Do we need to Rethink Immigration?

[RobinReborn]

Ayn Rand's beliefs on immigration were fairly clear though she did not write about it extensively.  She was in favor of it.

 

However things have changed significantly (welfare state, terrorism, different demographics) since she was alive so some may claim that an anti-immigration policy is compatible with Objectivism.

 

What do you think?

[Brant Gaede]

On 11/17/2016 at 8:42 PM, RobinReborn said:

Ayn Rand's beliefs on immigration were fairly clear though she did not write about it extensively.  She was in favor of it.

 

However things have changed significantly (welfare state, terrorism, different demographics) since she was alive so some may claim that an anti-immigration policy is compatible with Objectivism.

 

What do you think?

Is it now a matter of national defense?

I think the answer is, yes.

--Brant

[jts]

On 17/11/2016 at 8:42 PM, RobinReborn said:

Ayn Rand's beliefs on immigration were fairly clear though she did not write about it extensively.  She was in favor of it.

 

However things have changed significantly (welfare state, terrorism, different demographics) since she was alive so some may claim that an anti-immigration policy is compatible with Objectivism.

 

What do you think?

What you gotta rethink is your Constitution. Sharia law is above your Constitution. Your Constitution was made by man, sharia law was made by Allah. You gotta submit to sharia law. To hell with the Constitution. Any bad talk about Muhammad or Islam is bigotry and racist and hate speech.

99% of all the violence we see in the news in Europe is done by non-Muslims. Did you ever hear of a Muslim terrorist? Me neither. Islam is a peaceful religion and anyone who says otherwise deserves death.

 

[Neil Parille]

Quote

Ayn Rand's beliefs on immigration were fairly clear though she did not write about it extensively.  She was in favor of it.

 

To the best of my knowledge she didn't write about it at all.

[Brant Gaede]

1 hour ago, Neil Parille said:

 

To the best of my knowledge she didn't write about it at all.

She was grateful for being able to become an American, but philosophically she came with nothing I know of. Different times and places. My step-mother, who was an Immigration Judge, decried some 1920s legislation letting more people in (from southern Europe?). She died over 40 years ago so I can't get clarification. The memory is thin.

--Brant

maybe that law let Ayn Rand in

edit: looking immigration law up on Wikipedia, my step-mother was probably referring to the law passed in 1965 and she probably decried how it over-rode the two quota laws of the 1920s which effectively favored northern Europeans

as the only non-Jewish Immigration Judge--formally called Special Inquiry Officer--she was given the case of an Arab advocate of better US-Arab relations, Mohammad T. Mehdi, and she let him stay (her colleague Ira Fieldsteel ordered the deportation of John Lennon [he had no choice as Immigration Judges are not true appointed Federal Judges although GS-15s])

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

2 hours ago, Neil Parille said:

To the best of my knowledge she didn't write about it at all.

Neil,

I recall somewhere Rand saying that she, herself, was an immigrant. And she discussed something in that neighborhood.

I can't recall where, though. Maybe in the Q&A book?...

OK...

I found it (see here):

Quote

What is your attitude toward immigration? Doesn't open immigration have a negative effect on a country's standard of living?

You don't know my conception of self-interest. No one has the right to pursue his self-interest by law or by force, which is what you're suggesting. You want to forbid immigration on the grounds that it lowers your standard of living—which isn't true, though if it were true, you'd still have no right to close the borders. You're not entitled to any "self-interest" that injures others, especially when you can't prove that open immigration affects your self-interest. You can't claim that anything others may do—for example, simply through competition—is against your self-interest. But above all. aren't you dropping a personal context? How could I advocate restricting immigration when I wouldn't be alive today if our borders had been closed?
[FHF 73]

Ayn Rand also had no problems with Europeans immigrating to an unsettled America and taking it over by force when only Indians were here. I can find that quote, too.

I doubt Rand would have agreed with open borders if, say, the Soviet Union at her time had instituted a massive immigration to the USA program for the purpose of getting the new Americans to vote for politicians who would be friendly to communism and, ultimately, replace the American government with a communist one. I believe she would have invoked reason and "threat of compulsion" or something like that to denote the rigging of elections--and context--and demanded a temporary restraint on immigration from the Soviet Union.

Back then, I don't think she would have thought possible the current Muslim refugee problem in Europe or illegal alien problem in the US. (In the latter case, I can almost see her writing an essay on the breakdown of the American government in practice in allowing that extent of illegality from confused and corrupt philosophical premises.  )

Her biggest fears from outside were military and/or ideological invasion of people already here. It's not that she would find inconceivable a Trojan Horse kind of problem with new people from other countries who become Americans to effect election outcomes. (Her fear was the covert propagandists and communist organizers immigrating--see her testimony to Congress about Hollywood propaganda.) I think she simply didn't think of it because the probability was so remote back then.

I don't want to channel her, so that's only my opinion. (But, hell, I'm right.  )

Michael

[RobinReborn]

15 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

Is it now a matter of national defense?

I think the answer is, yes.

--Brant

 

Please elaborate.  I don't doubt that some portion of immigrants will be violent, but most of them will be productive, nonviolent citizens.  Some of them will even serve in the US military (remember the Khan family?).  It's not clear to me that immigrants are more likely to be terrorists than the existing citizenry.  Consider people like Timothy McVeigh or Dylann Storm Roof.

[RobinReborn]

6 hours ago, jts said:

What you gotta rethink is your Constitution. Sharia law is above your Constitution. Your Constitution was made by man, sharia law was made by Allah. You gotta submit to sharia law. To hell with the Constitution. Any bad talk about Muhammad or Islam is bigotry and racist and hate speech.

99% of all the violence we see in the news in Europe is done by non-Muslims. Did you ever hear of a Muslim terrorist? Me neither. Islam is a peaceful religion and anyone who says otherwise deserves death.

 

 

We are not Europe and I am insulted that you would compare the USA to Europe.  Europe has a long history of fighting with Islam (The Crusades, conflicts with the Ottoman Empire), the USA does not.

[Brant Gaede]

59 minutes ago, RobinReborn said:

 

Please elaborate.  I don't doubt that some portion of immigrants will be violent, but most of them will be productive, nonviolent citizens.  Some of them will even serve in the US military (remember the Khan family?).  It's not clear to me that immigrants are more likely to be terrorists than the existing citizenry.  Consider people like Timothy McVeigh or Dylann Storm Roof.

6 out of 10 not violent leaves . . . ?

"Will be violent" means it is a matter of national defense.

If Dad and Mom aren't violent what if their boys grow up and find their roots?

I am suggesting a philosophical rationale for restricted immigration. Nothing more.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

1 hour ago, RobinReborn said:

 

We are not Europe and I am insulted that you would compare the USA to Europe.  Europe has a long history of fighting with Islam (The Crusades, conflicts with the Ottoman Empire), the USA does not.

The Barbary pirates.

--Brant

[william.scherk]

On 11/17/2016 at 7:42 PM, RobinReborn said:

Ayn Rand's beliefs on immigration were fairly clear though she did not write about it extensively.  She was in favor of it.

In favour of being able to obtain a visa to the United States, and to marry and to adopt citizenship. Simple wants.

Whether we do or do not include asylum policy under the heading immigration, I don't think it is clear that Ayn Rand was in favour of the blob term, without breaking it down into current events.  During her lifetime, Russia expelled/allowed to emigrate huge proportions of Russian Jewry. I don't think she had any problem with that borderline case, or that the Russian Jews split their destinations between Israel and the United States. In the state of Israel they could become citizens without much paperasse, and there were reasonable options for Russian Jewry to assimilate or at least become permanent residents in America, due to the risk of repression if 'sent back' to Communism.

Similarly but more encumbered has been the state of siege applied to the Communists in Cuba. The hostilities subsequent to the Castro dictatorship meant that any Cuban who could escape the communists was, inter alia, an honorary combatant for America's "side."  Thus they were escaping America's enemy, and refuge was relatively easy to accomplish (but see wet foot/dry foot). Cubans fled a hideous nightmare of collectivism. Returning them would add to their prisoner status.

I don't think Ayn Rand would be equivocal about the crushed revolution in Hungary in 1956 and later in Czechoslovakia. Those 'migrating' from Hungary especially would likely have found favour, in the sense of having made the obvious choice for freedom and to risk destruction if 'sent back.'

Hers was a philosophy implacably opposed to racism and ethnic particularism, so I see her being relatively incurious about inter-European freedom of movement in the Schengen countries. It would seem reasonable to her, perhaps, that a pan-European freedom could be possible under unfettered capitalism, and that under a mixed economy and federalism, a precious freedom to move was the only benefit of the  statist superstructure.

I wonder that she was so hostile to ethnicity in Quebec and opposed to 'ethnic' states emerging in a process of balkanization ... and am not sure what she would think of Brexit, if in the same sense of Welsh or Scots particularism. If she mocked the Walloons and Flamands for their useless differences, would she enjoy the irony of the Wallonian become EU citizen first and foremost in his mind?  Would she have applauded the ethnic pluck of the Ukrainians or Estonians -- and applauded their haste to de-Sovietize and refederalize themselves into a grander European polity?  I don't know, but it is fun to speculate.

Was Ayn Rand in favour of separatism or Home Rule?  

I think she picked favourites among nation states and that she considered some states as a vast grey porridge of coercion vatted in People's Republics. So, any distinctive 'national' struggles for democracy and Western values might have left her ambivalent, and the notion of giving refuge to 'savages' or from porridge nations might well have been rejected utterly and completely, even under the rule of emergencies. 

On 11/17/2016 at 7:42 PM, RobinReborn said:

However things have changed significantly (welfare state, terrorism, different demographics) since she was alive so some may claim that an anti-immigration policy is compatible with Objectivism.

I think Rand would be happy enough that national security trump any remnant altruistic baloney motivating progressive concepts of immigration (particularly with the Canucki version of multiculturalism).  To the principle of protecting the best values of humankind from being extinguished by an uncontrolled influx of philosophically-defective peoples, I think she could knock off a few ringing essays with current hot-button issues fully engaged.

If you are asking What in particular needs rethinking, I suggest the basics. What is this thing immigration, what is it for, what does it do, what does it add, what does it take away, what indeed is its value if its value to a Nation can be estimated. 

I mean, obviously, North America would be a field of savages stuck in the Copper Age if not for Europeans, right?  If the influx and flourishing of the newcomers was good all in all, it can still turn bad if it overwhelms the carrying capacity of the melting pot.   Can America melt in more third-world and second-world and wildly ethnically-mixed cohorts of incoming?

I think so, but a pause or retrenchment or fine-tuning or wholesale simplification or reduction or heightened vigilance and even exclusions is surely on the table. 

In other words, the incoming Administration can make good on its promise of opportunity to a carefully-selected and vetted and smaller and less-alien and better-educated stream of incoming. It can bar any class of persons, any undeserving, any criminal or undocumented who have evaded the legal routes. It can simplify and rationalize your byzantine immigration and naturalization processes.  

The first step in "taking control of our borders," turning that slogan into reality. "What is your purpose in America? How long do you intend to be here? What is your value to America?" ..."How does the nation, its cohesion and its traditions gain by having you within?"

But I get in under the magic US-Canada visa, and only get asked the first two questions. It is assumed I will return to the hellhole of Canadianicity once my visit is concluded.

[Brant Gaede]

dup

[Brant Gaede]

1 hour ago, william.scherk said:

But I get in under the magic US-Canada visa, and only get asked the first two questions. It is assumed I will return to the hellhole of Canadianicity once my visit is concluded.

Thank God!

--Brant

we don't want your kind!

[RobinReborn]

26 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

The Barbary pirates.

--Brant

That was more than two hundred years ago.  Morocco was also the first country to recognize the US.

[Brant Gaede]

1 minute ago, RobinReborn said:

That was more than two hundred years ago.  Morocco was also the first country to recognize the US.

And the Crusades started 900 years ago.

--Brant

[RobinReborn]

29 minutes ago, Brant Gaede said:

6 out of 10 not violent leaves . . . ?

"Will be violent" means it is a matter of national defense.

If Dad and Mom aren't violent what if their boys grow up and find their roots?

I am suggesting a philosophical rationale for restricted immigration. Nothing more.

--Brant

I have no idea what you mean by 6 out of 10...

 

Did Catholic immigrants find out their roots of killing Protestants when they came to the USA (my reading of history suggests that the Protestant Reformation led to more violence between Christians than there was violence between Christians and Muslims)?

[RobinReborn]

Just now, Brant Gaede said:

And the Crusades started 900 years ago.

--Brant

Yes, and it lasted longer than the Barbary Wars.  And after the crusades the Turks seized Constantinople and tried to seize Vienna...

 

Do you not get the point I'm trying to make?  There's a difference between a war which is resolved peacefully with coexistence between the beligerents and wars that continually reoccur.  The USA has a history of reestablishing good relations with countries it has been at war with, it has clearly done so with England after its foundation.  The same is true for Germany and Japan after WWII.  There are plenty of other examples... fundamentally there is no reason why we can't establish good relations with Muslim nations.  We are in the process of doing so with Iran.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

21 minutes ago, william.scherk said:

But I get in under the magic US-Canada visa, and only get asked the first two questions. It is assumed I will return to the hellhole of Canadianicity once my visit is concluded.

William,

Thank God for you that Canada is big.

Huuuuuuuuuuge.

It has space and wilderness and lots of snow to makes mistakes with.

 

Imagine if Canada were the size of Japan, you lived there, and millions of poor people who didn't speak Japanese tried to flood in. What's more, this migration was fostered by an endless war for profit (and, frankly, hard drug) elitist machine hell bent on destroying the Japanese government.

Would you still consider the victimization story a moral priority? in that context, would you still think the victimization story was relevant as an ideological virtue, or would you start seeing it as a tool of propaganda?

The heartbreaking part (and I mean this sincerely) is that the victims will be the same in either case. The elitists say they care, but underneath, they don't give a fuck unless they are drunk and blubbering. Their priority is to consolidate money and power...

Would you turn your own self into a victim so they could have it?

That's what they're really shooting for...

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

3 minutes ago, RobinReborn said:

There are plenty of other examples... fundamentally there is no reason why we can't establish good relations with Muslim nations.  We are in the process of doing so with Iran.

RR,

I agree, but you left out a detail.

When did the US kick Iran's ass?

Michael

[RobinReborn]

32 minutes ago, william.scherk said:

I mean, obviously, North America would be a field of savages stuck in the Copper Age if not for Europeans, right?  If the influx and flourishing of the newcomers was good all in all, it can still turn bad if it overwhelms the carrying capacity of the melting pot.   Can America melt in more third-world and second-world and wildly ethnically-mixed cohorts of incoming?

 

I do not believe this is true.  I think Rand's interpretation of Native American culture was very misinformed.  They were not as primitive as some biased historians would have you believe.

[RobinReborn]

2 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

RR,

I agree, but you left out a detail.

When did the US kick Iran's ass?

Michael

 

Well... kicking ass isn't exactly a technical term, but I imagine you're aware of the CIA actions in Iran around the 1950s.  I also believe the US tried to isolate Iran and supported Saddam Hussein when he invaded their country in the 1980s.  There's also some vaguely conspiracy theory stuff I've read about several underseas internet cables being cut around 2008 when Iran was trying to sell oil in Euros.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

40 minutes ago, RobinReborn said:

Well... kicking ass isn't exactly a technical term, but I imagine you're aware of the CIA actions in Iran around the 1950s.  I also believe the US tried to isolate Iran and supported Saddam Hussein when he invaded their country in the 1980s.  There's also some vaguely conspiracy theory stuff I've read about several underseas internet cables being cut around 2008 when Iran was trying to sell oil in Euros.

RR,

I'm aware of all of that. I've seen similar up close in Brazil and I do not condone it. (I lived there for 32 years. Look up Operation Condor sometime...)

However, you were discussing war. I don't recall a war with Iran where we beat them like we did with England, Germany, Japan, etc.

What I do see is a bunch of crony globalists trying to interconnect bloody dictatorships with relatively prosperous and free countries so they can milk the free and prosperous, but run their scams with the dictators, and consolidate gobs of power and money undreamed-of in previous generations.

If the Iran deal plays out like President Obama structured it, it will be one more reason there will be floods of poor immigrants to rich countries in the future. The refugee scam works like this.

1. There is war fostered in some poor country (like Syria) where there is a bloody dictator who has no problem massacring his own people. That way the people are killed by friend and foe alike. In panic, these poor souls try to go anywhere but where they are.

2. Secret organizations (and some not so secret) are set up that will help them flood into prosperous countries that have relatively stable autonomous governments. If there are enough refugees and they are placed in the right regions, they will cause local chaos just by the sheer weight of their needs and lack of cultural assimilation. Besides, you can sneak in terrorists and organizing agents among them.

3. If it works as intended, the host countries get weakened so much, they need help from a central organization and cry uncle.

4. A central organization steps in with oodles of resources so long as the host countries provide concessions--ones that include giving up ever-increasing chunks of sovereignty--and also include giving monopoly and cabal status to the undertakings of the insider elites within that central organization.

5. The cool part for the elitist insiders is that the central organization does not even need to be all that organized. Actually, a tight organization will never happen because of the very nature of control-freak elitists. They will constantly fight each other (as elites and royalty have been want to do throughout human). All the modern elitist insiders need is for the sovereign nations to cry uncle. They can then organize the rest as they go along.

It's a hell of a scam and it's working in some places. Unfortunately for them, Brexit came along, then Trump. Others will soon follow.

That aside, all Iran needs is for the 12th Imam to show up in the head of some Iranian hardline religious leader and say it's time to set the world on fire so he can usher in Allah's good peace. If Iran has the nuclear bomb, boom.

There will be blood. Refugees from bombed places all over the place. Backroom deals galore. Floods of immigrants. And good productive people in peaceful countries will get screwed once again.

Thanks but no thanks...

We can build with people who show they want to build, but not with people who want to conquer the world in the name of a religion. And especially not with stewards from globalist cabals making the arrangements. Once Iranian leaders give up their world-domination craziness (including that part about setting the world on fire), I'm on board with your ideas. So long as their leaders don't, we disagree strongly.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

32 minutes ago, RobinReborn said:

I do not believe this is true.  I think Rand's interpretation of Native American culture was very misinformed.  They were not as primitive as some biased historians would have you believe.

How primitive?

--Brant

[william.scherk]

33 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

William,

Thank God for you

I know, right?  I will do so when I meet him.

I can reduce an argument to a truncated quip-quote and ignore all else ...

 

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 minute ago, william.scherk said:

I know, right?  I will do so when I meet him.

I can reduce an argument to a truncated quip-quote and ignore all else ...

 

 

William,

Cool.

It kinda reminds me of the sense all those polls made during the months and months of the elections, especially when people kept using them to prove that Trump was going to lose...

   

(Just razzing ya'... both times...  )

Michael