The Other Immigration Issue in the United States

[bodhitree]

Tariffs and embargos to nothing positive in the world market of today, they just create situations that come back to bite us on our butt or create animosity.

bingo(10characters)

[bakxierboxer]

You haven't travelled to too many nice places, have you?

HEH!
Nobody in their right mind wants to wipe the NICE PLACES off the face of the planet!

[bakxierboxer]

Strange, that's what they say about us...

Just goes to show ya that "exchange student" bit is pure BS. (at least when THEY'RE doing it!)

[bakxierboxer]

Tariffs and embargos to nothing positive in the world market of today....

Pretty much in agreement on that....

... they just create situations that come back to bite us on our butt.....

... what if it was just a bit of friendly nibbling?

... or create animosity.

You know, there ARE "things to be said" about "aping" certain "animalistic practices".......

[Becca]

Do you know any kids looking to be exchange students to some place like, oh, say, Mexico?

Yup. My cosin when to Baliz (sp?) for a simester.

I tend to post "tease"/"humorous"-type stuff about them.... except I don't believe I've ever found anything at all humorous about Cuba.



But.... what happens when you "really understand them" from that "first hand knowledge" and it turns out that the very "best" thing to do with them is wipe them off the face of the planet?

Then chances are you missed the part about understanding bringing tollerence. I've yet to meat someone who catually took the time to imerce themselves in another culture who found that culture so horrible that all members needed to be "wipped off the face of the planet"....

[bakxierboxer]

Yup. My cosin when to Baliz (sp?) for a simester.

Belize... one of the seats of the old Maya Empire. (see also Toltec and Aztec)

Then chances are you missed the part about understanding bringing tollerence. I've yet to meat someone who catually took the time to imerce themselves in another culture who found that culture so horrible that all members needed to be "wipped off the face of the planet"....

Assuming that he immersed himself in said cultures, did he come back with any "strange tastes" or "practices"?

"meat"?
Most of those old Central/South American cultures engaged in human sacrifice, if not outright cannibalism.

OTOH, they did the better part of removing themselves from the face of the planet.
(ever helpful.... perhaps others can be encouraged to "help themselves" in much the same manner?)

[bodhitree]

Yup. My cosin when to Baliz (sp?) for a simester.

.
He said Mexico toots, Belize is an entirely different country, with a different kind of economy, where they speak a different language, I hardly see how that's relevant to Mexico?

Do you know any kids looking to be exchange students to some place like, oh, say, Mexico?

Actually I've known quite a few, and one girl who just got back from Chiapas (the poorest state in Mexico) and loved it. As a matter of fact, with the exception of stupid people who go there to party and get arrested, I've never heard a bad story from Americans living in Mexico (of course they know the places to avoid).


The same is not true for Central Americans (for El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras mostly) in Mexico, who are often the victims of violence.


This thead has really brought out the irrational, maybe I should delete it!

[bakxierboxer]

.Actually I've known quite a few, and one girl who just got back from Chiapas (the poorest state in Mexico) and loved it.

She was an *exchange student*?
Not "just" a tourist?
From their HDI it doesn't seem that they've got all that much of an educational infrastructure to attract exchange students.

As a matter of fact, with the exception of stupid people who go there to party and get arrested, I've never heard a bad story from Americans living in Mexico (of course they know the places to avoid).

True.... AFAIK.

This thead has really brought out the irrational, maybe I should delete it!

OTOH, its also brought out something that might not have been evident otherwise. Some of us don't seem to comprehend the idea/"essence" of "competition". *Competition* is not a 2-man set, chi-sao, or "cooperative exercise" in any sense of the word.

While it is true in several senses that "competition improves the breed", the OBJECT of competing is TO WIN!
With "winning" in mind, it would make a certain amount of sense to with-hold anything that might confer any advantage at all to "the other side".
(this might even include "education")

[bodhitree]

She was an *exchange student*?
Not "just" a tourist?
From their HDI it doesn't seem that they've got all that much of an educational infrastructure to attract exchange students

Actually, she WAS an exchange student there, and she spent a whole semester there. She was not there as a tourist, is she were why wouldn't she go to a resort area?

[Becca]

Belize... one of the seats of the old Maya Empire. (see also Toltec and Aztec)




Assuming that he immersed himself in said cultures, did he come back with any "strange tastes" or "practices"?

"meat"?
Most of those old Central/South American cultures engaged in human sacrifice, if not outright cannibalism.

OTOH, they did the better part of removing themselves from the face of the planet.
(ever helpful.... perhaps others can be encouraged to "help themselves" in much the same manner?)

Sue me; I usually don't have much time to post, so I don't usually take the time to spell check, either.

As to the cultures in Central and South America, saying that they used to have human sacrifice is not the same as saying they still do. The most unusual thing Brett came back with is an almost English obsession with soccar and the willingness to eat shreded cow's toungue in a soft taco.

[bakxierboxer]

Actually, she WAS an exchange student there, and she spent a whole semester there. She was not there as a tourist, is she were why wouldn't she go to a resort area?

Heh!
I don't pretend to know why any/every-one goes anywhere... let alone Chiapas.
Especially when they're "wimmin-folk".

[bakxierboxer]

Sue me....

Nah!
Prolly have to get a lawyer to do that "properly"... and we've been subjected to all too much of "that kind" lately. We also seem to be doomed/fated to at least another several months of them..... at least from the democrapic side of "the campaign".

As to the cultures in Central and South America, saying that they used to have human sacrifice is not the same as saying they still do.

....or don't now.

The most unusual thing Brett came back with is an almost English obsession with soccar and the willingness to eat shreded cow's toungue in a soft taco.

Sounds perverse.....

[bodhitree]

Foreign students and immigrants account for almost 50 percent of all science researchers in the country. In 2006 they recieved 40 percent of all PhDs. By 2010, 75 percent of all science PhDs in this country will be awarded to foreign students.

Zakaria, Fareed. Newsweek, May 12, 2008

Link to article

The author is actually saying that this is a positive, and it is. I just think making it easier for scientists/doctors/researchers who want to stay here to be able to do so would benefit us in the long run. Sorry to dig up old thread!

[AJM]

america doesn't need doctors as much as darfur need s astable society of which doctors are a part.

If all the mental talent taht was educated in the west, stayed in the west and didn't disperse to other nations, if we as nations did not share our knowledge with other nations and their peoples then the value of the knowledge is diminished and becomes a tool of control and therefor even more corruptable.

what needs to happen is exactly what is happening. You want peple to return to india and become doctors there who are equipped with the knowledge of the west to go in tandem with what they have to deal with their.

We want electronics people and engineers to be going back to third world and developing countries to help raise those countries up.

we want to do this because we are all sick of looking at photographs of starving children in time magazine.

wealth is useless in any aspect be it money or knowledge if you cannot share it with those that need it most. Graft and avarice are short lived pursuits of self interest and do no one any good at all least of all the person who is behaving in such a manner or for that matter, a state which behaves that way.

as it is above, so it is below.

Sums up my thoughts pretty well.

[GeneChing]

This is our primary immigration thread and the story of Wong Kim Ark needs to live on our forum somewhere.

This man is the reason America grants birthright citizenship
By Robert VerBruggen November 3, 2018 | 10:27pm


Wong Kim Ark
Wong Kim Ark Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service

In 1895, in his early 20s, Wong Kim Ark returned to the United States, the place of his birth.

He’d grown up in San Francisco, the son of Chinese immigrants, and was a cook by trade. His parents had returned to their own homeland in 1890, and he’d gone with them — but in the time since he’d established a transnational lifestyle.

He’d started a family in China, but repeatedly made trips back to the US to work. In fact, he’d just met his first child, conceived on an earlier trip, and gotten his wife pregnant with a second.

Such arrangements were not uncommon for Chinese-American men, as the Chinese population in the US was overwhelmingly male.

The US was in the grips of intense anti-Chinese sentiment, and Chinese immigration had been cut off in 1882. But since he’d been born in the US, he was able to return by showing the documents required by local customs officials, including testimony from white people that he was a US citizen.

Or at least that’s how it had worked for him before. In 1895, it was different.

Wong was denied entry by a stridently anti-Chinese customs collector, on the grounds that he was not in fact a US citizen, owing to his parents’ status as Chinese immigrants at the time of his birth. Then he was held on ships for months as he fought the case — with legal help from the “Six Companies,” a Chinese-American organization that had made a point of standing up for Chinese civil rights in thousands of court cases.

Eventually it was decided, on the basis of an earlier appeals-court precedent, that his US birth made him a citizen. But the US attorney general decided to push the issue further, and his case ended up at the Supreme Court.

That court’s ultimate decision is back in the spotlight now. In an interview released early this week, President Trump announced a plan to take on “birthright citizenship” via executive order.

This is the rule under which just about everyone born in the USA — including the children of illegal immigrants — is automatically granted citizenship, and the rule that Wong helped make US law.

It’s important to understand the situation Wong was born into. Between 1860 and 1880, the Chinese-American population tripled, topping 100,000 by the end of that period and concentrated largely in California. In 1868 a treaty explicitly welcomed these migrants — though they were not eligible for naturalization. And while Chinese-Americans made up small percentage of the overall American population, the tide shifted after repeated economic recessions, fueling a racist backlash.

In theory, Wong’s case posed a rather narrow question: Whether he was covered by the 14th Amendment clause granting citizenship to “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

Today, most courts would carefully parse those words, check dictionaries as needed, consult legal texts to see if the phrase was a term of art, and perhaps read up on the legislative history as well, to see what the people who actually wrote the words intended to convey.

Back then, however, the Supreme Court took a different path. In a 6–2 ruling, it touched on the text and history of the actual amendment only lightly and decided to cement the definition of citizenship we’d inherited from English common law, where everyone born in the country is treated as a natural subject. The same rule had applied to whites in the US since the country’s founding, the Court said, and the amendment had extended the rule to everyone else.

This is how Wong got his citizenship. And it’s why birthright citizenship presents such an enormous hurdle for those that oppose it.

Opponents of birthright citizenship today aren’t trying to prevent legal immigrants from re-entering the country if they visit their homelands, though, or to exclude entire racial groups.

Rather, they primarily fear — quite sensibly — that immediately granting citizenship to the children of people who came here illegally serves as a magnet, or at least a reward, for crossing our borders without authorization.

Today’s immigration critics are also correct to point out that the 14th Amendment wasn’t written with illegal immigration in mind, as there were no immigration restrictions yet in 1868 when it was adopted. One imagines that if illegal immigration had been an issue at the time, the amendment would read quite differently, in a way that clearly gives Congress the ability to deny citizenship in cases where people broke the law to get it.

So, what does all of this actually mean for Trump’s planned order? If Congress passed a new law ending birthright citizenship, the courts would immediately hear challenges rooted in the 14th Amendment, with Wong Kim Ark a key precedent.

Today’s Supreme Court could certainly reconsider the issue and consult a wealth of evidence that the 1898 Court mostly ignored, including the debates surrounding the 14th Amendment. But there is strong evidence from those debates that the amendment was, in fact, meant to confer citizenship on virtually everyone born here, with just a handful of exceptions (such as the kids of foreign ambassadors).

There are respected legal scholars who disagree — advancing a theory that “jurisdiction” requires allegiance to and the consent of the US — but a challenge to birthright citizenship would require all five conservative justices to read the historical evidence in a very specific way and break with decades upon decades’ worth of precedent and standard practice.

Wong Kim Ark eventually returned to China for good. His legacy will remain a part of America for far, far longer.

Robert VerBruggen is a deputy managing editor of National Review