Comment by like_any_other | Hacker News Reader

Comment by like_any_other | Hacker News Reader

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> especially in the United States.

China has 1.4 million immigrants, and 12000 foreigners with permanent residency. Not per year, but total, cumulative [1]. Despite having 4x the population of the USA.

Meanwhile the USA has gone from 83% White in 1970 [2], to White children being a minority [3] in less than 50 years. And most of that change was due to legal immigration (that they were promised wouldn't change anything [4]) Yet still they're called out for not erasing their own identity even faster.

So do you just not believe in the national right to self-determination, to decide who may live among them? Do you also not believe in this right for Kashmir [5,6] or Palestine?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_China

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta...

[3] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/less-than-half-of-us-chil...

[4] Secretary of State Dean Rusk and other politicians, including Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), asserted that the bill would not affect the U.S. demographic mix - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Ac...

[5] Kashmir’s new status could bring demographic change, drawing comparisons to the West Bank - https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/08/08/kashmirs-new...

[6] Human rights activists said that the moves to change Kashmir’s status were only the first steps in a broader plan to erode Kashmir’s core rights and seed the area with non-Kashmiris, altering the demographics and eventually destroying its character. Previous laws barred outsiders from owning property. - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/world/asia/india-pakistan...

How long did it take America to go from 0% white to almost complete native erasure?

If we’re gonna apply your definitionally racist argument then whites (ie Europeans) (or Asians or Africans) shouldn’t be in the country.

Also, apparently you’re ok with America’s population doubling with immigration as long as those immigrants are white Europeans?

The share of immigrants as a percentage of population is about where it was between the mid 1800s and early 1900s, but you’re fine with that because it was primarily Europeans? (Although, ironically, a lot of those Europeans were also not considered white contemporaneously and it’s only now that their descendants consider themselves white and rail about all the non white immigeants).

I would not be using the "natives were wiped out by foreign conquerors" argument in support of uncontrolled (or any other kind) immigration, if I were you.

So the Americans deserve it? Well, thank you for your honesty.

> Although, ironically, a lot of those Europeans were also not considered white contemporaneously and it’s only now that their descendants consider themselves white and rail about all the non white immigeants

This is outright false: https://www.academia.edu/69843076/The_Becoming_White_Thesis_...

In fact it is so false, that 8 Irishmen signed the US Declaration of Independence: https://www.irishpost.com/life-style/meet-8-irishmen-signed-...

The myth was likely started by Noel Ignatiev's "How the Irish Became White" book [1]. The same Noel Ignatiev that co-founded the "Race Traitor" journal, "which promoted the idea that "treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity"". Who would have thought such an unbiased and objective academic would be falsifying history. It's an exercise for the reader how something both so unbelievable, and so easily falsified, could persist for so long in academia.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noel_Ignatiev

> So do you just not believe in the national right to self-determination, to decide who may live among them? Do you also not believe in this right for Kashmir [5,6] or Palestine?

On a personal moral/philosophical level, I think lines on a map which we call "nations" are a foolish way to decide who is allowed to go where and do what.

So from first principles, I don't accept the framing. I don't think "national" right to self-determination is a meaningful or valid term. It exists in practice but it is not valuable except in terms of pragmatism/realpolitik.

Therefore, I advocate for immigration policies which are much more focused on helping people and bettering society around me than on any nation-based concept of identity. That doesn't mean I want to bring more people who would hurt others into my society. But it does mean I don't care about whether the people who come in are "like me" in some meaningful way.

(That doesn't mean I don't act like nations exist or agree that they do, just that my ideal world probably would not include them in that way. Nor does it mean I don't think national lines ever echo the lines of societies or that I'm an anarchist who doesn't believe in governments. I just don't accept the idea that "this person lives on this side of the border" is a meaningful way to decide if they get to live in a place or not.)

Also, it sounds like what you consider "national" framing is actually racial framing. Given that you spend a lot of time talking about white people in a nation that has never been just white people, is that not correct?

> lines on a map which we call "nations" are a foolish way to decide who is allowed to go where and do what.

A nation is a group of people. What you're referring to is territory that belongs to a country.

> But it does mean I don't care about whether the people who come in are "like me" in some meaningful way.

That's great if you don't value national identity or the differences between nations in any way, but many people do value those. They (myself included) wish to see their and other groups retain their distinctions, and not be homogenized into a globally indistinguishable mush, which is what you propose.

> Also, it sounds like what you consider "national" framing is actually racial framing.

That is what "national" means [1]. The "people who share a passport" alternative meaning is a very recent redefinition.

[1] https://www.etymonline.com/word/nation

>> I just don't accept the idea that "this person lives on this side of the border" is a meaningful way to decide if they get to live in a place or not.)

I curious where do you draw the line then? Can a random person move to your backyard or your house?

You can be sure that, like most people who espouse such open-borders views, he has never been impacted by the negative externalities of such policies.

Like the Uk Green Party leader who lodged a complaint about planned migrant camp in her town. It’s all about optics and as soon as it impacts them directly they revert.

Careful with the facts you are committing serious wrong think

Why are you so concerned with White people being the minority? Does the US somehow have a history of not treading minorities equally or something that I’m not aware of?

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