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Comment by DannyBee | Hacker News Reader

"Immigration is about serving Anerica's interests, not the interests of those who would come here."

Tell that to the Native Americans. Also unless you are one of them, at some point, your parents or their parents or ..., almost certainly got here not through something that was not in the interest of "serving America's interests".

But now that you got yours, ...

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In the real world, there are winners and losers. People show up in a new place and challenge the current inhabitant's claim to possession. It's always been that way. There's no point fretting over a war that was lost 8-10 generations back. Today, the descendants of the European settlers have as much if not more rightful claim to the land as the descendants of the Aboriginal Americans.

All power eventually reduces down to force. If you have the ability to enforce your possession, congratulations, it's your land. This may not comport with the fairy tales that even grown-ups cling to today, but it's how the real world of scarcity, competition, and meritocracy works.

Immigration is good, but if there wasn't an interest in ensuring that immigration policy benefited the host nation, immigration policy wouldn't be a thing. No foreign national is owed access to any country.

Some immigrants are productive and beneficial to the host nation, and some aren't. Immigration policy attempts to filter the wheat from the chaff and to ensure that in aggregate, the citizens of the host nation are benefited, not negatively impacted, by the incoming foreign nationals. That's not a controversial statement -- it's the entire theory of immigration policy in the first place.

The ones who were engaged in tribal wars of conquest with each other before Europeans ever showed up?

That seems like a dodge to me. Let's stick with the point you tried to make: Was the immigration of everyone else done only in their best interest? (clearly not, since they were almost all killed). Or was instead done in the interest of others?

Could you clearly delineate the point for me when it became okay to change immigration policy from the former to the latter? Was it right after your ancestors got here, or sometime before?

Was it before or after we put the big statue in ny harbor memorializing the former?

That wasn't immigration. That was the dislocation of one people by another. 90% of Indians died shortly after first contact because of smallpox, which moved faster than the Europeans themselves did.

And of course, if the Indians had their informed choice, they would never have wanted Europeans to come.

But they didn't have the power to do anything about it. This world doesn't care about right and wrong, only weak and strong.

Edit:

Actually you're dead wrong. There was no immigration essentially from the start of the republic until the late 1800s, and again almost none between 1920 and 1950. And until the 60s, it was only from European societies for the most part.

I notice, again, that you've decided to focus only on the one rhetorical flourish, and not answer any of the questions to which the answer clearly is "actually, our immigration policy has never been like that in the history of the country, and the only reason i'm here is because of that. But it's time to turn it off because i've already got mine".

> "actually, our immigration policy has never been like that in the history of the country, and the only reason i'm here is because of that. But it's time to turn it off because i've already got mine".

You've hit the nail of the head and that part "I've got mine", is really what it is.

It's time to turn off immigration from countries that have cultures that actively conflict with western culture and it's values.

As a homosexual, I don't want immigration from countries where 90% of the population think it's completely rational to jail and execute people for being gay.

There was plenty of German immigration between 1810 and the civil war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Americans#19th_century

Also, I have no idea why you think it relevant that they were European. Certainly Ben Franklin didn't: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2008/02/swarthy-.... At the time of actual immigration, the majority opinion was not that Italians, Poles or Jews were desirable immigrants.

It's possible for immigration to be good at some times and bad at others based on changing factors like the economy, supply and demand for labor, population, international relations, etc.

I'm not going to take a position on whether we should be allowing more or less immigration now, but it feels to me like you're trying to trap OP in a logical contradiction that just isn't there.

I'm confused. It sounds like you're suggesting that the Native Americans would have done better if they had been led by someone like Trump. Would that be a fair characterization?

The point is that America's policy has never been what he claims. It's never been "immigration exists to serve america's interest".

If it had been, most people in the US today would likely not be here.

As for done better, no, that's the other point.

The europeans still would have killed them anyway, no matter who was leading them.

In the same way that if they really really wanted to, the terrorists would just kill us anyway, and immigration policy wouldn't change a damn thing.

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