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PaperclipPerfector  27d ago (text post)   25128 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 20, 2024

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Erik Prince was on Tucker Carlson. It was nearly two hours, and I enjoyed most of it. They talked about Ukraine, the CIA, republicans, Afghanistan, drone warfare, surveillance, smartphones, and much more.

https://x.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1792963714779426941

https://rumble.com/v4wl5or-erik-prince-cia-corruption-killer-drones-and-government-surveillance.html

Also youtube, somewhere.

I wanted to transcribe this part, and talk about it. Approximately 1:09.

EP: There's a lot of people that are considered American citizens that probably shouldn't be considered American citizens.

TC: I agree with that completely, but an actual American, someone who grew up here.

EP: Fair. But the left has devalued American citizenship, it should mean something to be an American. I mean, a Roman citizen: it meant something.

TC: I mean a Venezuelan gang member who's here illegally is every bit as American as you, who was born in Western Michigan, so yes, I'm quite aware of that.

EP: Anchor babies, birthright citizenship, all of that must go.

TC: Yeah, you wonder if we've reached where that is impossible for the country to act in its own interest just because of the changes due to immigration.

EP: I read a lot of history, and I know that things have been a lot worse in certain societies, and corrective events can be shocking and traumatic to people but it's still possible.

I have not been shy about voicing my thoughts on citizenship, so to hear them echoed in some part on a platform like this was interesting and unexpected.

What other societies is he talking about? I am most familiar with the Reconquest, where the mohammadeans were driven out of Iberia over centuries. That fits pretty well with what Prince is saying. I'm less familiar with the partition of India, by religion, then the separation of Bangladesh from Pakistan. This seems less relevant. What else is there? And what would that look like in the USA and Europe?

There's plenty to talk about from this conversation. The parts on drone warfare were particularly interesting to me, but didn't seem to fit with the rest of this post. And I'm out of time, so I post this as-is without any further commentary.

Anchor babies, birthright citizenship, all of that must go.

This shows a shallow understanding of the US immigration system.

Here are the common ways you can get a visa -> green card -> citizenship:

  • Illegal immigration -> anchor baby -> wait 25 years -> Green card (400k? closest thing to stats)
  • Refugees (150k/yr) (relatively low by historic standards)
  • Lottery (50k/yr) (constant number since 1995.)
  • High skilled visas -> green card (Green card sponsorship is rare unless you're making 6 figures) (300k/year)
  • Marriage and minor dependents (600k/yr)

So which of these do you disapprove of, how much lower should each of them be ?

No one likes illegal immigration, so that's a moot point. The rest seem to be more so about identifying legitimate cause (actual marraige, real refugees, real need for immigrant labor) than the nature of the visa itself.

Illegal immigration -> anchor baby -> wait 25 years -> Green card (400k? closest thing to stats)

Why are you ignoring the anchor baby? You know, the foreigner who just got citizenship immediately for no reason.

Refugees (150k/yr) (relatively low by historic standards)

Why should I care about people who have been approved, and not those who claim asylum in order to enter the country legally, who have not yet been approved or denied?

Twenty-eight out of the last thrity-one months have had encounters increase year over year. I only stopped counting because they don't give me FY20 information. The increases in FY22 are practically doubling, and they still rose in FY23 and so far in FY24. That's not low by historic standards, that's an insane invasion by historic standards.

This number should be 0. Maybe once upon a time it made sense to allow refugees into the country. Maybe in the future it will make sense again. Today, I want it all shut down.

Lottery (50k/yr) (constant number since 1995.)

I do not think we should be letting anyone in via lottery, but I appreciate sortition as an allocative tool. If this were the only immigration I wouldn't care, and we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Marriage and minor dependents (600k/yr)

Nope, I don't want chain migration or more foreigners of any kind, for any reason. Certainly not children and women who aren't going to contribute, anyway. When we imported Chinese workers in the West, we didn't import their women. This was the correct choice, and we should reinstate it.

No one likes illegal immigration, so that's a moot point.

Incorrect. Revealed preference shows many people, mostly Democrats, like illegal immigration. Other coethnics like illegal immigration. NGOs who get paid by the feds like illegal immigration.

Given your misrepresentations already, especially about refugees, I have a hard time addressing this in good faith.

Chinese men and women immigrated to America starting in the 1850s. I don't have stats on the proportions, but some amount of women also came over similarly seeking economic opportunities and fleeing the economic mess that was China circa 1850.

My understanding is that the ratio of Chinese men to women in 19th century America was something like 20 to 1. Add to that the fact that many of those women were prostitutes in Chinatowns and it's pretty clear why there's hardly anyone left descended from that particular wave of immigrants, apart from a few white Californians who have an Asian blip on their 23andme results.

"Your understanding" is, respectfully, "just trust me, bro". But yes, some significant portion of 19th century women immigrating to America were prostitutes. Chinese included.

There's an obvious point that young men are most willing and able to immigrate or take other massive risks. Are you claiming a particular point about 19th century Chinese immigrants supportable by historical evidence? Or did they bring the standard crew of mid-19th-century immigrant women with them?

My source was the following passage I remembered reading from The Chinese in America by Iris Chang:

Back in 1880, on the eve of the Exclusion Act, the male-female ratio in the ethnic Chinese community was more than twenty to one—100,686 men and 4,779 women. By 1920, deaths and departures had reduced the male Chinese population, while a small number of births had increased the female population, but there were still seven Chinese men for every Chinese woman. One significant cause of this disproportion was that U.S. immigration policies prevented Chinese workingmen from bringing their wives into the country. The law automatically assigned to women the status of their husbands, so if their husbands were categorized as “laborers,” their wives would be, too, making them ineligible for admission to the country. Only the wives of bona fide Chinese merchants were welcome.

So the arrival of any Chinese female in the United States was a rare event. From 1906 to 1924, only about one hundred fifty Chinese women secured legal permission to enter the United States. Then the Immigration Act of 1924 was enacted, prohibiting the entrance of any foreign-born Asian woman. Aimed primarily at ending the practice of Japanese mail-order brides, it hurt the Chinese American community as well: from 1924 to the end of the decade, not a single Chinese woman was admitted to the United States.

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