Jamestown at 400 and Xenophobia in Virginia

I think it is for the bird brains among us.

We are one of the lowest taxed peoples in the world, and that is why our health and education services are so poor. True, the tax burden is not well spread across all income groups, but that is another problem.

Immigration has made this country the wonderful place it is. So many Americans have narrow, insulated, ignorant views like this that we need immigration to freshen up our gene pool and bring enlightened views to the country.

Also we are not a particularly generous country to poor people from other lands, as we used to be. It is not easy to get the necessary approvals to come and live in this country. Nor should it be, because we need to keep out those who are criminals, terrorists etc.

However, we should welcome people who will help to make America even greater than it is today.

I wouldn't necessarily say it makes a "good point," but there is a rather obvious lesson contained therein which is accurate: Welfare, if not done carefully, results not in less need, but a culture of need. To be effective, welfare efforts need to have the pointed goal of helping people be productive and self-sufficient, not enabling them to not be.

In general, however, I abhor emails like this - overly patriotic and emotional snippets meant to be passed between people who already agree with the contained message. A coworker of mine loves to print out every conspiracy forward he receives and pass it out to our group. (He either hasn't figured out the forward button on his email or thinks a hard copy somehow makes it more legitimate.) The majority of the time I look up the forward on snopes.com and make sure everyone on the printed distribution gets a link to the debunking, but this coworker of mine is rarely interested. I even printed it out for him once, hoping he might relate, but it didn't elicit greater interest. Such leaves me wondering why - Why is he so interested in putting in the effort to propagate the email forward, and yet so disinterested in investigating it any further?

To take the conversation in a different direction, I've noticed the same trend in discussing religion. I'm LDS and I've had my fair share of debates with anti-Mormons - especially of late. It seems many of them fit into the same category as my coworker: they've attained a certain degree of knowledge about a topic and are very prone to share it (as well as broad-based conclusions allegedly based thereupon), but are not interested in putting out the effort to gain a full understanding of the issue or justify the logical soundness of their outlook. A perfect example is the 1826 "trial" of Joseph Smith. I've run across many with a spurious knowledge of the Neely Bill who publicly categorize it as "proof" Joseph Smith was a fraud, but few are willing to read - much less do - the research necessary gain a contextual, academic, or even thorough understanding of the issue. Not only are they persistent in their uninformed view, but they are persistent in sharing this view while claiming authority on the subject. It frustrates me to no end.

It's really the Romanians we have to watch out for ... they're pretty sketchy. :-)

I've been thinking about this one for awhile and I choose option B. There is something to be said for America's existence, success and focus being based upon a history of ethnic diversity. And I agree that this should continue. But first, a little devil's advocate - why should the immigrants stay home?

Homogenizing ourselves with the status quo still leaves us pretty diverse ...

... but, it cuts off the influx of new ideas and innovations. On the flip side, it could definitely be argued that we've opened ourselves up for picking. Let me generalize a bit with some stereotypes. Are we really getting a lot of innovation or revolutionary ideas from illegal immigrants south of the border? It's easy to argue that landscaping crews and field workers offer nothing intellectual to America other than somebody else's body to wear out on manual labor. Are we really getting a lot of innovation or revolutionary ideas from immigrants on student/work visas (e.g. China & India)? This one is more vague. Obviously a lot of brilliant immigrants have done great things working in industry. However, America has lost a lot of industrial secrets and corporate strategies when those immigrants return home and take the idea with them to a cheaper labor market. (Yes, Americans sell out too ...) I'm sure American kids that did not make it to college because someone on a student visa took their slot and then returned home were pretty pissed. That about sums up the reasons I know that most people are feeling negative on immigration.

Oh, I almost forgot hospital care. Now my wife is about as "save-the-world" as they get. But after she started riding as an EMT with the local ambulance corps, even she has become peeved at the hospital system providing tax funded care to illegals. 1) NJ has some pretty high taxes and 2) it means the ambulance and hospital staff is tied up when a call for an actual citizen may come in.

But what about reasons to keep on letting immigrants in?

Americans in general are pretty stupid. We're very naive. Many don't even travel more than 100 miles from home in their lifetime. We live in our little towns and see/know the people that live around us. We call ourselves culturally diverse because we live in a country that is diverse ... but our scope of experience is NOT diverse.

Now I'm not saying the Europe is the all-knowing sage of culture, no matter what the French think. And most people can get along fine in their lives without having any idea what people are like in Africa, Asia or the Middle East.

But when they come here, it sure makes people's eyes open. And it really does force Americans to understand what it means to be part of a global community so long as they don't let their biases/prejudices cloud their eyes. The reality is - sure, your ancestors were Irish, African or Chinese or whatever more than a century ago. But that doesn't make YOU Irish, African or Chinese.

All this I've just written is rather discombobulated and stream-of-consciousness. But I wanted to throw some thoughts into the mix without just being a non-participating reader.