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This statement â" unsupported by any citations, BTW

LMGTFY:

From The Economist:

Indeed, Robert Sampson, a sociologist at Harvard, has found that "increases in immigration and language diversity over the decade of the 1990s predicted decreases in neighborhood homicide rates in the late '90s and up to 2006." An eight-year study of violence in Chicago led Mr Sampson to conclude that Mexican immigrants are less prone to violence than native-born Americans, whites or black, of comparable age and socio-economic status. In recent years, El Paso, Texas has had the lowest murder rate of any American city with a population of 500,000 or more, despite sitting directly across the Rio Grande from Juarez, a Mexican city plagued with horrific gang violence. Other metropolitan magnets for new arrivals from south of the border, such as San Diego, San Antonio and Phoenix, are similarly pacific. "Cities of concentrated immigration are some of the safest places around," Mr Sampson observes.

These patterns are reflected, as one would expect, in data on incarceration rates. White men born in America are twice as likely to end up in prison as men born abroad, while American-born black men are many times more likely to land in jail than their immigrant counterparts.

Studies cited therein:

https://contexts.org/articles/...

http://www.urban.org/urban-wir...

http://migrationinformation.or...

is irrelevant to my point.

Right, because in a debate about crime and immigrants what could crime rates of said immigrants could possibly have to do with it?

Clearly you've run into information that contradicts your point, i.e. that crime rates would go down with less immigrants, and rather than revaluating your prejudice you double down on it. Brilliant.

an Israel-kind of wall stretching for 2000 miles would cost $6.4 bln

I don't know how Slate came up with that quote, but just the property rights have been estimated at several times that. It implies a cost of less than 60c per linear foot . If you ever stood next to the wall in Jerusalem you would know how ridiculously low that estimate is. Simply driving the segment of the wall to its final location would cost you that much in fuel, before we consider material and installation costs.

As I said, the wall is a simplistic solution from the mind of a child. You actually want to stop illegal immigration? punish the employers. It was tried in the 80s and it worked wonders, which is exactly why it was repealed back then (incidentally that is how Canada does it. They essentially do not have an illegal immigration problem, and believe you me there is no wall between the USA and Canada. As it is it would be trivial for any of the 11 million illegal immigrants to cross the border into Canada). Facts are we have illegal immigration because business needs illegal immigrants.

Indians didn't really start immigrating to the United States in significant numbers until about 50 years ago. Citation.

I don't know why someone would suggest that a group that only arrived here so recently could be the only "true Americans". This whole thread is idiotic.

I'm sure the parent to your post meant what he said as a joke, but you raise a very good point. According to what I've been able to find, well over 600,000 people cross the U.S.-Mexican border every day. I don't know what a legitimate statistical study would uncover, exactly, but I think it's reasonable to guess that far more people will die of cancer because of this than will die from terrorist attacks. Even if someone is going to argue that this is really directed at the drug war more than anything else, I still say the numbers are not likely to justify the cost in cancer. Certainly, no amount of marijuana confiscated because of this can justify the use of these scanners, because the marijuana deaths per annum is zero.

In the US we have immigrant laborers that are likely to do jobs that the general populace doesn't want to do. In Japan the desire for a homogeneous society is working against them because of their migration policies $100,000 robots aren't the solution. I'm quite sure that Chinese workers, making a buck fifty a day would welcome working in a Japanese home, for real wages as a caregiver

This is actually the 'old style' socialism you are complaining about. State of the art socialism is about empowering individuals and helping them become productive members of society, wherever you can.

You should invent a catchy name for this 'new style' socialism that doesn't have any downsides at all.

May I suggest 'Socialism of the 21st century'

Denmark has a program called Flexicurity which is a popular example of this. Under that system, once you lose your job, you can get unemployment benefits as long as you are actively looking for another job. Or, if you prefer, you can go back to school, get some new skills, during which time the government will also help you out. This has worked out really well for the Danes: it allows companies to easily fire people they don't need, and allows people who are out of a job to easily find another one (or retrain for another one). It is a flexible, secure workforce.

Tax revenues in Denmark are 50% of GDP, as compared to 28% if GDP in the United States.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_as_percentage_of_GDP

Don't get me wrong - a lot of things in Scandinavia are done well. Still pretending that their model doesn't have a downside is dishonest. It also seems unlikely that Americans will support doubling the size of the already massive Federal Government, which is really what the tax revenue figures are measuring. Finally even if they did it's not clear that even if they did the US Federal government would perform as well as a Scandinavian one.

I suspect that Scandinavian social models only work in small countries with a cultural homogenous population. This guy from Denmark agrees

http://www.migrationinformation.org/Profiles/display.cfm?ID=485

Traditionally, Denmark has not regarded itself as a country of immigration. This is due to its relatively homogeneous population of 5.4 million, a strong sense of national identity, and the fact that, until recently, immigration flows were moderate. Most immigrants in Denmark came from other Nordic or Western countries, and the country experienced more emigration than immigration.

In addition, the welfare state was designed on the basis of a culturally similar citizenry, and the Danish economy has successfully adapted to a variety of international challenges by taking advantage of institutions built around a powerful sense of civic solidarity.

Since the end of the guest-worker program was in the early 1970s, however, a growing numbers of immigrants, mainly refugees and family dependents of refugees and former "guest workers," has challenged the status quo.

Particularly the generous welfare system works because only a small minority choose to free load on the system by living on benefits - if that minority is small enough they can be subsidised by the rest. That's not going to be the case if you extended the same model to a larger, more diverse country like the US, or even if you allow people in who don't fit in culturally as has happened with immigrants to Denmark.

Note the problem here is not with the immigrants per se. I knew a guy from Armenia whose family moved first to Sweden and then to the US. His mother said that "when you walk down the street in Sweden people looked at you like you were a monkey. In America Armenians are regarded as being white and that is all that matters". I suspect this is partly an economic issue. Most recent immigrants to Scandinavia end up on welfare and stay there. In the US welfare is less generous and so they have to work. Still that affects people's perception of immigrants being hardworking.

Essentially the Scandinavian welfare system is creating social discord. It's not hard to imagine that Americans would behave similarly if they paid mu

This graph should illustrate the point. Baby boomers are of course, the TV generation. They were there when it all started. Frankly, there are just so many of them compared to us (over 80 million, I believe), they skew the results of everything. And they always have.

We will be paying for these people's meals in the next 20 years. I hope you're ready to work long hours for not much of anything because that's the reality.

* The Mountain Gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei) is far from the only species of gorilla - the Western Lowland Gorilla (Gorilla beringei gorilla), Eastern Lowland Gorilla (Gorilla beringei graueri) and Cross River Gorilla (Gorilla beringei dielhi) take the total gorilla population up to around 150,000 - still not great, and still needing our utmost attention, but nowhere near as endangered as you make them out to be.

* The biggest threat to the Gorilla population is not humans, it's the Ebola virus, which has decimated Western Lowland Gorilla populations and in fact continues to do so, according to most wildlife and conservation organizations.

* The population of mountain gorillas, according to the World Wildlife Fund, is actually increasing from it's dire state.

Interesting to note that even though the US has tougher immigration and naturalization policies than Japan...

Bullshit. Look up the word "jus sanguinis". Better yet, let me just tell you what it means.

Japan is a jus sanguinis state, meaning that it recognizes citizenship by blood, not by birth (as is the case in the United States, Ireland and many other countries). Article 2 provides three situations in which a person can become a Japanese citizen at birth:

1) When either parent is a Japanese citizen at the time of birth
2) When the father dies before the birth and is a Japanese citizen at the time of death
3) When the person is born on Japanese soil and both parents are unknown or stateless
These rules are very strictly applied, which often creates problems for unmarried non-Japanese mothers. In such cases, unless the Japanese father gives express recognition of paternity before the birth, the child is generally not recognized as a Japanese citizen

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Japanese_Immigration_ Law

There is also some more good reading found here:
http://www.migrationinformation.org/Profiles/displ ay.cfm?id=39

Japan is better then it was, but that isn't saying much.

Hence, Belgians wholeheartedly embrace the eID, a clear violation of privacy and a technology that would cause Beijing and Pyongyang to salivate.

One reputable analyst, Barbara Simpson, noted that the foreign-born population (including those with Belgian citizenship) now exceeds the native-born population. I have been trying to track down this statistic. Perhaps, someone in Slashdot can help me.

What is happening in Belgium, with its accelerating destruction of Western values and Western society, is merely a foreshadowing of what will happen to the USA if we do not control our borders. When I attend meetings of Amnesty International at my local university, I see many foreign students, but virtually none from China (which includes Taiwan province and Hong Kong). As the large Chinese communities in the USA will attest, most of the foreign students will remain permanently in the USA and will significantly impact the Western values in this country.

I fear for the future of America.

None would turn back, because of the free handouts they get from the wasteful American welfare system which subsidizes laziness. They can't wait to get here and laze on the public hammock.

Many of these people ... have actual jobs that put them on payrolls.

So far as "inforcing" (outdated) (read: ineffective -j) immigration laws - well, how exactly do you propose doing that?

Thanks, but I'd sooner toss my tax dollars into the street than to fund your racist propoganda.

I won't call you a racist.

I'll just call you ill-informed.

Let's take a look at the economic performance of places where immigration happens, and where it doesn't. percent by state
Now, which state do you think has a better economy, New York or West Virginia? California or Mississipi? Obviously, the immigrants are going to where the economy is good, so if Mississippi's economy picks up, then they are likely to see more immigrants. However, if having a large number of immigrants hurts our economy, then I'd say that NY and California should have gone downhill and Mississippi, Alabama and West Virginia should have become the economic powerhouses of the nation long ago. I also think it's interesting that the poorest states in the union are also the ones which have some of the strongest anti-immigrant sentiment, despite having hardly any immigrants there anyways. As if an Indian moving to San Jose is stealing a job from a guy in Mobile.

It is natural for jobs to go to the person who can do the job who asks the least pay for it. People bitch about it when they are trying to get a job, but no one bitches about it when they hire someone to wash their car. We have four choices: A) let people come to America and work, B) let the jobs go to places where people work cheaper, C) work for cheaper than the other people, or D) wait for our economy to go so far into the crapper that no one would ever come here to work.

Ok, you pick.

Personally, I'd pick A. Of course, it would be better if we'd let them become citizens, because then they'd be Americans. But as long as we have people like you, who insist that only Native Born Americans = Americans, we insist that only a few are allowed to become citizens, not matter how many want to.

We have good reason to think that.