[democracyforum]

The ''red'' or native indians, came from Siberia.

[TheIronist]

(Original post by Dux_Helvetica)
It is relevant because as the world starts viewing the United States less as an 'Anglo' dominated country and more as a country with Latin American characteristics, the wealth inequality of the United States will contribute to that view.

And they would be wrong to view that way because wealth inequality has very little to do with Latin American immigration. Again, irrelevant. Are we discussing here what the world thinks about the US or what the US really is like? are we talking about the truth or whatever happens to pass for the truth in the media?

...

[gagaslilmonsteruk]

OK don't neg me for saying this, but according to a recent episode of Glee ("The Spanish Teacher") Spanish will overtake English as the first-language of the USA by 2030. I personally don't see the problem with that. I mean after all, our native tongue for 300 years was French before we got English back

[navarre]

(Original post by gagaslilmonsteruk)
OK don't neg me for saying this, but according to a recent episode of Glee ("The Spanish Teacher") Spanish will overtake English as the first-language of the USA by 2030. I personally don't see the problem with that. I mean after all, our native tongue for 300 years was French before we got English back

You're basing that on an episode of Glee? Seriously?

80% of Americans speak English as a first language, and 96% speak it very well. Most Hispanics speak English fluently, and knowledge of Spanish is usually lost amongst third generation immigrants. Education is always done through a medium of English, as is government business.

Spanish has always had a presence in the South West, but it's not going to overtake the role of English in daily life any time soon.

And our native tongue was never French. It may have been the official language, but it was spoken by a small elite. The majority of people exclusively spoke English.

[Captain Crash]

All I'm saying...

[rawkus]

(Original post by Bootyboomboom)
I would say so. My uncle lived in Southern California during the 70s and 80s. Back then it was a pretty decent place to live. Now it's a complete hell-hole. Whole areas of LA have been consumed by gangland warfare, Fresno is now a meths sinkhole and San Diego has already become an extension of Mexico. Immigration (both legal and illegal) is definitely the main reason for California's decline (and its bugetary problems) That state is also the canary in the coalmine for the direction that the rest of America is heading.

It takes a special kind of revisionism to argue that LA in the 1980s, at the height of the crack epidemic, was less violent and more free from gang warfare than it is now.

(Original post by democracyforum)
Seems that reconquista is in full force. According to the map, California will be the first to be overrun, then Texas, later Arizona and New Mexico.

More than half of the kids under the age of five in the US are Hispanic.

All the states mentioned were part of Mexico (bar parts of Texas) 160 years ago anyway and were taken by force by the colonies under a Democrat Presidency with the motive of spreading pro-slavery influence and states. Did you not wonder when you were typing "New Mexico" which originally incorporated Arizona as well. And it seems that the Fact that California is hope to cities with Spanish names also escaped your grasp.

[rawkus]

(Original post by democracyforum)
Native Indians did not found America.

They inhabited it.

The founders of America were Europeans. It is a European settlement.

If you go by the definitions of recognitions of countries, and acknowledge the existence of America, then you accept this.

Native Indians never called themselves Americans, we gave the land that name

That is pretty poor reasoning. You are applying our idea of ownership of land and states to a peoples who do not have the same concept and using that to justify their removal from land that they inhabited first. What makes our system more objectively legitimate than theirs? It merely rests on your assumption that it is a better and more legitimate system.

If we were to agree with your assumption unquestionably, then it would set precedent for all sorts of cases of ethnic cleansing in the past century which most people generallycfind abhorrent.

[Bootyboomboom]

Rawkus, I assure you, you haven't the faintest clue what you're talking about. It takes a special kind of revisionism to argue that California is a better place to live now than in the 1960s, 70s or 80s.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...BAJB1IDRUH.DTL

In 1985, 78 percent of Californians considered their state to be 'one of the best place to live in America' According to the latest Field Poll, only 39 percent of Californians feel that way today. In fact the poll if anything doesn't demonstrate the full extent of California's deterioration because it doesn't sample public opinion among the two and a half million White Californians who have abandoned the state since the early 90s to escape the 'benefits' of diversity.

And yes ALL of California's social problems are at bottom due to over-immigration. Why is there such a low level of trust and sense of community in Los Angeles and other California cities? Because immigration and diversity have combined to destroy social capital. Not my view, but the result of years of sociological studies by the liberal sociologist Robert Putnam:

"People living in ethnically diverse settings appear to 'hunker down,' that is, to pull in like a turtle," writes Putnam.

They tend to "withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less, to agitate for social reform more but have less faith they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television."

Writes columnist John Leo, "Putnam adds a crushing footnote: His findings 'may underestimate the real effect of diversity on social withdrawal.'" [Bowling With Our Own , City Journal, June 25 2007]

Also, why is the California state government so incapable of resolving the budget crisis? Because Californian taxpayers don't want to pitch in and sacrifice for tax consumers who are largely Mexican immigrants. Why is California bankrupt? Because it has been overrun by illegal aliens (and the politicians who represent them) who have driven out taxpayers and businesses to other states.

Mexican immigration is destroying America's wealth, destroying social capital as well as depressing wages. This is not a statement of opinion but fact.

[TieMeUp]

(Original post by democracyforum)
Seems that reconquista is in full force. According to the map, California will be the first to be overrun, then Texas, later Arizona and New Mexico.

More than half of the kids under the age of five in the US are Hispanic.

Without immigration the US would be going under. Many reasons for this. The first is that it is a demographic imperative that the United States must remain a young country if it wants to be a pre-eminent power. If it shuts itself off from population growth, it will atrophy like Japan.

The second reason is labour supply and comparative advantage, and it's certainly the case, in my opinion, that the US gets as much as Mexico from the implicit bargain. The main benefit is having access to a third world labour market, while retaining the spending power of American dollars. Of course, this only works while they are illegal.

The third reason is scientific research and general economic development; the American university system, Silicon Valley and the defence contractors would probably close overnight if access to the H-1B "Genius" visa were restricted. The fact is, American undergraduates are of very poor quality indeed. Only the Ivy League provides an education that meets or exceeds the quality of what you'd expect from an average UK university.

Their scientific knowledge is poor, their quantitative skills are limited, and their ability to think critically next to non-existent. A liberal arts degree at an average American university is basically GCSE-level regurgitation. If you look at the postgraduates, professors, researchers, and so on, I think the majority of them in the US are foreign born; China, Vietnam, the Eastern bloc, and so on. Unless the US has a means by which it can immediately start turning out decent graduates, you're stuck with immigration for the moment.

(On the other hand, if world military pre-eminence, scientific leadership, economic leadership, and any claim to the US experiencing increasing living standards and expanding opportunity in the 21st century are not of value... you could always shut off the spigot of immigration and go back to isolationism)

[democracyforum]

It's nothing to do with the economy

It's the quality of the people, the culture, the history and the values and morals of a people that make a country great.

Why move to a country just to turn it into the one you left ?

[Chi019]

(Original post by democracyforum)
Seems that reconquista is in full force. According to the map, California will be the first to be overrun, then Texas, later Arizona and New Mexico.

More than half of the kids under the age of five in the US are Hispanic.

Certainly low skill migrants from Mexico have created an underclass in California which is having a disastrous financial impact.

For a closer glimpse of what's in store for California, look at the Los Angeles Unified School District, the largest in California and the second largest in the country. Of its roughly 700,000 students, almost three-quarters are Hispanic, 8.9 percent are white, and 11.2 percent are black. More than half of the Latino students (about 300,000) are "English learners" and, depending on whether you believe the district or independent scholars, anywhere between a third and a half drop out of high school, following significant attrition in middle school. A recent study by UC Santa Barbara's California Dropout Research Project estimates that high-school dropouts in 2007 alone will cost the state $24.2 billion in future economic losses.

Even those who graduate aren't necessarily headed to success. According to one study, 69 percent of Latino high-school graduates "do not meet college requirements or satisfy prerequisites for most jobs that pay a living wage." It is difficult to see how the majority-Hispanic labor force of the future can provide the skills that the sophisticated Los Angeles economy demands. Already studies show that as many as 700,000 Los Angeles Latinos and some 65 percent of the city's illegal immigrants work in L.A.'s huge underground economy.

The unhappy picture in Los Angeles is replicated to one degree or another across much of California and is taking a huge toll on the state's economic competitiveness and long-term prospects. California's educational system, once easily the best in the country, is today mired in mediocrity near the bottom among the 50 states as judged by National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests in math, science, reading, and writing. And for the first time in its history, California is experiencing an increase in adult illiteracy. In 2003, it had the highest adult illiteracy in the United States, 23 percent nearly 50 percent higher than a decade earlier. In some counties (Imperial at 41 percent, Los Angeles at 33 percent) illiteracy approaches sub-Saharan levels.

Perhaps even more important than the collapse of educational achievement among the lower strata is a deterioration of the higher education that was for decades the basis of California's preeminence in science and technology. California currently ranks 40th among the 50 states in college-attendance rates, and it already faces a significant shortage of college graduates. Studies have shown that the economy will need 40 percent of its workers to be college-educated by 2020, compared with today's 32 percent. Given the aging white population (average age, 42), many of these new graduates will have to come from the burgeoning Latino immigrant population (average age, 26). By one estimate, this would require tripling of the number of college-educated immigrants, an impossibility if current trends hold. The state's inability to improve the educational attainment of its residents will result in a "substantial decline in per capita income" and "place California last among the 50 states" by 2020, according to a study by the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=112167023

If only they had read Anatoly Karlin's blog on PISA and importance of national IQ 50 years ago

[Chi019]

(Original post by TieMeUp)
Without immigration the US would be going under. Many reasons for this. The first is that it is a demographic imperative that the United States must remain a young country if it wants to be a pre-eminent power. If it shuts itself off from population growth, it will atrophy like Japan.

You are overlooking the following:

1. National cognitive ability is closely related to national prosperity and performance of institutions.

2. Different population groups have different average abilities. High immigration from populations with lower average abilities will lower the national average and lower productivity.

3. Increased ethnic diversity has costs in terms of social cohesiveness and reduced trust which also affects productivity.

Japanese economist Yuji Aida made these points rather succinctly in an article in the Chicago Tribute 20 years ago:

Today, non-white groups are challenging the traditional order. Within the next 100 years, and probably much sooner, most Americans will be people of color. For the first time since the United States came into being, Caucasians will be a minority. Illiteracy may become widespread, and many Americans will not speak standard English.

Japan, too, faces major changes. A graying economic superpower, it may be a society of old people by the early 21st Century. Because of our low birth rate, we might have to admit more foreign workers, skilled and unskilled, to provide basic services and keep the factories running. But these problems pale in comparison with the upheaval threatened by America`s demographic evolution. Do blacks and Hispanics, for instance, have the skills and knowledge to run an advanced industrial economy? If the answer is yes, America will maintain its vitality through the next century and beyond. But I`m skeptical. Consider black Africa, for example. Struggling against outside pressures to forge independent nation-states from different tribal cultures, the region is plagued by poverty, political instability and other serious problems. Former Spanish and Portuguese colonies in Latin America have also failed to create viable high-tech societies. Iberian and African cultural traits seem to impede industrialization. The concept of contractual obligation is also vital. No modern society can operate efficiently without a willingness on the part of its citizens to observe formal agreements. Economists warn that the newly industrialized economies will have difficulty developing further in an interdependent world without cultivating this value. In many Arab countries, people don`t even keep appointments. With such attitudes, how can they catch up with the industrialized world?...

The history of industrialization holds important lessons for the United States. As African-Americans and Hispanics gradually replace whites in the labor force, management positions and public administration, they will become responsible for corporate America. Do they have the right stuff?

Idealistic Americans say yes. They insist that if scholastic attainment, living standards and social status improve, blacks, Mexican-Americans and Puerto Ricans will be capable of assuming this burden.

Many Japanese intellectuals appear to agree, either because they believe in equality or are afraid of being labeled racists. I would like to be optimistic, but frankly, the experience of the last 500 years leaves little room for hope. Blacks and Hispanics will not be able to run a complex industrial society like the United States unless they dramatically raise their sights and standards in the next 40 years...