Americans prefer to live in single family homes. Myself, I would go crazy living in an apartment. The huge apartment blocks one sees in the cities in Europe look spirit killing to me (and are eyesores).
So many of our environmental issues would be lessened if our population wasn’t growing so fast. But the environmental groups shy away from this issue. It’s not PC.
“We Americans have to look at immigration from the prism of what is good for the country and the people already here.”
Countries are reliant on growth to a certain extent to take care of an aging population. Look at countries with negative population growth like Japan to see real economic issues. It really is a complex issue.
"Americans prefer to live in single family homes. "
Actually, if you look at the changing RE landscape, that is less and less true. People are favoring living in more urban areas without yards and with greater proximity to others and resources and amenities they can walk to. Some of this is due to changing values in younger generations and some is due to an aging population which is downsizing.
@TatinG - you live in California? Even if you don’t, drive around some rural areas in many parts of this country and they seem underpopulated, with small towns that are all but abandoned. Then there is the rust belt, with cities where the centers are similarly underpopulated, although they have their infrastructure intact. And Appalachia…
There are many areas that would benefit from an influx of development and the people it would bring. Doesn’t have to be immigrants - it could be anybody. People will leave areas with little economic promise whether they are outside our country or within it. Those areas need help, both outside our country and within.
The main point of bringing up the Gothic/Roman example is because I am concerned the anti-immigration attitudes in this country and moreso in Europe is coming(US)/has already come(Europe) perilously close to what the high-handed Romans did to the initially happy to assimilate Goths which caused them to be isolated and resentful of the Romans enough to rebel and eventually wipe out 10% of their entire army at the 378 AD Battle of Adrianople.
If one carefully examines the roots of those “populist movements”, they go back decades and are descended from past groups with colonialist/racist attitudes.
The Le Penists in France could easily be traced back to the Pied-Noirs and pro-colonialists who wanted to hold on to the crumbling French Empire at the very least. Not too surprising considering Jean-Marie Le Pen…founder of the National Front in France co-founded it with known Vichy members(French collaborators of the Nazis during WWII) and other ideological fellow travelers.
Many of the British “populists” could be traced back to far-right groups in the early 20th century who insisted on maintaining the British Empire in which the “colonials”…especially non-White colonials were to be “rightfully” treated as second-class citizens.
This mentality was largely behind the racist anti-immigrant movements during the '50s and '60s and extended to White British emigration to British colonies/former colonies like Australia and Rhodesia in which the White dominated governments of those colonies/former colonies openly promoted a social order/immigration policies favoring White Europeans*
As for Hungary, most of their ideology/members could be directly traced to the far-right proto-fascist followers of Hungarian military dictator Admiral Miklos Horthy and the blatantly fascist Arrow Cross Party who ended up being supplanted as Hungary’s rulers by Hitler. This is one reason why a lot of Hungarian nationalism for much of the 20th century is highly suspect as much of it when it was prevalent was strongly associated with Horthy and the Arrow Cross party…both of whom allied and collaborated with the Nazis during the war.
And in Rhodesia…the British colonialist policies and Ian Smith’s White minority government who unilaterally declared independence to maintain White minority rule after Britain did a near 180 on those colonialist policies. Both encouraged White British and European immigration…going so far as to give them generous resettlement subsidies and financial assistance to the point some British pundits from the period remarked that a working-class White family who’d be living in public council estate housing(equivalent to living in the projects here in the US) and voting for labour in the elections became some of the most staunchest racist right-wingers even by Rhodesian standards of the '60s and '70s once they were resettled in Rhodesia with resettlement packages generous enough so they were living like well-to-do upper-middle class Britains complete with African servants working for a pittance and at the mercy of the most tyrannical mistreatment by those White European immigrants.
And such policies strongly contributed to the rise of African nationalist extremists like Mugabe despite efforts by many “Rhodies” and sympathizers to deflect responsibility by citing the long racist trope that Black Africans are incapable of self-rule while omitting the substantial role the colonialist racist policies of the past and attempts to maintain the colonialist social order against increasing opposition through oppression by the colonialist police/military ended up undermining/destroying the moderate indigenous factions.
I’ve came across similar arguments from Europeans regarding immigrants from countries their very European countries colonized for decades/centuries. And it tends to be regarded by most of those immigrants…especially those who know their history as quite offensive because it reeks of rank hypocrisy.
Similarly, much of the reason why immigrants from Mexico, Central/South America, and the Caribbean “have no choice” is precisely due to the effects of US policies in those areas ranging from military interventions, facilitating coups, and encouraging a social order of extreme SES inequality for the benefit of US business and political interests.
One example of this was the US supported coup of Guatemala in 1954 on behalf of the United Fruit Company:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
Totally agree. Dense cities, skyscrapers, small apartments/spaces, pollution, crowds, crime, public transportation, and expensive real estate = depressing, IMO.
There is a certain type of person interested in that kind of lifestyle, certainly not every young person. It’s important for politicians, policy makers, and planners to not try and shove urbanization down everyones throat… because believe it or not, it’s not what everyone wants.
The US is a huge country. Nobody is forcing anyone into living in a dense, urban environment. However, if you want to live and work in NYC, SF, DC, Boston, this is something that is already happening or will happen sooner or later. Other places like Denver are also experiencing a renaissance of the inner urban core.
I don’t think it is being shoved down anyone’s throats. More a matter of demand driving supply. Folks seem to want to go in two directions - more urban or more rural. Suburbia is no longer appealing to many for a lot of reasons.
That’s not necessarily true…
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/real-estate/sd-fi-millennial-study-20170302-story.html
And one interesting tidbit…
“homeownership” doesn’t equal a single family home in suburbia and associating something with the “American Dream” doesn’t mean everybody wants that. The term “American Dream” has become a bit hackneyed and cliched.
Buying patterns have shifted.
“Right. Exactly. The best interests of the United States of America. Not the best interests of individual human beings, no matter how much compassion we may have, and certainly not the best interests of other nations.”
The problem with that is we also claim to be a compassionate country, so for example our immigration laws allow for people seeking asylum, and it is a dark blot on the US IMO that the US refused to take in other than a relatively few Jewish refugees from the Nazi insanity in Europe, HL Mencken was supposed to be an anti semite, yet he argued strenuously that not only was this the right thing to do, but the US was hurting itself by not doing the right thing, but anti semitism in the US ruled the day and to be blunt, the people who are most anti immigrant today are a lot of the people who de facto prevented the US from helping more.
And it is kind of interesting that there are more than a few illegal Irish immigrants in the US, there is a whole cluster of them living in places like the Woodlawn section of the Bronx, yet no one is talking about them, we hear about Hispanics, and the argument is they are taking other people’s jobs, but how about those folks? Why aren’t there raids targeting illegal Chinese immigrants, a lot of the workers in restaurants in Chinatown in NYC and in Flatbush are people who fled places like Fukkien and other rural areas and were smuggled into the US, but ICE hasn’t exactly targeted them. Like I said, if we are going to enforce immigration laws then it better be based on across the board enforcing them and not saying “if you are from central or south america, or happen to be muslim, stay out, but if you are Asian or Irish or whatnot, well, what the heck, you needn’t worry”.
I also think that having an open heart is in the best interests of the US, do you think the ugly anti muslim rantings we have in this country, the claim that Muslims are all terrorists or are bring shariah law to the US, aren’t heard all over the world? You think that people in other countries don’t see the ugliness around immigration, where for example politicians openly associate hispanic immigrants with gangs and rape and murder and whatnot in justification of blocking immigration from south america, and don’t realize what it is about? It is seen as what it is, justifying unevenly applied policies in something like immigration by saying “X group are all bad”, it is no different than those that justify bigotry against blacks by citing crime statistics or gangs like the crips and bloods and whatnot, and say “look what those people do”…it basically reinforces the image around the world that the US claims to be compassionate, open people, but that that is only true for people who are like themselves, and that is not in our best interests. It was kind of like during WWII politicians talking about the tyranny of the Nazis, their aweful racial superiority policies, while the US had the whole Jim Crow society in a large part of the country, you don’t live into what we preach, we end up hurting as a country.
Not to mention time and again the rabidly anti immigrant types have been shown what they are,fearful and ignorant, and that their vision was very short sighted. If the WASP elite and the anti catholic types had held sway, how many good people would the US have never seen? If we had taken in Jewish refugees, who knows what they and their descendents would do. The guy who just did masonery work on my house came here in the 80’s illegally, became legalized, and did amazing work for me, his kids are all in elite colleges, how many other people are there like that?
I would prefer we have a humane and rational immigration system and one not based on bias or on some notion of ‘who is good enough’ to be American, and I also want to see enforcement done without prejudice or bias, if we are going to deport illegal hispanic immigrants from Mexico and south america, we also better deport illegal immigrants from everywhere else, and they exist, and we also better crack down on employers who hire illegals, both of which aren’t done today.
@doschicos:
I tend to agree with you, every projection is (right now) that young people prefer more densely populated areas, and they don’t think, unlike past times, that as they get older they will move to the burbs as boomers and gen x did. There is one tell tale sign of that, interest in driving is way, way down with young people today, when I grew up kids were dying to get licenses and get the ‘freedom’ of having a car, that isn’t true with millenials (my car magazines have been talking about that a lot) and one of the things cited is they want to live in places you don’t need a car, which the burbs definitely requires. Perhaps the self driving car will make them want to live in the burbs, but I think that young people may want to own the american dream in a city or central area with mass transit, rather than the sprawl of the burbs.
As far as rural america goes, you are correct, it is dying, young people for the most part aren’t dying to move to rural areas and tech firms and the like aren’t going to suddenly locate there. There are some who want to move to rural areas and open a B and B, or take up organic farming or whatnot, but the demographics have shown that rural america is dying off, because some artists revitalize an old mining ghost town doesn’t mean main street, USA is gonna come back, I agree with that.
In WWII, the US military was racially segregated, so that when people in Europe came into contact with US military helping to roll back the Nazis, they may have seen the racial segregation in practice. Probably not the best aspect of the US for others to see, even if they were otherwise glad to see the Nazis rolled back.
And it took 149 posts.
Again, I think your information is outdated.
FYI: Discussion of racism is relevant in the immigration discussion as past anti-immigrant movements/policies in this country and European countries and their respective colonial empires if applicable were centered on it.
All you are doing is attempting to suppress it in ways many White supremicist groups and those who prefer ahistorical explanation to evade such uncomfortable acknowledgements of historical fact germane to discussing and better understanding the actual root causes/issues behind anti-immigration movements here in the US and since others brought it up…Europe.
Many African-American soldiers in segregated units and Axis POWs noticed and remarked on how Nazi POWs were treated far better than African-Americans who were serving on the same American fighting team during the war.
@fractalmstr For each article you post claiming it isn’t true, I can post several (more recent than 2015) claiming the opposite. You statistic you’ve quoted with the 66% is only meaningful in comparison to seeing the same statistic from previous generations/time periods. As a stand alone stat, it’s not very telling.
In addition to the decline in driving, there is also a decline in marriage, as well as the aging boomers who are downsizing as I previously mentioned.
I didn’t say anything about a threat. You brought up threat.
I just said I prefer our culture to Saudi Arabia’s… do you feel the same way? Or do you think they are equal? Or perhaps prefer Saudi Arabia? Simple questions, really.
Why do you equate our current immigration policy with any risk/fear/dislike of Saudi Arabia? What analogy are your drawing, @soccerguy315? How is it pertinent to the discussion at hand if Saudis aren’t coming to the USA? They are a kingdom, we are not, despite what a certain coiffed person might think.
Yes, I prefer it here over the KSA. But if you are worried about immigration from the KSA being any kind of threat to turn the US into the KSA culturally, that threat is non-existent. Indeed, the threat of the US becoming more theocratic or religiously discriminatory is domestic in nature, rather than being brought in by immigrants. So why do you think that the KSA of any significant relevance to general immigration to the US?
Really, musicprnt? Godwin’s Law?