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Comment by indigochill | Hacker News Reader

There are a couple interesting assumptions here:

1. There's such a thing as a true nation 2. That how long a person's family has lived in a region should entitle them to keep others out

The first one is bound to wander into circuitous philosophical debate, but I'm curious what the rationale is for the second.

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I'm not making the second assumption at all, I explicitly disclaimed any opinion on the merits of particular stances on immigration in countries that are not my own:

> I'm not writing this to take a stand on immigration in Europe or anywhere else, but it's important for us in the US to not project our own sensibilities into a completely different context.

As for the first assumption, I'll grant you I was making that. Whether or not the concept of a nation exists in reality, it undeniably exists in people's heads, and it's less obviously artificial in Europe and elsewhere than it is in the United States.

EDIT: Although, note that I didn't actually use the phrase "true nation", I said "true nation state", and I think the existence of a nation state is less up for debate than the existence of a nation.

> I think the existence of a nation state is less up for debate than the existence of a nation.

That seems muddled. A nation-state is a state whose population are dominantly formed out of a single "nation." Generally the nation implies some kind ethnic or ancestral ties (and granted the definition can be fuzzy) - but if concept of a nation is in doubt ... then so in the concept of a nation state. They are necessarily coupled.

I think the key thing is that for a nation state, anything that can significantly impact the composition of the citizenry to change the scope of what the nation means is effectively an existential consideration. The US is explicitly not a nation-state, though americans have mixed opinion on the matter. Europe is comprised of nation states, but may of them these days seem to consider that a bit of an historical embarrassment and want to transition to be some form of multicultural state, especially as part of the multinational confederation of the EU.

To an extent you're right, but I think it's actually the existence of the nation state that proves the existence of the nation. A nation without a state is a fuzzier concept because there's no clearly delineated boundaries (neither ethnic nor geographical), but a nation with a state can prove its existence more readily.

If you believe that people and cultures are different (which almost everyone outside America believes) then it follows that a region reflects the people who developed it. Countries are, of course, not just land, but they are built of infrastructure, governments, institutions, culture, customs, rules, norms, and values. If Iowa is polite, flat, and egalitarian it’s because Iowans made it that way. By contrast India or China are the way the Indians and Chinese made those places. It stands to reason that if Iowans like Iowa, they might be resistant to immigration from people who are different who will change the place.

You seem to think that people are never influenced by outside sources such as wealthy capital owners spreading propaganda in Iowa in order to make it the way the capital owner wants. I know you'll say "oh people can make choices for themselves" but that's not how behavior works especially when avenues of information are so highly controlled

I don't think it's fair to characterize the belief that the people living in a country have a large influence on how that country turns out, as thinking that outside forces have no effect.

Essentially always whenever I see statements like that they ignore larger systemic forces at play so I don't think that it's unreasonable.

You mean wealthy capital owners who want to erase people’s natural affection for their own culture and communities so they can freely sourcing fungible labor from anywhere in the world? Yeah, there is a propaganda effort on that front.

That said, I think in the long run people see through propaganda and correctly perceive their own self interest. Knowledge workers in NYC and SV are following their own self interest in aligning themselves with global capital on the immigration issue—they benefit from a globalized economy with free movement of labor—while plumbers in Iowa are acting in their self interest to opposite it.

I think the second one comes from the idea that we inherit the residence and customs as something akin to property. The 'right' to inhabit a particular region in the same way of life, could be defended if people coming to a place disrupted those rights.

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