Suspicious given the xenophobic nationalist government the US has in place. "But we're just following the rules!" innocent look

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rayiner 8 hours ago | parent [-]

American immigration laws are designed to have a small stream of permanent immigration, both to protect american jobs and to protect american culture from foreign influence. That’s what people voted for over decades. The New York Times did a good podcast on the issue. https://youtu.be/xgDdTV7A57w. If you want to define “xenophobic” to encompass that then that’s your choice. I don't think that's a sensible or useful definition. The concept of "xenophobia" only applies to individuals. It's wrong to assume that somebody will be a certain way because of their nationality. That obviously doesn't translate to immigration, which involves the mass movement of people who do have a distinct culture in the aggregate, and do transplant their culture into the U.S.: https://www.sup.org/books/economics-and-finance/culture-tran...

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lanstin 7 hours ago | parent [-]

I know a lot of people that support these cruel and chaotic changes to our immigration laws and they are mostly xenophobic - they don’t like people speaking languages other than English at the store, they don’t like religions different than their own, they don’t like family traditions different than their own.

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rayiner 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Xenophobia is about assuming that people are different because of their national origin. It's not "xenophobia" if there are actual differences, especially if there are actual changes to someone's society. Treating all cultural differences as equally desirable is cultural relativism. Not everyone who rejects cultural relativism is xenophobic. You're allowed to prefer your own culture and to live in a society that reflects your culture. The countries that most immigrants come from treat that principle as axiomatic.

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TimorousBestie 6 hours ago | parent [-]

You’ve successfully mangled the definition of xenophobia.

“A strong aversion, antipathy, or fear of foreigners.” Simple as.

It wouldn’t be wrong if you admitted that you want some degree of xenophobia. But I suppose that sounds even less convincing than your preferred abuse of terminology.

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rayiner 5 hours ago | parent [-]

> “A strong aversion, antipathy, or fear of foreigners.”

Yes, it's antipathy to foreigners in and of themselves. It's antipathy based on the mere fact that someone is a foreigner by stereotyping them based on nationality. Antipathy based on actual cultural differences.

	▲	account42 12 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I think the confusion of "no one should be persecuted for being part of group X" with "no one part of group X should be persecuted" is the root of far left ideology.

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assemblyman 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This might seem like an academic point but the support of all xenophobic people for these changes doesn't imply that some non-xenophobes don't support these changes (or ones in the same spirit) as well. I don't know what the relative numbers are, but the support of a negative group for a cause doesn't invalidate the cause.

US immigration can be very slow and bureaucratic (even pre-Trump). I hesitate to say but generally, it's not as arbitrary as people think. If things are clearly above board, it works out.

The US still is a destination in very high-demand. There are a huge number of qualified and unqualified people, who would come here in a heartbeat (and it goes without saying, there are a huge number of people who have no interest in moving here).There are clearly agents like the H-1B body shops who have exploited the system. Similarly, masters programs were launched effectively to trade full tuition for an opportunity to enter the US labor market (e.g. all the masters in financial math programs). This doesn't mean we don't get amazing people on H-1Bs or in masters programs but these pathways have been exploited.

Many people desire a sane immigration policy and experience. One that allows promising candidates into the country. The exact definition of a "promising candidate" was outsourced to universities and companies sponsoring these visas. A lot of people have lost trust in those institutions. I don't know what a good solution is but the rise of these policies is a symptom that the current system is not working.

	▲	rayiner 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> This might seem like an academic point but the support of all xenophobic people for these changes doesn't imply that some non-xenophobes don't support these changes (or ones in the same spirit) as well. Americans aren't "xenophobic." I just got back from two weeks in rural Texas and everyone was super nice to me. Nobody was "afraid" that I'm a foreigner. They just don't want me to bring my entire extended family over and in numbers that changes the culture of their home. And people in my dad's village in Bangladesh would hate if some other group did the same thing to them. People throwing around “phobia” and “ism” is just a way to obscure what they really mean, which is cultural relativism and erasure of the distinction between citizens and foreigners.

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2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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