Thread: Re: How do we decide who gets to be an American?

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I'll start by saying I don't agree with this author and I did comment as a guest using my Bad Robot ID. But I'd like to know where most of the forum members stand on this issue. Also, feel free to also leave your comments to this Big Think article.

The executive summary of the article appears to be: "I think selfishness is a good thing, so **** the immigrants."

It's a point of view. It's your country.

For the UK we are a country of immigrants. Most recently our plumbing systems are being kept functioning by Poles. In the post war years the National Health Service depended on Commonwealth immigrants. A little earlier some of my ancestors walked over from France, when you could still do that with dry feet.

The last time I checked, while I was living in one country I was also living on a single planet.

I believe that LEGAL immigration should always be available to ANYONE who registers and QUALIFIES. Now qualifying means that you are not carrying a communicable disease, have no felony criminal record or been arrested for felonies. Beyond that I don't think that there would be anything else that comes to my mind as to prevent anyone from applying for citizenship from anywhere.

I'm probably going to catch hell for this but you asked for opinions, and like Hitler I probably wouldn't even be able to live up to my own high standards and wouldn't be that pissed off if I got culled for the good of society. It happens.

But this is what I attempted to post in comment to the article. but I don't like registering just to leave a comment so they can bite me.

"I think the border should be a 10 mile wide field of deadly land mines, laser guided precision sniper fire and aggressive venomous wildlife. If anyone can make it across alive they deserve legal citizenship on the spot.

If they don't make it then they died fighting and should be given a burial at Arlington cemetery, after all that's where people who fight for USA freedoms go, right?

To the guy who can't find any reasonable complaint except that the author referred to the USA as America rather than USA, your argument is lame and you made no point whatsoever.

It doesn't matter at this point who used to live here, the land now belongs to the USA and the citizens thereof. People migrate, wars happen, and natural selection (yes humans are part of nature and war is a mechanism of natural selection, get over it) decides who lives and who dies and where people end up going.

I think people of the USA are too damned politically correct and have lost their sense of patriotism and national pride. I think many people who are legal citizens and even descendants of the first colonists, don't deserve to be here. Those that want to live off public assistance and assume the world owes them something. If it were up to me, we would have two classes of people in the USA, those who are true to what our forefathers envisioned(all them patriots), meaning they are willing to fight for our freedoms and those who merely benefit from the blood offerings of the others. The ones who benefit would no longer have the privileges of voting or land ownership. They would be given second place in consideration for jobs. The adults would only be given charity if they had genuine physical or mental disabilities. And their children would only be entitled to charity until they are legal adults.

Patriots would get first access to resources but not in excess. And anyone who doesn't like being a second class citizen can become a patriot by serving in the military or some other mutually agreeable standard practice that demonstrates their will and desire to risk their own blood to be a free patriot. And patriots wouldn't have to pay as many taxes.

Why should the second class get body guards for free."

I don't expect anyone will agree with me or find it pleasant, I'm ok with that. I know its not pretty. But to me it seems fair. It's my point of view and my opinion. No one is required to like it or agree.

I do consider opening the border entirely as an agreeable alternative, personally I think we should take over Mexico and help them get drinkable tap water. Our luxuries are not free, and if they want them, fine, pay for them like we do.

Another ridiculously biased article that refuses to take a look at the real issues and exaggerates concerns.

Even the language used betrays his prejudice-- 20 million illegal aliens, for example, is completely untrue. There might well be 20 million undocumented, but that's not the same--the majority of them arrived completely legally or were born in the US. Uncertainty, governmental incompetence and no clear comprehensive policies keep many of these hard working people in the shadows.

It's also rather amazing that with immigration as near record lows (possible negative from Mexico, formally the highest) and deportations at near record highs, we think this important now. It's not. It's just hot air based in bigotry and irrational fears by a blogger clinging to a fantasy rose colored past that never existed.

That's how I stand.

seagypsy

It's not much of a registration. You enter whatever ID you want, your email address then click the guest post box, and that's it.

Yeah but i always end up spammed all to hell when I give my email address to those things. I may go back and use some made up email address but then I may be getting some unknown stranger spammed to death.

I'm not very trustworthy of the internet these days and I'll likely be an anti internet conspiracy theorist before I die, requiring euthanasia lol.