Letters to the Editor
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The overall disingenousness of the immigration debate
I am with Ogden, in that I am generally politically liberal but my views on illegal immigrants are not neatly categorized. It seems to me that the O'Relly-Rivera spat is typical of the debate in that all parties involved tend to proceed disingenously and intentionally obfuscate the issues at hand. I don't believe illegal immigrants are disproportionally engaged in criminal activities.
However, I can understand O'Reilly's frustration that many are unwilling to concede that there are numerous sensible, non-racist reasons why this country would wish to decline to accommodate every last one of the tens of millions of Latin Americans who would like to settle here. I am certainly sympathetic to their reasons for wishing to, but they have no inalienable legal right to do so, contrary to the dishonest "no one is illegal" rhetoric that has become common.
We as a nation have a right to set our own immigration policies. We need to decide what is the appropriate number of legal immigrants to admit (however arduous that process may prove to be) and then find a way to enforce the law.
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Well, yellow dog,
it's not the 17th century anymore and being born on Planet Earth doesn't give each and every homo sapien the inalienable right to be an American citizen.
FWIW, I've lived around Mexicans most of my adult life and have a cultural comfort zone about ten miles wide. The mathematics of the matter are what matters; much of the anti-illegal alien crowd indulges in naked racism, I'm afraid, but that doesn't mean all of their concerns are unfounded.
I have a hard time getting in a lather about it. My city is 40% Hispanic, and about 40% of them are illegal. I figure we're about maxed out, and I'm cool with it. I will say this though: Anyone who tells you that they don't strain the social services network -- rather severely -- has no idea what they're talking about.
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Kudos to Salon
Congrats on publishing an excellent article that highlights some of the most important recent research findings on immigrants, particularly Latinos, in the last few years. As a fellow sociologist (studying the health consequences of immigration and family structure) who admires Sampson's work, I was very pleased to see this cogent piece as a rebuttal to O'Reilly's misinformed diatribes.
Keep up the good work!
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"They took our jobs!" (South Park voice)
Yes, illegal immigration is bad... ask any Indian. The issue is more complex than "they took our jobs, overburdened the system... and whatever the talking point du joir is for now." Much of this debate smacks of people in exclusive neighborhoods who want to be the last ones in before we lock out the hooligans that follow. For you righties in the mix... please rationalize NAFTA and the immigrant issue. If you want to talk about downward wage pressure, look to Wall Street (and those off shore shelters), not East LA... The academic was talking about those fear-inducing crimes that Fox likes to spew (violent crimes against persons)... His point was that those crimes are LESS likely to be committed by someone who wants to make it here than what O'Reilly was insinuating. Remember, those of you indignant about those immigrants, don't speed on the way home today... it's ILLEGAL.
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It's a class issue
The person who talked about the immigration quotas is absolutely correct. My husband is a legal immigrant, but only because he had the opportunity to marry me. We tried many other avenues of getting him a visa but were unsuccessful. Anyone who has been gone down this path knows that the avenues for legal immigration are extremely limited, and for the most part exclusive to those who either have a very specific skill set (doctor, nurse, architect, etc.) or are extremely wealthy. This is a point I feel pundits consistently miss when discussing the situation - people like Bill O'Reilly keep saying, well, they're doing this ILLEGALLY, if they came in legally there wouldn't be a problem. Whether they know it or not, this is a class issue, and saying that only the legal immigrants can come in is like saying "Bring us your tired and huddled doctors who rode in first class on the way over here."
I'm not saying there shouldn't be limits on immigration. I'm just saying that right now, wealth is practically a prerequisite for legal entry into the country.
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The Population Bomb Is Exploding And We Pretend It Isn't
At the end of Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" interspersed among the credits are a series of several suggested ways to lessen the impact of humanity on our environment (ride a bike, recycle, etc.). These are all commendable but what is omitted is the most glaringly obvious one, responsible reproduction. As the U.S. population crossed the 300,000,000 mark last year, only passing mention was made in the press. Yet almost all of the serious environmental and social problems we have and are about to face are directly related to the fact that there are so many of us. The average American consumes 4 to 5 times the energy and materials used by the average human on Earth, so in terms of environmental impact, there are 1.2 billion to 1.5 billion Americans, greater than the population of China.
Within my half century plus of life I have seen countless acres of farmland paved over and covered with suburban sprawl. Fewer and fewer children have the opportunity to have direct access to nature on a daily basis. The alienation of youth is exacerbated by their disconnection with nature and the crowding they must endure.
Many of those who come to this country are excellent people, but we really don't need any more, thank you. As petroleum supplies dwindle over the coming decades, our country, along with the rest of the world, is going to be hard pressed to feed the ones already here. We need to seriously start building self-sufficient communities with sustainable economies. The long crisis of the 21st Century has only just begun as the era of cheap energy draws to a close and we should develop strategies for reducing population gradually and humanely. Restricting immigration is one of the most effective methods of accomplishing this.
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re sabrina07
shhhh....don't go bringing up that nasty little "c" word! This is america after all, why talk about "class" when you can neatly obscure the issue with "race"?
you're spot on by the way - it's all about class, it always has been, but that simply doesn't fit into the neat little lie of The American Dream, so the issue gets conflated with race.
actually I'm Canadian, we seem to be doing pretty well with immigration. I was reading an article for one of my politics classes and it pointed out that pretty much across the board our policy of multiculturalism is better at integrating immigrants into Canadian society than the melting pot (intermarriages, non segregated living etc). It seems counter-intuitive I know, but allowing people their culture actually speeds up integration!
I know that sounds like a bit of an aside, but it seems to me the underlying issue is one of nativism, or fear of losing cultural homogeneity...but I hate to tell you, the idea of a cultural and ethnic homogeneous state pretty much went out the door with Wilsonian Democracy - it's a 19th Century ideal that's simply outdated and impractical. You're just going to have to get used to it - brown people will be your neighbours.
Also, it seems to me that the same sort of dodge is going on here as with gay marriage - i.e it's not immigrants I hate but illegal ones = it's not gays I hate but gay marriage - that's a neat little way to sidestep any charges of bigotry, but underneath there's a whole lot of bigotry going on.
thanks,