This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
This is the first time a single topic has so completely taken over my Twitter feed that I've been driven off it because of how annoying and never ending the discussion has become. Every other Tweet is about Indians or H1B visas, and very little of substance is being said. It's just a lot of anger and dumb takes. One side is mostly just being blatantly racist while the other is getting really pissed off and gloating about the superiority of immigrants. It's incredibly boring.
I would be interested in a conversation about actually improving immigration policy. I find it ridiculous that the US has elements of randomness to its system and isn't blind to national origins.
I'd be curious to know more technical details about Canada's system. There has clearly been a huge drop in the quality of immigrants. I used to think that they just lowered the points threshold for permanent residency in order to raise the immigration rate, but I learned recently that they actually introduced or expanded some different immigration streams that just require employer sponsorships in specific industries which take people directly from community colleges and they actually targeted India first to start with. Apparently, this is being abused with basically fake college programs and sometimes even fake jobs. I'd love to know more about what happened here.
To put it bluntly, the recent explosion of immigration to Canada is a naked attempt at keeping the ponzi scheme that is Canadian real estate inflated. The exact mechanisms aren't really important.
The LMIA and TFW program:
Canadian corporations can hire TFW (temporary foreign workers) by submitting a LMIA (labor market impact assessment). The LMIA is supposed to show that the relevant position could not be filled with a domestic Canadian. Of course, this program was rife with fraud. Corporations would put up fake job postings that were unable to be accessed, then use their vacancy as justification for hiring TFW. The foreign workers themselves would pay for an LMIA by paying immigration lawyers to fill an LMIA for them; those lawyers would then garnish their wages. Sometimes, the business owners themselves would act as "immigration lawyers", essentially paying TFWs below market rates. Also, foreign workers would sometimes simply pay for an LMIA for an entirely fake job, in order to migrate to Canada. This entire scheme was a way for Indians to escape to Canada from India.
Diploma Mills:
Foreign post-secondary students pay much more than domestic students in Canada. So, some fraudulent colleges have popped up offering extremely weak diplomas in "hospitality" and "business management", for the express purpose of luring in foreign students, mostly Indians. Side note: Its not just new colleges doing this. Well established colleges have also dumbed down their programs and purposefully admitted huge amounts of foreign students just to juice their profits. Now why would Indians enroll in such blatantly fraudulent programs? Why as a means of immigration of course. Foreign students (again, mostly Indian), enroll in this programs, then cheat, or skip class in order to work.
All of this is a way to attain permanent residency, and then eventually Canadian citizenship, all the while inflating the housing market and depressing wages. By the way, this doesn't even begin to cover the bribes, and fake job offers used to bolster permanent residency applications, or the fact that the points requirement got significantly lowered by the present administration.
More options
Context Copy link
So, both sides just being racist.
It's funny how that label only gets applied in one direction.
No, one side is saying some Indians are better workers than some Americans. That's not saying Indians are better as a whole.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
White countries are the only ones expected to take in millions of foreigners, regardless of the actual desire of the population of the country, and opposing that is dismissed as "racist" and "stupid." It's not stupid to not want millions of Indians to flood your community and workplace. You can just say "I don't want to live with you" and that is 100% good enough justification.
Some people do want to live with them though.
This is less convincing than it would be in a world where freedom of association is actually allowed.
Practically, because of the way American laws work, demanding it for any American is demanding it for all of them.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Sure, but then the equivalent person who says "I do want to live with you" has just as much weight. It's not an argument it's just might makes right basically. Which is fine, but it can be turned to support any cause. It's an argument agnostic tool.
No it doesn't, because it's our country. The person demanding access to someone else's country and community has less weight than the community and country they are trying to access.
But some of your people IN your country support immigration. When they say yes, come on in, your position applies to them just as much.
I don’t think this works. If my sister and I were living in a shared house, it wouldn’t be appropriate for her to invite random people to come and live with us.
Sure it would. Absent any other agreement, you both have equal rights to decide who lives there. She can move Bob into her bedroom, its her house too after all.
My point was that SS did not advance an argument beyond if i don't want it, it shouldn't happen, but absent some actual structure on why, that is exactly equally countered by someone else saying I do want it so it should happen.
It's an argument that can be used for anything for or against. Which means it isn't a very good argument at all.
If you don't want Bob in the house you are likely going to have to convince your sister with an actual argument. There isn't enough room, you can't afford the extra food, and so on.
Certainly for my sister, if i tell her not to do something she wants to do, she is going to want a reason, beyond I don't want you to.
Your intuition may differ, but SS was making the same point that I was: to me, it seems obviously unacceptable for one party to make significant unilateral changes to shared living conditions without getting clear buy-in from everyone else involved.
That doesn’t mean you have a license to block all changes just for the fun of it but ‘I don’t want to share my house with strangers’ is an entirely valid reason. It just seems totally obvious to me that you don’t get to install strangers in somebody else’s house just because it’s your house too. Personally I think this is a common assumption, which is why politicians constantly lie to give the impression they respect it.
Once that’s assumed, SS is arguing (correctly in my opinion) that he and other anti-immigration advocates possess the inalienable right of veto. He doesn’t need to convince his countrymen, they actively need to convince him to permit immigration. “I’ve known Bob for ages, he’s a great guy, he does DIY and I’ll tell him to move out if he’s a nuisance, please give him a chance.”
The problem is that this is status quo bias. Absent an actual agreement, you can't assume this is true. You then have to convince the other person they should agree that how things stand now are how they should stay. If you think buy in is required, that is something you NEED to have agreed in the first place, in order to establish you have the same expectations.
This is a fundamental difference that you cannot take for granted. Because it means someone has a unilateral right to prevent any change, which is also obviously unacceptable in exactly the same way you complain about making changes.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Holy shit man, same. I have so far added word filters for:
India
Indians
h1b
h1-b
h-1B
And it’s still flooding me. I need AI based filtering and I need it now.
It'll get better once normies finish with their holidays. Right now it's the maladjusted who don't visit family arguing with non-christians who don't celebrate Christmas.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is the same thing that’s been happening for the last 30 years, but now it affects Silicon Valley eggheads so it actually matters. Much like how nobody cared about automation taking jobs until it started threatening terminally online artists.
It's affected SV people for years too. None of these arguments are new at all.
The only thing that has changed is that the faction that demands less immigration has been emboldened by recent successes and feels like it can win the argument without being crushed under a regime that allows it to play out.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link