posted
I don't know if no middle ground is possible. We could debate how much immigration to allow versus open or closed borders. We could debate how we assign priority to immigration requests. Currently, we prioritize reunification of families—if you have someone in the states who can claim you, you move to the front of the line. We could debate whether this is preferable to prioritizing based on a prospective immigrants likely ability to contribute to our economy, or likely need to rely on social services.
Posts: 1112 | Registered: Jan 2003
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posted
Incidentally . . . I was kinda bewildered by his application of Falling Down to this topic. I didn't see the movie as being about his reaction "the humiliations that he sees imposed on him by a multicultural society" at all. And I didn't see it as being a tale of conflict between "obsolescent rectitude" versus "a rainbow coalition of Angelenos." I musta seen a different movie. I thought Douglas's character cracked under the strain of high pressure urban life. For instance, I recall (***SPOILER***) that he had recently been fired, but based on Huntington's own characterization of the lot of California Latinos, he certainly was not pushed out of his white-collar job by Latinos. Really, I just got out of it someone who couldn't deal with the modern world. Smog, congestion, traffic, fast food, crime, visitation rights, and so forth. I didn't get any WASPS versus the rainbow coalition vibe out of it at all. This says a lot to me about how Huntington's perceptions are colored—Huntington seems to equate all of the above ills with minority culture.
Posts: 1112 | Registered: Jan 2003
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Storm, Mexico isn't losing who they consider to be their "best and brightest."
Who are they losing? Well, in many places they would be called refugees rather than immigrants, if you get what I am saying.
My brother-in-law worked for a long time as a service tech of RF devices, often used in manufacturing for gluing things together. A good portion of his work sent him to Mexico to help out the NAFTA beneficiaries. He didn't go to Cancun or Mexico City or any of the places we often see on TV. He went to the central portions of the country. Durango, for example, was a regular destination for him. What he saw there shocked him, each and every time he went.
The discrepancies between the factory owners and management compared to the workers was astounding. Management lived in large house, drove nice cars and had their own armed guards. The factory workers dressed in clothes ragged to the point where Goodwill wouldn't accept them as donations and lived in slapped together corrugated tin shacks. And the factory workers were better off than those who didn't have those jobs.
The grocery store parking lots had armed guard towers and were surrounded by chain link fences topped with spirals of barbed wire. Grocery stores...
Police and soldiers walk the streets. You don't dare look at a soldier in the face. Why? Because the soldiers have to crack down on the poor so often that they fear when you are looking at them, you are trying to find out who their families are. That's a rough life for a young man conscripted to be part of the military and their families are often the targets of reprisals when they are forced to use brutal tactics on the population.
While some folks live on the barest levels of subsistance, others eat well, live well and sock away tons of money.
This isn't Cancun or any of the Mexican resort destinations. It's not even Tijuana. It's places like Durango and Chihuahua or the Yucatan. It's a rough and brutish life. One that makes a run for the border and the potential slavery that waits there look like a good idea.
Mexico is right now the cesspool that we're afraid to talk about for fear of screwing up the gobs of money we make out of it. It's not just NAFTA, this was going on long before that came around.
Posts: 2848 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
O.K. This goes back to my argument that perhaps we are propping up a corrupt and screwed up country. (I mean, beyond actually bailing them out a few years a go. )
Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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Yeah but what are we going to do, pull a Sadaam and annex them so we can "fix" their corrupt government? Don't think it would go over too well. And the problems we have by the stream of immigration would instantly multiply exponentially.
posted
Honestly, in my opinion, I would make some changes to our foreign trade and NAFTA agreements. If a county wishes to participate in NAFTA or receive Most Favored Nation status for trade purposes, it must have a set in stone minimum wage like the US has. That minimum wage must reflect the actual cost of living in a country and should be based on the same minimum guarantees that we base our minimum wage on.
If they want a crack at our markets and the wealth we have to spend, then they must hold themselves to a higher standard than they are now.
We don't need an Iraq situation for this. Simple economics can handle the situation: play fair or we'll take away your access.
Posts: 2848 | Registered: Feb 2003
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