Some desi guy posted a hilarious rant to Craigslist on dealing with suspicious looks from fellow passengers while riding the DC metro (thanks, midnight toker):
… after the London subway bombings, i have been getting “the look” on public transportation and at airports. To put it mildly, my days of picking up girls on a plane are over…
I don’t have an accent, a dot or a large cobra wrapped around my head (except on Tuesdays). I’m your typical poser hipster Indian living in DC, trying to get my hands on as much smoke, beer and ass as i can. But step on the metro… and suddenly i transform into Allah-kazam bin Laden…
… open your book bag at least 3 times. As soon as you reach for the bag, look at their reactions. Kodak moments all over the place.
My dream is to go on a plane, act crazy suspicious… basically inviting some white folk to beat the shit out of me. Then when they open my bags, it will be full of Bibles and medicine for sick children. Then i’ll sue all the muthafuckers and go live on some island with all my money and broken bones. Now that’s the American dream.
… i gotta deal with this bullshit everyday on the metro… It’s not even a cool subway like NYC or in Paris. The lame ass DC metro.
The DC metro reminds me of BART. The New York subway is to DC’s what a fastback is to a station wagon: it isn’t wide and cushy, but it’s a hell of a lot faster.
Read the whole thing. See Anna’s related post here.
Sure, and i can reword what you said and make it fit my preconceived notions too, but that’s not really a conversation 🙂 I said that hard work and talent are one factor in making money, not the one and only factor. It’s also somewhat problematic to define success in terms of money alone but I have a feeling I’m not going to get you to acknowledge that 🙂
Indeed; I think your notion of meritocracy is overly reductive, tautological, and wholly unsustained by the reality around us. Education, family background, class, social obstacles, etc. all play a role in a person’s success. Or are gender gaps in income level wholly due to women’s lack of talen and work ethic 😉 But I suppose there’s nothing I can do to draw you out of your Calvinism.
The heart of immigration policy is diversity. The diversity lottery has more to do facilitate immigration from former eastern bloc countries, and countries that were historically excluded from immigration. That is very fair.
The key question is whether US immigration policy should be conducted in the national interest. I think everyone here can agree that engineers, doctors, and scientists are more likely to make money, found companies, and assimilate; they are also less likely to commit crimes, put children up for adoption, or go on the dole than the population at large.
In other words, they are a net economic benefit to society. One measure of the extent of this benefit has been quantified here, with original numbers from the Census here.
A key question is whether you believe the US should take in people that will be beneficial to the US or whether it should just take in people at random (i.e. Diversity Lottery). Why should a random draw be prioritized over merit? For example, Europe is now having major problems because they did not think their immigration policy through. Shouldn’t immigration be conducted like other foreign policy — namely, with explicit calculation of America’s national interest? [please don’t invoke iraq, this is a discussion of whether or not it should be conducted in the national interest, not whether it is]
If it is agreed that immigration policy should serve the national interest — not to mention the national security interest — then it would be difficult to contend that we should privilege the immigration of individuals likely to be net tax recipients rather than net tax payers. I mean, if you agree (as JJ and others seem to) that the socieconomic problems of immigrant group X are a function of that group’s education, then an educationally selective process is a prophylactic against such problems.
Just how do you quantify who’s more valuable as human being? What if, it’s a child with the potential to become something truly great or fail miserably, how do you judge that’s child’s worth? Musicians? Poets? Writers? Philosophers? Atheletes? Painters? Sculpters? Who has the ability to judge such things?
Or are gender gaps in income level wholly due to women’s lack of talen and work ethic 😉
Gender gaps in income level are a function of many variables, including:
1) the fact that women take time off for childbirth 2) the fact that in studies of men and women of equal competence, women are less likely to be as ruthlessly competitive as men
and
3) the fact that women tend to not want to marry men who make less money than them (or who are shorter, less well educated, etc.). For a brutally candid demonstration of this fact, consider:
Take those together and you have a formula for a robust gender asymmetry in earnings. Which naturally segues to the next point…
It’s also somewhat problematic to define success in terms of money alone
Agreed — so let’s forget that economic inequality exists! If, as you claim [and I agree], one can be successful without having money –poor and happy and so on — then why does it matter whether some Americans are filthy rich by absolute standards (i.e. car, TV, playstation) while others are filthier rich (two cars, two TVs, etc.)?
Let’s leave the issue be. Then we don’t have to argue about whether or not logical implications of non-“profound statements” are invalid when they lead to unpalatable conclusions 🙂
Returning to the gender wage thing…let’s also acknowledge that just as monetary success is not all there is to success, neither is sexual success in the sense of hooking up with as many people as possible. The truth is that though women make less $ than men, women in general can more easily get sex than men can. And so they trade: marriage if it’s a long term contract, and prostitution in the short term.
By neglecting this enormously important non-monetary form of exchange by mentioning only the gender wage gap, you are making women out to be far less powerful than they actually are. Wages can buy you some things, but sex appeal can buy you quite a few others — and if you sum the buying power and take into account the fact that the two buy different things…it’s not at all clear that one group is “ahead”.
Just how do you quantify who’s more valuable as human being? What if, it’s a child
Children don’t — and shouldn’t — immigrate unless they’re with their parents. The decision is made on the basis of their parents.
In any case, refusing to decide is not an immigration policy. We don’t have open borders for a good reason — virtually the whole population of the world would come. When you have 7.3 million applicants for just 50000 spots in the rather obscure Diversity Lottery, we’d see our population grow overnight.
Thus if we dispense with the open borders issue, we’re talking about admitting some finite number N of people per year. The number of applicants will exceed N. Hence we have to make judgments on which people we should admit. Terrorists and enablers will be stricken right away, but that leaves quite a few more. We have to make decisions on the rest, no?
Co-operation also works. Being competitive is not the sole deciding factor.
why does it matter whether some Americans are filthy rich by absolute standards (i.e. car, TV, playstation) while others are filthier rich (two cars, two TVs, etc.)?
Consider two situations: in one, Jhontu is raised by two parents making $35,000 between them, working three jobs between them, with high school educations and no health insurance. Consider the medical treatment he’s likely to get, the possible bankruptcy of his parents if any of them should come down with a severe illness, what kind of parental support he will get for his educational activities (both financial and in person), how much time he will get with his parents, the strain on his parents’ relationship and how that will play out, and the emotional eff ects of living in a society that tells you you should be wealthy or “middle class” and mocks you when you are not, consider the aspirations of his parents have. JConsider that most of the people around him are going to go into the military or blue collar jobs after they garduate from high school, if they do graduate at all. When Jhontu graduates, one of his friend’s parents helps get him a job in an auto plan. These are just a few examples of what it might be like to be working class (I don’t really know, because I wasn’t raised working class so I hope someone out there will correct me or help me fix this vision).
Now consider Tarit’s situation. Tarit’s father is a doctor and makes upwards of $200,000 a year. His mother works part time out of interest, but has time for him. Tarit takes piano lessons, ice skating lessons, and guitar lessons. Tarit is told, from the time he is very young, that he can be anything he wants to be. When Tarit comes down with pneumonia, but it’s quickly diagnorsed and treated with medicine that his father gets from the hospital. When Tarit needs a summer internship during high school, one of Tarit’s father’s friends hooks him up with a job at an investment bank. Tarit goes to public school, but in the suburbs, and the school spends $12,000 per year per student and has special programs for different types of students, ample extracurricular opportunities and other means. Tarit takes a sample SAT and gets 1000; he takes an SAT prep class after that and gets 1200. he takes out some loans to go to school and his parents help him with the rest. He gets into the University of Pennsylvania and his parents encourage him to become a lawyer because he doesn’t want to be a doctor; His grades are not great and he didn’t work kthat hard, but they’re good enough for him to get into a 2nd tier law school. He goes to law school, works at a firm both summers, and then goes on to become a lawyer.
Consider the relative amount of power each of these people will have to affect public policy. Now multiple Jhontu’s situation by tens of millions of people and multiple Tarit’s by about one million, and you’ll understand why class matters (particularly structural class and not social class). Consider that if Jhontu somehow became upwardly mobile and made it to a higher SES, that would still leave tens of millions of other people behind. Consider that if Tarit somehow lost his job or was struck by mental health problems, he would have much greater financial and social support mechanisms.
You don’t have to be a socialist to acknowledge that this kind of situation is not ideal.
oh–and i have no problem with–and in fact think it’s better—to expand this analysis to a global one that recognizes that people have privileges on the basis of nationality also. So an American working class person, while getting screwed, has more opportunities for a decent life and for meeting his/her own definition of success than a working class Mexican person. Who in turn has more opportunities than a workingclass person in Niger.
And then we can talk about nation-states and the roles they play in preserving the inequalities of this global class/nationality system that’s built on the legacy of colonialism and continuing imperialism (soft or hard) both of which were and are influenced by race, ethnicity, religion, as well.
Admitting a finite amount wasn’t the issue of your previous comment. The pretext of it was the belief that only a particular type immigrant be allowed in; my question was how would you base your policy around this idea? Race? Genetics? Looks? Psychology? Pathology? Height? Width? How far they could spit? Smokers? With or without STD? Balding? Fat or skinny? Would they have to physicals? SAT’s and ACT’s? Straight or GAY or Bi or Tran?
Who would the jugdes be? Could they be impartial?
They do and they can. I have a very good from Iran who emigrated in his early teens, i.e. 11 or 12. He lived with aunt’s and uncle’s, and his family is still in Iran. He is not perfect but a very talented musician, electrician, and programmer. Based on your earlier statement would you have allowed him in?
Plus your original statement….
…is predicated your belief that certain minorties, namely Latinos and Blacks (and probably south asians too), are genetically not predisposed to the…
You know it’s interesting, but your anonymous bio and other’s posting on gnxp are mysteriously gone. But what I do remember, other than how cognitively elite you are, is your concluding quote from the constitution: “the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness”. Isn’t it sad that your policy would be to deny others the very same.
No no I think the Chinese migrants who went over to Russia were themselves more business-minded than the average Chinese (and the average human). Every nation and race has its business-minded folk.
I think others addressed the issue of merit, but the other value in the diversity lottery is….well, diversity. America is the land of immigrants and displaced Native Americans. As a country we must stay true to this tradition (well not the displacing Native Americans part). Granted it can’t be open immigration from a practical point of view, but we can try to be fairer in the distribution of visas … hence the diversity visa. Seems like a good thing, no?
agreed. increase the peace!
I had to smile while reading this one. So if femininity connotes power, under your system should we give highest immigrant preference to single, attractive, PhD women? Maybe we can call it the “Miss Sakimoto visa” …. 🙂
blac