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Comment by foogazi | Hacker News Reader

> Why does a Guatemalan immigrant add more value to American society than a sixth generation Appalachian?

Who’s saying the Guatemala adds MORE value ?

They can add the same value as an Appalachian and still be a win for the country

> Are the Chinese sitting around saying “what we need to improve this country is a bunch of non-Chinese.” Are Indians saying that? Japanese?

The Chinese are saying they want more people

The Japanese certainly want more people too

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I think the much worse failure is assuming all immigrants come from "immigrantland". The impact of a Chinese physicist (and his children, and his children's children) will be much different than a Guatemalan farmer. Until those left-of-center can admit this reality of life, they just need to be totally ignored.

I agree high skill immigration is different, but I don't think it’s better. My dad came here as a skilled immigrant. He didn’t need to rely on welfare services, sure, but my parents are still steeped in the classist/elitist mentality that’s deeply ingrained in our south Asian culture. They think it’s right and proper for elites to dictate to “the common people” how to live, because that’s how our society is structured. They also think religion is ignorant/backward, because they come from this tiny secular elite in our overwhelmingly Muslim country. They bring all these foreign values to the polling place every time they vote.

At the end of the day, you have to ask: what makes America, America? Is it the best minds from all over the world? I don’t think so. America was a world power long before significant skilled immigration. Instead, I think it’s the distinct cultural and political values of the English settlers who founded the country—not just the elites, but especially the “common people.”

There's a simple hard truth that intelligence is largely heritable and intelligence has a significant correlation to an individual's fiscal net effect (not only that individual, but his/her children, and the children's children, and so on). There's a level of low-skill immigration (or at least guest workers a la Asian countries) that is good because you allow high-skill people to work in high-skill occupations. But once you cross that level you just drag down overall productivity. What's happening in America is you have an extremely productive class of (typically white and Asian) skilled workers, and then an extremely unproductive class of service and public-sector workers that are increasingly a drain on fiscal health. The left doesn't see this differentiation (or they do, but they refuse to acknowledge it because noticing differences among groups is what bad people do) and just simplify it to "immigration good" like some sort of late night watching, reddit-reading NPC.

That assumes that intelligence is what makes a country successful, and I don't think that's the case. Australia became a first world country starting from a British penal colony.

Suggest reading some Garett Jones. Hive Mind is a great book.

The Chinese and Japanese want more Chinese and Japanese people because they have mismanaged their population. Some are arguing for immigration to address a population decline.

I see very few people in those countries expressing the American sentiment that the country is “enriched” by having immigrants from non-Chinese/Japanese backgrounds come to the country. If those countries could stabilize their populations without foreign immigration, they’d do that in a heartbeat.

It's very simple: Chinese and Japanese people do not like people who don't look like them. Were you trying to bait someone into saying that? I'll say it because I have been told by natives of both that it's true. Here in the US, we consider that to be a base instinct and try to suppress it.

Suppressing bad instincts is good and all, but don't overdo it. Central American farmers are not interchangeable for Chinese physicists. It's really amusing how much of leftism relies on discredited 1960's blank slate ideology.

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