EPGAH
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Joined: 12/25/2006
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ORIGINAL: philosophy
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Oh, I'm sorry! Do you take old land claims that seriously?
Should Italy get back pretty much all of Europe, you know, the good ol' Roman Empire? Or should Germany, since they conquered it in World War II? (Until America "helped them realize" they should give it back...Oh, wait, that was imperialist of us, wasn't it? Should we have looked the other way as Hitler's war-machine stomped around, and only punished Japan, our direct enemy?)
...think you may want to actually study a bit of European history before commenting on it.
You might need to look at it too...Constant warfare, land changing hands involuntarily, but due to more or less equal technology-levels (which progress some say was driven BY that very warfare) meant that neither side "wiped the other out"...When Euros came over to the American continent, a desire to stay light and mobile had squelched technological progress (At least that is the current consensus for how American Indians remained in techno-stasis while the Europeans "Blinded them with Science"!). Arrows versus armor that had been specifically designed to deflect "professional" armor-piercing arrows--and the newfangled crossbow-bolts, and leather shields against armor-piercing bows/crossbows and even primitive firearms!
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I would say you could deed your land to them if you feel that strongly about it, except that you're in Canada...Wait, wasn't that in Indian land too?
...and parts of it still are. There are problems, but avenues of communication are open with a view to solving it.
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Do you set aside land--TAX-FREE--for them to live as they choose?
.....not ours to set aside. You have that ass-backwards. It's not a question of them being given anything, it's a question of them retaining something.
If you conquer it by military force, and have sufficient power (And the will to USE that power) to ENFORCE your territorial claims, then it is yours. We have laws about property, and possession is 9/10 of the law, but REpossession is that all-important other 1/10...Still, we have laws so that if some goon steals from say, my business, the cops will try to find him and punish him. With varying degrees of success, our law tries to PREVENT the strong from preying on the weak, while war is almost exactly the opposite.
Furthermore, Americans have been accused of "wiping out" the Native American Indians...If that were true, we didn't do a very good job! (And no, I haven't asked the local Indian Reservation if we wiped them out...would look like a bad cartoon, "You dead, man?")
We COULD HAVE wiped them out...I think a typo eliminates those two words sometimes, or an intentional attempt to make us look worse.
But yes, once we conquer it, it's ours to give, not anyone else's to take!
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(And laugh when they choose your high-tech comfort over the "moral high-ground" of the ancient Noble Savage ways...strange, isn't it? )
...nope....admire them when they find a new way to synthesise both cultures. Which, at least round here, is the norm.
I didn't mean laugh at them, but more that for an "oppressed" people that we "wiped out", they seem to take a real shine to our "evil" technology and creature comforts! I admire all kinds of people for integrating...I think I said that before...what gets me upset is when foreigns come in, DEMAND and/or EXPECT "gifts" from America, when they have not yet put any value INTO America! MOST people here add something to America, if they were given aid, they could add more (And yes, this is a paraphrase of Lee Iacocca's famous speech to save Chrysler) "Pay us a little now to keep our businesses afloat, or pay us a LOT more later, when we're unemployed!"
(Chrysler has since been bought by a "certain" foreign company...and then the autoworkers' strike slit their own throats--and gave their Bosses a "reason" to shed a number of jobs--but I digress...)
Also, as LadyEllen pointed out, certain "segments" of immigrants demand services, but don't "feel" our laws are worth obeying! Of course their countries of origin aren't going to want them back, they'd prefer another country deal with the parasitic infestation! If you PUSH them out, you're "Uncompassionate", if you WIPE them out, you're "xenonophobically genocidal"!
But again, why should the First World take on the expenses of more people, when our health/education/"public-funded" (and especially our "evil" police!) housing systems can barely support our OWN people?
Taking on the people isn't the problem, it's their demands on your infrastructure, housing, medical, educational, and police setups.
Infrastructure and housing can't be helped, they have to live somewhere, and they need your electricity, water, sewage, etc. to KEEP living there and your roads to get from home to work...Yeah, work!
Medical can be PARTIALLY avoided by filtering out the sick ones BEFORE they enter your country, and can be completely offset by making sure the ones entering are rich enough--and WILLING--to pay their own hospital bills, rather than just "sticking it to" the taxpayers!
(And before anyone talks about the "poem" on the Statue of Liberty, it said GIVE US your poor&wilted, we would take them, but it never said anything about us having to take care of'em...And it mentioned something about a Golden Door too, but doors can opened and closed by the OWNER, not just by the entrant--yet, they complain LOUDLY if you try to close it because you consider your country "too full", and putting up a neon "NO VACANCY" sign of sufficient size would be tacky, and expensive--and probably cause another New York blackout! Secondarily, that poem was added AFTER France gave/sold the Statue to us, something like an international "Kick Me" sign?)
Educational costs are offset IF they live the way Americans do, one family per "unit"--that means they pay property tax, the way it was designed. However, that gives immigrants an incentive to be "clever" and cram a lot more of themselves into a "unit" that simply wasn't designed for that many people! (And usually whine for the duration about overcrowding and the attendant health-problems!) However, this "cleverness" doesn't stop them from having more (and more and more and more) children, increasing the overcrowding, and the load on our medical (see above) and educational systems. Let's see, more taken out, with the same amount put in...Sounds bad to me...But that forces them to either skimp on education per child (Which is "bad", because immigrants usually need MORE attention, due to their "imperfect English skills"--when they deign to learn English at all!), or raise property taxes, which hurts existing citizens more than immigrants, due to the aforementioned "cleverness". Said "cleverness" is technically against maximum-occupancy laws and State Fire Codes, but those are about as well-enforced as non-smoking laws and/or borders...
There IS a third option, but it's political suicide: Close and consolidate schools! One thing the forced-integration programs proved is that you CAN ship fairly large numbers of kids "long" distances by buses, send them to a school on the other side of the city, rather than one near them...Buses can do it! (Which was supposedly the idea of mass-transit, but according to Forums, my history-book is wrong, so...?) However, closing schools and redistricting kids for any reason other than racial integration makes EVERYONE bristle, and gets the Superintendent of Education fired! It would be a good sitcom episode, if it weren't REAL(ly the kids'--and by extension, the nation's--future at stake)!
(Sidebar)
The local County Assessor, to be fair, didn't raise property taxes, she raised the "assessment value" of local properties, to slightly more than double their previous "worth". It was a "clever" end-run around tax-cap laws, but just like the immigrants' "cleverness", it had negative side-effects: Forcing some college-age kids to move back in with their parents, decreasing TAXABLE rental income, and further encouraging immigrants to bunch up, since housing prices were instantly doubled by law! The end increase in revenue was about 20%! I say again, DOUBLING prices for 20% gain!
(End Sidebar)
As to the police, I don't just mean because of the immigrants who believe they can drain our services, and yet pick-and-choose which laws they "feel" like obeying or not. Seeks and LadyEllen have covered that fairly thoroughly, at least about Romanian gypsies. Around here, Mexicans fulfill the same purpose: Committing crimes and giving "them" all a bad name! However, there's the counterpoint: Police called in to protect immigrants from people who want to "do something about them"--and usually end up targeting harmless ones!
As foreigns don't "feel" a need to assimilate anymore, they cause ever more tension (LOOKING different can't be helped, and is in some cases encouraged, but speaking/acting different, and waving it in front of your hosts' faces--sometimes literally--is one factor, committing crimes and property damage is a big one, and of course, the whole, "More of them than us" argument, which both fosters distrust, AND makes "them" feel like they don't need to become "us"...And in extreme cases, makes "them" declare they don't need "us" at all--just our land&technologies, I guess?)
So we need to have, if not discrimination, then at least "entry standards" (Think of a college entrance exam, their perusal of your transcripts, etc., or a bouncer at your favorite nightclub, or the flimsy plastic metal-detectors at the entry and exits of certain buildings...)
And an extra tax on the "immigrants" who choose not to assimilate would also be a good idea. (Reread the police paragraph, and summarize: If you don't assimilate, you're causing extra friction on purpose, and will in most cases, be the first to complain--if not the first "victim"--when the locals lash out in blind frustrated retaliation!)
In conclusion, I think it is OrionWolf's tagline that has 2 very salient bits of cliche wisdom:
"Life is never fair, so get over it"
"Equality among people usually means that someone wants us all to be equally mediocre"
These certainly apply to the immigration/housing debate, don't you think? Forced helping of others is called Communism, if I remember correctly, and didn't we fight a Cold War to prevent its spread?
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RE: Adult enough to discuss it!! - 
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