Quote:
Originally Posted by apocalipstic
While I agree that people who want to emmigrate to the USA are often victimized by the very people they trust to bring them here, I do not agree that they should be kept out.
No one travels to the US in a shipping container from SE Asia beacsue they have a good life at home. No one leaves their home and family in Honduras to WALK to the US becasue they just feel like it.
The USA was set up by immigrants and has always been horrible to it's most recent immigrans.
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Since you say this, I want to clarify a comment I made earlier. While, quite honestly, I think that the United States should seriously consider a 20 year ban on all immigration except for political asylum my *reasons* for it should be stated explicitly.
I believe that no small amount of this hysteria is about race. I am fairly convinced--although I might be wrong--that if it were Seamus and Mary from Gloucester coming over instead of Juan and Maria, there wouldn't be nearly as much noise even if the former were coming in the same numbers. Because of that and because of America's history, I think that we should be willing to
bend over backwards to demonstrate that it's *not* about race. Now, that's not fair--it's absolutely true but as my grandmother used to say, there's much in life that is neither right, pretty or fair.
It's like being non-white and a woman in my field. My buddy Ogre (not his real name, obviously) gets loud or bangs his hand against his desk because an end-user isn't listening to him, he's just a big emphatic guy with a booming voice. If I do the same thing, I'm an angry black woman. If a man raises his voice, he's passionate. If a woman raises her voice, she's shrill. So in corporate America, as a black woman, I have learned to bend over backward to comport myself in such a way that only someone who *wants* to see me as "angry black woman" can see me that way. It's not fair but it beats the hell out of being passed over for promotion or being first to be laid off.
America has a regrettable history on race and, as such, we as a nation have to bend over backward. So by banning ALL immigration for 20 years, it takes race out of the question. I would think that those who are most exercised about what they see as a tide of immigrants coming over the border would leap at the opportunity to ban all immigration and NOT be called out for racism. Strangely, though, in the last 15 years of proposing this kind of thing to people on the other side of the immigration issue to me, I've had maybe one or two bites. That's not necessarily indication of racism but it does cause one to question why.
Cheers
Aj