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Originally Posted by horn
This is based on the assumption that there are a lot of fundamentalist* foreigners wanting into Britain/America. An assumption that might be wrong, especially when the reasons normally given for restricting immigration (as far as i'm aware) is focused more on whether or not we need them for work as opposed to how their "culture" or beliefs may affect the country adopting them.
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I don't care about an immigrant's culture or beliefs (although if one of their beliefs is that the world owes them a living then I'd suggest they try another world--or at least a different part of this one). Basically, the only people I'd exclude would be:
- Those who are unable or unwilling to work (no free lunch here)
- Those who have a history of criminal or antisocial behavior (we have plenty of criminals and nutjobs already, thanks)
- Those who have serious communicable diseases (AIDS, TB, Bird flu, etc. no free health care here either--try Canada or Europe)
- Terrorists ('nuff said)
Other than that, welcome aboard! You don't want to assimilate? Fine with me. You don't want to learn English? Not my problem. You want to impose your religious/socialist/utopian vision of the world on me? Get in line.
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Originally Posted by Dante Hicks
1. Voting tends to follow economic activity after a given period (denying the vote to children of people who are working becomes tricky in most liberal states) - so it's just a matter of time. Having said that, trying to take over a society through immigration and the ballot box is a pretty slow process - due to the way communities tend to be distributed and the low level of political involvement from immigrants their political power rarely reflects the demographics. Non-white MPs represent 2.5% of UK MPs (or something like that) - the non-white populaiton represents something like 8 or 9%. The US is even more imbalanced from what I can recall of the ethnic make-up of the Senate.
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I think looking at the Senate to get an accurate picture of immigrant representation in the US is rather odd. The Senate is, by design, far less democratic than the House of Representatives (I imagine it'd be a bit like looking at immigrant representation in the House of Lords). If you're serious you should look at the House of Representatives where you'll find 71 minorities (Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Pacific Islanders (mostly Hawaiians) and Native Americans) or about 16% of the House. Of those groups, Hispanics have the largest numbers of immigrants (most blacks, Pacific Islanders and Native Americans in the US have been here for a long time and whatever political power they do or don't have has little to do with immigration policies). Even among Hispanics, many have been here for several generations. Basically, the whole non-white == immigrant paradigm doesn't work very well in the US.
That said, Hispanics probably are under-represented in the US political system in some sense. In part, this is because a lot of them are here illegally and can't vote and many who are citizens don't vote. Nonetheless, in California for example, where Hispanics make up about 30% of the population, they have 22% of the seats in the state legislature; so they're not doing too badly at all by that measure.
However, I don't care for the whole identity politics meme. The idea that various ethnic/racial/religious groups can only be (legitimately) represented by members of their own group only serves to promote groupthink and tends to balkanize political minorities. Voters would usually be better served by making common cause with candidates/parties on issues that are important to them rather than trying (and often failing) to elect candidates from their own group. Representative democracy has enough problems as it is.
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But given the lack of a credible left, I don't blame people mad at imperialism politics for joining the only force force who could credibly be said to be actively and internationally resisting the United States. Sure, Noam Chomsky has written some withering articles, and there's plenty of armchair leftists out there telling it like it is (sup) but **** it - Bin Laden and co are the only ones with the guts (and ability) to smash a ****ing plane against one of the most important buildings in the US. Fifty years of American hegemony and it's a guy in a cave who lands the first punch on the US since WW2. I'm surprised Bin Laden doesn't have more recruits tbh.
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I suspect nothing surprises an armchair leftist more than how few will actually
do something for the cause. It just doesn't seem fair.
