From: Charlie Stross (charlie@antipope.org)
Date: Sat Sep 01 2001 - 15:18:34 MDT
On Sat, Sep 01, 2001 at 04:51:16PM -0400, Mike Lorrey wrote:
> > >
> > > Bigger isn't better for U.S. immigration policy
> > :
> > > I have yet to meet an American who wants 1 billion neighbors. Or 400
> > > million. This is not an issue of immigrants, but of immigration.
> >
> > I wonder who the American Enoch Powell is going to be?
> >
> > (And has immigration cropped up before as a code word for racism?)
>
> Those that are for it obvious try to paint their opponents as bigots,
> primarily because the largest immigrant group is mexicans, who vote
> Democrat overwhelmingly, yet those same 'pro-immigration' Democrats have
> been fighting for 8 years against allowing more Cubans to come to the
> US, primarily because Cubans vote Republican. Funny that.
I was referring specifically to the UK experience. There was a lot of
immigration from the Carribean and India/Pakistan into the UK in
the 1950's and 1960's; subsequently, as overt racism was politically
unacceptable except on the barking fringes of the conservative party,
"immigration" became a kind of code-word for "keeping the darkies out".
Obviously, this doesn't work in the US, which has a large indigenous
black population. But I noticed some interesting resonances in this
piece. Given that white anglo-saxon types are due to become a minority
in the US by 2050 if current trends continue, I'm wondering if this
grumbling isn't a direct analogy to the British experience?
-- Charlie
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