cajunrevenge
Well-known member
lol
Immigrants
- Thread starter nsacpi
- Start date
57Brave
Well-known member
12/20/2024
The Immigrant "Invasion" Is Just WMDs All Over Again
There is no immigrant invasion at the southern border of the United States. That needs to be said at the outset any time you wanna talk about What's Wrong With Our Country. No matter how many times people say it, no matter how much it's covered, no matter even if elected Democrats agree, it's simply not true. The immigration system in this country is broken but that's because Republicans have refused to fund the courts needed to quickly process asylum claims and other cases.
The idea of an immigrant "invasion," as Donald Trump (who we really elected president for a second time - I know, it's ****ed up, right?) puts it constantly, has one purpose, and that's to scare the public with a lie so that a cabal of power-mad assholes can remake the nation to suit their warped, contorted viewpoints. That should sound incredibly familiar for those of us with brains that actively remember **** more than a tweet-cycle old.
It's weapons of mass destruction all over again.
Oh, sweet children of America, you need to know that in the scary months after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (that's the "9/11" you hear about every year, in case you weren't born yet or are ****ing dumb), the administration of President George W. Bush decided that the nation of Iraq needed to be attacked and remade as a "democracy," free of its dictator Saddam Hussein. The fact that Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks and the fact that the dictator of the country that did have a great deal to do with them, Saudi Arabia, was apparently off-limits was not something you were allowed to say openly lest you be labeled anti-American. Besides, we were assured, endlessly, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, big missiles, perhaps nukes, **** that could **** up, say, Israel or even our allies in Europe or maybe even the USA itself. So we had to invade Iraq, take it over, and prevent the mad leader of the country from unleashing hell on the earth. In 2002, the president was given blanket authorization to use military force against Iraq by a bipartisan vote in both houses of Congress. Again and again, we were told that we needed to bomb the **** of the country to prevent a mushroom cloud over DC. Anyone who disputed that idea was treated as a traitor, even if you were a veteran. Ads were run declaring your support of terrorists if you dared say that WMDs (as the shorthand went) were a lie. The foreign policy and economic policy of the United States was remade around the goals of eliminating WMDs and turning Iraq into a shining example of freedom in that region of the world. If that sounds weird and hyperbolic, if anything, I'm understating how this **** went.
And, of course, it was all a lie. There weren't WMDs. The whole thing was bull****, but two-thirds of Americans believed Iraq had something to do with 9/11. Two-thirds believed the WMD lie. All of them were wrong (I could say, "All of you were wrong" since I was right, but I don't wanna be smug about it), but Democrats and Republicans leaned into the lie because of the fear of opposing such a huge part of the population. Nearly three-quarters of the country supported the war, which eventually changed to over half coming around to saying it was mistake. But the damage was done to Iraq and to the US, even if the defeat of the GOP in 2008 was one of the outcomes of the entire ****tastrophe.
Of course, since we're Americans, we're damned to repeat every goddamned mistake in an endless cycle, and while we're not being lied into war this time (although there's weird talk about sending troops into Mexico), we are once again watching policy decisions being made that will wreck millions of lives because of hysteria over a lie that has caught fire.
So not only did Donald Trump run and arguably win on his unending declarations of "the greatest invasion in history" happening at the US-Mexico border, but it's become a standard line for every Republican in office at all levels. And Democrats have joined in, going from accusing Republicans of stoking fears with their rhetoric to campaigning on the very restrictions that the anti-immigration right wants. Hell, even some supposedly left-leaning pundits have used Trump's language. And, again, it's all a lie. I don't want to go into all the ways it's a lie (like the fact that the majority of undocumented people came into the country legally and just stayed).
Like the WMD lies, this lie serves a policy purpose and it's not just to get the rubes all heated up to vote for fascists, although that worked pretty ****in' well. The very word "invasion" is important because a declaration of an invasion could be a pretext for Trump using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to get the military involved in rounding up and deporting anyone who is undocumented. Beyond that nightmare, making everyone believe that the hottentots are rampaging through the border in order to pillage our villages and rape our dogs and murder our women or whatever the **** puts a violent justification on policies that are simply ignorance and racism, stopping the Great Replacement and White Genocide and that kind of bull**** that gets Trump, Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, and Elon Musk all hard and throbbing.
And, like invading Iraq (and that was really an invasion), billions of dollars will be spent to act on this lie. It will enrich a few loyal companies who get the contracts to build the detainment camps. It will cause wanton violence as every armed ****nut jonesing to go nutzoid on their immigrant neighbors tries to "help." And, eventually, it will fail as people realize what a horrific cluster**** of family separation, caged children, and decimated workforces is doing to the country.
What can be done now is for Democrats to stop giving in to the Trump language on immigration. Leave that **** to Fox "news" and it's devolved descendants. Let ****heel podcasters scream into the void about migrant caravans or whatever. We've already ceded so much ground by allowing the GOP to exploit every story of a migrant committing a crime. How about instead talking about how migrants are mistreated and killed. How about showing some goddamn strength instead of going along with the raging pitchfork-waving mob? Put out some torches instead of helping to light them.
Maybe, just maybe, we can stop this lie before it ****s things up as badly as the last lie.
The Immigrant "Invasion" Is Just WMDs All Over Again
There is no immigrant invasion at the southern border of the United States. That needs to be said at the outset any time you wanna talk about What's Wrong With Our Country. No matter how many times people say it, no matter how much it's covered, no matter even if elected Democrats agree, it's simply not true. The immigration system in this country is broken but that's because Republicans have refused to fund the courts needed to quickly process asylum claims and other cases.
The idea of an immigrant "invasion," as Donald Trump (who we really elected president for a second time - I know, it's ****ed up, right?) puts it constantly, has one purpose, and that's to scare the public with a lie so that a cabal of power-mad assholes can remake the nation to suit their warped, contorted viewpoints. That should sound incredibly familiar for those of us with brains that actively remember **** more than a tweet-cycle old.
It's weapons of mass destruction all over again.
Oh, sweet children of America, you need to know that in the scary months after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (that's the "9/11" you hear about every year, in case you weren't born yet or are ****ing dumb), the administration of President George W. Bush decided that the nation of Iraq needed to be attacked and remade as a "democracy," free of its dictator Saddam Hussein. The fact that Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks and the fact that the dictator of the country that did have a great deal to do with them, Saudi Arabia, was apparently off-limits was not something you were allowed to say openly lest you be labeled anti-American. Besides, we were assured, endlessly, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, big missiles, perhaps nukes, **** that could **** up, say, Israel or even our allies in Europe or maybe even the USA itself. So we had to invade Iraq, take it over, and prevent the mad leader of the country from unleashing hell on the earth. In 2002, the president was given blanket authorization to use military force against Iraq by a bipartisan vote in both houses of Congress. Again and again, we were told that we needed to bomb the **** of the country to prevent a mushroom cloud over DC. Anyone who disputed that idea was treated as a traitor, even if you were a veteran. Ads were run declaring your support of terrorists if you dared say that WMDs (as the shorthand went) were a lie. The foreign policy and economic policy of the United States was remade around the goals of eliminating WMDs and turning Iraq into a shining example of freedom in that region of the world. If that sounds weird and hyperbolic, if anything, I'm understating how this **** went.
And, of course, it was all a lie. There weren't WMDs. The whole thing was bull****, but two-thirds of Americans believed Iraq had something to do with 9/11. Two-thirds believed the WMD lie. All of them were wrong (I could say, "All of you were wrong" since I was right, but I don't wanna be smug about it), but Democrats and Republicans leaned into the lie because of the fear of opposing such a huge part of the population. Nearly three-quarters of the country supported the war, which eventually changed to over half coming around to saying it was mistake. But the damage was done to Iraq and to the US, even if the defeat of the GOP in 2008 was one of the outcomes of the entire ****tastrophe.
Of course, since we're Americans, we're damned to repeat every goddamned mistake in an endless cycle, and while we're not being lied into war this time (although there's weird talk about sending troops into Mexico), we are once again watching policy decisions being made that will wreck millions of lives because of hysteria over a lie that has caught fire.
So not only did Donald Trump run and arguably win on his unending declarations of "the greatest invasion in history" happening at the US-Mexico border, but it's become a standard line for every Republican in office at all levels. And Democrats have joined in, going from accusing Republicans of stoking fears with their rhetoric to campaigning on the very restrictions that the anti-immigration right wants. Hell, even some supposedly left-leaning pundits have used Trump's language. And, again, it's all a lie. I don't want to go into all the ways it's a lie (like the fact that the majority of undocumented people came into the country legally and just stayed).
Like the WMD lies, this lie serves a policy purpose and it's not just to get the rubes all heated up to vote for fascists, although that worked pretty ****in' well. The very word "invasion" is important because a declaration of an invasion could be a pretext for Trump using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to get the military involved in rounding up and deporting anyone who is undocumented. Beyond that nightmare, making everyone believe that the hottentots are rampaging through the border in order to pillage our villages and rape our dogs and murder our women or whatever the **** puts a violent justification on policies that are simply ignorance and racism, stopping the Great Replacement and White Genocide and that kind of bull**** that gets Trump, Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, and Elon Musk all hard and throbbing.
And, like invading Iraq (and that was really an invasion), billions of dollars will be spent to act on this lie. It will enrich a few loyal companies who get the contracts to build the detainment camps. It will cause wanton violence as every armed ****nut jonesing to go nutzoid on their immigrant neighbors tries to "help." And, eventually, it will fail as people realize what a horrific cluster**** of family separation, caged children, and decimated workforces is doing to the country.
What can be done now is for Democrats to stop giving in to the Trump language on immigration. Leave that **** to Fox "news" and it's devolved descendants. Let ****heel podcasters scream into the void about migrant caravans or whatever. We've already ceded so much ground by allowing the GOP to exploit every story of a migrant committing a crime. How about instead talking about how migrants are mistreated and killed. How about showing some goddamn strength instead of going along with the raging pitchfork-waving mob? Put out some torches instead of helping to light them.
Maybe, just maybe, we can stop this lie before it ****s things up as badly as the last lie.
nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
Enjoyed reading this op-ed by Phil Gramm and Robert Topel in the WSJ. Bolding added for ****s and giggles.
In a country with widespread use of quotas, preferences and set-asides, we seldom see unadulterated merit, especially in academics. As board members of a foundation that awards scholarships based on merit and financial need, we have seen what merit looks like. The findings are important enough to share.
Finis Welch, our late friend and economics colleague at Texas A&M University and UCLA, grew up in a poor Texas family and was paralyzed from the waist down in an accident when he was 18. That setback fueled his determination to succeed. Finis became a prominent academic economist and made a fortune in statistical software, economic consulting and ranching. He left that fortune to award four-year college scholarships to promising students from Texas families of modest means. Students, in other words, like him.
The Finis Welch Foundation supports more than 40 students a year at Texas A&M and the University of Texas, with plans to expand to as many as 250 scholarships a year. Both universities provide the foundation with roughly 300 of their top applications from students seeking financial aid. Our scholarships cover tuition, room and board and provide services, such as mentoring and business contacts, that prosperous parents might give their children. The foundation offers instruction in everything from table manners and etiquette to career and life advice and has staff who are there when our scholars need help.
When awarding scholarships, the foundation ignores applicants’ race and sex. We review high-school transcripts, but given the level of grade inflation, for all practical purposes, our applicants have near-perfect grades and have taken many advanced-placement courses. So transcripts and grades are of limited use in choosing among candidates. The same is true for the obligatory college essay. Other factors are more informative and distinguishing, such as extracurricular activities and whether an applicant worked while in high school. All applicants have stellar recommendations, but some letters stand out. Relative performance on standardized tests is the key differentiator among this pool of high-achieving candidates. That’s why the foundation requires all applicants to take the SAT or ACT. The average SAT score of last year’s 43 scholarship recipients was 1450, which is at the 96th percentile, and the highest score was a perfect 1600.
Once we make our selections, we ask for more biographical information as part of our counseling support. When the process is complete each year, the most common characteristic among recipients is that both parents were born in a foreign country. This was true of 62% of the recipients in 2024, about three times the share that would be expected if the students were drawn at random from the nation’s schools. Another 9% had one foreign-born parent, while only 29% had both parents born in the U.S. Parents of this year’s recipients came from China, Guatemala, India, Korea, Kuwait, Laos, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan and Vietnam. Not surprisingly in Texas, 20% of foreign-born parents were from Mexico.
These extraordinary numbers raise the question: Why did a majority of high-school seniors chosen on merit come from families with immigrant parents? Part of the reason is that foreign-born parents are on average poorer and more likely to meet the foundation’s income requirement. But there’s more to it. Based on research from the Institute for Family Studies, immigrant households are more likely to have both natural parents in the household. Also, their children were less than half as likely to have recorded behavioral problems at school, and were much less likely to have ever been expelled.
But immigrant households also predominantly spoke a foreign language at home, were much more likely to live in poor areas or areas with high minority populations, and were less likely to own their own home. The overwhelming majority of Welch Foundation scholarship recipients attended public schools—often subpar ones—though they were more likely than other students in their neighborhoods to attend charter schools. But perhaps the most significant finding is that 91% of all immigrant parents nationwide expected their children to graduate from college, and 59% expected them to pursue graduate or professional degrees.
Our conversations with winners confirm these high expectations. Immigrant parents know their children can advance through education.
These findings reinforce why America needs immigrants. Illegal immigration should be stopped because it is illegal, but that shouldn’t taint our view of legal immigration. Immigrants bring new energy to America, and their drive to succeed has been a powerful force for American progress.
The story of America is the story of the immigrant. America can attract legal immigrants from all over the world based on the opportunity and freedom we offer. What Pericles said 2,500 years ago about Athens applies to America today: “Where the prize is highest, there, too, will you find the best and the bravest.”
Preventing the best and bravest from coming to our shores is a recipe for national decline. Ambition and dreams are powerful. The Finis Welch scholarship recipient this year with a perfect 1600 SAT score and foreign-born parents was asked on the scholarship application about his goals. His response: “to cure cancer.”
In a country with widespread use of quotas, preferences and set-asides, we seldom see unadulterated merit, especially in academics. As board members of a foundation that awards scholarships based on merit and financial need, we have seen what merit looks like. The findings are important enough to share.
Finis Welch, our late friend and economics colleague at Texas A&M University and UCLA, grew up in a poor Texas family and was paralyzed from the waist down in an accident when he was 18. That setback fueled his determination to succeed. Finis became a prominent academic economist and made a fortune in statistical software, economic consulting and ranching. He left that fortune to award four-year college scholarships to promising students from Texas families of modest means. Students, in other words, like him.
The Finis Welch Foundation supports more than 40 students a year at Texas A&M and the University of Texas, with plans to expand to as many as 250 scholarships a year. Both universities provide the foundation with roughly 300 of their top applications from students seeking financial aid. Our scholarships cover tuition, room and board and provide services, such as mentoring and business contacts, that prosperous parents might give their children. The foundation offers instruction in everything from table manners and etiquette to career and life advice and has staff who are there when our scholars need help.
When awarding scholarships, the foundation ignores applicants’ race and sex. We review high-school transcripts, but given the level of grade inflation, for all practical purposes, our applicants have near-perfect grades and have taken many advanced-placement courses. So transcripts and grades are of limited use in choosing among candidates. The same is true for the obligatory college essay. Other factors are more informative and distinguishing, such as extracurricular activities and whether an applicant worked while in high school. All applicants have stellar recommendations, but some letters stand out. Relative performance on standardized tests is the key differentiator among this pool of high-achieving candidates. That’s why the foundation requires all applicants to take the SAT or ACT. The average SAT score of last year’s 43 scholarship recipients was 1450, which is at the 96th percentile, and the highest score was a perfect 1600.
Once we make our selections, we ask for more biographical information as part of our counseling support. When the process is complete each year, the most common characteristic among recipients is that both parents were born in a foreign country. This was true of 62% of the recipients in 2024, about three times the share that would be expected if the students were drawn at random from the nation’s schools. Another 9% had one foreign-born parent, while only 29% had both parents born in the U.S. Parents of this year’s recipients came from China, Guatemala, India, Korea, Kuwait, Laos, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan and Vietnam. Not surprisingly in Texas, 20% of foreign-born parents were from Mexico.
These extraordinary numbers raise the question: Why did a majority of high-school seniors chosen on merit come from families with immigrant parents? Part of the reason is that foreign-born parents are on average poorer and more likely to meet the foundation’s income requirement. But there’s more to it. Based on research from the Institute for Family Studies, immigrant households are more likely to have both natural parents in the household. Also, their children were less than half as likely to have recorded behavioral problems at school, and were much less likely to have ever been expelled.
But immigrant households also predominantly spoke a foreign language at home, were much more likely to live in poor areas or areas with high minority populations, and were less likely to own their own home. The overwhelming majority of Welch Foundation scholarship recipients attended public schools—often subpar ones—though they were more likely than other students in their neighborhoods to attend charter schools. But perhaps the most significant finding is that 91% of all immigrant parents nationwide expected their children to graduate from college, and 59% expected them to pursue graduate or professional degrees.
Our conversations with winners confirm these high expectations. Immigrant parents know their children can advance through education.
These findings reinforce why America needs immigrants. Illegal immigration should be stopped because it is illegal, but that shouldn’t taint our view of legal immigration. Immigrants bring new energy to America, and their drive to succeed has been a powerful force for American progress.
The story of America is the story of the immigrant. America can attract legal immigrants from all over the world based on the opportunity and freedom we offer. What Pericles said 2,500 years ago about Athens applies to America today: “Where the prize is highest, there, too, will you find the best and the bravest.”
Preventing the best and bravest from coming to our shores is a recipe for national decline. Ambition and dreams are powerful. The Finis Welch scholarship recipient this year with a perfect 1600 SAT score and foreign-born parents was asked on the scholarship application about his goals. His response: “to cure cancer.”
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nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
Native-born.
I do wish they would get off the wagon and start pulling their weight.
But hey its a free country. They are free to whine about the ballers taking all the jobs and scholarships from their kids if that makes 'em happy.
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Tapate50
Well-known member
They got reservations bro.
[tw]1871633174163554325[/tw]
The one thing I don’t understand about “protectionist conservatives” is the idea that we need to get rid of all our labor competition so that American workers can earn more and work less but that prices won’t go up as a result. Y’all aren’t supposed to be the bleeding hearts. Let the entry-level engineer work 80 hours a week, that’s the bootstrapping you all told us we have to do to get ahead. Just because there’s a collection of boogeymen from other countries to blame doesn’t mean you have to abandon the rest of your views on the economy.
The one thing I don’t understand about “protectionist conservatives” is the idea that we need to get rid of all our labor competition so that American workers can earn more and work less but that prices won’t go up as a result. Y’all aren’t supposed to be the bleeding hearts. Let the entry-level engineer work 80 hours a week, that’s the bootstrapping you all told us we have to do to get ahead. Just because there’s a collection of boogeymen from other countries to blame doesn’t mean you have to abandon the rest of your views on the economy.
I have my own views on DEI and actively believe a lot of the people championing diversity are doing so in either flawed ways or for flawed reasons. I believe that due to systematic oppression for the past 200 years that we have set up an environment where the color of your skin does have a real correlation with your poverty level, but that the solution isn’t through quotas or elevating individuals in that system based on their race. Instead, I support providing more resources and opportunities in impoverished communities and school systems. I also believe that most organizations benefit from a greater level of diversity. That diversity can come in the form of different races or sexual orientations, but can also come from hiring people that lived in a very small rural town or as a military child. Diversity in thought and experience is a very good thing because you gain different perspectives. And DEI initiatives that support understanding other points of view or lived experiences helps make for a more well-rounded team. Unfortunately it’s hard to get a tangible deliverable result to that portion of a program.
nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
The main value of DEI is the "I" or inclusion part and the recognition of implicit bias as an important thing to overcome.
The "E" part is the most problematic because sometimes merit and equity come into conflict and that should be resolved in favor of merit. But emphasis on the E part means sometimes merit gets short shrift.
The "D" part is like motherhood and apple pie. No one is against diversity. But the evidence of its benefits depends on what kind of diversity you are talking about. There are high privileged dark-skinned people and highly underprivileged people with light skin. Using skin tone as a proxy for diversity leads to all sorts of problems.
Last edited by a moderator:
nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
the full text of Vivek's tweet:
The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the TRUTH:
Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.
A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.
A culture that venerates Cory from “Boy Meets World,” or Zach & Slater over Screech in “Saved by the Bell,” or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in “Family Matters,” will not produce the best engineers.
(Fact: I know *multiple* sets of immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch those TV shows precisely because they promoted mediocrity…and their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates).
More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of “Friends.” More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less “chillin.” More extracurriculars, less “hanging out at the mall.”
Most normal American parents look skeptically at “those kinds of parents.” More normal American kids view such “those kinds of kids” with scorn. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve.
Now close your eyes & visualize which families you knew in the 90s (or even now) who raise their kids according to one model versus the other. Be brutally honest.
“Normalcy” doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our asses handed to us by China.
This can be our Sputnik moment. We’ve awaken from slumber before & we can do it again. Trump’s election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.
That’s the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence. I’m confident we can do it.
The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the TRUTH:
Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.
A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.
A culture that venerates Cory from “Boy Meets World,” or Zach & Slater over Screech in “Saved by the Bell,” or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in “Family Matters,” will not produce the best engineers.
(Fact: I know *multiple* sets of immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch those TV shows precisely because they promoted mediocrity…and their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates).
More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of “Friends.” More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less “chillin.” More extracurriculars, less “hanging out at the mall.”
Most normal American parents look skeptically at “those kinds of parents.” More normal American kids view such “those kinds of kids” with scorn. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve.
Now close your eyes & visualize which families you knew in the 90s (or even now) who raise their kids according to one model versus the other. Be brutally honest.
“Normalcy” doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our asses handed to us by China.
This can be our Sputnik moment. We’ve awaken from slumber before & we can do it again. Trump’s election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.
That’s the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence. I’m confident we can do it.