FWD.us Remixes the Statue of Liberty Greeting 160
theodp writes "In the days leading up to the Senate's passage of the landmark immigration bill, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled a new ad from FWD.us, his pro-immigration reform PAC. The ad, 'Emma', contains an altered version of Emma Lazarus' famous 1883 poem 'The New Colossus' ('Give me your tired, your poor...'), which is engraved on a bronze plaque inside the Statue of Liberty. 'In doing so,' notes the Latin Times, 'it [the ad] departs radically from the meaning of Lazarus' original — which exalted the Statue of Liberty as a "mother of exiles" and redeemer of the world's rootless poor — to accommodate the PAC's call for more high-skilled workers from abroad be allowed to work and live legally in the United States.' Instead of the original's call for 'the wretched refuse of your teeming shore' and 'the homeless, tempest-tossed', the FWD.us remix asks for 'the influencers and the dreamers...talent that is searching for purpose...those dedicated to the doing'. Here's a YouTube Doubler of readings of both versions — pick your fave, kids!"
The poem was already a perversion of the idea... (Score:2, Informative)
The idea was that the USA would be a shining city on a hill, an example for other nations.
It wasn't supposed to be a beacon for immigrants.
"Hey, you can do this too"... not "Hey, come over here cause you can't get your shit together over there"...
Re:The poem was already a perversion of the idea.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea was that the USA would be a shining city on a hill, an example for other nations.
It wasn't supposed to be a beacon for immigrants.
"Hey, you can do this too"... not "Hey, come over here cause you can't get your shit together over there"...
Whose idea?
Why did the people who wrote our constitution include a clause granting citizenship to those who are born here? Had *they* already perverted the idea?
When I was a schoolboy we were taught to take pride in the fact that we were and always had been a melting pot. Somehow we've run off the rails since then.
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Why did the people who wrote our constitution include a clause granting citizenship to those who are born here?
To ensure that former slaves and their descendants were considered citizens. You're talking about the 14th Amendment, which was ratified 3 years after the Civil War. I believe in birthright citizenship for the children of immigrants, but as a matter of historical fact that was not why the 14th Amendment was enacted. In fact children of white immigrants were considered citizens by birthright long before the Civil War.
When I was a schoolboy we were taught to take pride in the fact that we were and always had been a melting pot.
They told me it was a salad bowl (seriously). The idea that "we were and always had been a m
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They told me it was a salad bowl (seriously).
I had a history professor who referred to it as a "giant tossed salad."
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On the other hand, the people from all over Europe, as well as native Americans and people from other places too, were pretty thoroughly mixed and there were no other ethnic tensions to speak of. It was very common for people to have a little bit of Cherokee in them
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The melting pot thing has been, IMHO, always been more an observation of fact, rather than an ideal. That is to say, the melting of several different kinds of metals together does, at times, give birth, to a stronger alloy. You don't want to use a weapon of pure iron up against someone using a blade of forged steel...your blade will crack in two when the blades meet. Unfortunately, the process is, as we've seen, closer to serendipity when a new alloy is discovered, especially since the science is still matu
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The alternative to the melting pot isn't the salad bowl, it's the Balkans. Or pick your favorite salad bowl. Pretty much anywhere in the world where various cultures and peoples have become mixed they've either assimilated to the point of no longer being able to easily
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So by all means let's have a melting pot. Even if melting two metals together forms a blade weaker than either of the two metals, that blade will still be stronger than a blade made of two separate pieces of metal or a blade made from metals that have not thoroughly blended.
Wrong: bi-metal blades are extremely common in applications like jigsaws (sabre saws) and reciprocating saws ("sawzalls"), because they're more durable than single-metal blades. Bi-metal is not an allow, it's two separate metals joined
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Borg Immigration (Score:3)
When I was a schoolboy we were taught to take pride in the fact that we were and always had been a melting pot.
Yes - I've always found it amusing that the US is so proud of being a "melting pot". This suggests that all cultural distinctiveness will be lost and you have to become just like everyone else - it's the Borg approach to immigration. Not sure why you would want to be so proud of that but, having once been a US resident, I'll grant that it is an accurate metaphor.
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You're right. Ghettos, no-go areas and riots are much better than assimilation.
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False dichotomy. Can't you think of any alternatives?
In Canada (not sure about other places) they often contrast the tossed salad with the melting pot. In a tossed salad, there is distinction without separation (no ghettos yet no assimilation).
Of course these are both metaphors and we can argue about reality, but surely you can at least conceptualize two distinct cultures living together without race riots. Realistically, swathes of the US are like that, regardless of the melting pot metaphor.
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In Canada (not sure about other places) they often contrast the tossed salad with the melting pot. In a tossed salad, there is distinction without separation (no ghettos yet no assimilation).
And what makes you think there are no immigrant ghettos in Canada?
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False dichotomy. Can't you think of any alternatives?
In Canada (not sure about other places) they often contrast the tossed salad with the melting pot. In a tossed salad, there is distinction without separation (no ghettos yet no assimilation).
Of course these are both metaphors and we can argue about reality, but surely you can at least conceptualize two distinct cultures living together without race riots.
If I naively assume the best about people, or assume they're all just like me, then sure I can conceptualize that. But people aren't like that. Can you give an example of a society that has long endured and prospered as a salad bowl? (America is not an example, while there are salad bowl sections most have historically melted together and the most salad bowl like relation-between blacks and whites-nearly destroyed the country).
Realistically, swathes of the US are like that, regardless of the melting pot metaphor.
And realistically it often causes problems.
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False dichotomy. Can't you think of any alternatives?
In Canada (not sure about other places) they often contrast the tossed salad with the melting pot. In a tossed salad, there is distinction without separation (no ghettos yet no assimilation).
Of course these are both metaphors and we can argue about reality, but surely you can at least conceptualize two distinct cultures living together without race riots. Realistically, swathes of the US are like that, regardless of the melting pot metaphor.
The dichotomy is not false, it just simply hasn't come to fruition yet. If we look to history when you have large numbers of people from different ethnic or cultural values coming together one of two things must happen. They all blend to form a new people or, in the best case, they live together with mutual tension and the occasional flare up and/or war.
It is not possible to be both one people and many. You can have a country made up of many different peoples. You cannot have a Nation made up of such.
The Am
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Yes - I've always found it amusing that the US is so proud of being a "melting pot". This suggests that all cultural distinctiveness will be lost and you have to become just like everyone else
Nice try at snarky low-level anti-Americanism, but it means no such thing. It does not mean that any more than being, say Polish, means that Poles have no individual identity. It does mean that our culture is an American alloy.
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This suggests that all cultural distinctiveness will be lost and you have to become just like everyone else - it's the Borg approach to immigration. Not sure why you would want to be so proud of that
Because it's the only solution that works long-term.
(I am an immigrant in US, so I would dare say that I have the moral right to judge.)
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You really think crossing the border strips any and all cultural identity from everyone? The whole melting pot metaphor is supposed to represent how culturally diverse we are, and it's true almost to an annoying level in some places.
If you really were a US resident, I don't know where you lived to feel so disconnected from the amplitude of intertwined cultures, but it's certainly not the norm.
Re:Borg Immigration (Score:4, Insightful)
When I was a schoolboy we were taught to take pride in the fact that we were and always had been a melting pot.
Yes - I've always found it amusing that the US is so proud of being a "melting pot". This suggests that all cultural distinctiveness will be lost and you have to become just like everyone else - it's the Borg approach to immigration. Not sure why you would want to be so proud of that but, having once been a US resident, I'll grant that it is an accurate metaphor.
Although the metaphor isn't perfect, part of the idea of the melting pot is that you take the best parts from every culture. As for the cultural distinctiveness, the original cultures remain in whatever land they came from - where they still fight with their neighbors over those differences.
If you're born here, you're not losing your culture - you're living the culture you were born to. If you came here, well, why did you come if you didn't think the culture had a lot to offer? If you want to come here and embrace American culture while keeping a few of your own things that you honestly think are better, great! But if you want to come here and make is just like the place that was so much worse that you wanted to leave, then WTF?
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When I was a schoolboy we were taught to take pride in the fact that we were and always had been a melting pot.
Yes - I've always found it amusing that the US is so proud of being a "melting pot". This suggests that all cultural distinctiveness will be lost and you have to become just like everyone else - it's the Borg approach to immigration. Not sure why you would want to be so proud of that but, having once been a US resident, I'll grant that it is an accurate metaphor.
Well, there is a certain danger in mistaking metaphors for reality. But when you melt stuff together, you don't lose the original characteristics, you blend them. Which is how we ended up with spaghetti and meatballs. Which isn't actually Italian, but owes its existence to Italian immigrants adapting their cuisine to American food pricing and availability. And is regularly enjoyed by almost everyone else in the USA.
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Damnit, now I want some spaghetti and meatballs...
Have a burrito instead.
And a fortune cookie for dessert.
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They were the Enlightenment ideas. Voltaire, Rousseau, Locke, Thomas Jefferson.
The United States of America was the first nation in history to be founded on ideas.
Every other country that ever existed was based on ethnicity. Even today we see people trying to break away to form ethnic homelands.
What Idea? The idea that the people allow a government, rather than the government allowing the people. The idea that a government was a social contract among free people in a state of nature. Personal sovereignty. E
Re:The poem was already a perversion of the idea.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Every other country that ever existed was based on ethnicity. ... The melting pot idea was introduced by people who had something to gain.
First you praise the US for not being based on ethnicity, and then you criticize the melting pot. Talk about a confused argument.
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When I was a schoolboy we were taught to take pride in the fact that we were and always had been a melting pot.
Anti-immigration sentiment has run high and low to varying degrees since at least the 1890s, when we essentially shut down all immigration for China, and much for the same reasons, "they are taking our jobs." Somehow we still have jobs in America, even after four centuries of immigration......
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welfare is at an all time high, less Americans are employeed at any time since women entered the work force.
Lets be blunt the concept of hiring immigrants has never been about compassion, but about paying them lower wages than they could pay Americans.
If you want to have a conversation about Americans being lazy it starts with the stock holders and ends hipsters with bigger mouths than brains and 4 year degrees in beer drinking, and existential bullshit philosphy.
So immigr
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Basically, if you're upset at "Indians" taking your job or "Mexicans" taking your job, you're not only racist, you're an idiot. If that doesn't match you, then please realize I am not talking about you.
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At what point in your lifetime has America not had jobs? I'm only in my mid 30s, but at no point in my life has America not had jobs.
In the past few years there were plenty of lazy fucks who were unwilling to work a job that was 'beneath' them.
The people 'taking our jobs' are taking jobs the complainers are unwilling to work for pay they are unwilling to accept.
Foreigners don't take American jobs, American's are too fucking lazy to do them in the first place.
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At what point in your lifetime has America not had jobs? I'm only in my mid 30s, but at no point in my life has America not had jobs.
In the past few years there were plenty of lazy fucks who were unwilling to work a job that was 'beneath' them.
The people 'taking our jobs' are taking jobs the complainers are unwilling to work for pay they are unwilling to accept.
Foreigners don't take American jobs, American's are too fucking lazy to do them in the first place.
"...jobs, Mexicans are too fucking lazy to do them..."
"...jobs, Africans are too fucking lazy to do them..."
"...jobs, Chinese are too fucking lazy to do them..."
"...jobs, Arabs are too fucking lazy to do them..."
It sure sounds racist if you say that for any other nationality. For Americans it's ok?
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and stop with this Lazy American bullshit. Your projecting YOUR lazyness onto others who's "laziness" is wanting to make minimum wage.
Why is that so called liberals resort of conservative arguments when backed into a corner.
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When I was a schoolboy we were taught to take pride in the fact that we were and always had been a melting pot. Somehow we've run off the rails since then.
The idea of a melting pot was first popularized in the play, The Melting Pot (1908) by Israel Zangwill.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Melting_Pot_(play) [wikipedia.org] The famous line is:
"America is God's Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and reforming... Germans and Frenchmen, Irishmen and Englishmen, Jews and Russians - into the Crucible with you all! God is making the American."
If you read the play, you'll see that he was talking about what became a popular idea of assimilation, while preserving some of the native culture. Don't worry, we're not going to take your Christmas trees away.
Emma Lazarus wrote her poem in a climate of socialism. She was a supporter of the immigrant poor.
The Latin Times is correct to
Re:The poem was already a perversion of the idea.. (Score:4, Funny)
Anyone who thinks America should adhere only to the original wording of the declaration and the original constitution is an idiot. Basing society which has experienced 237 years of social change on an equally old document is ludicrous.
You want to discard the Constitution? Sorry, but the NSA beat you to it.
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Society has changed, but human nature has not changed in our entire history. When those documents were written, they were written with those things in mind.
You might as well argue we shouldn't ground our engineering in physics because the position of the planets has changed.
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Our founding fathers were not perfect. Neither are the documents they wrote. The Constitution endorsed slavery. Many will argue it was a necessary evil in order to get a compromise and have all colonies endorse the document. If that's the case, then there is no reason to believe there are other compromises in the document and it isn't flawed in other aspects.
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Our founding fathers were not perfect. Neither are the documents they wrote. The Constitution endorsed slavery. Many will argue it was a necessary evil in order to get a compromise and have all colonies endorse the document. If that's the case, then there is no reason to believe there are other compromises in the document and it isn't flawed in other aspects.
Then it is a good thing that they included provisions for modifying it, isn't it? The problem is that many people want to just pick and choose the parts they like and interpret the others in ways that make no logical sense when taken as a whole and accounting for the intentions of those who wrote it.
If one does not like it, one should campaign to amend it and not merely ignore or interpret away the parts one does not like.
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Looks like a good place to leave this: http://www.movetoamend.org [movetoamend.org].
While the idea, amend vice ignore, is good their proposed amendment is deeply flawed. The language used would not only prohibit corporate speech, thus killing any right to advertise or promote their products unless granted permission by government, it would have the effect of eliminating all rights from any corporation. Including rights of property and many others.
Clearly it was put forth by someone who really just hates corporations for no logical reason while failing to remember that the vast majority of
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I think that Unions, religious organizations, and non-profits are just as devoid of inalienable rights as corporations. People have rights, not legal constructs. However, I can see why people are less upset about a group th
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Your analogy is flawed. It would be better to say that I don't want my engineering to be grounded on our understanding of the world as it was 250 years ago. In the last 250 years, we have refined Newtonian physics, created new material (plastics, anyone?), gained a better understanding of catastrophic events that can cause failure (plate tectonics, meteorology, and so on), and have better models for how the world works.
Note, also, that the GP was not suggesting that the Constitution be scrapped, but rathe
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"The shining city on a hill" is very recent, far more so than massive US immigration promoted by the US. The US desire for immigrants dates back at-least to the Louisiana Purchase (1803), where it was acknowledged that holding the land against other powers with colonial ambitions required occupation by US citizens, with economic ties to the east coast.
Re:The poem was already a perversion of the idea.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you Native American? If not, you're a hypocrite.
Do you seriously think the Native Americans don't regret the way they left their borders open to anyone who turned up?
If they could go back in time and build a wall to keep Europeans out, I suspect most would eagerly have done so.
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Walls are a sign of a society in decline: Great Wall of China, Hadrian's Wall, Berlin Wall, etc. They say: "here was our high-water mark, then we were swept back out".
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Walls are a sign of a society in decline: Great Wall of China, Hadrian's Wall
The "Chinese" starting building those walls several centuries BC, before there even was a China.
Hadrian's Wall was built in 122 AD, 354 years before the fall of the Western Empire, and 1331 years before the fall of the Eastern Empire.
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Walls are a sign of a society in decline: Great Wall of China, Hadrian's Wall
The "Chinese" starting building those walls several centuries BC, before there even was a China.
Would there even have been a China without those walls?
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An Important Inaccuracy (Score:4, Informative)
From the summary:
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled a new ad from FWD.us, his pro-immigration reform PAC.
This is inaccurate. The main focus of the PAC is on guest workers, not immigrants.
Re:An Important Inaccuracy (Score:5, Insightful)
"Guest workers" is such a euphemism, we should use something more accurate:
out-sourcing trainees
skill exporters
wage reducers
foreign vulnerables
Don't get me wrong, I welcome actual immigrants. I don't even have a problem with individuals who come here for temporary jobs of any sort. I just think that a system where the top 10 h1b employers - accounting for half of all h1b visa holders are outsourcers [motherjones.com] is in any way good for americans citizens or immigrants. If anything it discourages the next generation from even considering the idea of going to school to learn how to be an engineer which just makes things even worse for us down the road.
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If Big Business was serious about their rhetoric, they'd be trying to expand the E-visa quotas [state.gov] instead of the H1-B quotas.
That would allow us to truly recruit the cream of the crop instead of trying to vacuum up even more of the 1~1.5 million engineers that India graduates every year.
Re:An Important Inaccuracy (Score:5, Interesting)
From the summary:
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled a new ad from FWD.us, his pro-immigration reform PAC.
This is inaccurate. The main focus of the PAC is on guest workers, not immigrants.
Yeah, "pro-immigration reform" is a bit of a stretch for "pro-cheap-foreign-labor reform".
"Give us your (somewhat) skilled workers willing to work for a sub-standard wage.
Or rather, just loan them to us long enough for the next group to be ready."
Re:An Important Inaccuracy (Score:4, Insightful)
"Give us your (somewhat) skilled workers willing to work for a sub-standard wage.
The thing is, it doesn't even have to be a sub-standard wage.
They can pay the market wage, but the market wage is significantly suppressed by the influx of X00,000 new workers every year.
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From the summary:
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled a new ad from FWD.us, his pro-immigration reform PAC.
This is inaccurate. The main focus of the PAC is on guest workers, not immigrants.
That always works so well. To alleviate a shortage of workers after WW2, Germany had
a "guest worker [wikipedia.org]" program, inviting over a million of mostly young
men to work in German industries, for what was assumed would be a limited
time, after which they would return "home".
Guess what: Germany became home, and over 60 years later, there are now
millions of third-generation descendants of those guest workers living in Germany.
"There was a call for workers, and there came people." – Max Frisch
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But it did turn out pretty well for germany! The whole fucking country was destroyed after war and it's one of the most industrialized countries in the world now!
Let's not forget: the problem with immigration in the US is not the illegal immigrants. It's the non white immigrants ;)
Don't believe me? Look at the linked facebook page "boo hoo, these are not Ellis Island immigrants, they are southern border" Wow. Come on. We all know it's a racism issue, but at least try to keep pretending it's about illegal im
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of course it is, its a PAC, promoting the self-intrest of facebook's CEOs, as well as the intrests of other corporate and stockholders of various tech companies.
The message is simple: more cheap foreign labor
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This is inaccurate. The main focus of the PAC is on guest workers, not immigrants.
If by "guest workers" you mean all H-1Bs, then you should understand that for many people this is, effectively, the only viable path to green card and citizenship, so they're guest workers in name only (and, coincidentally, handling this is precisely why H-1B is considered a "dual intent" [wikipedia.org] visa).
I can't say for Facebook specifically, but if they're anything like Google and Microsoft in that regard (and I would expect that to be the case), then they sponsor all their H-1B employees for green cards as soon as
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If by "guest workers" you mean all H-1Bs, then you should understand that for many people this is, effectively, the only viable path to green card
Why is that effectively the only viable path? Because there are limits and quotas on immigration to the US, and there are many more applicants than available slots. So why are H-1B's entitled to special consideration? There's no objective evidence that their skills are in short supply in this country.
In which case their stance would be very much pro-immigration in practice.
No, the H-1B doesn't increase chances for immigrants in general, it just skews the selection of immigrants in a way that's to the advantage of tech billionaires. If you believe that Zuckerberg, Gates, and the r
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Why is that effectively the only viable path? Because there are limits and quotas on immigration to the US, and there are many more applicants than available slots. So why are H-1B's entitled to special consideration?
Your logic is flawed. It's not that "H1Bs are entitled to special consideration". It's that people who want to immigrate take whatever paths are available to them, and for people without relatives in the country, H1B is often the only track available.
And what is wrong with that, exactly? Most other countries that do immigration also provide the work-to-citizenship track.
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It's not that "H1Bs are entitled to special consideration". It's that people who want to immigrate take whatever paths are available to them
It is special consideration because there is no justification for it, but I don't blame people here on H-1B's or hold any animosity towards them whatsoever. It's US government policy that I have a problem with.
Most other countries that do immigration also provide the work-to-citizenship track.
We're talking about work-to-green-card, not work-to-citizenship. If US policies were seriously about immigration then we'd skip the indentured servitude step and just give them green cards. That was the correct and traditional US approach. Five years and you can apply for citizenship (a policy we had
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We're talking about work-to-green-card, not work-to-citizenship.
Pragmatically, it's the same thing with one extra step. Most people who get green cards go on go get citizenship, and getting it is pretty easy at that point - if you want it, you'll have it.
. If US policies were seriously about immigration then we'd skip the indentured servitude step and just give them green cards. That was the correct and traditional US approach. Five years and you can apply for citizenship (a policy we had since 1790).
The policy that you've had since 1790 was no entry visas at all, and a person only needed to live and pay taxes in the country for a year (in a few locations, two years) to become a full-fledged citizen. There was no such thing as a green card, either.
Mind you, if every H1B (who declared intent to immigrate) would just
Fuckerberg (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously fuck that guy. I'm sure that if it wasn't him, some other unscrupulous douche would be in his place doing basically the same shit but he's the one here and now so fuck him and his abuse of the powerless.
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Looking at the list there, it's basically everyone in Silicon Valley, except... Apple? (I'd say Amazon, too, but they're not Silicon Valley).
All the big names are there, including Google and Microsoft, and various other ones.
Can I pick (Score:3)
The corporate version (Score:5, Insightful)
"Keep your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
Send me your young, your rich,
Your highly skilled, willing to work 18 hour days.
They will soon be returned to you as wretched refuse,
on your teeming shore."
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Sadly, this is probably the most accurate version of what's happening today. The immigrants cheering this on seem to not realize that the immigration reform currently in the works is merely a way to legalize and increase the exploitation of those already here illegally. This will not end well, for anyone. We'll bring more tired and poor from overseas, as long as they have barely sufficient technical skill to push the right buttons at approximately the right time. We'll displace skilled workers with chea
Re:The corporate version (Score:5, Informative)
"The New Colossus"
Emma Lazarus - 1883
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
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I'm actually crying when I read this, but thank you for posting it.
Re:The corporate version (Score:5, Insightful)
The original version says, "all those people that you rejected, we can see that, even though on the outside they like worthless, they have good in them. Send them to us and we will help bring out their greatness."
Zuckerberg is saying, "Hey send us all your good people, who everyone knows is good. We want them."
The generosity of the first is easily matched by the selfishness of the second.
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Honestly, he would be hard pressed to be more insulting to the country that give HIM a shot even if he wiped his ass with the slag on national television.
If we start an exile program, I'm putting his name in the hat.
Patriotic Americans should spit on his shoes if they pass him in the street.
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I like a lot of poetry of this era (so I'm not necessarily put off by the formalism, heightened style and Classical references)... but nonetheless my opinion of this poem ranges from "mediocre" to "fucking awful". It's also more than a little insulting to its target audience of prospective immigrants.
And I gotta say that the actual statue is the most hideous thing I've ever seen. What a horrible first impression to make: "Welcome to the U.S., where we have no taste in art or literature!" (Not saying that
Should be (Score:4, Funny)
I am a brazen giant of Geek fame,
Who conquered networks astride from lan to lan;
Here at our white-washed, paywalls shall stand
A nerdy man whose torch lights flame wars
Master of walled gardens
Father of social Exiles. From his mouse-hand
Glows the world-wide web; his code wileding minions command
The air-gapped harbor that geocities frame.
"Keep, ancient pictures, your funny stories!" cries he
With silent lips. "Give me your engineers , your admins,
Your huddled masses yearning to code C,
The wretched refuse of your Mac store.
Send these, the clueless, tempest-tost to me,
I need more fodder for my golden horde!"
The added lines (Score:3)
And give me the influencers and the dreamers/
Talent that is searching for purpose/
Those dedicated to the doing
Send all these, the boundless born to me
I guess that's what you get when your writers are unaware of meter......I'd really like to know who thought the word 'influencers' meant anything. Woodie Guthrie could improvise more poetic speech live.
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Those dedicated to the doing
How transcendentally awful. Adding lines to a sonnet and not respecting the structure. Was it too much effort to do it in iambic pentameter?
Re:The added lines (Score:4, Insightful)
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"Why isn't he hiring Harvard grads instead of immigrants? Perhaps the cost of a US education has inflated to such a level that the payback required to justify the expense makes you unemployable. Perhaps we need to deflate the cost of the US education system because it's economically unsustainable."
Insightful. Education has become such a racket in this country. The lefties thought that if everyone had a college education it would make us all richer. Nice thought but it doesnt work that way, it just leads to
Re:The added lines (Score:4, Insightful)
The lefties thought that if everyone had a college education it would make us all richer.
Don't blame the lefties for that one. I remember reading the Wall Street Journal editorial page during the 1970s, and their solution for all the problems of poverty was that anybody in this country could get a college degree if he worked hard enough, and a college degree was the ticket out of poverty. No need for the federal government to order desegregation, they said. If the negroes want good jobs, all they have to do is go to college. (Like Condi Rice, playing Chopin for success.)
The idea that education solves all problems is a popular one and appealed to liberals and conservatives alike.
To people on the left (not liberals), education was desirable but education alone wouldn't solve the fundamental problem of an unequal, unjust society.
Once again good intentions prove no substitute for understanding what the heck is going on.
You're right about that one.
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Nothing against Art History, but it is pretty much only useful in the realm of academics and we don't need a huge portion of the population majoring in it.
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The King Is Wearing No Clothes (Score:2)
As for India, isn't it time to let them be free, of us? Canada's oil pipe to Huston Texas can only help the buyers in Brazil; are they not able to be free of us?
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But when I see the H1B's roll in, I see no families. Why?
Because you aren't looking hard? I'm an H-1B employee, and I moved with my wife (divorced since). Every single person on that visa I know who is in a relationship (which is most of them) have their partners, kids etc with them.
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I couldn't care less about "family values" of my home country (and it is not in Asia). One of the reasons why I moved here is because I wanted to avoid the intolerant bigotry that passes for "values" there, and because I gave up on trying to change that.
Zuck him (Score:3)
Zuck him. He can go zuck himself. What a motherzucker.
It Is So Over, Isn't It? (Score:2)
I try to tell myself it was all an illusion in the first place.
But it doesn't feel that way.
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It wasn't this way until after 1980 or so when everything became all about the DOLLAR.
It could easily swing back. All it would take is another activist generation. The seeds for that already exist in the current abuses.
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All it would take is another activist generation.
Could you wake them up?
Let's become a giant shopping mall (Score:3, Informative)
We'll invite everyone in.
Culture? We have none. We are all citizens of the television.
Heritage? None. We are arbitrary, gray and without origins. We need government, television and shopping to feel a sense of place.
Values? We have nothing in common except that we like money, we like sex, and we like to shop.
It's the path to Idiocracy + Brave New World.
Why does Zuckerberg support it? Cheap labor. People who permanent vote for no majority rule. And more customers who haven't yet gotten jaded about the decay.
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...as long as no tits pop out at us on the TV through all the sex, or the National Security Federal Bureau of Intelligence Agency Communications Commission may get angry.
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funny how you have no culture despite your culture being the most visible international export culture.
the ipod may be assembled in china but it sure exports american culture.
New and Old (Score:2)
The new one to makes me want to puke.
The old one is genius, and what my great-grandfather lived.
FUCK.US (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that he is the one who should get fucked. If he was on fire i wouldn't piss on him to put him out.
FWD.us made me think of FreeWorldDialup (Score:2)
FWD.us made me think of the defunct VoIP service known as FreeWorldDialup and run by Jeff Pulver. Nevermind, then.
I can dream (Score:3)
Re:the plaque itself is a remix (Score:5, Informative)
The statue of liberty didn't originally have that inscription, that was added later and itself had nothing to do with the symbolism of Libertas.
The poem was written in 1883 and read at the Opening of the Statue of Liberty to the public in 1886. While it took almost 20 years before a plaque was added to memorialize the poem in 1903, it was very much in the original spirit of the the Freedom the Statue represents.
It was not like the addition of "In God We Trust" on our money, or "Under God" to the Pledge during the McCarthy era of rampant fears of God-less communism.
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That makes as much sense as pledging allegiance to a flag.
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The funny thing is that in order to get into the Statute of Liberty, you have to wait on line for an airport-style search.
I used to work near Battery Park, and I often used to go to the fort, where I'd sit in one of the windows and look at the Statue of Liberty. It was one of my favorite spots in New York City.
Then they installed that security line and spoiled my view.
(I would have told a joke here if I wasn't worried about being misunderstood and arrested by the FBI.)