Immigration: We Should Be Asking What You CAN Do For Your Country
"My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country," said John Kennedy.
Good point -- and one that should be considered when we're opening the gates to the U.S.
A long read by David Frum in The Atlantic notes that, yes, coming to the US would benefit millions of would-be immigrants, but policymakers seldom ask whether their arrival would benefit us:
Nobody is making conscious decisions about who is wanted and who is not, about how much immigration to accept and what kind to prioritize--not even for the portion of U.S. migration conducted according to law, much less for the larger portion that is not.Nor is there much understanding of what has happened after it has happened. A simple question like, "How many immigrants are in prison?" turns out to be extraordinarily hard to answer. Poor information invites excessive fears, which are then answered with false assurances and angry accusations.
How's our don't ask; just admit immigration policy going?
•Minnesota is home to America's largest Somali community, 33,000 people. The unemployment rate for Somali Minnesotans in 2015 was triple the state average, 21 percent. As of 2014, about 5,950 of the state's Somali population received cash assistance; 17,000 receive food assistance as of 2014.
•A close study of Somali refugees by the government of Maine (home to the nation's second-largest Somali community) found that fewer than half of the working-age population had worked at any time in the five years from 2001 through 2006.
•Somalis have so much difficulty finding work in the developed world because their skills badly mismatch local labor needs. Only about 18 percent of boys and 15 percent of girls attend even primary school in Somalia. UNICEF has given up trying to measure literacy rates. Much of the U.S. refugee population is descended from people held as slaves in Somalia, who accordingly lack any family tradition of education. Their children then flounder in Western schools, baffled by the norms and expectations they encounter there. In the U.K., Somali students pass the standard age 16 high school exams at a rate less than half that of Nigerian immigrant students.
•Other young Somalis turn to political and religious violence. An estimated 50 American Somalis returned to fight for al Shabab, committing some of the most heinous acts of that insurgency. One carried out a suicide bombing that killed 24 people in 2009. Al Shabab claimed three American Somalis took part in the attack on Nairobi's Westgate shopping mall in 2013 that killed at least 67 people. Al Shabab is now intensely recruiting American Somalis to undertake terror missions inside the United States.
Immigration advocates understandably prefer to focus on the contributions of the refugees from Nazism than on less successful and more recent experiences.
Yet surely it is the more recent experiences that are more relevant. Pre-civil war Syria was no Somalia, but it was very far from a developed country. In 2010, the average Syrian had less than six years of schooling, less even than Egypt, according to the UN Development Index. Women were systematically subordinated: Only a quarter of Syrian women completed secondary education; only 13 percent participated in the workforce. Few Syrians will arrive with the skills of a modern economy, even apart from the language gap.
...One reason we hear so much about the Jewish refugees of the 1930s, to circle back to where I started, is the natural human tendency to wish away overwhelming problems. If the word "refugee" conjures up Albert Einstein, Kurt Weill, Hans Bethe, Lawrence Tribe, Billy Wilder, and Henry Kissinger--well, what country wouldn't welcome as many as it could get?
...Everywhere in the Western world there is a fast-growing constituency for new kinds of immigration and refugee policies. If anything is shameful, it is the shabby, thoughtless, and arrogant elite consensus that has to date denied that constituency a responsible political leadership. But that too is changing, yielding to heavy evidence and hard experience.
Re the JFK quote...here's something interesting, probably from the 1990s. Don't know the author's name.
http://alt.support.childfree.narkive.com/kMt9vWF9/i-didn-t-write-this-but-i-wish-i-had-long
First fifth (yes, it's that long):
One of the things I enjoy is deconstructing common phrases to try to discern what they really mean. For instance, at his Inaugural in 1961, there's the John Kennedy quote, "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." On the surface, it sounds patriotic and wholesome, but when you take it apart, it has no real meaning. Robert Ringer's comments on this about 20 years ago were rather telling. In effect, he said, what's a "country?" A country is collection of 250 million people, all with different needs and wants and desires and motivations. You're going to ask 250 million people what you can do for them? Nope. Boil it down a bit, and "your country" translates to "your government." And "your government" tends to mean "those currently in power." What Kennedy might have been saying then, cynically, might be written as, "don't ask those of us in power to do anything for you. Instead, what can you do for those in power?" Doesn't sound as wholesome and all American, does it?
There are piles of these phrases: America: Love It Or Leave It. Does that mean, "Don't question the status quo?" Hugs Are Better Than Drugs. Not always. And drugs aren't always bad, even illegal ones. Just Say No. You want me to not think, but just exhibit a knee jerk reaction based on your social values? (this last one is a cousin to "Better Dead Than Red."
So now, there's this phrase you hear broadcast over and over, uttered by well meaning people who probably never thought about what it means: Children Are Our Future...
(snip)
lenona at December 12, 2015 11:03 AM
DHS is not sure it's "appropriate" to see what an immigrant posts on public social media. Snort Snort
"But immigration officials do not routinely review social media as part of their background checks, and there is a debate inside the Department of Homeland Security over whether it is even appropriate to do so."
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/us/san-bernardino-attacks-us-visa-process-tashfeen-maliks-remarks-on-social-media-about-jihad-were-missed.html?_r=0
Bob in Texas at December 12, 2015 4:23 PM
there is a fast-growing constituency for new kinds of immigration and refugee policies
Yeah, that would be nice; but if a flood goes on too long, everything you had is lost.
More of the agency problem here: the immigrant boosters are spending our country's heritage so they can get a short term buzz from helping the Other.
bomag at December 12, 2015 7:18 PM
IF anyone wants to know: I found some notes on an old printout. It's likely that the above piece was by Turtle, in 1997, from Weightless Dog Productions.
lenona at December 13, 2015 10:40 AM
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