illegal immigration---part I: Culture

Source; SNGLR

“High levels of immigration and ethnic diversity seem to cause a reduction in social capital...makes people turn inward, become more selfish, less interested in contributing to their communities.”---Robert Putnam

“The history of immigration into the United States up to now has been one of assimilation.”—Mark R. Levin

“The current level of assimilation of all recent immigrant groups is lower that at any time during the first great migration early in the 20th century.”---Manhattan Institute

"The fact is, Central America has two big exports: Oil, and their second biggest export is poverty to the United States -- from which, in remittances sent back home, they get tens of billions a year. Foreign governments have a stake in illegal immigration to our country." –George Will

“Humans are not born for citizenship, but must be made fit for it.”—Spinoza

Our nation is experiencing a border crisis that must be addressed. In addition to the serious security concerns, the border crisis has reached such an elevated state that it now holds long-term implications for every other area of American life. So, let's do what kammie harris said she'd do to secure our border, 3 yrs. ago, by getting to the root of the problem.

The U.S. annually brings in millions of mostly low-skilled immigrants. In the last decade the U.S. admitted, not counting millions of illegal immigrants, tens of millions legal immigrants alone, forcing American workers to compete against a growing population of low-wage workers, allowing employers to reduce wages thanks to the annual low-skilled immigration scheme.

Mass immigration comes at the expense of America’s working and middle class, which has suffered too from poor job growth, stagnant wages, and increased public costs to offset the importation of millions of low-skilled foreign nationals.  However, the Washington, DC-imposed mass immigration policy(1), hat they incorporated into our immigration laws and policies, through procedures in violation of our Constitution’s constructs, is a boon to corporate executives, Wall Street, big business, multinational conglomerates and the left-wing/democrat Party (who lock in voters that are dependent on government handouts), as every 1% increase in the immigrant composition of an occupation’s labor force reduces Americans’ hourly wages by 0.4%. Every 1% increase in the immigrant workforce reduces Americans’ overall wages by 0.8%. 4 million young Americans enter the workforce every year, but their job opportunities are diminished as the U.S. imports roughly 2 new foreign workers for every 4 American workers who enter the workforce. 

For blue-collar American workers, mass immigration has not only kept wages down but in many cases decreased wages. There is ample evidence that American workers primarily at the bottom of the labor market or negatively affected by immigration into our country. Among the winners of that migration are those who tend to be better educated and higher paid workers. At least 9 major, significant studies, including one by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine and one from the National Bureau of Economic Research-- whose conclusions both have been lied about by the left-wing media--and also including an on-going study done by Harvard's George Borjas, generally considered the leading immigration economist in the country, which, by the way, makes him hated, reviled and lied about by left-wing/democrats who have proven can't handle  or be expected to voice the truth. Out-of-control mass immigration is an ongoing lesson in how politicians, journalists, and so-called "experts" of all stripes can be so consequentially wrong about their predictions and promises.

Immigration can contribute to the well-being of a society. It can also contribute to its demise(2). Americans were assured and promised that the changes neo-liberal ideology demanded in our immigration  laws, starting in 1965,  would not produce what in fact they have now produced.  Neo-liberal ideology cultivates the concept of multiculturalism, a form of cultural relativism that reduces all cultures to equal status.

But all cultures are not equal, obviously evidenced by aliens fleeing their cultural homes to come to America while the overwhelming vast majority of Americans are not engaging in a similar expatriation.  American cultural is not interchangeable with all others. The "wealth of Nations" is inextricably connected to the attitudes & culture of their inhabitants.

In light of that, Garrett Jones, with a formidable bibliography, has documented how people tend to import political attitudes and cultural norms like luggage(3). When a people migrate, they bring attitudes derived from previous culture with them. Those imports ultimately change the receiving country's government, economy, and future. The past is prologue it seems. And that cultural persistence across generations is real, people never completely assimilate. Jones found 3 dominant indicators that link the past political attitudes and cultural norms to the present: State history, Agricultural history, and Technological history since 1500 A.D.  SATH for short.

Summarizing, when people migrate, they bring their SATH score with them, which means that a people's past is a better predictor of economic success than geopolitical history. HEY, that negates the standard narrative that the left-wing banters, that global poverty of today is overwhelmingly due to the so-called post 1500 post-Columbus oppression, you know, the standard woke garbage--AGAIN!

The US presumes an individualistic culture, which is found only in the Westernized nations. Culture, not race(4), is the true limitation to the American dream. Scholars of world cultures make quite clear that culture has no necessary connection to race

The vast influx of previous legal immigrants have assimilated well. Nearly all came from Western societies, so the newcomers were largely attuned to individualism before they arrived. Today's illegal immigrants, however, nearly all come from non-Western societies. They come here mainly to escape their culture's results, not specifically to seek freedom and its burdens. Burden's whose demands often defeat them. Today's non-Western illegal immigrants mostly arrive without the positive attitudes and experiences that promote a free and orderly society. Their sense of obligation to others is typically limited to their own family or ethnic. Their politics are immoderate, so their political demands swing between extremes. Their assumption is most often that only society is responsible for the lives they lead. Non-westerners have a cultural pattern of adjusting to their environment rather than seeking change. And right and wrong for them is shaped more by expectations of other people than by internalized standards.

left-wing policy makers have ignored the essential personal difference between all Western and non-Western groups - the much greater passivity and lesser self-command, on average, of non-Western groups compared to those who descended from Western societies. Non-western groups respond more strongly to authority than incentives. They tend to do what they are told, not what they themselves decide, and evade when necessary or convenient. That is why the most effective social programs used to deal with them have been directive. They tell clients firmly what they should do to get ahead - for example, get through school, get keep a job, avoid trouble with the law, and avoid procreation outside marriage.

Western culture, in contrast, is inner-driven and moralistic, it migrates authority from the outside to inside the self, with such required norms as equality, democracy, and the rule of law. Obviously, such values are never perfectly achieved, yet they are taken seriously. That is how Western societies permit  freedom and prosperity and yet maintain order. Even the underprivileged in the West have shown more initiative in improving things than those in the non-West. Many non-Westerners fail on their own to get ahead, and many display unusual high levels of crime and other social problems--they do not inspire the same trust as Westerners(5). Western groups above all showing capacity for sublimation - the ability to take on external goals and values inwardly and then to organize their lives around them. In a deep sense, they're outward freedom rests on an inner freedom. No non-Western group shows this.

To be sure, there are outliers, for example, attitudes toward policing and religion aren't transplanted. However, the rule holds up well despite the outliers and a people's past does a good job of predicting outcomes. For example 60% of Hispanics compared to only 47% of whites believe people have hard lives not in part because of their form of government but because their cultural attitude is that government benefits do not go far enough, according to the Pew Research.

All this is to say that immigration has long-term consequences and that not all immigration is alike, which means the narrow conception of diversity the left-wing forces upon US comes at a dangerously high cost. A mountain of data and studies shows that increased ethnic diversity lowers trust in local neighborhoods and acts as a multiplier social conflict for the nation. Naturally, with that decrease, the social safety nets begin to fail, the result being usually a bigger, more pervasive, more ineffective and more corrupt government. Even the Journal of Economic Surveys noted the destruction of what gives the US its standard of living and freedom when it stated: "Ethnic diversity seems to lead to a shift from public spending on public goods to public provision of private goods, arguably because the latter can be targeted to particular power-enhancing groups."

Getting ahead and democracy demand a view of life where people are competitive and basically self-reliant, make only limited and civil demands, and do not project responsibility for themselves on to others. In other words America, with its freedom and prosperity, is simply an exemplar of the individualistic way of life. 


Advanced countries(6) like the US, experiencing or even welcoming endless waves of immigration that are transplanting cultural traits derived from those with low SATH scores can survive in the short term. But they are essentially plundering the legacy of those who came before, mortgaging their future by satisfying left-wing ideological fetishes and demands for cheap labor. All this makes human flourishing increasingly difficult and ultimately on a downward scale. The world will ultimately be worse off as a result. Where's the progress in that. But, that's what the left-wing supports and wants more of. The mass importation of regime clients from the 3rd world, under the pretense of high-minded neo-liberal ideology, has become a runaway phenomenon threatening the very political order that authored it

Today, due to neo-liberal based laws and policies, open-ended mass immigration coupled with the destructive forces of multiculturalism, multilingualism, dual citizenship, expansive entitlement programs and affirmative action have combined to form the building blocks of a different kind of America. One where aliens are taught, encouraged and rewarded to resist assimilation. This then is leading to balkanization, antagonism and conflict that is tearing the fabric of American society. 

Yet as this ideology has been consistently rejected by the American people, leaders of this ideology, accustomed to influencing, even setting policy without even notice to American citizens, are welcomed at the highest levels of power in American government.

Government ceases to be legitimate if its principal responsibility is not to its citizens. Government therefore is obligated to qualify and uphold immigration policies that contribute to the well-being of its civil society. If that is not so then that says that the non-citizen has equal, or arguably more, value than the citizen, which is nonsensical. Therefore, what is left to ask except have the governed given their consent to our current immigration policies? 

Should America inevitably become a non-Western country, it will most likely lose the dynamic and civic qualities that come from an individualistic culture, and which have powered it to lead the world towards freedom and prosperity.

“Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it...…it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security…”—Declaration of Independence

“The Bolsheviks success, as Lenin understood, would take a two-fold process. First they centralized all power in the hands of the party control, and using any method, legal or not, moral or not,  sought to wipe out all political opposition. At the grass-roots level, they encouraged the destruction of previous traditions, habits, institutions or mores by redirecting all power to local government. There was no clear division between the interests of the party and the government. There was no intent of ruling through parliamentary sovereignty. This undermined democracy at the center and neutralized the power of the citizenry. Lenin’s conception (which  formed the Bolshevik zeitgeist),  of the state had always been a monopoly of total centralized power..”---Orlando Figes

 

1.     The National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers, after 50,000 apprehensions of border crossers in south Texas, declared that: "certainly we are not gullible enough to believe that thousands of immigrants came to America without the encouragement, aid and assistance of the United States government." Besides the valuable observations of veteran lawmen who know the patterns of the border and can spot anomalies, the evidence that the flood of illegals is an orchestrated event, and not spontaneous, is piling up. U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) Chief David Auguilar had estimated that they only catch 1 in 5 illegals.

2.     George Borjas, a harvard economist and immigration specialist, has shown empirically that, under our present system, immigration — legal or otherwise — is a net loss to Americans.

3.     Jones' findings are confirmed in the findings of Diego Comin of harvard, Bill Easterly of nyu, and Rick Gong of the univ. of california, that concluded that 78% of the difference in income today between sub-Saharan Africa & Western Europe is associated with technological differences in 1500 A.D. & not attributed to the post-1500 slave trade, colonialism, or post-Independence factors(1). Further, economists Yann Algan and Pierre Cahuc found that 46% of home-country attitudes towards trust persist in 2nd up to 4th generation immigrants. UCLA's Paola Giuliani found that 1st thru 3rd generation people whose parents came from countries with higher savings rates tended to save noticeably more than similar people whose parents came from countries with lower saving rates, such financial behavior being another predictor of national prosperity.

4.     Many blacks today have perpetuated a non-Western mindset, living mainly from day to day, rather than for the future, and suffering unusual social problems because of it. These problems gained significant traction in the '60s and '70s after the start of the war on poverty, the great society and despite the large advance of civil rights. Welfare systems designed on a victim mentality brought about the near total collapse of the black family and has produced soaring black crime and welfare dependency.

5.     Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau are illustrative. They have had a relative history of immigration whence came a high SATH scoring people with the legacy of good governance, competent bureaucracy, and Confucian culture. But in general Asians as individuals excel only so long as they're in school. From college onward, however, success in America requires an ability to make personal argument, set one's own goals, and take risks, what Asians usually lack. This is why they underperform as Leaders, as research shows. Other than Asians, all minorities still do worse than average in education, income, and wealth, and are much more involved in crime, single parenthood, and other social problems. Much, if not all, of their current inequality results from this. Cultural differences offer a far better explanation than race.

6.     There is a similar dynamic at play with immigration from Europe. In fact, the percentage of European descent in a given country can predict 75% of the differences in standard of living across countries. On average, the places outside of Europe that are the richest today were usually the poorest before Columbus. European colonization flip the world's fortunes upside down and gave the last the opportunity to became first.

 

Different but related:

https://spectator.org/the-melting-pot-myth-is-destroying-america/

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/bidens-parole-abuse-is-driving-the-border-crisis/

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/03

https://how_many_millions_of_illegal_aliens_in_the_country_does_the_democrat_party_need_to_destroy_america.html

https://www.thethinkingconservative.com/the-deteriorating-state-of-our-nation/

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