NY Times Did An Article On Anti-Immigration Activist

[Tiberius]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/07/us/national-push-by-a-local-immigration-activist-no-gop-retreat.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

“I was taught that we have an American culture to which immigrants will assimilate,” Mr. King said. “And I am incredibly resentful that’s not what’s happening anymore.”

 

Who the hell taught him that?? What a profoundly ignorant statement

 

 

Interesting article though. Just change the time and it could be an anti-Irish Know Nothing, an anti-German super patriot of WW1 who got the German-American bank in Buffalo changed to Liberty bank or Anti-Italian zealot of 1920

[dayman]

I think that is a fair statement. IMO, it is true, that America has always done assimilation better than any other country. Where I disagree with that guy is that we still do (for the most part).

[B-Man]

I think that is a fair statement. IMO, it is true, that America has always done assimilation better than any other country. Where I disagree with that guy is that we still do (for the most part).

 

You are correct S.O.B.

 

I suspect that the OP wasn't paying attention in school or is very young...............perhaps both, ......either way its embarrassing for him.

 

The "Melting Pot" America was a standard part of basic school curriculum for decades and decades.

 

 

.

[Tiberius]

I think that is a fair statement. IMO, it is true, that America has always done assimilation better than any other country. Where I disagree with that guy is that we still do (for the most part).

 

Yes, but they don't just jump over the border and suddenly become anglo Americans. Immigrants contribute as much as they accept the new culture. I see it as a two way street, not just a surrender of their culture. That guy is mad, probably, because they have accents and dress differently

 

You are correct S.O.B.

 

I suspect that the OP wasn't paying attention in school or is very young...............perhaps both, ......either way its embarrassing for him.

 

The "Melting Pot" America was a standard part of basic school curriculum for decades and decades.

 

 

.

 

Melting pot is give and take, not just immigrants changing

[dayman]

Yes, but they don't just jump over the border and suddenly become anglo Americans. Immigrants contribute as much as they accept the new culture. I see it as a two way street, not just a surrender of their culture. That guy is mad, probably, because they have accents and dress differently

 

 

 

Melting pot is give and take, not just immigrants changing

 

Well it may or may not be true that the guy is angry. And there is no doubt the melting pot concept is a two way street (and the two-way nature is what makes it so valuable). But let us not confuse the two way street with thinking that it isn't more important for immigrants to assimilate into our culture than for our culture to change for them. As you have said, we've been at this for a while. Generally speaking, we're pretty diverse and open as is. If immigrants come here, it is reasonable to expect them to get with the program.

[\GoBillsInDallas/]

I see it as a two way street

 

So basically, you're telling us you go both ways.

[Tiberius]

Well it may or may not be true that the guy is angry. And there is no doubt the melting pot concept is a two way street (and the two-way nature is what makes it so valuable). But let us not confuse the two way street with thinking that it isn't more important for immigrants to assimilate into our culture than for our culture to change for them. As you have said, we've been at this for a while. Generally speaking, we're pretty diverse and open as is. If immigrants come here, it is reasonable to expect them to get with the program.

 

It's a free country. Yes, they have to obey the laws and everything, but we have un-assimilated groups in the country now. I do business with the Amish all the time and they are not assimilated as far as I can see. I guess it comes down to what we mean by assimilated. I see this guy thinking everyone should be like him. What if the immigrants come into the country and become like inner city blacks? Or hillbillies or upper west side Jews? Is that assimilated in his eyes? And doesn't the fact he wants to keep them from having citizenship the number one thing keeping them from "assimilating" anyway?

 

So basically, you're telling us you go both ways.

 

Boom!!!

[....lybob]

It's a free country. Yes, they have to obey the laws and everything, but we have un-assimilated groups in the country now. I do business with the Amish all the time and they are not assimilated as far as I can see. I guess it comes down to what we mean by assimilated. I see this guy thinking everyone should be like him. What if the immigrants come into the country and become like inner city blacks? Or hillbillies or upper west side Jews? Is that assimilated in his eyes? And doesn't the fact he wants to keep them from having citizenship the number one thing keeping them from "assimilating" anyway?

 

It always strike me that some people long for a past that never existed, what King described is nothing new - assimilation usually is a slow process that usually takes a couple generations, it was common that adult immigrants never became fluent English speakers , Children who come over and the children of Immigrants became fluent in both languages, the next generation are fluent in English and less fluent in the old world language, the following generations are pretty much fully assimilated speak English only. Buffalo had German Polish and Italian language newspapers (and probably others) There was a Buffalo Polish language newspaper around in the 1950s- The battle over language and assimilation is nothing new.

 

German language: The desire to perpetuate the German language was a critical element in the cultural cohesiveness of the German community. In both Catholic and Protestant German churches, sermons were delivered and scriptures were read in the native tongue. German was also the language used in the five German Catholic schools that existed in Buffalo in 1850. Indeed, many Germans insisted that their language achieve official status, demanding that Buffalo should become officially bilingual, with all laws and ordinances printed in both languages. Other groups, such as the German Young Men's Association, a cultural nationalist group founded in Buffalo in 1841, were dedicated to the perpetuation and preservation of the German language and culture.

 

The community's struggle for public recognition of the German language and German culture continued throughout the next decade as German leaders made persistent and periodic requests for the appointment of German teachers in, schools in German neighborhoods. It was not until 1866, perhaps as a kind of guilt-ridden recognition of the role that Buffalo's German population had played in the war effort, that the Common Council finally relented and did appoint several German teachers to teach German in four schools on Buffalo's East Side.

http://www.buffaloah.com/h/ger/illus/

 

Generally opposition to immigration revolves about distribution of resources (jobs, land, governmental largess, etc etc) and quality of life issues - from the OP's article

 

Mr. King says his wrath grew slowly, beginning in the 1990s with a feud with Mexican neighbors who disrupted the quiet of his leafy street. In Mr. King’s account, they parked fleets of run-down vehicles on their lawn and at one point housed 22 people in a jerry-built warren of rental rooms in the basement.

He took the neighbor to court over code violations, and the conflict boiled for seven years until the family moved away.

but this is nothing new, my dad had access to old Buffalo police logs and there were all kind of complaints about people raising live stock in their back yards (city folk apparently don't want to be woken up at dawn by the soothing crow of a rooster) people running enterprises out of their house or just too many people living in one house.

[Azalin]

Generally speaking, we're pretty diverse and open as is. If immigrants come here, it is reasonable to expect them to get with the program.

^ this.

[TakeYouToTasker]

Historically, immigrants came to America because of what America has represented. They came here wanting to become Americans, which to them, represented more than just a word. They wanted freedom, they wanted an escape from restrictive caste systems, they wanted to reap the fruits of their labor and to actually own something that no-one could take away from them. This is the desire that culminated in the representation of America as a "melting-pot" where people could come and absorb the culture that made America great; most immigrant families insisting that their children speak English, even if they could not, because they saw how much better and easier it would make their lives.

 

The vision being espoused by gatorman in this thread is not one of a "melting-pot", but rather one of a patchwork tapestry, purposfully segregated along the skin-deep lines of race and ethniticity; which seeks only to divide us in the most ugly and least moral way possible for purely political reasons.

[B-Man]

Asylum Antics

 

While media grannies are getting their knickers in a twist over the antics of a Missouri rodeo clown, a cascading, Mariel Boatlift-style immigration emergency may be brewing on the Mexican border. Fox reports:

A sudden influx of illegal immigrants from Mexico requesting asylum is overwhelming immigration agents in San Diego, forcing agencies to rent hotel rooms for some undocumented families and release others to cities around the U.S.

 

Documents obtained exclusively by Fox News show Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been paying for hotel rooms for dozens of recently arrived families to relieve overcrowding inside the San Ysidro and Otay Mesa, Calif., processing centers. Some ICE employees are working overtime and others have been asked to volunteer to work weekend shifts. “Duties include intake, placements, transports and release of family groups and unaccompanied minors,” according to a memo obtained by Fox News.

 

This is the nightmare scenario of border control — thousands of Mexicans just showing up at our border crossings and demanding asylum based on fear of cartel violence (generalized violence is not grounds of asylum). Very few Mexican applicants end up receiving asylum, but that’s not the point — once they’re released into the country, they can just disappear (especially under this administration). That’s why immigration, faced with the onslaught, is housing some in local hotels (including this Quality Suites), to make sure they don’t run off. “Others,” reported Fox:

were released to addresses in Texas, Florida and even Brooklyn, N.Y.

ICE sources say the addresses are almost always bogus

. When they don’t show up for court, they are removed by an immigration judge in absentia.

 

“Removed in absentia” means they’re ordered deported, but that order just goes on the pile of hundreds of thousands of others that have been issued but ignored — unless you’re a rapist or drug dealer, no one’s looking for you.

 

And this isn’t some random upsurge — the applicants have been coached on what to say:

“This clearly has to have been orchestrated by somebody,” said former U.S. Attorney for Southern California Peter Nunez [and chairman of the board of CIS]. “It’s beyond belief that dozens or hundreds or thousands of people would simultaneously decide that they should go to the U.S. and make this claim.”

{snip}

UPDATE: A retired border agent e-mailed a colleague of mine that something similar is happening with people from India making bogus asylum claims at border Ports of Entry in Arizona:

Since October 2012 about 2,000 Indian nationals have asked for political asylum at both Nogales POEs. (Before they open the Mariposa POE at 6 in the morning, the Indians are already waiting at the gate.) They are coming every day, no end in sight. . . . These figures are from inside the port, CBP refuses to give official statistics. . . . We cannot refuse them, they are processed (taking away lots of POE officers from more important work) and sent on to central processing stations

where they are given a hearing date and released . . . never to be seen again.

 

 

Edited August 12, 2013 by B-Man