07/30/10
From Numbers USA
Home > About Us > "No" to Immigrant Bashing
An organization I just may join and support.
They condemn illegal immigration, but they
recognize that many illegal immigrants are NOT EVIL.
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Message from Roy Beck, Executive Director The chief difficulties that America faces because of
current immigration are not triggered by who the immigrants are but
by how many they are.
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| Nothing about this website should be construed as advocating
hostile actions or feelings toward immigrant Americans; illegal
aliens deserve humane treatment even as they are detected, detained
and deported. Unfortunately, to write about problems of immigration
is to risk seeming to attack immigrants themselves. Even worse is
the risk of inadvertently encouraging somebody else to show
hostility toward the foreign-born as a group. I encounter too many immigrants and children of immigrants in daily affairs where I live in northern Virginia to take those risks lightly. From five continents, members of immigrant families have passed through my home, especially in the persons of friends of my sons. They are among the physical therapy patients of my wife; they are participants in youth activities which I lead; they are friends at my church, which has received national recognition for creating local service to new immigrants; they are neighbors; they are business clerks and owners where I trade. Thus, as is the case for millions of other Americans, I have a very personal stake in not wanting to provoke hostility or discrimination toward the foreign-born who already are living among us. But our kindly feelings toward immigrants must no longer stifle public discussion about the effects of immigration numbers. To talk about changing immigration numbers is to say nothing against the individual immigrants in this country. Rather, it is about deciding how many foreign citizens living in their own countries right now should be allowed to immigrate in the future. None of this is to suggest that no immigrants are scoundrels or contribute to problems of immigration because of their bad personal behavior. It is not unfair, nor does it constitute immigrant bashing, to criticize the behavior of specific immigrants who violate our laws or otherwise behave in a manner unworthy of guests who have been invited into this country. It IS immigrant bashing, however, to ascribe those bad characteristics to whole groups of people based on their ethnicity or foreign-born status. All of us should be careful of the language we use so as not to inadvertently appear to be making such negative generalizations. Not only is it ethically wrong to engage in such stereotyping, it is tactically short-sighted. There is much to suggest that most immigrants already among us would support reductions in immigration numbers. The reasons are not surprising. Virtually any reduction designed to help native-born Americans would be even more beneficial to foreign-born Americans. That is why so many immigrants are supporters of NumbersUSA.com. Perhaps the greatest "immigrant bashers" are those Members of Congress who refuse to look at the abysmal conditions of so many immigrant Americans and who every year insist on adding more than a million more immigrants into their occupations, schools and communities. --Based on an essay first published by W.W. Norton & Co. (1996) * * * * * I need to read further through their site before I decide on joining. I like their attitude toward "innocent" illegal aliens, but I am against amnesty. The most I would offer is that they all go back where they came from and apply for legal immigration through proper channels. If a background investigation proves that they lived clean, and crime-free while they were here illegally, that might give them a few plus points in getting a visa to come here legally. Those admitted (a quota per year) would be required to learn to speak English, learn American history and culture, renounce their former country and become American citizens. No more foreign flags and no more press '1' for English. Cruel and heartless isn't it? Tell that to my Irish ancestors and everyone else's European and Asian ancestors. There ain't no free ride. Notice that I didn't mention African ancestors. Blacks are a special case, you have to tread lightly there. A few centuries back, black muslims in Africa found out they could make money by rounding up interior African tribe people and selling them to traders who eventually sold them to a few thousand Southern U.S. plantation owners. Ever since then, many dark-skinned persons around the world have had a personal hatred against the U.S. and have been trying to figure out how to live off the country or destroy it. Never mind that slavery was abolished 150 years ago and written into the Constitution. Never mind that the U.S. created a country in Africa for the freed slaves to go home to (Liberia). The U.S. was shipping boatloads there as fast as they could, but they were breeding so fast in the inner cities, the boats couldn't go fast enough. Nowadays we have many distinguished black people in the fields of education, art, sciences, the military, the law and similar fields where they are the equal of, or superior to, their peers of other races. I do not think intelligence and accomplishment is a genetic thing connected to race. These individuals prove it. I have worked with and been entertained by these giants, I read their work almost daily and frequently post their articles on this site because they're exceptional. They stand out all the more because the great majority of American blacks are what would crudely be called "niggers". Uneducated by choice, unable to communicate in English, violent in groups, cowardly alone, substance addicted, either impoverished or wealthy depending on which end of the drug pipeline they inhabit. They hate white, brown, yellow people, successful people, educated people, sober people, Jewish people, black people who are any of the above. They pride themselves on being violent thugs and criminals, supplying the ghetto with all the death and drugs it can handle. Insuring that no gifted black child will ever come out of that ghetto to become a distinguished black person. I got a little off track... I'll save my thoughts about the tragedy of wasted potential for another day. Also the irony that so many of the black "ex-slaves" are converting to Islam, the religion of the people who originally started their whole problem. Maybe we should just round them all up and ship them to Mexico.
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