Tags
Affirmative Action, African Americans, Asian Americans, economic growth, education, environment, family joining, Growth Machine Politics, housing stock, immigration, immigration lottery, Machine Politics, Merit based immigration, minority set asides, nuclear disaster, overpopulation, Ph.D.s, refugees, risk management, underemployment, unemployment, USA, voting, women
The US has plenty of talented people. Many of whom are unemployed or underemployed, as seen in the US government’s NSF chart below. There are certainly more Ph.D.s and almost certainly more unemployed Ph.D.s in 2017 than in 2010. Insanely, Affirmative Action/Minority Set Asides aren’t just for those whose ancestors suffered discrimation, which does include earlier generations of Asian Americans, but new arrivals benefit. America has also been diverse for a very long time. It has always been more diverse than most have admitted; was more diverse in the late 1800s; more diverse in the early 1900s; and if it wasn’t diverse enough there has been a population dumping from overpopulated countries over the last half century such that there can be no excuse for doubting the fact other than willful blindness. While there is some merit in the idea of immigrant lottery, winning a slot should be a very rare event and all expenses paid so as to give the poor a chance. There is no merit to merit-based immigration because there are plenty of talented people already in the USA. That leaves asylum seekers/true refugees, for whom the US probably isn’t doing enough. Shockingly, in recent decades, less than 10% of immigrants to the US have been refugees. Asylum seekers/refugees are often educated and talented.
https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf14310/
The first step in helping refugees should be to stop supporting policies that create more (e.g. repressive governments, land grabs, mining, militarism). Then the question becomes if the immigration should be permanent or effort made to help people repatriate. Spouses should be allowed in but no more piggy-backing in of family members should be allowed with the possible exception of care-giving purposes. Foreign students can still be welcomed but return home afterwards.
In the past there was the concept of melting pot. Earlier arrivals tended to be refugees and transportation was difficult and costly, and communications difficult. In stark contrast, less than 10% of legal US immigrants over the last decades have been refugees. The US has admitted so many legal immigrants who already have a home and just want to immigrate, that Americans find themselves both unemployed and even unable to get green cards for their foreign spouses, because the entire system is so knotted up due to people who have no need of being in the country, and so moving a case forward requires a good lawyer and one suspects bribery. Where are Americans supposed to go? Only recent immigrants and those from certain countries have right of return to their indigenous homeland(s). Where are they supposed to work? How to pay off the student loans for their degrees? Why do Americans have no right to dream of a better life? Why do Americans have no right to dream of a life that was even as good as their parents? For too long politicians have pandered to idea of “growth machine” and immigration-based machine politics. For over 150 years politicians have seen more immigrants as more votes. And, the more people in a country the less each vote counts.
“The United States admitted more legal immigrants from 1991 to 2000, between ten and eleven million, than in any previous decade. In the most recent decade, the ten million legal immigrants that settled in the U.S…. By comparison, the highest previous decade was the 1900s, when 8.8 million people arrived,…. Legal immigration to the U.S. increased from 250,000 in the 1930s, to 2.5 million in the 1950s, to 4.5 million in the 1970s, and to 7.3 million in the 1980s, before resting at about 10 million in the 1990s. Since 2000, legal immigrants to the United States number approximately 1,000,000 per year, of whom about 600,000 are Change of Status who already are in the U.S. Legal immigrants to the United States now are at their highest level ever, at just over 37,000,000 legal immigrants. Illegal immigration may be as high as 1,500,000 per year with a net of at least 700,000 illegal immigrants arriving every year.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_States For the 8.8 million people they apparently mean from 1900 to 1910.
https://www.dhs.gov/immigration-statistics/yearbook/2015/table1
Via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_(United_Nations)
As Martin Luther King pointed out shortly before he was assassinated , (see starting ca 22 min http://youtu.be/RMLyhshxQc8 ), and as is still the case today, after the Civil War the US government favored recently arrived immigrants over black people who have been in America for hundreds of years. Someone from India or China, the most populous countries in the world, can come to the US and claim minority status and get government subsidies meant to help black people and women, as has been the case for Holtec’s Kris Singh. Insanely, Affirmative Action/Minority Set Asides isn’t just for those whose ancestors suffered discrimation, which includes earlier generations of Asian Americans, but new arrivals benefit.
“For purposes of the 8(a) Business Development program, the following individuals are presumed socially disadvantaged (called “presumed groups”):
* Black Americans
* Hispanic Americans
* Native Americans
* Asian Pacific Americans
* Subcontinent Asian American”
* https://www.sba.gov/contracting/government-contracting-programs/8a-business-development-program/eligibility-requirements/social-disadvantage-eligibility
Mining Awareness + 
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