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Comment by codeddesign | Hacker News Reader

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We have cases where people grow up in the US, are natural born Americans, and they are taking paychecks to go compete against America in the Olympics. Americans are excusing this as "at least she got her bag". The effects of post-modernism, and this idea that there is no objective truth nor morality is slowly destroying society. When someone immigrates to the US it should be clear to them that their loyalty belongs to the US.

The Olympics are games. No one is hurt by someone playing for another team. Are people disloyal to America if they vacation in a foreign country? They are siphoning American money off to a foreign country instead of patriotically traveling inside the US of A. Don’t watch the Great British Bake Off! You are giving your American attention to a foreign show over the great Home Grown American TV!

> When someone immigrates to the US it should be clear to them that their loyalty belongs to the US.

But your example cites a "natural born American", not an immigrant?

> When someone immigrates to the US it should be clear to them that their loyalty belongs to the US.

When you immigrate to any country you know very little about how the country really is and how well it'll treat you. It's up to the country to gain a citizen, otherwise the ties are just monetary while the job lasts.

> When someone immigrates to the US it should be clear to them that their loyalty belongs to the US.

An immigrant who hasn't at least applied for citizenship definitely doesn't owe loyalty to their country of residence.

From your perspective I feel like you have not spoken to many immigrants. Loyalty over ones own home country because you get a paycheck through some semi-exploitative H1B scheme cannot reasonably be expected.

And in your mind moral objectivism fixes this how? You equate these things to post-modernism, do you believe disloyalty came to exist in the world for the first time during 1950s?

I'm guessing this doesn't cut the other way? Like US doesn't have to give back all its foreign-born scientists and engineers (and some athletes).

This is satire right? You're comparing stealing intelligence for Iran to... playing sports in the Olympics?

Its all part of the same idea. The idea that you can be in America, and not be loyal to America, that America is fundamentally evil and not worth loyalty. That things like money are more important than your country.

When Albert Einstein fled germany to help the USA build nukes to destroy germany, was that good or bad?

Eileen Gu, who you are talking about here, is a prime example of the strange issue of misplaced loyalty to a country that is far more abusive than USA

If immigrants were loyal to their country, they wouldn't do this. The problem is immigrants who don't make it their country.

Hey man, the US is just an economic zone, not a country

I think those things are not in opposition. Something can be a country and an economic zone.

You know what, I'm going to defend this, because despite how off-colour and bad faith it comes across there's a definite nugget of truth that we have to sit with.

If your hiring program is built around increasing diversity, and you have an enemy state who would count as diverse by default then you have quite literally opened the door for exploitation.

All the handwringing in the sibling comments are not even trying to contend with this.

Also, it seems to be second generation migrants with greater affinity for extremism and patriotism for their parents country - despite never living there (this is the case in Sweden at least), and those are usually full citizens: this is very difficult to contend with for security services who use citizenship as a proxy for weeding out potential disloyalty).

But hey, they work for 20% off, so there's that.

Unless you’re claiming all immigrants are spies, your logic doesn’t make sense. People loyal to their country tend to stay there.

>People loyal to their country tend to stay there.

You'd be surprised. If I were to emigrate because of economic reasons (which is by far the most popular reason to emigrate) my loyalty would stay with my paychecks. I don’t see how it could be otherwise. What binds me to my new country? My history, my character, my race, my religion…? Guess not.

Many modern immigrants to America are purely economic. The rich are fine with this because they profit, but the labor class suffers.

> People loyal to their country tend to stay there.

Not necessarily true. Source: I have friends and family who came to the US from Russia and are still loyal to Russia. When the topic comes up, they tell me they would fight for Russia in a hypothetical US/Russia war.

It's entirely possible to love your country and still seek out a better life elsewhere for practical reasons.

Edit: To clarify, this isn't universal. Some folks who came over absolutely hate the country of their birth, some still love it, while others are ambivalent. But you can't make a blanket statement like "people loyal to their country tend to stay there" when there are stark financial and quality of life advantages to moving from one place to another.

Some immigrants are loyal to their country.

A company hires immigrants.

It's possible the company has hired immigrants loyal to their country.

Logically, it works like that.

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