Israel's immigrant children fight deportation

[Danno 1,228]

That makes sense. Restore the national balance. Iroquois and Seneca in NY and the Great Lakes, Seminole in Florida, Apache in the southwest, etc. Whitey out!

At a certain time that would have been a good plan but since they failed to act.... they lost their country.

Should we not learn from the mistakes recorded in immigration history?

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

At a certain time that would have been a good plan but since they failed to act.... they lost their country.

Should we not learn from the mistakes recorded in immigration history?

You missed my post. Its right before the one you just answered.

[scandal 951]

You missed my post. Its right before the one you just answered.

He likes me more than he likes you.

[Danno 1,228]

Our "make up" has changed a lot since the founding of this nation. The slave trade and then each wave of immigrants, you know the history. Which point in time would you baseline as our "historical make up"? Give me a year, or even a decade.

Of course other than the Slave trade most immigrants came from Europe with small numbers from a few other places.

By the late 1800's I think many people felt we had taken too many, too fast and if you look at immigration numbers as the early 1900's came around Immigration was slowed down considerably.

As the century passed on with low levels of immigration, I think even with our regional, racial and political differences we seemed to grow into what we .... or I would call the American experience as a people.

We basically enjoyed the same past times, worshiped or respected the Same God, Ate the same foods,

cheered the same type sports, enjoyed music with minor differences,

embraces the same basic moral code,

even enjoyed the same basic customs of dress as well as the same family order. (of course there were some exceptions one could find their numbers were small)

Though we had some differences we were a lot more alike, than we were different.

As people from other parts of the world, immigrated here; though they might be from a starkly different culture did, within a generation or two become immersed in the American culture, todays Immigrants rarely experience this due to the numbers.

What we have today are Ethnic pockets or even whole parts of cities where even Schools, are so crowded with non english speaking students that, even this historical place to foster immersion is being lost.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Of course other than the Slave trade most immigrants came from Europe with small numbers from a few other places.

...

What we have today are Ethnic pockets or even whole parts of cities where even Schools, are so crowded with non english speaking students that, even this historical place to foster immersion is being lost.

"Ethnic pockets" existed aplenty back in the good ol days when most immigrants were from Europe. In just about any big city. European immigrants, for example those from Ireland, were met with hatred and fear back when they came. Sure, today we say "they were European" but that's not how the nativists saw it back when they were actually pouring in.

But, of course.. you know all this.

So let's dispense with this little segue and get back to my original question. Which year or decade would you like to designate as the baseline that defines our historical makeup? Remember, even before all us pesky non-Euros starting showing up and being born right here in your (ha) country, the "make up" changed quite a bit. Jews, Catholics, Irish, Eyetalians, Slavs... each injection was new and foreign at the time. So yes, state your year and let's go from there.

[Danno 1,228]

"Ethnic pockets" existed aplenty back in the good ol days when most immigrants were from Europe. In just about any big city. European immigrants, for example those from Ireland, were met with hatred and fear back when they came. Sure, today we say "they were European" but that's not how the nativists saw it back when they were actually pouring in.

But, of course.. you know all this.

So let's dispense with this little segue and get back to my original question. Which year or decade would you like to designate as the baseline that defines our historical makeup? Remember, even before all us pesky non-Euros starting showing up and being born right here in your (ha) country, the "make up" changed quite a bit. Jews, Catholics, Irish, Eyetalians, Slavs... each injection was new and foreign at the time. So yes, state your year and let's go from there.

I thought I noted these objections were in part the reason immigration numbers were greatly reduced as we went through most of the 1900's

As for a year, let's say the "greatest generation" era.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

I thought I noted these objections were in part the reason immigration numbers were greatly reduced as we went through most of the 1900's

As for a year, let's say the "greatest generation" era.

Interesting choice. Is it possible your choice of that generation is driven by the fact that as a child your elders belonged to that generation? I am wondering why you didn't pick a time period going further back. Lack of familiarity? Or is your choice driven by the fact that this was the "last" generation prior to this country opening the floodgates to non-European immigration? I am curious, any insight you wish to provide into your choice would be appreciated.

In the interests of full disclosure, just so you know where I'm coming from. My parents, both non-European immigrants, gained legal entry into this country in the early 1970s. I was born in this very state in the mid 1970s. So obviously (and I am sure you understand this) my preference for a baseline would be no earlier than that. That's my reasoning, the desire to exist. What's yours?

[Danno 1,228]

Interesting choice. Is it possible your choice of that generation is driven by the fact that as a child your elders belonged to that generation? I am wondering why you didn't pick a time period going further back. Lack of familiarity? Or is your choice driven by the fact that this was the "last" generation prior to this country opening the floodgates to non-European immigration? I am curious, any insight you wish to provide into your choice would be appreciated.

In the interests of full disclosure, just so you know where I'm coming from. My parents, both non-European immigrants, gained legal entry into this country in the early 1970s. I was born in this very state in the mid 1970s. So obviously (and I am sure you understand this) my preference for a baseline would be no earlier than that. That's my reasoning, the desire to exist. What's yours?

There really wasn't a reason why I picked that space of history other than: in the early part of the 1900's we did have some of the problems due to mass immigration, as the immigration rates were cut down by the 30's 40's and 50's the low immigration rates had done their work and I think most would agree we were as united as we had ever been.

IMHO we are not repeating the mistakes of an earlier time when we allowed too many too fast.... because this time we are compounding the problem by Immigrating large numbers of people who are vastly different than the swarms of Europeans were, from each other.

And I would guess this did start in the 70's.

I grew up in NJ and can hardly remember ever hearing non english speaking folks about, only a few exceptions even come to mind.

[peejay 327]

There really wasn't a reason why I picked that space of history other than: in the early part of the 1900's we did have some of the problems due to mass immigration, as the immigration rates were cut down by the 30's 40's and 50's the low immigration rates had done their work and I think most would agree we were as united as we had ever been.

IMHO we are not repeating the mistakes of an earlier time when we allowed too many too fast.... because this time we are compounding the problem by Immigrating large numbers of people who are vastly different than the swarms of Europeans were, from each other.

And I would guess this did start in the 70's.

I grew up in NJ and can hardly remember ever hearing non english speaking folks about, only a few exceptions even come to mind.

In the 1920's America had no problem slamming the door on immigration when the country felt it was time to do so. Now, even merely suggesting it even in times of high domestic unemployment is met with howls of racism and nativism. Total bullshit! Even suggesting a crackdown on illegal immigration is met with resistance and finger pointing. Totally absurd!

Clearly the USA has lost it's senses and the power to control its own destiny. Sad!

[Danno 1,228]

In the 1920's America had no problem slamming the door on immigration when the country felt it was time to do so. Now, even merely suggesting it even in times of high domestic unemployment is met with howls of racism and nativism. Total bullshit! Even suggesting a crackdown on illegal immigration is met with resistance and finger pointing. Totally absurd!

Clearly the USA has lost it's senses and the power to control its own destiny. Sad!

Hey I am all for "Multi Cultural" tourism, it does everyone good to better be aware of the various cultures we have in the world but... As long as the myth that a "multi cultural society is better" keeps being repeated I will counter it with vigor ..... and occasionally with facts.

Here is a huge study which clearly showed the results which anyone who has a pulse... and has lived in highly multi cultural locations can attest.

----------------------------------------------

The downside of diversity

A Harvard political scientist finds that diversity hurts civic life. What happens when a liberal scholar unearths an inconvenient truth?

(Illustration/ Keith Negley)

By Michael Jonas | August 5, 2007

IT HAS BECOME increasingly popular to speak of racial and ethnic diversity as a civic strength. From multicultural festivals to pronouncements from political leaders, the message is the same: our differences make us stronger.

But a massive new study, based on detailed interviews of nearly 30,000 people across America, has concluded just the opposite. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam -- famous for "Bowling Alone," his 2000 book on declining civic engagement -- has found that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings.

"The extent of the effect is shocking," says Scott Page, a University of Michigan political scientist.

The study comes at a time when the future of the American melting pot is the focus of intense political debate, from immigration to race-based admissions to schools, and it poses challenges to advocates on all sides of the issues. The study is already being cited by some conservatives as proof of the harm large-scale immigration causes to the nation's social fabric. But with demographic trends already pushing the nation inexorably toward greater diversity, the real question may yet lie ahead: how to handle the unsettling social changes that Putnam's research predicts.

"We can't ignore the findings," says Ali Noorani, executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition. "The big question we have to ask ourselves is, what do we do about it; what are the next steps?"

The study is part of a fascinating new portrait of diversity emerging from recent scholarship. Diversity, it shows, makes us uncomfortable -- but discomfort, it turns out, isn't always a bad thing. Unease with differences helps explain why teams of engineers from different cultures may be ideally suited to solve a vexing problem. Culture clashes can produce a dynamic give-and-take, generating a solution that may have eluded a group of people with more similar backgrounds and approaches. At the same time, though, Putnam's work adds to a growing body of research indicating that more diverse populations seem to extend themselves less on behalf of collective needs and goals.

His findings on the downsides of diversity have also posed a challenge for Putnam, a liberal academic whose own values put him squarely in the pro-diversity camp.

Putnam has long staked out ground as both a researcher and a civic player, someone willing to describe social problems and then have a hand in addressing them. He says social science should be "simultaneously rigorous and relevant," meeting high research standards while also "speaking to concerns of our fellow citizens." But on a topic as charged as ethnicity and race, Putnam worries that many people hear only what they want to.

. . .

Putnam is the nation's premier guru of civic engagement. After studying civic life in Italy in the 1970s and 1980s, Putnam turned his attention to the US, publishing an influential journal article on civic engagement in 1995 that he expanded five years later into the best-selling "Bowling Alone." The book sounded a national wake-up call on what Putnam called a sharp drop in civic connections among Americans. It won him audiences with presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and made him one of the country's best known social scientists.

Putnam claims the US has experienced a pronounced decline in "social capital," a term he helped popularize. Social capital refers to the social networks -- whether friendships or religious congregations or neighborhood associations -- that he says are key indicators of civic well-being. When social capital is high, says Putnam, communities are better places to live. Neighborhoods are safer; people are healthier; and more citizens vote.

The results of his new study come from a survey Putnam directed among residents in 41 US communities, including Boston. Residents were sorted into the four principal categories used by the US Census: black, white, Hispanic, and Asian. They were asked how much they trusted their neighbors and those of each racial category, and questioned about a long list of civic attitudes and practices, including their views on local government, their involvement in community projects, and their friendships. What emerged in more diverse communities was a bleak picture of civic desolation, affecting everything from political engagement to the state of social ties.

Putnam knew he had provocative findings on his hands. He worried about coming under some of the same liberal attacks that greeted Daniel Patrick Moynihan's landmark 1965 report on the social costs associated with the breakdown of the black family. There is always the risk of being pilloried as the bearer of "an inconvenient truth," says Putnam.

After releasing the initial results in 2001, Putnam says he spent time "kicking the tires really hard" to be sure the study had it right. Putnam realized, for instance, that more diverse communities tended to be larger, have greater income ranges, higher crime rates, and more mobility among their residents -- all factors that could depress social capital independent of any impact ethnic diversity might have.

"People would say, 'I bet you forgot about X,'" Putnam says of the string of suggestions from colleagues. "There were 20 or 30 X's."

But even after statistically taking them all into account, the connection remained strong: Higher diversity meant lower social capital. In his findings, Putnam writes that those in more diverse communities tend to "distrust their neighbors, regardless of the color of their skin, to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less, to agitate for social reform more but have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television."

"People living in ethnically diverse settings appear to 'hunker down' -- that is, to pull in like a turtle," Putnam writes.

In documenting that hunkering down, Putnam challenged the two dominant schools of thought on ethnic and racial diversity, the "contact" theory and the "conflict" theory. Under the contact theory, more time spent with those of other backgrounds leads to greater understanding and harmony between groups. Under the conflict theory, that proximity produces tension and discord.

Putnam's findings reject both theories. In more diverse communities, he says, there were neither great bonds formed across group lines nor heightened ethnic tensions, but a general civic malaise. And in perhaps the most surprising result of all, levels of trust were not only lower between groups in more diverse settings, but even among members of the same group.

"Diversity, at least in the short run," he writes, "seems to bring out the turtle in all of us."

The overall findings may be jarring during a time when it's become commonplace to sing the praises of diverse communities, but researchers in the field say they shouldn't be.

"It's an important addition to a growing body of evidence on the challenges created by diversity," says Harvard economist Edward Glaeser.

In a recent study, Glaeser and colleague Alberto Alesina demonstrated that roughly half the difference in social welfare spending between the US and Europe -- Europe spends far more -- can be attributed to the greater ethnic diversity of the US population. Glaeser says lower national social welfare spending in the US is a "macro" version of the decreased civic engagement Putnam found in more diverse communities within the country.

Economists Matthew Kahn of UCLA and Dora Costa of MIT reviewed 15 recent studies in a 2003 paper, all of which linked diversity with lower levels of social capital. Greater ethnic diversity was linked, for example, to lower school funding, census response rates, and trust in others. Kahn and Costa's own research documented higher desertion rates in the Civil War among Union Army soldiers serving in companies whose soldiers varied more by age, occupation, and birthplace.

Birds of different feathers may sometimes flock together, but they are also less likely to look out for one another. "Everyone is a little self-conscious that this is not politically correct stuff," says Kahn.

. . .

So how to explain New York, London, Rio de Janiero, Los Angeles -- the great melting-pot cities that drive the world's creative and financial economies?

The image of civic lassitude dragging down more diverse communities is at odds with the vigor often associated with urban centers, where ethnic diversity is greatest. It turns out there is a flip side to the discomfort diversity can cause. If ethnic diversity, at least in the short run, is a liability for social connectedness, a parallel line of emerging research suggests it can be a big asset when it comes to driving productivity and innovation. In high-skill workplace settings, says Scott Page, the University of Michigan political scientist, the different ways of thinking among people from different cultures can be a boon.

"Because they see the world and think about the world differently than you, that's challenging," says Page, author of "The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies." "But by hanging out with people different than you, you're likely to get more insights. Diverse teams tend to be more productive."

In other words, those in more diverse communities may do more bowling alone, but the creative tensions unleashed by those differences in the workplace may vault those same places to the cutting edge of the economy and of creative culture.

Page calls it the "diversity paradox." He thinks the contrasting positive and negative effects of diversity can coexist in communities, but "there's got to be a limit." If civic engagement falls off too far, he says, it's easy to imagine the positive effects of diversity beginning to wane as well. "That's what's unsettling about his findings," Page says of Putnam's new work.

Meanwhile, by drawing a portrait of civic engagement in which more homogeneous communities seem much healthier, some of Putnam's worst fears about how his results could be used have been realized. A stream of conservative commentary has begun -- from places like the Manhattan Institute and "The American Conservative" -- highlighting the harm the study suggests will come from large-scale immigration. But Putnam says he's also received hundreds of complimentary emails laced with bigoted language. "It certainly is not pleasant when David Duke's website hails me as the guy who found out racism is good," he says.

In the final quarter of his paper, Putnam puts the diversity challenge in a broader context by describing how social identity can change over time. Experience shows that social divisions can eventually give way to "more encompassing identities" that create a "new, more capacious sense of 'we,'" he writes.

Growing up in the 1950s in a small Midwestern town, Putnam knew the religion of virtually every member of his high school graduating class because, he says, such information was crucial to the question of "who was a possible mate or date." The importance of marrying within one's faith, he says, has largely faded since then, at least among many mainline Protestants, Catholics, and Jews.

While acknowledging that racial and ethnic divisions may prove more stubborn, Putnam argues that such examples bode well for the long-term prospects for social capital in a multiethnic America.

In his paper, Putnam cites the work done by Page and others, and uses it to help frame his conclusion that increasing diversity in America is not only inevitable, but ultimately valuable and enriching. As for smoothing over the divisions that hinder civic engagement, Putnam argues that Americans can help that process along through targeted efforts. He suggests expanding support for English-language instruction and investing in community centers and other places that allow for "meaningful interaction across ethnic lines."

Some critics have found his prescriptions underwhelming. And in offering ideas for mitigating his findings, Putnam has drawn scorn for stepping out of the role of dispassionate researcher. "You're just supposed to tell your peers what you found," says John Leo, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. "I don't expect academics to fret about these matters."

But fretting about the state of American civic health is exactly what Putnam has spent more than a decade doing. While continuing to research questions involving social capital, he has directed the Saguaro Seminar, a project he started at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government that promotes efforts throughout the country to increase civic connections in communities.

"Social scientists are both scientists and citizens," says Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College, who sees nothing wrong in Putnam's efforts to affect some of the phenomena he studies.

Wolfe says what is unusual is that Putnam has published findings as a social scientist that are not the ones he would have wished for as a civic leader. There are plenty of social scientists, says Wolfe, who never produce research results at odds with their own worldview.

"The problem too often," says Wolfe, "is people are never uncomfortable about their findings."

Michael Jonas is acting editor of CommonWealth magazine, published by MassINC, a nonpartisan public-policy think tank in Boston.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/art...e_of_diversity/

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Hey I am all for "Multi Cultural" tourism, it does everyone good to better be aware of the various cultures we have in the world but... As long as the myth that a "multi cultural society is better" keeps being repeated I will counter it with vigor ..... and occasionally with facts.

I haven't read your study. But I will tell you, anecdotally, I enjoy life in the multicultural part of the world I live in today (and have lived in for over 16 years). I'll also say something very politically incorrect and openly admit why I think it works, and works well. Because in the section of NJ we've carved out for ourselves, the parts we live in and work in and shop in and dine in, there is no major concentration of poor people. To me, what fuсks up neighborhoods and towns isn't people of a certain color or ethnic background. What fuсks them up are poor people. Poor people of any color.

[Peikko 1,575]

You can make it politicalyl correct by simply saying that poverty fucks up towns and neighbourhoods, no need to personalise it as 'poor people' as if being poor makes one evil or bad or messy or incapable. Poverty makes it impossible to function in the way one can if one has disposable income to spend on aesthetics.

That said, poor people used to be incredibly proud and would spend hours polishing a concrete stoop to make it shine - perhaps today's poor lack a sense of pride?

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

You can make it politicalyl correct by simply saying that poverty fucks up towns and neighbourhoods, no need to personalise it as 'poor people' as if being poor makes one evil or bad or messy or incapable. Poverty makes it impossible to function in the way one can if one has disposable income to spend on aesthetics.

Feel free to speak about this in the abstract. I won't.

[Peikko 1,575]

As you like - personally, I think it's #######.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

As you like - personally, I think it's #######.

Uh huh. You must think homeless people in the mall are endearing and charming