.) . There are over 2 millions applicants and a high percentage of them have a college degree or even a higher degree. It is said it requires about two years to process these 2 millions applicants to fill the 200+ openings in order to be fair in the process.
The similar problem may exist in the other country: China. Maybe many european countries, too.
The world will not lack people to fill any job in the next N years, as long as there is no barrier (between countries, between union members and non-union members, between those who have and those who have not) for people to access the job.
Maybe next time you think you are the only one who is qualified or fit for the job you have, you may want to be humble enough to know that some barrier has been set up, (arguably) fairly or unfairly, so that these people won’t have the equal opportunity to access to this job.
Too many people, but always not enough resources for everyone. Or, look at it in another way, if the resources are equally or “fairly” divided, no one will have access to enough resources.
The “pie could become bigger” in the “trickle down” theory may be a mirage if not an outright lie – at least this seems to be the case in terms of the wealth: in the recent decade or two, the wealth has been trickling up rather than trickling down.
Not that black and white. One can be pro-immigration where it’s controlled by the host country - who, how many, what skills/assets, what values, etc. and is done to benefit the locals; at the same time we can be very anti-migrant where you have a bunch of people from societies that often dislike the values of the society they invade, and who control the process by jumping to the head of the queue by breaking into your house, squatting, and demanding they be accommodated.
^^ Amen to Post #374.
And I do not give a darn if they contribute to the economy if their first contributions to our country is to break the law getting here and/or demand assistance as if they are entitled to our money and services. Any country can do without new peoples who introduce themselves in such a way.
The reason Americans left the rust belt is that there are no jobs. How do u expect these migrants to assimilate successfully if they cannot work to support themselves?
The Vietnamese Boat People are an example of a successful non-Western, large refugee migration to the US.
One of these refugees who arrived in the US at age 8, Joseph Cao, became a U.S. Senator for the state of Louisiana.
Of course, it helped that the boat people refugees were carefully screened (favoring families and disfavoring unmarried young men), and were anti-communist.
Re: “favoring families”
Could a family include a teen who will soon be a young man? Be aware that once a family is here, their grownup child will more likely join them sooner or later, even if their teenage or slightly older “children” could not came to the states at the same time.
Oh…,boy…why do young men become so “unwelcomed” in general in moden days except for the business which could profit from their labor (to do physically demanding, and often dangerous jobs) in a cost effective way?!
I once heard that the social cost (crimes, etc., even disabilities) for males are higher than that for females, statistically speaking.
Unattached males are the problem, mcat. If they have families, it’s a whole different ballgame, but in every society throughout history, large numbers of unattached young males have created all sorts of problems.