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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33423 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023

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Many of my coworkers and my wife are non-white immigrants. They are not making things worse. I don't think "everyone" is blaming societal problems on Indian and Asian immigrants.

Many people correctly blame some European crime rates on middle eastern and African immigrants. But here in America the middle easterners and Africans that I know have college degrees and houses in the suburbs. They aren't to blame for America's problems.

A lot of that is just having an ocean between you. So America gets the higher hbd of the population. Europe gets the lower class.

Yeah, they get unemployable refugees and we selectively let in Iranians and Nigerians with graduate degrees.

Opposition to high-skill immigration is usually framed in terms of "importing an overclass" as contrasted with low-skill immigration "importing an underclass." The former is a greater threat to your position if you are already at the top of the existing social order.

Wealth can insulate you from whatever dysfunction your new manual laborers have brought with them, but it isn't going to make your kids do better on the SAT than the Asian kids down the street of your gated community. There are also those who are motivated purely by racial animus (to wit, "I would rather live in Moldova than Wakanda").

I saw this in action when the UK govt announced a visa-granting program for Hong Kong-ers. The reddit hivemind that normally constantly fetishises importing as many low-/un-skilled browns as possible to own the conservatives was suddenly in uproar -- because these ones had the capital to buy houses and maybe even outbid them!

I think high skill immigration is a wage suppression scheme aimed at middle and upper middle class Americans. I think that the minimum H1B visa wage should be raised enormously. $60k/year is ridiculously low for a skilled worker that supposedly no American is available to replace. And their work restrictions are way too strict. They end up locked in at a job which helps suppress wages.

I've seen businesses refuse to consider hiring Americans fresh out of college and instead hire even more H1Bs. I think rules as written that's illegal, but apparently there's no enforcement.

On the other hand America gets to brain drain the world and import in really great future Americans and the parents of Americans.

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