Contrary to the charges in some quarters, [my immigration bill] will not inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area, or the most populated and deprived nations of Africa and Asia."
--- Donald Trump? Nope: Senator Ted Kennedy.
Let’s get this out of the way: Donald Trump is crude. He’s a crude man who uses crude language.
But he uses that language to express truths that many Americans – in fact, were they honest, most Americans – know in their heart of hearts are true, however uncomfortable that truth. That’s quite probably why he was elected.
The recent kerfluffle over Trump wondering aloud why we were so interested in accepting immigrants from so-called “sh##hole countries” is a prime example. Yes, it’s vulgar. It’s also objectively accurate. And it has zero to do with race.
Immigration decisions are about educational levels, needed skills or professions, and the ability to culturally assimilate. Every single country on the planet has used those criteria for immigrants, without question, for the last one hundred years or so.
Claiming otherwise is not only demonstrably inaccurate, it is also a politically correct absurdity that changes immigration from a positive source of new skills, passion, and patriotism into a morass of dependence, misery, and resentment.
Countries vary in their implementation of those criteria. Japan basically nixes any immigration at all, to preserve ancient cultural norms and native ethnicity. Australia requires proof of a skilled profession or recommendation from a state to permit the creation of a new business to benefit Australia. Russia requires a formal invitation from a Russian company for employment, and that company has to have permission to hire a foreigner before it can offer the job.
Ah, you say. Racists! All of them are clearly white racists. ‘Brown’ countries are far more inclusive. Aren’t they?
Well…. No.
South Africa allows work visas only for those filling jobs critically underserved by their citizens. Even to visit most countries in Africa, the most readily accepted visitors are (in order) from Finland, Sweden and Britain. Among the least permitted? Cameroon, China, Rwanda, and the Congo. China requires very substantial economic investment in the country over a period of three years, or a senior position in a company doing business there. Mexico requires proof of income of more than 400 days of their minimum wage before one can retire there; no benefits.
I could go on, but you get the idea. Look it up yourself.
Unless African and South American and Asian countries are oddly racist against their own predominant ethnicities, something else is going on here. And to find out what, precisely, is at issue, we have only to look at the recent politically correct insanity in Western Europe.
The movement begun by German Chancellor Angela Merkel has permitted multiple millions of functionally illiterate, culturally dissimilar refugees to flood the European Union, and it has been an unmitigated disaster. Germany needed up to 80,000 technologically skilled workers, primarily mathematicians. By pretending that uneducated migrants from the Middle East and Africa would magically fill this vacuum (political correctness knows no reality), it ended up with masses of migrants, less than 1/5th of whom even had exposure to the lowest level of high school.
Far from providing the host countries with vigorous new citizens to prop up the low European birth rate, that decision has created a permanent underclass, cultural upheaval, chronic dependence, and dozens – if not hundreds -- of “no-go” zones in major European cities, where a lack of cultural assimilation, shattered expectations, resentment and misery have created areas so dangerous that the police have, effectively, given up. The mass migration has also, ironically, given rise to a massive populist movement that threatens to unseat the decades of center-left control.
On a rare personal note: the Vancouver No-Go zone. Several years ago, crossing Vancouver on foot between two popular tourist destinations, my family and I stumbled unwittingly into a No-Go zone of the homeless. While this dead zone was less a result of misguided migration policies than misguided homelessness policies, the result was the same. We found ourselves in a post-Apocalyptic scene of lawless streets, incipient violence, destroyed buildings, and flaring bonfires. One man, clearly also homeless but kind, approached us and told us to leave the area quickly, guiding us out. On the way, he explained that the police had given up on the area. What happened on those streets, stayed on those streets.
That dozens of these zones have cropped up across Europe, based on an utterly predictable placing of symbolism over reality by people who should surely know better, is a staggering thought. And Donald Trump, however blunt his phrasing, is saying that the United States needn’t follow the European lemmings over their cliff.
Pretending that immigration should be based upon the need of the immigrant, rather than the need of the country, sounds noble and makes the well-intentioned heart pitter-patter with self-approbation. It is also an unmitigated disaster.
And unless Ted Kennedy was a racist for pointing this out, neither is Trump.
--- Donald Trump? Nope: Senator Ted Kennedy.
Let’s get this out of the way: Donald Trump is crude. He’s a crude man who uses crude language.
But he uses that language to express truths that many Americans – in fact, were they honest, most Americans – know in their heart of hearts are true, however uncomfortable that truth. That’s quite probably why he was elected.
The recent kerfluffle over Trump wondering aloud why we were so interested in accepting immigrants from so-called “sh##hole countries” is a prime example. Yes, it’s vulgar. It’s also objectively accurate. And it has zero to do with race.
Immigration decisions are about educational levels, needed skills or professions, and the ability to culturally assimilate. Every single country on the planet has used those criteria for immigrants, without question, for the last one hundred years or so.
Claiming otherwise is not only demonstrably inaccurate, it is also a politically correct absurdity that changes immigration from a positive source of new skills, passion, and patriotism into a morass of dependence, misery, and resentment.
Countries vary in their implementation of those criteria. Japan basically nixes any immigration at all, to preserve ancient cultural norms and native ethnicity. Australia requires proof of a skilled profession or recommendation from a state to permit the creation of a new business to benefit Australia. Russia requires a formal invitation from a Russian company for employment, and that company has to have permission to hire a foreigner before it can offer the job.
Ah, you say. Racists! All of them are clearly white racists. ‘Brown’ countries are far more inclusive. Aren’t they?
Well…. No.
South Africa allows work visas only for those filling jobs critically underserved by their citizens. Even to visit most countries in Africa, the most readily accepted visitors are (in order) from Finland, Sweden and Britain. Among the least permitted? Cameroon, China, Rwanda, and the Congo. China requires very substantial economic investment in the country over a period of three years, or a senior position in a company doing business there. Mexico requires proof of income of more than 400 days of their minimum wage before one can retire there; no benefits.
I could go on, but you get the idea. Look it up yourself.
Unless African and South American and Asian countries are oddly racist against their own predominant ethnicities, something else is going on here. And to find out what, precisely, is at issue, we have only to look at the recent politically correct insanity in Western Europe.
The movement begun by German Chancellor Angela Merkel has permitted multiple millions of functionally illiterate, culturally dissimilar refugees to flood the European Union, and it has been an unmitigated disaster. Germany needed up to 80,000 technologically skilled workers, primarily mathematicians. By pretending that uneducated migrants from the Middle East and Africa would magically fill this vacuum (political correctness knows no reality), it ended up with masses of migrants, less than 1/5th of whom even had exposure to the lowest level of high school.
Far from providing the host countries with vigorous new citizens to prop up the low European birth rate, that decision has created a permanent underclass, cultural upheaval, chronic dependence, and dozens – if not hundreds -- of “no-go” zones in major European cities, where a lack of cultural assimilation, shattered expectations, resentment and misery have created areas so dangerous that the police have, effectively, given up. The mass migration has also, ironically, given rise to a massive populist movement that threatens to unseat the decades of center-left control.
On a rare personal note: the Vancouver No-Go zone. Several years ago, crossing Vancouver on foot between two popular tourist destinations, my family and I stumbled unwittingly into a No-Go zone of the homeless. While this dead zone was less a result of misguided migration policies than misguided homelessness policies, the result was the same. We found ourselves in a post-Apocalyptic scene of lawless streets, incipient violence, destroyed buildings, and flaring bonfires. One man, clearly also homeless but kind, approached us and told us to leave the area quickly, guiding us out. On the way, he explained that the police had given up on the area. What happened on those streets, stayed on those streets.
That dozens of these zones have cropped up across Europe, based on an utterly predictable placing of symbolism over reality by people who should surely know better, is a staggering thought. And Donald Trump, however blunt his phrasing, is saying that the United States needn’t follow the European lemmings over their cliff.
Pretending that immigration should be based upon the need of the immigrant, rather than the need of the country, sounds noble and makes the well-intentioned heart pitter-patter with self-approbation. It is also an unmitigated disaster.
And unless Ted Kennedy was a racist for pointing this out, neither is Trump.
