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Comment by collyw | Hacker News Reader

Many people aren't sold on that notion. I can't see how bring people from vastly different cultural backgrounds, many of whom won't speak the language are going to benefit the economy.

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Are you familiar with a country called the United States? I hear they've done pretty well with immigrants from vastly different cultural backgrounds, many of whom don't speak the language.

Yeah, they even have a state called California which gets quite a few people from Mexico coming in across the border. Many of them speak little or no English. I hear it is doing okay.

You will be getting a wall soon enough.

If we do too good of a job of keeping out Mexicans, we will have serious food shortages. There will also be other areas that suffer -- like upscale landscaping that seems to be mostly maintained by Mexican workers -- but the whole food shortage thing worries me lots more.

So, I hope we don't get too clever about it.

A wall all along the US/Mexico border is a fantasy. It's the grown up equivalent of promising to put soda in the drinking fountains when running for class president.

So where do you suggest all these people are going to work as you seem so sold on the idea? Many countries in the South already have high unemployment.

Also heard about US/Mexico borders, green card quotas, h-b1, etc. You practice immigration quotas (which may be smart), we do not. I would be interested to see the outcome of a massive muslim immigration in the US.

Look up Dearborn Michigan

"As of the 2010 census the population of Dearborn was 98,153. The racial and ethnic composition was 89.1% Whites, 4.0% black or African-American, 0.2% Native American, 1.7% Asian, 0.2% Non-Hispanics of some other race, 4.0% reporting two or more races and 3.4% Hispanic or Latino.[14] 41.7% were of Arab ancestry (categorized as "White" in Census collection data)."

Sorry, 50k is not massive, let's talk about a couple of millions.

The Muslim influx was a result of colonial France. Britain has a sizeable Muslim population which is doing relatively well. The problem was discrimation and non-integration. Muslims (of North Africa) are unfortunately INA similar position as blacks in the USA.

The only common factor being their economic status.

But the Arab French have integrated culturally and are highly successful artists, athletes, businessmen, etc. Its only a matter of time before they deliver on the promise of immigration.

P.S. I'm a Muslim of South Asian origin born in Saudi Arabia.

Sorry, but we do have quotas. We're just not vocal about them.

edit: No, we actually don't, my mistake. But there seems to exists unofficial expulsions and regularization quotas to meet every year.

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