Ann Coulter on Immigration

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
41

Headhunter,

[quote]Headhunter wrote:

[…]You missed the point: are all these things done to accomodate illegal aliens? Read the article (it WAS moved) and see the context.[/quote]

Possibly so. I read the article earlier, but found it as usual with her quite polemic.

I did concentrate on answering your questions though (given the fact that I had so far not commented on the article itself), so if I got the wrong end of the stick, you might have to review your rethorical style as well. :wink:

[quote]At my wife’s university senate, someone actually got up and asked, “What are we doing to protect the rights of our faculty who are here illegally?”. My response would have been, “Uh…fire them?”

We are being inundated by lawbreakers. That’s one of the points here.[/quote]

I would agree with your stance: Anyone who breaks the law should be treated equally and I can’t really comment on this proposed amnesty - I think hspder made a few good points as usual.

Makkun

42

lucasa,

[quote]lucasa wrote:
Makkun,

Reading your post and Alwyn’s QoD several weeks ago (about the people he works with at the universities) is actually really unnerving. It’s almost as if you see the issue as the US vs. everyone else, when it is nothing of the sort.[/quote]

I think that’s an invalid assumption: outside of the US these arguments are wielded regularly as well - so this discussion is not about the US only.

Well, I guess most Mexicans would find that just a bit unnerving…[quote]

(largely for tax purposes, but also census, healthcare, and labor/productivity purposes among many others) would like to know about it when they do. If I switch jobs and residences within the US, the government likes to know. If I switch jobs and residences in Germany, England, France, etc. their respective governments like to know. [/quote]

If you are an EU citizen, you may move and work whereever in the EU you want, without informing anyone. In Germany you will need to tell the authorities, where you live, in the UK, you don’t. Moving countries and jobs is actually easier than getting a mobile phone contract - don’t get me started on that…

I think here is where your misunderstanding lies: I can’t speak for Alwyn Cosgrove, but I certainly don’t support illegal immigration. Your country has every right to try to defend its borders against people crossing it illegally. But there are a few points that have to be brought up in this discussion:

Unfortunately, at least in Germany and the UK, activists against (illegal) immigration tend to blow the problem out of proportion and link it to all kinds of dangers to culture and society.

Also, if 1M illegal immigrants have managed to get into your country in this short time frame, you should question your government’s efficiency in protecting its borders. How many foreign terrorists get through this massive loophole - makes the whole no-fly-lists deal and biometric passport deal we “legal” aliens have to go through a bit of a joke, hm?[quote]

I admit, HH goes a little far saying we shouldn’t offer services in several languages (We’re largely capitalists, if it pays to learn the language, we’ll do it.), but he’s right in that often the other language isn’t written for the grad student on a visa who speaks passable English or the newly minted citizen who just stepped off the boat.[/quote]

Yes, he does. And that is the kind of rethoric I meant earlier: Offering a variety of languages in public services to the many guests in your country is more of a courtesy than a sign of an invasion. Having lived in a country (Japan), where you mostly don’t get this courtesy (at least not 10 years back) in council services, you start appreciating the fact that not everyone is a language genius (like many of the pure english speakers I met there who after years in the country relied on their English) and that offering services in the most spoken other languages just speeds up the process.

[quote]Please tell me this is just a misperception on my part and not yours.
[/quote]

Don’t know. I think we have our stereotypes that we project on each other.

Makkun

43

[quote]danmaftei wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
danmaftei wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
makkun wrote:
danmaftei wrote:
I fear for the outcome of this thread…

Considering who started it, I think your fears are not unfounded.

Makkun

Don’t be afraid boys! Intelligent dialogue, if you are capable of it, is always welcome! Begin anytime.

HH

HH, I’m not discussing this topic because I know very little about immigration, and as such I don’t feel qualifed to talk about it.

Regardless, I still fear for the outcome of this thread… if it’s anything like your last ones, it’ll be a rep vs. dem pissing match in about a page.

I thought you were setting up your account to ignore me. What happened?

I couldn’t find the ignore button… :frowning:

What happened to “who the hell are you?”[/quote]

I know, posting here at 8:30 on a Friday night. I’m a loser! Actually, when you have 3 younger kids…well, figure it out.

Welcome to America! Taking jibes at each other is sport. Calling someone a moron is NORMAL. Don’t take it so seriously. For ex, Vroom just called me a ‘trolling asshole’, which was me setting him up. But its all just jousting for fun.

44

[quote]hspder wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
Ahh…a follower is not her. Keep trying.

Ayn was an immigrant herself. Find me a single quote from her that supports tough immigration laws as being objectivist, and I’ll be happy to concede.

Alternatively, come up with a consistent objectivist reasoning against free immigration, and I’ll concede.

Until then there’s no amount of insults that can get out of the hole you dug yourself into: you were the one continuously praising her and praising Greenspan for being a follower. And now that you disagree with her view, you refuse to admit it or provide a quote that shows her opinion on it – you sulk. You take infantile stabs at “libs”, like we were some sub-human race.

Very mature.

Headhunter wrote:
Is that for relief after Sowell rips you a new one?

“rips you a new one”? We might be catty, but our discussions are actually very civilized. They’re stimulating. We meet for lunch every week we are in campus. We like keeping our brains active. We have some level of respect for each other. We both earned it.

In fact, I have even more intense discussions with some of my liberal friends – in particular about this issue of immigration, as you might imagine. Yes, us sub-human libs like to argue with each other a lot.

A discussion is about making each other think. Sometimes we even change each others minds. And that’s OK, you know? Two minds always think better than one, even when they do not agree.
[/quote]

You claimed that Ms. Rand advocated elimination of immigration controls. Its up to you to find where the lady herself, not an underling, says this. Should we take words attributed to Jesus in the Bible as truly his? “Well, John says that Jesus said…” blah, blah, blah. Nope.

You made a claim. Back it up. I made no claim about her saying this stuff.

Ms. Rand was a philosopher. I doubt very much that she had anything to say on an issue like this.

45

[quote]Headhunter wrote:
danmaftei wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
danmaftei wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
makkun wrote:
danmaftei wrote:
I fear for the outcome of this thread…

Considering who started it, I think your fears are not unfounded.

Makkun

Don’t be afraid boys! Intelligent dialogue, if you are capable of it, is always welcome! Begin anytime.

HH

HH, I’m not discussing this topic because I know very little about immigration, and as such I don’t feel qualifed to talk about it.

Regardless, I still fear for the outcome of this thread… if it’s anything like your last ones, it’ll be a rep vs. dem pissing match in about a page.

I thought you were setting up your account to ignore me. What happened?

I couldn’t find the ignore button… :frowning:

What happened to “who the hell are you?”

I know, posting here at 8:30 on a Friday night. I’m a loser! Actually, when you have 3 younger kids…well, figure it out.

Welcome to America! Taking jibes at each other is sport. Calling someone a moron is NORMAL. Don’t take it so seriously. For ex, Vroom just called me a ‘trolling asshole’, which was me setting him up. But its all just jousting for fun.

[/quote]

In that case, fuck those fucking republican bastards pieces of shit!

46

[quote]danmaftei wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
danmaftei wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
danmaftei wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
makkun wrote:
danmaftei wrote:
I fear for the outcome of this thread…

Considering who started it, I think your fears are not unfounded.

Makkun

Don’t be afraid boys! Intelligent dialogue, if you are capable of it, is always welcome! Begin anytime.

HH

HH, I’m not discussing this topic because I know very little about immigration, and as such I don’t feel qualifed to talk about it.

Regardless, I still fear for the outcome of this thread… if it’s anything like your last ones, it’ll be a rep vs. dem pissing match in about a page.

I thought you were setting up your account to ignore me. What happened?

I couldn’t find the ignore button… :frowning:

What happened to “who the hell are you?”

I know, posting here at 8:30 on a Friday night. I’m a loser! Actually, when you have 3 younger kids…well, figure it out.

Welcome to America! Taking jibes at each other is sport. Calling someone a moron is NORMAL. Don’t take it so seriously. For ex, Vroom just called me a ‘trolling asshole’, which was me setting him up. But its all just jousting for fun.

In that case, fuck those fucking republican bastards pieces of shit![/quote]

Now you’ve got it!!

Now…go back to Bucharest!! :wink:

47

Hspder,

I thought about your argument overnight and I think it is false. Here’s why: You have to produce something Ms. Rand said in this regard, as I mentoined before. I don’t think you’ll be able to do that. Even if you do, SO WHAT? Even Ms. Rand disagreed with her favorite philosopher (Aristotle) on various points. Does that make her a hypocrit? No. You can certainly agree with someone’s core ideas but disagree with them in some singular details. Howard Dean is the head of your party. Do you agree with everything he says? (God help you if you do!)

I’m surprised that someone teaching at Stanford would use this kind of argument. Is this how libs trick their students into becoming fellow libs? Maybe…you were tricked like this, long ago?

48

Hspder,

I think you’re lucky to have found this site. You see, I think most of your colleagues are similar in background to you. Most are the children of hippies, you grew up in the upper-middle class, you never went hungry, and you even got to go to Disneyworld (Land?) a couple of times. So, you have a very insulated view of the world. You think the world is basically a happy place, with summer vacations, a regular paycheck and maybe even a second home in the mountains!! Wow!

It is not. It is a brutal, violent warzone. In the real world, your boss would LOVE to fire you and replace you with someone cheaper. The gang five miles away in the inner-city would be thrilled to rape your wife while you watch, rob you, murder you, and burn down your nice suburban home. Politicians, like Bill Clinton, would love it if you send your daughters to ‘intern’ with him. They crave power – the same motive that leads these beasts to seduce young girls leads them to enslave countries.

You will never defeat this evil or make this world a better place through liberalism. Only a Randian society, where all relationships between humans are VOLUNTARY (and yes, the SWAT teams and Marines will still be there to protect you from those who violate this principle) can ever lead us out of the morass.

I suggest that you read Shrugged or The Fountainhead. And welcome to reality.

49

[quote]Headhunter wrote:
You can certainly agree with someone’s core ideas but disagree with them in some singular details. [/quote]

Of course. However that’s not what I’m questioning. What I’m questioning is:

  1. You constantly advertise Ayn Rand’s ideals, inviting each and everyone to read her books. Many would say you’re to Objectivism what Tom Cruise is for Scientology. You don’t see me telling everybody how great Howard Dean is, and I have been seen SEVERAL times criticizing the Democrats. I’ve admitted that I voted for Arnold, and I’ve said before I would have voted for Ike (Dwight Eisenhower) if I had been old enough to vote at the time.

For you, however, this is the first time I see you falling outside the line of Objectivism, so you can’t be surprised that I’m surprised.

  1. No, I can’t find any direct quote from Ayn Rand on immigration. However, I feel that her philosophy is VERY well – and consistently – represented by the article I linked to, which defends free immigration. Since my dear colleague Tom Sowell has NOT been able to find an equally consistent argument against free immigration within the philosophy of objectivism, my assumption is that you won’t either. I hope that does not offend you – I’m not saying you’re less intelligent than Tom, just that you’re not more.
50

[quote]Headhunter wrote:
I think you’re lucky to have found this site. You see, I think most of your colleagues are similar in background to you. Most are the children of hippies, you grew up in the upper-middle class, you never went hungry, and you even got to go to Disneyworld (Land?) a couple of times. So, you have a very insulated view of the world. You think the world is basically a happy place, with summer vacations, a regular paycheck and maybe even a second home in the mountains!! Wow![/quote]

What the heck are you blabbering about? Where did you get that idea and why is that material to this discussion? Have you even paying attention to any of my posts?

51

[quote]Headhunter wrote:
Politicians, like Bill Clinton, would love it if you send your daughters to ‘intern’ with him. They crave power – the same motive that leads these beasts to seduce young girls leads them to enslave countries.[/quote]

By the way, I hereby elect the above paragraph as the most psychotic on T-Nation. Ever.

Dude, get treated. Commit yourself to a mental institution. Seriously. If not for our sake, for the sake of your students.

52

[quote]makkun wrote:
Having lived in a country (Japan), where you mostly don’t get this courtesy (at least not 10 years back) in council services, you start appreciating the fact that not everyone is a language genius (like many of the pure english speakers I met there who after years in the country relied on their English) and that offering services in the most spoken other languages just speeds up the process.[/quote]

Didn’t know you lived in Japan. Interestingly, that makes a friend of mine almost like the mirror (reversed) version of you: he’s a British guy (Welsh, to be more precise) who went to Japan to give English classes and then moved to Germany, where he has been living for 6 years now (he speaks fluent German).

His experience in Japan was very much in tune with what you describe; it’s amazingly hard to survive there without learning Japanese – he ended up giving up and just learning it (he’s one of those language geniuses I guess), because he couldn’t live there any other way.

Suffice to say, the number of people who permanently immigrate to Japan is negligible. However, I do not think that language is the prime reason for that.

53

hspder,

[quote]hspder wrote:
[…]
Didn’t know you lived in Japan.[/quote]

I’m full of secrets… :wink:

Now it’s getting spooky… :wink:

This argument popped up when I thought about whether there should be public foreign language services. I’ve heard the argument often before that “they” should learn “our” language (in whatever context). And in principle, I even agree - it always makes sense to learn the local language. But that only works when a society is inclusive enough go give you a chance to do so and to bridge your time there with a little help. If I wouldn’t have had any (influential) japanese friends, my life would have been much more complicated.

I understand that there is a balance to keep in welcoming soujourners into your society, between making them feel at home as guests and require them to adhere to culture and language. People can fail on both sides and having seen US and Canadian service personnel live in foreign countries for decades and not being able to go to a shop is a failure I have seen more than once. I guess that it seems hard to accept language learning when you speak a lingua franca like English - and in countries like Japan, you might just be on the border where this does not suffice anymore.

My knowledge on Japan is a bit rusty, but as far as I remember there always used to be a (relatively) big Iranian community, and of course many other Asians (in a very small percentage to the general population).

And Japan is, towards immigrants (or foreigners in general) really not what we would see as a very inclusive culture. Besides - it’s really expensive…

Makkun

54

[quote]makkun wrote:
My knowledge on Japan is a bit rusty, but as far as I remember there always used to be a (relatively) big Iranian community, and of course many other Asians (in a very small percentage to the general population).[/quote]

Almost 99.3% of the population of Japan consider themselves to be ethnic Japanese, according to 2004 Justice Ministry alien registration statistics.

Even if you count all the illegal immigrants and the US Soldiers stationed there, the total number of non-Japanese is less than 3 Million, which is nothing, considering that Japan has close to 130 Million people…

55

hspder,

[quote]hspder wrote:
makkun wrote:
My knowledge on Japan is a bit rusty, but as far as I remember there always used to be a (relatively) big Iranian community, and of course many other Asians (in a very small percentage to the general population).

Almost 99.3% of the population of Japan consider themselves to be ethnic Japanese, according to 2004 Justice Ministry alien registration statistics.

Even if you count all the illegal immigrants and the US Soldiers stationed there, the total number of non-Japanese is less than 3 Million, which is nothing, considering that Japan has close to 130 Million people…
[/quote]

Yeah, but if you continue reading the Wikipedia entry on this :wink: you will find that in these statistics, the ethnic minorities of zainichi, ainu and ryukyu are omitted.

Interestingly enough, when you get into discussions on these topics in Japan, you end up with having almost all evils connected to all those foreigners who come into the country to commit crimes. Pretty much like in much more integrative societies (like the UK and the US).

I would argue that it is in most cases rather the perceived level of “inflow” of foreigners and change to culture and society, than the actual figures.

Makkun

56

[quote]hspder wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
Politicians, like Bill Clinton, would love it if you send your daughters to ‘intern’ with him. They crave power – the same motive that leads these beasts to seduce young girls leads them to enslave countries.

By the way, I hereby elect the above paragraph as the most psychotic on T-Nation. Ever.

Dude, get treated. Commit yourself to a mental institution. Seriously. If not for our sake, for the sake of your students.[/quote]

You’ve just confirmed it: you must be the child of hippies, living in a happy-sappy world of suburbs and power-shopping, and “Let’s do lunch.”. Only someone living in an irovy tower at Stanford could write what you did.

Psychotic? Nah, call it realistic. You sure were upset when I challenged your insulated world. Isn’t that a sign of neurosis?

I grew up in the inner-city of Detroit. My father was an old army sergeant then truck driver. I worked nights in a factory while going to college. I would venture to say that my view of the world is much more realistic than that of someone in an insular world. The shame is people like you who put vermin like Clinton into office, over a fine man like Dole. I actually heard some asshole soccer mom say, “I could never vote for Dole! He’s got that ugly arm and all!!” (She was ‘cordially’ corrected.)

Someday, and I hope soon, the real people of this country will kick the shit out of these 'limosine liberals’and take back our country.

57

[quote]makkun wrote:
Yeah, but if you continue reading the Wikipedia entry on this :wink: you will find that in these statistics, the ethnic minorities of zainichi, ainu and ryukyu are omitted.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_issues_in_Japan[/quote]

True. However, looking at those would almost be like start looking at how many Scots live in England…

(I know a Japanese person would disagree with that statement, but my point is that there are degrees of “alienness”, and those ethnic minorities are far less alien to Japan than, say, a German or a Welsh… or an American. :-))

[quote]makkun wrote:
Interestingly enough, when you get into discussions on these topics in Japan, you end up with having almost all evils connected to all those foreigners who come into the country to commit crimes. Pretty much like in much more integrative societies (like the UK and the US).[/quote]

Oh yeah. Does not surprise me a bit.

It’s amazing how people fear change and react poorly to difference.

As I mentioned before, where I live – in the Peninsula of the San Francisco Bay Area – Asians are the ethnic majority (mostly Chinese, but also a lot of Japanese and Vietnamese).

It’s absolutely fascinating to hear or see how my colleagues that are either Asia-born or of Asian descent react when they go to regions of the US that have a racial mix that is fundamentally different. For example, if I tell one of them that I absolutely love San Diego (which is mostly White / “Latino”), and that, if it wasn’t for Stanford I’d much rather live there, every single one of them will immediately react by saying they hated when they went there, because it’s really “low-profile”, filled with “rude people”, “dirty”, and… “too close to the border”.

“Too close to the border”.

On the other hand, every single white or Latino person I’ve asked about San Diego absolutely loves it. It’s as close to paradise as it gets in the West Coast.

Some people are actually even more direct in their true motivations.

One of my wife’s closet colleagues is Vietnamese. My wife and I also like NYC a lot – so she convinced her colleague to go there. When she got back she (her Vietnamese colleague) started commenting that she actually didn’t like it (NYC) at all, especially complaining about how many more “dark” people are there compared to the SF Bay Area region (that is only 3%, with most of the black community isolated in Oakland, which is on the East Bay). She started going on about how unpleasant they are and how they are such a bad influence.

Now, like a lot of other Brazilians, my wife is very fair skinned even though her father is VERY black, born in East Africa (Mozambique). A wonderful man, which I’m closer to than I was ever to my own father. She is proud of that African heritage, and she should be. After she revealed that to her colleague, well, her skin color didn’t change, her personality didn’t change, but somehow the revelation of her heritage did change the perception her colleague had of her, and the attitude towards her is definitely very different. I’d describe it as “condescending”.

[quote]makkun wrote:
I would argue that it is in most cases rather the perceived level of “inflow” of foreigners and change to culture and society, than the actual figures.[/quote]

Absolutely, 100% agreed.

58

[quote]Headhunter wrote:
you must be the child of hippies,[/quote]

I’m not going to bother to continue to respond to your psychosis, however, I feel obliged to say this:

Yes, I AM the child of hippies. My parents were active participants in the hippie movement here in San Francisco, in the 1960s and 1970s. And I’m proud of it.

Happy now?

59

[quote]hspder wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
you must be the child of hippies,

I’m not going to bother to continue to respond to your psychosis, however, I feel obliged to say this:

Yes, I AM the child of hippies. My parents were active participants in the hippy movement here in San Francisco, in the 1960s and 1970s. And I’m proud of it.

Happy now?
[/quote]

I think the word Hippie has morphed into something it never used to be. I am an old Hippie. Back in the 60?s and 70?s you were a Hippie or a Redneck (which has also morphed) or you were Establishment (which has disappeared or maybe everyone is establishment today) I can not think of any other stereotypes that were not racial.
And by the way I do not know a lot about Ann Coulter but I thought her article to be Common Sense

60

[quote]hspder wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
you must be the child of hippies,

I’m not going to bother to continue to respond to your psychosis, however, I feel obliged to say this:

Yes, I AM the child of hippies. My parents were active participants in the hippy movement here in San Francisco, in the 1960s and 1970s. And I’m proud of it.

Happy now?
[/quote]

Not really. Our world needs hard-headed realists (like Harry Truman), not libs. Hoping to appease evil people by being ‘nice’ simply results in more evil. Teaching college students that America is evil (ever read Howard Zinn?), teaching these innocents that the way to peace is appeasement, simply means that a lot of good men will have to die, will have to pay in their own blood, to conquer this evil.

Imagine if Jimmy Carter had confronted the Iranians? Imagine if Clinton had confronted the terrorists? Good men are dying over there, because of liberal appeasement. No, I’m not happy at all.