The Dark Side of Diversity (green card, Aztlan, married, illegal aliens)

[Stonecoldharbours]

I wonder how many would go off to Iraq?

[saganista]

Originally Posted by citigirl

Our ancestors came to America for a new life and those that followed dreamed of the greatest dream, being an American.

Very substantial numbers of those ancestors of yours were criminals, sent here so that the Mother Country could be easily rid of them. The Marielle Boat People would have been a latter-day approximation. Then again, there will always be those who prefer romantic fables to actual history...makes them feel like somehow better people I guess...

[texanborn]

Originally Posted by saganista

Very substantial numbers of those ancestors of yours were criminals, sent here so that the Mother Country could be easily rid of them. The Marielle Boat People would have been a latter-day approximation. Then again, there will always be those who prefer romantic fables to actual history...makes them feel like somehow better people I guess...

I thought they were criminals against the church of England...Post a link to your "actual history".

[Kele]

Originally Posted by saganista

Very substantial numbers of those ancestors of yours were criminals, sent here so that the Mother Country could be easily rid of them. The Marielle Boat People would have been a latter-day approximation. Then again, there will always be those who prefer romantic fables to actual history...makes them feel like somehow better people I guess...

Please post verifiable information which proves this statement of yours to be factual.

Perhaps you've conflated those who left England to come to America with those who were forcibly removed and sent to Australia. I can see where the confusion might lie...I mean, after all, they're both really big continents.

[fastfilm]

saganista, if this thread were (better) titled "the dark side of non-assimilaton," what would your response be?

When I was in UCLA, I didn't give this concept much thought, as everyone who came to the university from all parts of the world was there for a common goal of his or her betterment with higher education. Its attainment would be a win-win situation: betterment of self and betterment of society, laudably generous goals that are not entirely self-serving. We all need educated specialists, America and every country. Each student certainly knew the common language of America and world commerce, English. Assimilation was something the Borg did since it didn't seem to apply here in our common unity, and we all got along famously inside this bubble.

But thirty years later in the working world and out in the current environs of Los Angeles that beset the non-rich, non-assimilation is a daily horrorshow. Selfish lawbreakers sneak in to sap government services, and American taxpayers are progressively gouged to pay for these services, services which they themselves will never get; illegals paid under the table gut wages and bar entry-level jobs for desperate and poor Americans; rabidly anti-American foreign nationals rage to change every aspect of our life into duplication of their "home country," in utter contempt of the fact that Americans initially came from all over the world, not just Mexico, and that pride in one's personal ancestry shouldn't trump pride in being American; the many third world practices that ignore hygiene, safety, public responsibility and dare one say common courtesy are the norm here now; Balkanization and complete cultural isolation are now "the bubble."

The pros of assimilation have an excellent factual study right here if you dig for it. One of the first topics in City-data's then newly created forums on the Los Angeles threads was commentary about an amazing newspaper article documenting the lives of sisters that moved from Mexico to America. One settled in Los Angeles, and became a jobless welfare mother of ten children. Despite twenty years residence here, she knew no English whatsover. She had even taken fertility pills to attain the number of children that she had. Her kids did mediocre work in schools, and she had no answer for anything the interviewer asked her about her personal choices.

Her sister, however moved to Kentucky, a state less Balkanized and coddling of illegals. By learning English after work, she went from factory worker to white collar office worker within ten years, and soon thereafter owned her own business. Her two children were well schooled, avoiding the pitfalls of non-English immersion, and went to college. When the first sister's L.A. kids eventually visited their Kentucky cousins, they complained that they couldn't understand them because "they used big words."

Assimilation into American culture shows that the second, Kentucky sister is best for herself, her children and her goals, as well as American society. It's too bad the apologists for illegals and non-assimilation have the first, Los Angeles sister as their inevitable result.

[citigirl]

Originally Posted by saganista

Very substantial numbers of those ancestors of yours were criminals, sent here so that the Mother Country could be easily rid of them. The Marielle Boat People would have been a latter-day approximation. Then again, there will always be those who prefer romantic fables to actual history...makes them feel like somehow better people I guess...

That could be said of Australia and look what a wonderful country it is now. There is a romance in our history. Now we are living the bad dream.

[Yac]

If this thread continues to be this far off topic, it will be closed.
Yac.

[bargainmom]

Hi Yac,

I dont' really see how this is off topic of immigration.

[Stonecoldharbours]

I don't either btw here, it seems to be very much on topic to me as well.

[saganista]

Originally Posted by Kele

Please post verifiable information which proves this statement of yours to be factual.

Perhaps you've conflated those who left England to come to America with those who were forcibly removed and sent to Australia. I can see where the confusion might lie...I mean, after all, they're both really big continents.

Perhaps you haven't delved sufficiently into those times to have recognized the parallels between colonial (pre-1776) US and subsequent (post-1788) Australian population histories. The agricultural endeavors that supported the colonies were all labor intensive undertakings. Estate holders did not do the work themselves. Demand for labor was so high that between half and two-thirds of all colonists who arrived here did so under terms of indenture, some voluntarily (as in with hope of avoiding certain starvation in England) and many under 'alternative sentencing' programs of the day. At first, convicted capital offenders were given the choice of execution or indenture in America, but with a continually rising demand for labor, significant numbers of other felons and petty thieves became eligible, and later mere debtors, orphans, and paupers as well. It was only when this supply of low-wage labor became totally insufficent to meet demand that the colonies turned to outright slavery on an organized basis to meet their needs.

Some suggested readings...

James Curtis Ballagh; White Servitude in the Colony of Virginia. Baltimore MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1895.

David W. Galson; White Servatude in Colonial America: An Economic Analysis. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

Peter Kolchin; American Slavery 1619-1877. New York, NY: Hill and Wang, 1993.

Abbot Emerson Smith; Colonists in Bondage: White Servitude and Convict Labor in America, 1607-1776. Chapel Hill, NC.: University of North Carolina, 1947.

Warren B. Smith; White Servitude in Colonial South Carolina. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1961.