Originally posted by Tac:
... they sure forget that it also happens in the US.Millions of illegal immigrants being exploited, racial discrimination, companies hiring immigrants and paying them crap because they know they can abuse them and fire them afterwards...
Immigrants - they are coming here leaving their whole life behind and starting from scratch, which is no easy thing to do. I immigrated with $90 in 1990 myself. You do not do that without a good reason.
Illegal immigrants - they have it harder because they have no right to work here. They cannot get a decent job, have no protection from our labor laws, etc. Still, the fact that hundreds of thousands of those people (including chinese) risk breaking our laws and other dangers of the journey and enter illegally into the US to be 'exploited' makes your statement untrue. While there are SOBs in any country that abuse their employees, with record low unemployment there is a shortage of hard-working people in the US. Most people here do not hire empolyees - legal and otherwise - to abuse and then fire them. Having dissatisfied employees is not good for business.
Companies (large ones) cannot hire illegal immigrants - they would get in big trouble with IRS/INS/Labor Department if they did. Legal immigrants have the same protection as people born in US - at least in New York.
Most illegal immigrants work in small busnesses that pay them cash - breaking the law. They mostly do that to avoid bureaucracy and employment-related expences like pension plans, taxes, etc. Even though salary is a tax-deductible expence, savings seem to be worth it.
For that they must be small local businesses that can get considerable part of their revenue in cash from clients that they (illegaly) do not book and report. In New York those are retail stores, car washes, car and house repair shops, farms, bakeries, restaurants, etc. Many educated illegal immigrands from Eastern Europe work for accounting and real estate businesses, for small businesses as bookkeepers. I am not even talking about house cleaning and babysitting - $7-8/hour jobs cash (NO TAXES - lucky criminal bastards!!!). There are also chinese sweat-shops here. Many people work for businesses run by their relatives/friends.
Of course G-d forbid anything happens to them, city hospitals cannot deny them treatment. It may not be as good as provided by expensive provate ones and you do not get the same treatment - you get your tooth pulled instead of root canal and crown installed if you do not have $1000 to pay for it - but better then you would expect in, say Russia. Of course those people mostly do have money - they are working after all.
The government/INS are really searching for such illegal activities and punishing the companies unmercifully. Since it is impossible to hide illegal employees from a sudden raid by labor dept./INS, the businesses are at the mercy of all their employees/former employees/customers - all who know about the fact and can squeal. So you can see that
good relations with illegal and legal employees are crucial for continual success of such an operation. That includes not screwing people up and throwing them out.
Of course the lives of illegal immigrants would have been better if US allowed more legal immigration and gave them legal status - we have lot of territory, jobs and most importantly need for honest hardworking people here - especially with local people (except welfare) not reproducing as vigorously as earlier. Most first generation immigrants, especially from the less developed countries do not live as well as average american. Their children certainly do - creating more demand by their consumption.
From my personal expericence New York and California are full of illegal immigrants - mostly chinese, mexicans and latin americans - who are living/working here for decades (even missing amnesties through ignorance) and even helping their relatives abroad. In fact, NY City agencies are strictly forbidden to cooperate with INS - meaning that if an illegal alien is found by police, school board or some other agency, those are not allowed to pass the info to INS for deportation. Illegal aliens still cannot vote for mayor here but their friends/relatives can and he knows it.
People stopped being forcibly brought to work into USA quite a while ago - in the 17th century when white people of England and US on humanitarian and ideological grounds decided to put an end to the milleniums-old practice of slavery flourishing in the world. First they put a stop to transatlantic slave trade - buying slaves from african kings and bringing them to the New World and Europe, then eradicating slavery altogether. (Even before that the sure way to set an unruly slave straight was to threaten deportation back to Africa like it was done with some slave rebels.)
If you want to find a bad country to live in, I suggest you look for one people are trying/running from, not to.
Discrimination. I assume you mean discrimination of african americans and women - those ones are the most notorious. According to the statistics (NLSU survey for instance) an african-american has a better work and more pay then his/hers white counterpart
of equal IQ. Same with a chance to get into a good college and get financial aid. So when you take capabilities into account there is a preferential treatment rather then discrimination towards african-americans - at least in the workplace.
There is a very slight dicrimination against the asians, especially in the education - their average IQ is about 3 points higher then whites which is not reflected in their share.
Colleges fight over african-americans that can complete the course. The same is true about the big companies trying to hire them in order to fill the quotas.
That is the result of Affirmative Action and other campaigns that are trying to "right" the "discrimination" by insuring the equality of the outcome - meaning the same proportion of every race/ethnicity/gender as it's proportion in the population.
That is quite hard to do considering that:
-- Some ethnicities' IQ (which is allegedely 40 to 80% inheritable - huge number statistically) differ from the average by more then a standard deviation.
-- While genders have pretty much the same average IQ, the standard deviation for women is allegedely narrower - making sure that there are much fewer idiots among women then men but there are fewer exceptionally smart ones either. Since you need really smart people in top-level positions, you do not see many women there. Of course some women have to "sacrifice" their carreer by taking prolonged breaks to bear/raise children. Also their biological/hormonal/pshychological design is quite different from men, so it would be stupid to expect them to participate as fully in the men's environment (see many women in flight sims or strategy gaming lately?). There is a reason why two genders are created. Women are generally superior to men - they can do everything men can - if not as well in most cases - while they can do many things men cannot do at all.
BTW, taking capabilities (IQ) into account, women are preferenced in this country as well rather then discriminated.
All in all, if you measure this country as an engineer with real numbers rather then as a well-wishing wishfull-thinking ideologist, it ain't so bad to it's people...
In short, as a first generation immigrant, I invite you, Tac, to visit the US someday and see for yourself that your statement is completely mistaken.
I hope this was informative.
All my statements in this post are borne by statistics I could refer you to. I strove to stay civil if a bit sarcastic in this post. Anyone caring to reply please do the same.
miko
[This message has been edited by miko2d (edited 03-26-2001).]
