Ted Kennedy's Immigration Legacy -- and why did he do it?

[Danno 1,228]

NumbersUSA claims that the US is overpopulated. Funny claim seeing that out of 238 countries, the US ranks 177 in population density at 80 people per square mile. In comparison, Spain (110) has 220/sqm, France (94) has 280/sqm, Poland (86) has 320/sqm, Switzerland (65) has 460/sqm, Germany (54) has 600/sqm, Belgium (32) has 880/sqm and The Netherlands (27) come in at 1020/sqm.

Now, if we compare the US to Canada (227) with 7.8/sqm, then yes, we're overpopulated. Otherwise, that particular claim is hard to defend.

Has NumbersUSA figured out yet how - without immigration - we would support an ever growing population - both in real and relative terms - of retired people?

One must think a little broader than how many people can we stand up in a square mile when consideringh "over crowded"

Things like infrastructure, natural resources, medical facilities and the budget to operate with sizable free services.

Things like Available schools and available jobs.

This and more determines over crowding.

[Heracles 417]

An anti-immigration stance is fundamentally based on the veiled assumption that people born in America are better than others based solely on their location of birth. There are few who will agree with that when you put it that way, but think about it. There are two reasons for opposing immigration. 1. National Security. This is reasonable and should be supported. We need to know who is coming in, in order to keep out murderers, terrorists, etc.

2. Protect the economy, jobs, oxygen, whatever you want to call it. This is an argument made by people who think that just because they were born in the US, they should get the jobs, education, economy, and resources they want without competition. This isn’t good for America in the long term. As long as we avoid competition and artificially choke the workforce to inflate wages, American jobs will continue to be shipped overseas. If you try to penalize companies for doing this, either the companies themselves will leave our shores entirely, or they won’t be able to compete with foreign equivalents.

We like to calm ourselves by thinking that the outsourced jobs are sweat-shop factory jobs. While some of them are, other countries are developing middle class professionals that are more qualified, and willing to do more for less money. The jobs that are outsourced overseas are becoming more technical and skilled. While this pattern continues, America continues to be more and more populated by middlemen. I’m not saying that this process is irreversible and it probably could never lead to a crash but only a rapid decline. But trying to protect ourselves with a by bottlenecking immigration is just burying your head in the sand.

Furthermore, such a policy is based on the unwarranted assumption that everybody on the inside of this immigration barrier is better than everybody on the outside. This policy could be continued indefinitely, but eventually you will end up with the inside being a cesspool of figuratively inbred underachievers and nobody left that wants to get in.

Immigration should be expanded to an open door policy. Applicants would be screened for National Security and a fee would be charged to cover the cost of that screening. But the process could be done in a relatively short period of time (months) and wouldn’t be based on quotas. Everybody who applies and doesn’t pose a threat would be admitted. At that point, anybody without proper documents could rightly be considered a national security threat, since anybody who wasn’t a threat could receive documents reasonably easily.

Well then the rest of the OECD must simply be stupid. Especially considering most of them are tightening their immigration laws. The average Joe in America is already quite poor yet you are advocating allowing even more unskilled labor to enter the country. Eventually turning it into some sort of Nigeria, Brazil, China or India.

What do you think an excess of workers does to salaries and living conditions?

Legal and illegal immigration are two totally different concepts.

[Danno 1,228]

Dems are using immigration to build an unbeatable voter base dependent on Govt Programs.

Very few Immigrants I have known embrace smaller Govt.

Funny, most immigrants I know (myself included) are against big Gov't and welfare handouts.

As a rule, people don't move to America - the land of opportunity - to be a welfare-collecting unemployed loser.

One of us should post data to see who is closer to the truth

OF those who do come and basically live off the rest of us, I would not go so far as to call them a looser, many are incapable of speaking the language or skilled enough to do anything more than basically mooch.

It's not their fault, it is ours for inviting this problem.

* these folks you know of .... what countries do they come from were taking free services from the Gov is looked down on?

Hell more and more Americans have no shame in demanding free bees.

Edited September 8, 2009 by Danno

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

NumbersUSA claims that the US is overpopulated. Funny claim seeing that out of 238 countries, the US ranks 177 in population density at 80 people per square mile. In comparison, Spain (110) has 220/sqm, France (94) has 280/sqm, Poland (86) has 320/sqm, Switzerland (65) has 460/sqm, Germany (54) has 600/sqm, Belgium (32) has 880/sqm and The Netherlands (27) come in at 1020/sqm.

Now, if we compare the US to Canada (227) with 7.8/sqm, then yes, we're overpopulated. Otherwise, that particular claim is hard to defend.

Has NumbersUSA figured out yet how - without immigration - we would support an ever growing population - both in real and relative terms - of retired people?

One must think a little broader than how many people can we stand up in a square mile when consideringh "over crowded" Things like infrastructure, natural resources, medical facilities and the budget to operate with sizable free services. Things like Available schools and available jobs.

This and more determines over crowding.

Well, let's take the extreme. Having been to the Netherlands where the population density is 13 times what it is here ( 1020/sqm vs. 80/sqm), I can tell you that people there aren't exactly "squeezed" or "shelved". In terms of natural resources, they probably fare quite a bit worse than we do. They probably have fewer roads per capita as well. Better services, though, in the medical, public transport, public services and education arenas. And they're doing surprisingly well. According to NumbersUSA , that would be impossible.

[Heracles 417]

Dems are using immigration to build an unbeatable voter base dependent on Govt Programs.

Very few Immigrants I have known embrace smaller Govt.

Funny, most immigrants I know (myself included) are against big Gov't and welfare handouts.

As a rule, people don't move to America - the land of opportunity - to be a welfare-collecting unemployed loser.

It's true. Immigrants are here for the green not for the compassion, lifestyle or standard of living.

The type of immigrant that fits this ideology migrates here accordingly. It also explains a lot of the immigration patterns and statistics.

Edited September 8, 2009 by Booyah!

[mawilson 2,133]

Well then the rest of the OECD must simply be stupid. Especially considering most of them are tightening their immigration laws. The average Joe in America is already quite poor yet you are advocating allowing even more unskilled labor to enter the country. Eventually turning it into some sort of Nigeria, Brazil, China or India.

Cheap labor is not a bad thing if we want to compete with India and China. Of course,

this approach works only if we can preserve them as a permanent underclass, and the

only way to do that is to perpetuate the flow of new arrivals.

[Heracles 417]

Well then the rest of the OECD must simply be stupid. Especially considering most of them are tightening their immigration laws. The average Joe in America is already quite poor yet you are advocating allowing even more unskilled labor to enter the country. Eventually turning it into some sort of Nigeria, Brazil, China or India.

Cheap labor is not a bad thing if we want to compete with India and China. Of course,

this approach works only if we can preserve them as a permanent underclass, and the

only way to do that is to perpetuate the flow of new arrivals.

Quite true.

Personally, I would prefer to live in a country where I can enjoy all parts of it rather than be restricted to my gated community or my country club. I actually pity the rich here. Stuck in their little neighborhoods in their 15,000 sq ft homes. They couldn't pay me to have that lifestyle. I much prefer an island in Greece or in Australia. That is something i definitely miss from there. That is, not having no go zones.

[Heracles 417]

Well, let's take the extreme. Having been to the Netherlands where the population density is 13 times what it is here ( 1020/sqm vs. 80/sqm), I can tell you that people there aren't exactly "squeezed" or "shelved". In terms of natural resources, they probably fare quite a bit worse than we do. They probably have fewer roads per capita as well. Better services, though, in the medical, public transport, public services and education arenas. And they're doing surprisingly well. According to NumbersUSA , that would be impossible.

All of the countries with an extremely high standard of living, have under 20 million in population.

[mawilson 2,133]

Well then the rest of the OECD must simply be stupid. Especially considering most of them are tightening their immigration laws. The average Joe in America is already quite poor yet you are advocating allowing even more unskilled labor to enter the country. Eventually turning it into some sort of Nigeria, Brazil, China or India.

Cheap labor is not a bad thing if we want to compete with India and China. Of course,

this approach works only if we can preserve them as a permanent underclass, and the

only way to do that is to perpetuate the flow of new arrivals.

Quite true.

Personally, I would prefer to live in a country where I can enjoy all parts of it rather than be restricted to my gated community or my country club. I actually pity the rich here. Stuck in their little neighborhoods in their 15,000 sq ft homes. They couldn't pay me to have that lifestyle. I much prefer an island in Greece or in Australia. That is something i definitely miss from there. That is, not having no go zones.

Yep.

[SMR 368]

An anti-immigration stance is fundamentally based on the veiled assumption that people born in America are better than others based solely on their location of birth. There are few who will agree with that when you put it that way, but think about it. There are two reasons for opposing immigration. 1. National Security. This is reasonable and should be supported. We need to know who is coming in, in order to keep out murderers, terrorists, etc.

2. Protect the economy, jobs, oxygen, whatever you want to call it. This is an argument made by people who think that just because they were born in the US, they should get the jobs, education, economy, and resources they want without competition. This isn’t good for America in the long term. As long as we avoid competition and artificially choke the workforce to inflate wages, American jobs will continue to be shipped overseas. If you try to penalize companies for doing this, either the companies themselves will leave our shores entirely, or they won’t be able to compete with foreign equivalents.

We like to calm ourselves by thinking that the outsourced jobs are sweat-shop factory jobs. While some of them are, other countries are developing middle class professionals that are more qualified, and willing to do more for less money. The jobs that are outsourced overseas are becoming more technical and skilled. While this pattern continues, America continues to be more and more populated by middlemen. I’m not saying that this process is irreversible and it probably could never lead to a crash but only a rapid decline. But trying to protect ourselves with a by bottlenecking immigration is just burying your head in the sand.

Furthermore, such a policy is based on the unwarranted assumption that everybody on the inside of this immigration barrier is better than everybody on the outside. This policy could be continued indefinitely, but eventually you will end up with the inside being a cesspool of figuratively inbred underachievers and nobody left that wants to get in.

Immigration should be expanded to an open door policy. Applicants would be screened for National Security and a fee would be charged to cover the cost of that screening. But the process could be done in a relatively short period of time (months) and wouldn’t be based on quotas. Everybody who applies and doesn’t pose a threat would be admitted. At that point, anybody without proper documents could rightly be considered a national security threat, since anybody who wasn’t a threat could receive documents reasonably easily.

Well then the rest of the OECD must simply be stupid. Especially considering most of them are tightening their immigration laws. The average Joe in America is already quite poor yet you are advocating allowing even more unskilled labor to enter the country. Eventually turning it into some sort of Nigeria, Brazil, China or India.

What do you think an excess of workers does to salaries and living conditions?

Legal and illegal immigration are two totally different concepts.

First off, they aren't totally different. They both involve moving from one country to another. But that's being a little #######, I suppose.

Anyways, you would never end up with something undesirable to that extent because eventually, people would stop wanting to come.

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

Did he force the 15 million illegals to come here or did he want people to do it legally? I'll bet more people are here illegally than those that came here as the results of his immigration work.

Ill offer a little guess-work.

Knowing the danger and exploitation, I doubt he "want's people to come here Illegally, but once they are here, he does everything to keep'em and add'em to his other tally.

One angle the writer did not seem to touch on (or maybe I missed it) was the oft cited reason:

Dems are using immigration to build an unbeatable voter base dependent on Govt Programs.

Very few Immigrants I have known embrace smaller Govt.

And yet, you bring a spouse here from Russia? How dare you water down our great nation Danno? Or is it 'other' immigrants who are bad?

You don't even know the difference between LEGAL and ILLEGAL immigration.

You might want to google it.

[SMR 368]

Dems are using immigration to build an unbeatable voter base dependent on Govt Programs.

Very few Immigrants I have known embrace smaller Govt.

Funny, most immigrants I know (myself included) are against big Gov't and welfare handouts.

As a rule, people don't move to America - the land of opportunity - to be a welfare-collecting unemployed loser.

One of us should post data to see who is closer to the truth

OF those who do come and basically live off the rest of us, I would not go so far as to call them a looser, many are incapable of speaking the language or skilled enough to do anything more than basically mooch.

It's not their fault, it is ours for inviting this problem.

* these folks you know of .... what countries do they come from were taking free services from the Gov is looked down on?

Hell more and more Americans have no shame in demanding free bees.

The problem isn't that we let them come. It's that we let them mooch. But if you're going to complain about mooching, then immigration is really a side issue. Why are you against foreigners coming and enjoying benefits that they didn't pay for but have nothing wrong with people who were born here but do the same thing? I am very much against mooching, but I don't limit my dislike of mooching to moochers from other countries.

Edited September 8, 2009 by SMR

[one...two...tree 2,762]

NumbersUSA claims that the US is overpopulated. Funny claim seeing that out of 238 countries, the US ranks 177 in population density at 80 people per square mile. In comparison, Spain (110) has 220/sqm, France (94) has 280/sqm, Poland (86) has 320/sqm, Switzerland (65) has 460/sqm, Germany (54) has 600/sqm, Belgium (32) has 880/sqm and The Netherlands (27) come in at 1020/sqm.

Now, if we compare the US to Canada (227) with 7.8/sqm, then yes, we're overpopulated. Otherwise, that particular claim is hard to defend.

Has NumbersUSA figured out yet how - without immigration - we would support an ever growing population - both in real and relative terms - of retired people?

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Well, let's take the extreme. Having been to the Netherlands where the population density is 13 times what it is here ( 1020/sqm vs. 80/sqm), I can tell you that people there aren't exactly "squeezed" or "shelved". In terms of natural resources, they probably fare quite a bit worse than we do. They probably have fewer roads per capita as well. Better services, though, in the medical, public transport, public services and education arenas. And they're doing surprisingly well. According to NumbersUSA , that would be impossible.

All of the countries with an extremely high standard of living, have under 20 million in population.

Yes, and they are very, very tiny. They all have a higher population concentration than the US. Population density says nothing about the standard of living in any given country. Nothing.

[Heracles 417]

First off, they aren't totally different. They both involve moving from one country to another. But that's being a little #######, I suppose.

Anyways, you would never end up with something undesirable to that extent because eventually, people would stop wanting to come.

No way. Australia's immigration is as busy as ever and they are extremely strict on illegal immigration. It is also the reason they have been able to maintain such a high standard of living and minimum wage for all. I think you will find not many, if any, other OECD countries allow illegals to operate and move as freely as you can here.

Where do you thin all of these poor unskilled illegal aliens are going to live? What sort of job do you think they will take up? What will this do for wages of Americans? Especially when a business knows that there is an endless supply of labor; which means they can pay minimum wage and get away with it. Opening up the borders entirely would absolutely destroy America's middle class and the poor would never have a chance to succeed.