Ten years ago they beat MIT. Today, it's complicated (2014)
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While perhaps not following the paradigm of success we on HN often consider, the team's victory in the competition and subsequent publicity became a widely distributed step-function for an entire generation of down trodden Latinos. Although anecdotal, I've witnessed a large swath of family and friends become engineers, go to med school or start their own business. This viable reality was made possible by the previous generation taking chances and working incredibly hard.
I admit that I've been envious in the past of my immigrant friends with parents who are from India, China and Korea, where studiousness and achievement are default conditions for upbringing. But I'm excited to see an inflection point in the Mexican culture and it starts with stories like these!
Most of the hispanic people I met through school or work were recent immigrants from upperclass families. However, one of my Columbian classmates at MIT grad school was the son of a janitor. He founded a startup after graduation. If we calculated a ratio for achievement vs our parents' occupations then he has one of the highest scores.
Here is the link to his company. http://www.skulpt.me
We have never dreamt of incorporating into our Union any but the Caucasian race—the free white race. To incorporate Mexico, would be the very first instance of the kind, of incorporating an Indian race; for more than half of the Mexicans are Indians, and the other is composed chiefly of mixed tribes. I protest against such a union as that! Ours, sir, is the Government of a white race....
Just pointing this out because "division" gets bandied about a lot inaccurately.
http://www.tufts.edu/alumni/magazine/fall2013/features/up-in...
Keeping talented people down is just a side effect.
TL:DR Governments take taxes from immigrants but don't spend the money improving services then complain that immigrants are overloading services. Blame the government not the immigrants.
When the article says he lost his place when voters pulled scholarship money from "people in the country illegally", I read that and think, well I'm not surprised - surely if the university is aware that somebody is in the country illegally then they have a duty to report it to the authorities, and certainly not offer them studentship - nevermind a scholarship?!
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/dmv-698896-licenses-undoc...
The relationship to illegals in the US is rather schizophrenic.
See, you can make the argument that "this is how it's organized" all you want, but when the outcomes don't make sense it just morphs into "why is it organized like this".
Also, you are trying to apply a psychiatric diagnosis of an individual to a population of people, which is nonsensical.
The child of an illegal immigrant is there illegally, they're not to blame, but they're illegal residency surely shouldn't be supported.
An analogy might be distributing inheritance evenly, because "children shouldn't be blamed for what their parents did [and how much they made doing it]".
Some people might argue we should do that... but even they'd surely agree it's pretty extreme.
Just seems like a rather ambivalent relationship with immigration law to me. But hey, that's just my outsider's point of view!
Then provide 0 medical services, CPS services, police services, or legal system services. If you have someone here illegally, especially a child, being targeted by a predator, it sucks. Really bad. But to offer them any services paid for by the American people is supporting their illegal residency.
I find that most people who push for the view of not supporting legal residency in cases such as school care or even medical care are still willing to do so when you talk about the illegal resident being the target of a predator. This makes me think that either they don't fully accept their own logic or that there is something else at play that they didn't expand upon.
Kicking a person out of the only country they've ever known is pretty harsh when they've done nothing wrong. The inheritance analogy falls pretty flat for this. Consider instead if the law said that children of murderers must be imprisoned along with their parents. If you came across the child of a murderer who had yet to be apprehended, would you report them?
> or, you are under 18, and not to blame for your illegal residency
to citizenship requirements?Also, unless there's a law specifically against it, there's nothing to prevent colleges from admitting or giving scholarships to people who have broken laws. You generally have to go out of your way to find out what someone has done. A college that only accepted people who hadn't broken any laws wouldn't be admitting most high school students.
Excluding people doesn't happen automatically - you have to actually make an effort to do it.
"Just executing the law, bro"
Legal terms (like "country of origin") are abstractions that often hide what that consequences of a decision actually are.
Rational arguments seldom make their way into this discussion, if it can be called that.
On the one side we have the empathetic liberals, who in many cases ultimately wish to see the complete abolition of national borders and global inequality. Joining them are corporations, which want abundant labor in order to reduce the costs of employment.
On the other, we have low-skilled citizens, who don't wish to see their quality of life reduced by admitting large numbers of people willing to work for very little. Along with them are those concerned about the political and cultural consequences of admitting a massive, homogeneous, and very different group of people into their homeland. There are probably some racists among the group, though probably far fewer than the other side often claim.
Whichever side you find yourself on, I think the following must be admitted:
1) The ordinary citizen currently in the United States will likely experience a decline in quality of life as a result of a permissive immigration policy.
2) Massive economic migration to rich countries from poor ones is not a solution to the problem of global economic inequality or poverty.
3) Historical instances of immigration, colonialism, and invasion do not justify or necessitate permissive immigration policies in the present day.
It's a common misconception among conservatives that progressive policies are driven solely by emotion, out of compassion and empathy. In fact, progressive policies are pragmatic, driven by sound economics based on long experience. Policies like the minimum wage aren't in place solely to give poor working families more money; they are in place to prevent just the sort of economically destructive race to the bottom that you use as a rationale for limiting immigration. With a strongly enforced minimum wage, workers compete to deliver better service, not to get lower wages. This prevents the decline that you speculate accompanies permissive immigration. Progressive taxation policies are similarly pragmatic and economically sound---despite the knee-jerk emotional reaction conservatives have to taxation, no substantial correlation has ever been found between tax rates and economic growth.
On what basis must this be "admitted"? You provide no rationale for it in the preceding paragraphs and then dump this line as if it should be obvious.
[1] http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/06/01/does-immigration-s...
The article you've cited addresses immigration in general, not low-skill immigration by itself. This could support argument in favor of a selective immigration policy, not massive immigration of low-skill workers from developing countries.
The real heroes here are not just the kids, but the teachers that with a non existent budget created a safe space for these kids to thinker and to use their natural talents
Come again?
Anyone can create a Delaware C corporation, even people from other countries who have never been to the US. You do need to be a citizen however to create an LLC or an S corporation.
(I wanted to do a startup part-time, but that dream was shattered after I found out from my school's immigration advisor that working for myself was prohibited.)
[1] New York Small Business Development Center (NYSBDC): http://www.nysbdc.org/
Thanks.
S corporations are nearly identical to C corporations, except that they do not pay any corporate taxes. There are a bunch of qualifications for being an S corp (that ensures only small companies can be S corps): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S_corporation#Qualification_fo...
An LLC (Limited Liability Company) is similar to an S corp in that it does not pay incomes taxes, but it is structured differently and is not a corporation. For a startup, I've heard it's more expensive to set up an LLC than an S corp.
The Republicans did give amnesty to 3 million illegals:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1283036...
The United States let in lots of immigrants. The world is full of people who want to come here. Shouldn't there be a more fair system?
On the second, I have little sympathy for the category of people who intentionally break a law and then cry foul when that is discovered and addressed.
So homosexuals put in prison because homosexuality is illegal in places (including the US not even 20 years ago)... no sympathy for them? OR... do you think not all laws are equal and that there are bad laws?
For bad but constitutional laws, we have a process for challenging and changing them. While they're in effect, I believe that if you're going to break them publicly, you should not expect to escape consequences.
Back when the U.S. constitution was written, visas did not exists, and getting permission to immigrate was uncommon. You could literally walk into most countries without any papers. As such, the enumerated powers of Congress actually only contains the power "To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization" (Article I, Section 8, Clause 4). Nothing about restricting immigration.
The US did not regulate immigration at all until the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882). The Act was challenged in the courts, and the SCOTUS ruled that Congress' power to "To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization" meant that it could also exclude people from entering the country – which is quite a stretch. For more, see: http://openborders.info/blog/immigration-
Popular opinion at the time was that Chinese and other Asian people were unfit to be part of American society, and the SCOTUS was willing to stretch the meaning of those words in the Constitution to grant Congress the new powers necessary to exclude them.
The problem is that a law is or is not constitutional based on numerous other factors such as popular opinion. The truth is that the SCOTUS is partially impacted by the will of the people at any given time (to say nothing of the entire issue of the political nature of the SCOTUS). Crying foul is one way to modify the will of the people. In some cases, what is constitutional is even explicitly tied to external factors (such as obscenity tests which in part depend upon current morals of the community).
If they did mean to create different laws they felt differently about, I left them an opening to do such in my last question.
There is no visa for unskilled people like the parents of the dreams in the movie. Even skilled people have a very hard time getting a US visa (more than any other country).
I don't think it is morally wrong for people to move another country seeking a better life, even if that country by a thin majority is unwelcoming of them (by making it impossible for them to immigrate legally).
I find your lack of sympathy repugnant.
That doesn't mean that, once discovered, the kids are entitled to residency or citizenship.
The young adults in question were born as non-US citizens and immigrated illegally (stipulated/agreed that this was not by their choice) to the US. Many years later, this is discovered. Now, the question is, "what to do about it?"
None of the above facts support a claim to US citizenship nor US permanent residency under the current immigration laws (as I understand them).
Whether it should is a different question. I _am_ in favor of a thoughtfully designed amnesty program for people who have lived peaceably and productively in our country for some extended period of time. I am also in favor of thoughtfully designed immigration program for people likely to live peaceably and productively in our country.
A key element to my support is that these policies be thoughtfully designed by experts (ie. not by me, and not in an internet chat room) and that it be enforced (in both directions) when violations or qualifications are discovered. I believe there are some natural limits to how many people we want in the United States, and as one of the preferred nations (as measured by net immigration), we do need some policies, ie: open borders are not the default option.
I'm entirely open for reconsidering (and am nowhere near an expert on) the first point (what our immigration policies are/ought to be).
I'm fairly unwavering on the second. When someone says, "ah, screw it, I don't like that law, so I'm not going to follow it," they put themselves at peril of being discovered and prosecuted.
Yes, I am Mexican and I agree 100% with you.
So, I would be extremelly happy to see that every time an illegal Mexican immigrant was caught in the US, before throwing him/her to the other side of the fence, and investigation was open to persecute and file criminal charges to every American national that said "screw it, I dont like that law" and gave an illegal job (at below-market wages) to the illegal immigrant.
I would be even more happy if other American nationials that were deprived by those illegal practices of honest livelihoods would start class-action civil lawsuits against the fat cats that lined their pockets with the sweat and blood of "wetback" labor. That would make my day!
But, you know... here in the real world, I would settle for you, sokoloff, to admit that whatever stability that those particular rules provide to American society is derived more from the discretionality to apply the same laws to some class of people but not to others. There is an old joke about democracy being 3 wolves and 1 sheep voting on what's for dinner tonight. I don't think that is precisely the case here, but there's a kernel of truth hidden there as well.
On your last paragraph, I do admit to parts of that (not necessarily whether it's more than 50%, but otherwise I agree), and that selective prosecution is a good thing in some areas (no sense ticketing someone for 56 in a 55 on a clear, dry, sunny day with light traffic). See also my last comment at: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11103596
So aren't we already in an unfair anarchic system, so what then is the problem when people cry foul that the system violates its own principles to give benefit to those least needing aid while strictly enforcing itself on those who most need help?
It saddens me how blue collar Americans can get so incensed at "Juan, the wetback", but never stop one minute to think that the one who is screwing them both is "Johnny 'Honest J' Howell".
As you've said say you are not an expert on immigration rules; I can give you a super-quick summary: in 1965, they changed the law to allow non-Europeans to immigrate. But they made it so extremely restrictive that practically no one could immigrate legally. Their objective was to ensure the ethnic composition ("whiteness") of the United States didn't change significantly. Which is why I don't see a family coming here seeking a better life as morally wrong.
To answer your specific Jim Crow law question, prior to the passage of the 14th and 15th Amendment, yes, I would support those chartered with the enforcement of those laws while seeking to change the law at the legislative level. (These are morally repugnant laws to be clear; the choice is between an orderly society with some bad consequences, or an anarchic society with different bad consequences. I choose order.)
After the 14th Amendment, those laws are unconstitutional, and I do not support the enforcement of unconstitutional laws.
Those states who had Jim Crow laws or even plantation owners who bought and sold humans; I can't understand it and can't support it, but it clearly was the majority point of view at that time and place.
This issue is running up against the fundamental challenge of democratic society: how to have a government that expresses and supports the will of the majority of its citizens without unduly restricting the freedom of those citizens who find themselves in the minority.
I would have helped slaves escape from slave states into free states, and would have harbored them in my home (and whatever property I owned) in total defiance and violation of the law. And I would've been willing to go to jail for it.
Why not a little of column A and a little of column B?
>I can't understand it and can't support it
Most people economically support slavery, albeit through a few layers of companies supplying companies. In the last 24 hours I ate a piece of chocolate from Nestle which I paid for, thus adding to demand that goes all the way back to child slaves harvesting chocolate.
Limiting immigration is limiting economic growth. The time when the country grew the fastest and most dramatically was also a time when shiploads of people were just showing up.
Every time you see someone saying "we need regulation for capitalism to work" these are their victims. Democrats and Republicans both have a history of denying people human rights, and the right to employ whomever I want-- without regard to where they were born-- in my business is a right that they are denying. It also denies the employee the right to work for whomever would like to hire them.
Government doesn't know best. This is why socialism has never worked.
So, if you're lamenting the way these people have been treated, look to your own voting history.