BF2S Forums Birthright citizenship, yay or nay?

aynrandroolz wrote:

you're pretty overweight for a dude that has done so much walking and seeing.

I think your views are clouded by your age. To you, it's normal, but I bet if I asked your parents or grandparents about how they feel about immigration I'd get a different answer. You can't just dismiss the views of older people and say they don't exist, because they do, and they're relevant. What we're exposed to in our youth is largely what we hold to when we're older. There was and it still remains to an extent, a large amount of racism directed at all of the newcomers. Maybe you don't experience it among your peers, which is a good thing, but you can't speak for your country or the continent as a whole.

uzique were you all dancing to reggae songs like this back in the '60s?



just wondering why if you all were so integrated and without racial tension in the '60s songs like these were produced in the '80s

the reality is the UK saw racial tensions around the same time as the civil rights marches and protests were going on here in the US.  You can argue the degrees of suppression and hatred, but stop trying to paint it like the UK has been some harmonious ethnic love fest since 1960, because it's not true.

i'm sure social tensions flared between groups when the massive influx of immigration occurred, yes, sure. communities are to a certain extent always xenophobic and not accepting of outsiders/the unknown. racism is everywhere where you have a new displaced/introduced group next to long-time settlers (especially if those long-term settlers are working-class, poor, or uneducated). racism breeds in these conditions. the point is that they were political equals... they had the same rights; they were full citizens, in short. america couldn't say the same at that time. and there was just as much socio-cultural acceptance and mutual respect/influence as there were bouts of racism. white british people and jamaican culture have a 100 year love affair, for example. so much so that we have knighted white reggae dj's.

of course i can't speak absolutely and say there was/is no racism in europe or the uk. there is always racism. xenophobia and these sort of attitudes are probably as old as tribal human civilization itself. they won't go away, either, no matter the political or economic structures surrounding it. my point was that, vis-a-vis the USA vs. european citizenship systems, the european non-birthright systems have never created a racial/immigrant 'inequality'. the view of immigrants being second-class citizens, susceptible to deportation overnight, is categorically not-true. our black windrush citizens were legal and political equals a long time before your 200-year old slaves reached any meaningful equality beyond the gestural. this isn't a competition, of course - every country develops along different timelines and historical paradigm shifts of their own - but the simple point here is that the OP's contention that "USA's system wins" is completely bogus. immigrants and fresh-citizens in pretty much every european state are given equal status and luxury, despite the differences in technical process.

to say that racism exists in pockets is neither here nor there. mexicans receive a lot of racist wrath and targeting in america today, from certain coordinated groups and sub-sections of the american populace. it's a complete non-point. i never tried to make out everything was harmonious and utopian, rather that new immigrants  here enjoyed equal civic status, and wore the term 'british' with some pride, even. contrast that to the enforced civil segregation in the states at the same time, and you have quite the contrast. within the framed debate of this thread, it is quite clear that the OP's vision of 'american citizenship' being this noble democratic triumph is clearly problematic. even though we don't have birthright, newly arrived british citizens enjoyed a better legal status than american born'ers. how is this so, according to macbeth's opening argument? clearly the OP is the worst OP d&st has seen in quite some time. did you miss the point of jenspm's where it turns out the sensationalist story is factitious, too? these deportations that spawned the 'debate' don't even occur, ffs.

oh and i was born in the 80's. can we stop condescending about age, as if it matters? the difference between a 30 year old and a 20 year old is not big, jay. we are part of the same ideological generation. stop acting like you have pre-vietnam sage wisdom. stop acting like you lived the cold war. relying on age really is just a fatuous argument. you fall back on the condescending 'now now' argument all the time when you have no actual points to bring up and substantiate. just a 'you're too young to understand, kid' rhetoric pull-out and splooge manoevre. well done. clearly your extra 10 years on this earth over me have not made you any intellectually sharper or wiser. defining moment from my youth being 9/11? for a start i'm british, not american. also i was about to turn 14 when those planes hit. why 9/11 and not the first gulf war, if i'm so acutely sensitive to american events? strange. i'm pretty sure my general gestalt and cultural sense had developed before then. you are so patronising it is untrue. what was the defining moment of your youth? discovering early 1980's-recipe lucky charms?

Last edited by aynrandroolz (2012-10-03 12:49:06)

Ilocano wrote:

But then, if you grew up in the 70's.

You have a different viewpoint on things like George Michael

DrunkFace wrote:

Cybargs wrote:

Dilbert_X wrote:

Why should temporary workers on a 1-2 year contract, typically not paying full local taxes, have the right to have their kid taken care of for life by the host country? Nope.

Because their kids ending up as citizens would give them more incentives to stay? I know lots of people who's parents gave birth to them in the US so they can acquire citizenship and move there when they get older.

Lol Europe too densely populated my ass.

Why do you want them to stay?

From a US gov point of view, more tax payers especially with "middle man" immigrant groups.

Dilbert_X wrote:

Incentives to stay? There are usually other paths to migration for skilled productive people than dropping a kid.
If contract workers don't like the line in the contract which says any kids born won't receive citizenship then I guess they shouldn't sign the contract.

Multiculturalism - The hard left seem to be in favour of it, but then typically they don't pay for it. I guess its nice for hipsters to have a wide array of ethnic snacks available to them as they wander home from a day of arguing about Proust or whatever, but someone somewhere does have to work at a certain point, pay taxes and so on - letting anyone in and then funding a life of leisure and unlimited child-raising for them does not make for an economy. Sure many immigrants work, many don't work or work well below the threshold that they're actually contributing.
That people who have no interest in integrating or contributing are fully funded means theres less cash available for running the country, funding academia for example - maybe the lefties and hipsters will wake up now.

I don't doubt life on the dole in a modern western democracy is far nicer than living in poverty a third world shithole.
I've seen areas of the UK turned into third world shitholes by third world immigrants, and the economy turn to shit as their welfare is funded by taxpayers. The UK Doctor who did my migration medical made a comment about her waiting room being full of foreigners demanding expensive but free treatment for themselves and their kids while the only time she saw people like me was to sign them off to leave the tax system.

IIRC Blair and Straw admitted opening the floodgates on immigration to change the political landscape ie guarantee themselves re-election - but fucked the economy in the process. Thats treasonous IMO.

this is a very disingenuous post. very transparent. a 40-year old man making transparent insults at me, calling me a "hipster"? come on, man. an adult that lives at home, wears socks-n-sandals, calling someone else a hipster over the internet. could you be any worse of a cliche? what is hipster about me? what is hipster about reading proust? do you have any idea what you are talking about? hipsters lugging their suitcase-sized pile of proust volumes around williamsburg? hipsters reading abstruse and insanely difficult literature from 150 years ago? ok. & why do you assume my defense of immigration has anything to do with 'ethnic cuisine'? this is intellectually pathetic.

you're trying to play devil's advocate here... and yes, as an academic, it would be all-too-easy for me to get kneejerk angry at 'pakis on benefits' taking my beloved grant/scholarship money. very very easy, considering the dire situation for university funding in the uk right now, and all the alarmist brouhaha in the press/academy about this government constriction. but no, i don't agree with your argument at all. i guess being a hipster in academia gives me the benefit of open-mindedness and understanding another's position; empathy from all those hipster novels, i guess. your argument goes on the assumption that a few anecdotal experiences of being in rough areas == no immigrants ever integrate. this is just categorically not true (and if it is, prove it, with evidence please) - it's just your silly nationalist racism clothed in seemingly blithe irrationalism. certainly, some sub-sections do not integrate. many neighbourhoods are like being in another country. but it's the small price you pay for the overall plurality and integration that DOES occur elsewhere. you can't pick on one small example and then extrapolate that to say that multiculturalism across the board has failed. even as an academic, i will say that the gross contribution that all of these cultures make to the public life in the uk - making our cities much more rich and varied places - is a bigger payoff than any academic research for everyday lived-life in the uk. brick lane is a far more stimulating and exciting place to be on a saturday than reading the latest post-structuralist doctoral thesis funded by the british taxpayer. and i say this holding academic research in very high regard and importance (just saying that as a disclaimer because i know the former sentence alone will mean nothing to you, who indeed thinks nothing of academic research to start off).

really that was a very silly post. aimed exclusively at me, by the looks of your contrived and inane 'hipster academia' points. really, what are you raging about? you left the country to go live with mommy and daddy a long time ago. why are you bitter? i should be bitter, considering it directly affects my funding situation. but i'm not. yet another brit living abroad complaining about how the country is 'going down the plughole'. a nationalist living in aussieland or the costa del sol. such integrity.

Last edited by aynrandroolz (2012-10-04 11:19:20)

Wow, holy generalisations batman!

This thread reminds me of Bioshock Infinite.