Sure, though we shouldn't hold up the poetry or the statue as a symbol of our country then.
There is a lot of what went into America that would be (or has been) lost by completely abandoning the idea though. Maybe its worth it, that's not for any one person to decide, but its a huge change and there's always the risk of throwing out the baby with the bath water.
It is still a symbol of the country. Settling the US was a meat grinder, and you basically turned up and sank or swam. You weren't ever a cost back then; you were an asset.
Now with all the various welfare programmes you can easily become a cost, although of course that's only a proportion of the people coming in, just as it's only a proportion of the people born in the country. But it's silly to equate what happened back then with what's happening now. And it's unfair to hold the US to this standard and not any other country. Particularly when the US takes in more (legal) immigrants than any other country each year.
We've got both a declining birth rate and an economy that demands growth. Our biggest competitor is 4x our size. We have vast open spaces, and a history of repeatedly, successfully incorporating waves of immigrants. We're not even remotely full.
Its still a more fundamental question for me than whether were full.
Should we be able to decide who has a chance to live here at all? We have laws and you have to abide by them, but beyond that I'm not sure why I should get to be gate keeper at all. We'd have to get rid of welfare programs if we have no cap on immigrations, but honestly if someone wants to move here and try to make a better life for themselves I don't see what the problem is.
I'm sure most would say crime, but that's just not a compelling argument. We will never have a bulletproof immigration system, people will find ways to sneak through went we don't want to let them in. More importantly, crime isn't a foreign problem - we have domestic crime that has nothing to do with immigrants.
_heimdall|1 year ago
There is a lot of what went into America that would be (or has been) lost by completely abandoning the idea though. Maybe its worth it, that's not for any one person to decide, but its a huge change and there's always the risk of throwing out the baby with the bath water.
robertlagrant|1 year ago
Now with all the various welfare programmes you can easily become a cost, although of course that's only a proportion of the people coming in, just as it's only a proportion of the people born in the country. But it's silly to equate what happened back then with what's happening now. And it's unfair to hold the US to this standard and not any other country. Particularly when the US takes in more (legal) immigrants than any other country each year.
mcphage|1 year ago
We've got both a declining birth rate and an economy that demands growth. Our biggest competitor is 4x our size. We have vast open spaces, and a history of repeatedly, successfully incorporating waves of immigrants. We're not even remotely full.
_heimdall|1 year ago
Should we be able to decide who has a chance to live here at all? We have laws and you have to abide by them, but beyond that I'm not sure why I should get to be gate keeper at all. We'd have to get rid of welfare programs if we have no cap on immigrations, but honestly if someone wants to move here and try to make a better life for themselves I don't see what the problem is.
I'm sure most would say crime, but that's just not a compelling argument. We will never have a bulletproof immigration system, people will find ways to sneak through went we don't want to let them in. More importantly, crime isn't a foreign problem - we have domestic crime that has nothing to do with immigrants.