U.S. Immigration

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1) The United States is not obligated to do anything nor care about foreign nationals outside of the Geneva convention. That is where your argument about the plight of immigrants breaks down- nobody is entitled to enter the US even under the Geneva convention. With up to 20% unemployment in places, immigration needs to be kept tight to keep social services from collapsing. The illegals are a plague when it comes to social services and crime and as it stands now we desperately need to get rid of them. The 'let the Mexicans do it' mentality for dirty and menial jobs is a myth now, and our existing recent college grads are in such desperate need to get those skilled jobs that it's creating a new type of economic crisis!

The last thing the US needs is millions of Chinese intelligence agents, paramilitary units, and subversives getting planted here!

Im all for immigration and I am probably going to be hated by other Americans for saying this but I think they should make it easier to get citizenship here in the United States because it is the land of opportunity also America is founded by immigrants.The problem is a lot of other Americans still seem rather Xenophobic on the idea. I am half tempted to apply for my duel citizenship with Canada because from the look of things it seems like Canadian citizenship seems a little easier to get than here in the states. In a way I understand your frustration as getting into college and getting through it is rather difficult I also work a full time job so balancing class with work is hard I dont have financial aid theres a long wait list it seems at this time so for the most part I can merely fill out a fee waver which only seems to cover a portion of the costs since the cost of tuition is on the rise and all the damn budget cuts. In the area where I live they love Chinese people most of them either own their own business or work for companies like Google, Yahoo, Apple, HP, Cisco, or Microsoft. Everybody deserves equal opportunities to have a higher standard of living as long as they are here legally or working on being here legally. If only the immigration system was a lot easier then there wouldn't be so many problems.

Isn't college in Canada free for you? Why on earth would you pay an arm and a leg to go to school in the U.S. when you could attend in Canada? Plus, Canada has universal healthcare! If I were you, I'd move back to Canada and consider myself lucky.

Since Canadian immigration seems to keep being brought up, perhaps I can shed a little light on my own experiences.

Interestingly enough, Albirea, my experience is sort of the opposite of yours. I was born and raised in the US, and now I'm living in Canada trying to gain citizenship here. The big change happened about five years ago. For the three years prior to that, I had been attending a private art college in Florida. It was a difficult experience for me, though. The department that oversaw my major (computer animation) was completely designed around satisfying the recruiters from Pixar and Dreamworks more than the students. I didn't like the department politics, and the workload was so intense that, by the end of each semester, classmates of mine were literally sick from the accumulated effects of not eating or sleeping. I myself skipped dinner most nights. I was working myself ragged and pulling in Cs and Ds nevertheless. I didn't really have any close friends, only acquaintances; the animation majors were actively discouraged from having social lives beyond collaborative ones with other animators. As a result, I developed a serious case of depression, and began constantly having thoughts of suicide. I just wasn't getting out of the experience what I had hoped to get out of art school-- and I'm sure my instructors could tell I wasn't cut out to be an industry animator too. Nevertheless, I was spurred on by my own stubbornness and unwillingness to quit the path I was already on. I felt I had an obligation to my parents to keep going and work as hard as I could, because they were paying my way through-- and I was going to go as far as I could, even if it made me miserable. I got to the end of my junior year before I inevitably ran into a brick wall and could not go any further.

My parents were livid, of course-- not at me, because they knew I had done all I could, but at the school for leading me into my third year and then dumping me in a ditch to either repeat the year over again or try a new path. They hadn't saved up enough for me to go through even a single extra year there; a new major would have been two years extra. It was at that point that we began to assess the option of me moving to Canada as a serious alternative. I already had some friends in the Vancouver area, whom I had met online and with whom I had become very close. We realized that my best option was to move here, start on a new path at a cheaper school, and start developing more satisfying social connections. I was happy to make the move because it finally meant having some real friends.

After a summer of putting together a new portfolio for submission to colleges around Vancouver, I moved to BC in October of 2007. The first few months, I adjusted to my new life, and got myself a study permit and a BC CareCard. I was accepted to a local art school up here-- tuition turned out to be about half of what it had been at college in Florida. Not only that, I found that my new major, fine arts, suited me much more, the pacing of the classes was far more reasonable, and there was none of the conformist politics to struggle against. I was way, way happier, because I was doing what I loved, and I had friends and colleagues with whom I could finally have normal social interactions. With the aid of therapy, my clinical depression began to significantly lessen. During the course of my studies I was able to bring my car up from Florida, along with a trunk full of personal belongings from my parents' house. Two years ago, I graduated, with a BFA. It took me six years, and a lot of financial help from both my parents and student loans, but I finally had a degree. Shortly after I graduated, I obtained a work permit.

I'm still in Canada on my work permit, and even though I am not yet even a permanent resident, I feel like this is my home. Aside from my parents who still live in Florida, my loved ones are all here. My timing is rather fortunate; I am eligible for a fairly new program called the Canadian Experience Class. Essentially, the program allows immigrants to apply for permanent residency status with either two years of job experience in Canada, or one year plus a Canadian diploma. I have the diploma, which means I only need to hold down a job for a year to become a permanent resident. It is after I gain permanent residency that citizenship becomes an option. And it is this, I think, that likely accounts for the comparative ease with which someone like me can work toward becoming a full Canadian, as opposed to someone becoming a full American-- Canada has been very, very accepting of me. I realize this could be because I'm from Canada's closest ally in the world, and other people from other places will have different stories to tell. And this is not to say I haven't experienced any setbacks myself, either. There have been some issues with bureaucratic red tape, and in one instance my car got vandalized by someone who apparently saw my Florida license plate and decided to express his disdain for his southern neighbors in a message on my passenger side doors. But I chalk that up to some dyspeptic individual. By and large, Canada takes pride in being a multicultural society, and they back up their words with actions and policies. Most of the people I have met here have been rather helpful and eager to see me assimilate into Canadian society. I'm not really sure that eagerness and friendliness has an analog in the US.

Browning,why are you saying all inmigrants are criminals? That's an awful generalization.

I think one of the things Albirea wanted to accomplish was fighting that point of view. Inmigrants get looked down upon, deemed as less inteligent, less capable, and more lazy. And the usual *they took our jobs* mentality. But from what I can gather, she has not been lazy at all. Getting into the MIT is no joke, it's one of the best universities in the world, and quite attractive for someone who wants to archieve his full potential. Some natural-born americans feel very... entitled. Why? What have you done to deserve what you get, other than being born in a certain geographical location? The taxes argument has already been debunked, because legal (and apparently illegal) inmigrants pay them too. And someting I find to be very important; jobs should go for the ones most capable, the ones who will be more productive, more hardworking, because it's on the best interest of those who are providing those jobs and also, because the more productive one will be able t contribute more to the economy. And I'm sure there are a lot of hardworking Americans, I'm not one for stereotyping, but there is also a fair amount of lazy and entitled ones. And for the latter I say; if you don't want to lose your jobs, then work harder for them.

I'll clarify later tonight.

Congratulations for getting into MIT, despite the odds being again you in more ways than one. A Chinese friend from the mainland dreamed of entering MIT. It didn't workout in the end though. He settled on Texas A&M as that is where he could obtain a scholarship.

Hope you get the cost situation under control. No need to bankrupt the family or leave yourself with unsustainable debts for life. I don't know if this article will be of help, but recall this Professors piece about MIT working to make their classes less expensive.

"Higher Ed Moving Online"

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/ ... ng-online/

And with that, I'm working on learning Chinese at the moment, thought this good advice ~ san si hou xing.

Everyone in America is a immagrant. Excpet those of Native American descant like me

I wasn't aware of that. Interesting.

One of the problems I've heard of was with someone who was married to a US citizen who was born here, and could not get a green card. I think he was Australian. He'd given up good work in Australia to come here, because his wife needed to care for her elderly father. But if he couldn't work, they couldn't afford to live near her father. He couldn't get a green card though. It was an impossible situation and I thought completely unfair to the couple, who were just trying to do the right thing for a family member in need.

Illegal aliens broke the law just by crossing the border. Then there's the littering, identity theft, fraud, and frequently driving without a license, DUI, hit and run, drunk in public, domestic violence, and they seem to find sex crimes more socially acceptable than other groups. That doesn't even include the rampant drugs, gangs, and rings of organized crime. They do boneheaded things while driving, and they are usually the ones creating noise ordinance violations and celebratory gunfire.

I haven't figured out if Hispanics are generally less intelligent or not, but their culture sure isn't helping. The one thing I have noticed is that since they now get student aid and have flooded the colleges like they do to everything else, the majority of them drop out halfway through and are seen less and less the more advanced the classes get. It's just one more way of draining the system. I'm sure there are a lot of skilled professionals in other countries, but we need to make jobs for the people we already have here first. Latin America and third world peasants have a piss poor sense of economics- it took a long time to build such a rich society, and a 8 hour work day and minimum wage, and we don't need a bunch of gomers destroying all that!

Wow yeah, us stupid latinos are good for nothing, aren't we? (note: sarcasm)

First of all, we need to differenciate between illegal immigrants and legal immigrants.

So about legal immigrants:

Hate to break it to you, but I went to college before anyone who was living there or here did, and I own my own business now, as well as working another full time job and I'm going back to study. I've worked multiple jobs usually officially since I was 13 and I have never seen an American or Australian with the same drive and work ethic that many of us have.

I'm not saying latinos aren't lazy - some of them are - just like anywhere - but those ones don't usually make it into your countires because they can't support themselves or they can't get visas. But most of them who are legal immigrants are extremely hard working, and they wouldn't be able to stay there if they weren't. The number of immigrants I know here at the moment work their butts off to stay here (often at jobs below their professional capablities because the government won't recongise their credentials). And they often have to be good citizens because if they break the law, they generally get deported.

If you want to generalize about immigrants - at least make the distinction between legal and illegal.

Last edited by Kjas on 02 Jul 2012, 8:28 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Well... illegal immigrants and legal immigrants are diferent. The latter must usually work hard to get their papers, and show their worth. I have cousins who are natural born U.S. citizens, daughters of two legal immigrants who are now also U.S. citizens, and even them had to deal with the prejudice you're showing. The teachers of the oldest one didn't make as much of an effort to teach her as with the other ones, because they saw she was hispanic and thought her inferior. Also, her english skills were a little behind because of speaking spanish inside the household, and they confused it with stupidity. Only after a lot of hard work and consistently getting good grades could she prove them wrong. Saying we're lazy because of our race is really... .

And believe me, I know a lot of quite capable, hard working hispanic people, who would do a better job than the average american.

Even them, I'm afraid. Everyone in the world is an immigrant except possibly some people in East Africa.

Nope people of native ancestry, have more of a right to a certin peace of land then others do.

But it's a change in quantity, not quality. Are you saying that third-generation white immigrants in the US have more right to the land than first-generation white immigrants?

None of then hae a rght to the US in my opinon.