
Immigrants Do a Great Job at Becoming Americans - jseliger
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2017-11-21/immigrants-do-a-great-job-at-becoming-americans
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vokep
Not many are against immigrants or immigration in general, at least not in
regards to the US. The issue is _Illegal_ immigration. You're supposed to come
through the front door.

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hopler
1\. http so://news.vice.com/en_us/article/pa4mq7/the-us-keeps-mistakenly-
deporting-its-own-citizens

US keeps mistakenly deporting its own citizens.

2\. Natural born citizens don't come in through the front door.

3\. Making immigration illegakt and then claiming to be anti illegal
immigration isn't fooling anyone.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nativism_(politics)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nativism_\(politics\))

~~~
artificial
Over 1 million people legally immigrate annually. No other country comes close
to this and it apparently still isn't open enough. What do you propose to
improve things?

~~~
romwell
>Over 1 million people legally immigrate annually. What do you propose to
improve things?

How about we _really_ punish people who benefit from this? That is, punish
people who hire illegal immigrants with prison terms.

The only reason no other country comes close is that our country _allows that
to happen_ on purpose by not going after people who benefit from it.

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luckylion
> Immigration has lots of economic benefits, and few economic costs.
> Immigrants pay for native-born Americans’ retirement, start companies, and
> make the U.S. a desirable destination for investment, while not taking away
> jobs or depressing wages of the native-born.

That's weird. Economists regularly find that more supply decreases prices, and
that this holds true for the labor market as well. But of course, it's an
opinion piece with no claim to be based on facts, knowledge of said facts, or
anything other than "I feel like this is true".

For more science-based thoughts on the economy and immigration, maybe turn to
politico instead of bloomberg:
[https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/trump-
clinto...](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/trump-clinton-
immigration-economy-unemployment-jobs-214216)

~~~
wtetzner
> That's weird. Economists regularly find that more supply decreases prices,
> and that this holds true for the labor market as well.

You seem to be suggesting that immigrants aren't also consumers.

~~~
luckylion
If you're talking about buying stuff at the grocery store: sure, but it's not
a 1:1 offset. You don't need to hire an extra employee to serve an extra
customer. Over all, more labor supply = lower wages. That's really not a wild
theory, and I personally haven't heard anybody claim that it's not true, but
would love to hear your take on it.

What typically is a response to realizing that is to try and regulate the
labor market more so supply and demand don't set the price, i.e. minimum wage,
fixed wages, or some other way of making the labor market work less like a
market.

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akhilcacharya
> Assimilation, therefore, is really a process of integration -- many cultures
> becoming one culture. E pluribus unum

This is 100% correct and it always makes me supremely uncomfortable when
people champion "assimilation" as a goal. America isn't a Borg collective, and
American exceptionalism would not exist in a monoculture.

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sitkack
Americans born here had it happen to them. Immigrants actively seek it. The
same thing applies to anything inherited, religions, food, music, operating
systems, editors, etc.

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TheBeardKing
What does becoming American even mean? This country is such a mishmash of
religion, politics, food, culture, etc. As an average white guy, I'm happy if
you just speak English and maybe put up something at Christmas.

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beezischillin
I've been thinking about this for a while. While the US is such a huge
country, it's obviously hard to pinpoint an obvious "American culture", but
even more so maybe the identity is so hard to track down because of its
prevalence? During the last 100 years American culture's become so prevalent
in the west ("globalism") that a lot of countries are very Americanised where
popular culture, art and even businesses originate from the US.

I mean, I live in Eastern Europe and I'm currently watching an American TV
series on Netflix while I'm writing this comment on my Apple MacBook with a
podcast waiting for a listen later and there's a Sam Harris book on my bed.
It's nothing like my heritage of what it means to be Hungarian, living in
Transylvania. And yet you're sharing a lot of American identity with me.

It's just a thought I've been playing around with, but maybe that's why
Americans have such a hard time finding their identity as Americans?

~~~
mondo9000
I think its just white Americans with that problem, other groups seem to have
an identity. Why don't white Americans seem to have a culture? I think its an
interesting question, I have various ideas, but nothing compelling.

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pretendscholar
Because white is an amalgamation of many different European cultures
(Scottish,Irish,English,German...) that I think all diluted one another to the
point that there is no specific culture piece that is universally white-
american.

~~~
mondo9000
There used to be Little Italy and German parts of town and such, but they
disappeared with suburban white flight.

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fallingfrog
I don’t really get the point of restricting immigration at all. I mean, why
not build a wall between Texas and Oklahoma? They have a different state
government, different tax rates, different state laws, different government
benefits. Makes just as much sense as a wall with Mexico. Huge numbers of
people move from state to state without any authorization or notification, and
nobody cares. The whole debate makes no sense. It should be a nonissue.

~~~
SamReidHughes
You need to read up on your history. There has been a lot of complaint about
state to state migration too.

