There was a fairly balanced op-ed piece in today's Washington Post by Robert J. Samuelson. In it he mentions the fact that the illegal immigrants use more social services and that the local governments (i.e. local taxpayers) are paying for these costs not the Federal Government who are the ones who failed to keep the illegals out of the country in the first place.
At the end of the article Mr. Samuelson says this:
"Immigration slowly halted during and after World War I. The Italians and Poles came mainly between 1890 and 1915. Older immigrants didn't always have to compete with newcomers who beat down their wages. There was time for outsiders and insiders to adapt to each other. We should heed history's lesson."
The lesson of history Mr. Samuelson is that in the period between 1890 and 1915 Immigration was controlled and enforced. That is not the case today. Ellis Island was not built because the Federal Government had nothing else to do with the money. It was built to control immigration something that is not happening today.
As far as assimilation goes. I got your assimilation right here! I have Cablevision's basic cable TV package at my house. Cablevision changed the line up of channels a few years ago. They took off the one C-Span channel they carried but, I now have four Spanish language channels. There was no cable TV back in the early 1900's in fact there was no TV at all. So immigrants were forced to interact and communicate in the general language of the community which was English. Thanks to modern media there is no need for today's immigrants to adapt today as they did in the past.
2 comments:
What a joke! There will never be assimilation. Look at the big cities...'Chinatown', 'Little Italy'. And of couse all the spanish newspapers/tv/radio. Wow, he must have run out of subjects to write about.
These individuals broke the law. If american citizens violate the law we are punished. And now some select few want to reward these individuals. The argument is they perform services that American workers won't. Garbage. I know of individuals in the housing industry who have lost their jobs due to illegals working cheaper. They use more social services than they contribute in taxes, which is usually zero because they are in most instances paid cash. People need to wake up and realize our way of life is worth protecting.
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