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Garshasp

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Immigration is generally beneficial. It usually adds to a nation's economic wealth and military strength, and even to its intellectual power and cultural riches.

 

Unfortunately, everyone in the world today lives in a Welfare State. This is a kind of 'moderate', collectivist tyranny, which could also be described as semi-lawlessness, featuring a permanent civil war between residents, or a Hobbesian "war of all against all". Theft from, and coercion of, one's neighbors is rampant.

 

Big Brother is everywhere nowadays. So it matters how predatory and efficaciously warlike any potential new immigrants will be. Competent parasites and powerful civil warriors aren't desirable.

 

Thus today only the good people should be allowed in to a high-quality nation. Only the cream of the world's crop. The bad people, in turn, should be assiduously kept out.

 

Indeed, the good would-be immigrants should be positively recruited. Maybe even rewarded or bribed for coming over. "Good" means those who enhance the quality of life of the nation. Those who add to the material wealth and raise the level of civilization, etc.

 

Specifically, immigrants to a superior country should be workers -- especially hard and smart ones -- and not thieves/criminals or welfarist beggars. Any such social parasites and nation-destroyers should be disallowed and deported -- even those of long-time citizenship.

 

The highly religious, self-sacrificial, and welfare statist should also be forbidden. People of bad philosophy almost always undermine a nation's culture, lifestyle, and spirit, among other things.

 

"Good" also means the healthy, wealthy, comely, intelligent, well-educated, virtuous, rational, individualist, and freedom-loving. Also those who will quickly learn the language, adopt most of the culture, and become a patriot. A proper, good, and wise immigration policy will forthrightly forbid or expel all traitorous, bigoted lowlifes back to the primitive, corrupt, socialist hellholes whence they came.

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Do you know what this forum is?  Most of us aren't sympathetic to top-down social planning, nor do we consider government the right judge of who is "good," whether your definition be "the healthy, wealthy, comely, intelligent, well-educated, virtuous, rational, individualist, and freedom-loving...who will quickly learn the language, adopt most of the culture, and become a patriot [sic]" or some other.  We came together because of a shared interest in the work of a woman who immigrated to the US with barely any English, no professional skills and no investment capital.  You might be more at home elsewhere on the web.  Search on "Margaret Sanger" maybe.

 

You don't quite say so, but you seem to believe that many or most immigrants to the US actually are "the bad people... highly religious, self-sacrificial, and welfare statist......of bad philosophy...traitorous, bigoted [you should talk!?] lowlifes."  If this is your belief, do you have any data?

 

Finally, why do you want to deport them?  Exterminating them would probably be cheaper counting the costs of dealing with the ones who sneak back in.

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Reidy: You read my post in about as hostile and unjust a manner as possible. We live in a Welfare State -- not a libertarian utopia. When it comes to immigration, human quality counts. What do you think of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which abandoned most elements of seeking high-quality immigrants? This changed America radically. Was it for the better? Similar immigration policy changes took place throughout Western Europe. Did these states profit by it? Will the amnesty-and-legalization immigration bill just passed by the US Senate uplift America? Is seeking "the cream of the crop" for new citizens truly so evil and anti-Objectivist as you make it out?    

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... ... Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which abandoned most elements of seeking high-quality immigrants?

The country-quota system that preceded it was racist. There is nothing "high quality" about a guy from a small Irish village coming to the U.S. in 1964 versus someone from a previously limited-quota or restricted country coming in after that. U.S. immigration law is still racist, but the pre-1965 situation was far worse.
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Reidy: You read my post in about as hostile and unjust a manner as possible. We live in a Welfare State -- not a libertarian utopia. When it comes to immigration, human quality counts. What do you think of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which abandoned most elements of seeking high-quality immigrants? This changed America radically. Was it for the better? Similar immigration policy changes took place throughout Western Europe. Did these states profit by it? Will the amnesty-and-legalization immigration bill just passed by the US Senate uplift America? Is seeking "the cream of the crop" for new citizens truly so evil and anti-Objectivist as you make it out?    

Yes, I would say that's it's pretty straightforward collectivism to assume America wants immigrants to better the nation according to whatever top-down plan for "quality." Individual people have a right to move to other individual's property if they so voluntarily agree based on their own preferences for what betters their own lives. Anything else is initiation of force.

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Alrighty, then.  From the top. 

 

Immigration is generally beneficial. It usually adds to a nation's economic wealth and military strength, and even to its intellectual power and cultural riches.

 Strictly speaking, all of this is true.  But you're thinking in terms of the "public good" and collective actions.

If I told you that red hair and freckles usually accompany each other because of the Great Ginger Spirit, it would be an exact parallel.

 

Big Brother is everywhere nowadays.

 Also, strictly speaking, true.  But just like that, in the course of two brief sentences. . .

  

Big Brother is everywhere nowadays. So it matters how predatory and efficaciously warlike any potential new immigrants will be. Competent parasites and powerful civil warriors aren't desirable.

 "Wrong" is just about the most tactful word for it.

 

 

Thus today only the good people should be allowed in to a high-quality nation.

 Determined to be good- BY WHOM and allowed to come here- BY WHOM?

 

 

The bad people, in turn, should be assiduously kept out.

 By whom and by what right?

 

 

Indeed, the good would-be immigrants should be positively recruited. Maybe even rewarded or bribed for coming over.

 By whom, by what right and with WHOSE money?

You are suggesting that we worsen the problems you originally lamented!!!

 

 

Specifically, immigrants to a superior country should be workers -- especially hard and smart ones -- and not thieves/criminals or welfarist beggars. Any such social parasites and nation-destroyers should be disallowed and deported -- even those of long-time citizenship.

 The ends do not justify the means, and it is appalling that you would imply they do.

 

 

People of bad philosophy almost always undermine a nation's culture, lifestyle, and spirit, among other things.

 Yes, but IDEAS CANNOT BE CRIMINALIZED!

 

 

"Good" also means the healthy, wealthy, comely, intelligent, well-educated, virtuous, rational, individualist, and freedom-loving. Also those who will quickly learn the language, adopt most of the culture, and become a patriot.

 Take a second look at this list, please.  Seriously.  Look closely and tell me what's wrong with it.

 

 

When it comes to immigration, human quality counts.

WHO determines this quality, WHO enforces it and by WHAT infernal right?!

 

 

Is seeking "the cream of the crop" for new citizens truly so evil and anti-Objectivist as you make it out?    

 Judge- and prepare to be judged.  If this is moral than it is applicable to you, as well.

 

Prepare to be judged, not for your choices and your actions, but for your USEFULNESS to me.

 

Prepare to be judged for the condition of your physical body and appearance, which you have little control over; prepare to be judged for your monetary standing- whether that is important to you OR NOT!

Prepare to be judged for your intelligence or lack thereof (I will grade according to Chess-playing aptitude).

 

Prepare to be judged for every evil advocated in this thread. . . Whether you knew it to be evil, or not.

Edited by Harrison Danneskjold
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The ideas you are advocating are not freedom.  They would constitute a monstrous form of tyranny- enacted in the name of freedom. 

 

If you have trouble realizing why, by all means, feel free to ask about it.

 

I would be happy to explain it to you- precisely because I am antithetically opposed to this suggestion.

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Immigration is generally beneficial. It usually adds to a nation's economic wealth and military strength, and even to its intellectual power and cultural riches.

 

Unfortunately, everyone in the world today lives in a Welfare State. This is a kind of 'moderate', collectivist tyranny, which could also be described as semi-lawlessness, featuring a permanent civil war between residents, or a Hobbesian "war of all against all". Theft from, and coercion of, one's neighbors is rampant.

 

Big Brother is everywhere nowadays. So it matters how predatory and efficaciously warlike any potential new immigrants will be. Competent parasites and powerful civil warriors aren't desirable.

 

Thus today only the good people should be allowed in to a high-quality nation. Only the cream of the world's crop. The bad people, in turn, should be assiduously kept out.

Indeed, the good would-be immigrants should be positively recruited. Maybe even rewarded or bribed for coming over. "Good" means those who enhance the quality of life of the nation. Those who add to the material wealth and raise the level of civilization, etc.

Garshasp's personality A: -The damn cats can't keep their hands out of the cookie jar.

Garshasp's personality B: -Let's put someone in charge of who gets to eat from it from now on.

Garshasp's personality A: -But how do we decide who?

Garshasp's personality B: -Oh, I know, let's ask the guy the cats put in charge.

Garshasp's personality A: -Brilliant.

Seems a bit schizophrenic, don't you think?

You don't see any problem with the same government which is the initiator of all these evils you list (welfare state, collectivist tyranny, theft, coercion) getting put in charge of deciding who the good and who the bad immigrants are?

If any welfare state's politicians were allowed even more power over which immigrants they accept, they would pick immigrants who are most like their constituents. Obviously. Anything else would be political suicide.

The less power the government has over selecting immigrants, the more likely it is that the better people will be the ones to come over. The only reason why criminals have a better chance to make it into the US today is precisely because making it into the US involves jumping fences, dealing with smugglers, bribing government officials and falsifying papers.

It's precisely your idea, shared by many Americans (most of them on the political Right), that has caused this state of affairs. Perhaps it's time for you and your central planning suggestions to get out of the way, and let individual Americans exercise the freedom of choice they have left to decide which immigrants to invite over, and/or "bribe" to come over. Without requiring permission for it from the government.

And, as far as the problem of the people coming over being enticed by government handouts, address the source of that problem. Although I don't think it's as big a problem as you are making it seem. I'm confident that most of the problems, be it in Western Europe or the US, that you are blaming on immigrants, are actually caused by something else entirely, and the immigrants' involvement is merely incidental. In fact, in Western Europe at least, the immigrants are the victims of government labor regulations that cause massive unemployment among newcomers. They're not the cause of that unemployment, or the civil war those policies will inevitably lead to.

Edited by Nicky
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