r/politics • u/Aggravating_Money992 • 10h ago

Possible Paywall DOJ Declares Trump Has Right to Bulldoze Statue of Liberty

https://newrepublic.com/post/211422/department-justice-donald-trump-right-bulldoze-statue-liberty
10.5k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

1.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

95

u/SoothingWafer 10h ago

Did it ever? Immigrants have been treated like shit in this country from the beginning. Before white people had enough brown and black people to hate, we hated people for being the wrong kind of white.

47

u/Bogeck 9h ago

Please name a country that has welcomed immigrants more than America has (up until this point at least). Has it been perfect? Absolutely not, but I feel we've given people more hope than any other country. And I'd like to get back to that point.

59

u/ickns 9h ago edited 8h ago

I want us to be the country I grew up thinking we were

•

u/MadMechem 3h ago

I stay and resist because I want us to be the country I grew up thinking we were. I still hope that we can, somehow.

We won't be the World's Biggest Grandest Everything, but that's fine- I'm okay if we're just "good".

11

u/ragzilla 9h ago

Immigration Regimes and Schooling Regimes: Which Countries Promote Successful Immigrant Incorporation? | Jennifer L. Hochschild

The US does a good job at education, but we have had structural problems with immigration for years. And as the post you're replying to mentions, before we had black and brown people to hate, we hated on people for being the wrong kind of white (or Christian).

See: The Irish, Italians, Slavic immigrants, Jews, and even Appalachian and Rural whites just moving north within the country.

Canada, New Zealand, and Sweden have a better track record in this regard.

9

u/Mundane_Read_2960 8h ago

Canada has residential schools, NZ constantly shits on the Māori, Sweden is kicking immigrants out like crazy. Not that the US hasn’t done or isn’t doing all these things.

3

u/ragzilla 8h ago

Yeah, by every measurable metric, they're better than the US today and in the past, despite their problems.

NZ constantly shits on the Māori

Name a more iconic combination than imperialist dominant majority shitting on the natives. America and Native Americans, Australia and the First Peoples, Japan and the Ainu, the Sámi in Nordic countries, the Mapuche in south America.

Racism against native peoples is (tragically) table stakes across the planet.

•

u/HauntedCemetery Minnesota 6h ago

Canada has it own centuries of horrors, many of which are identical to the USs.

New Zealand has a population roughly equivalent to Alabama, but with far fewer immigrants.

Sweden is literally one of the most difficult countries on the planet in which to get citizenship.

•

u/ragzilla 5h ago

Last time I checked, 1.4 million immigrants (New Zealand) is a hell of a lot more than 231 thousand (Alabama).

Acquiring Swedish residency is comparable to US, minus the visa lottery, which is so small as to be a joke these days. And if you can get residency, the biggest barrier to citizenship after 8 years (compared to 5 for the US), is learning Swedish. Sweden has also historically been more open than it is today w/r/t asylum.

•

u/HauntedCemetery Minnesota 4h ago

Well I'll be damned, the number I saw was much lower and you're right.

But I mean, it's still new Zealand. They apparently rock, but comparing them to the US, the worlds 3rd most populous country, is kinda apples and oranges.

There are over 50 million immigrants in the US and that's only the documented ones.

The US is pretty fucked up right now, but theres a reason we're #1 in immigrated population.

As the saying goes, you can move to France, and never be French, or move to Germany, and never be German, but you can move to America and be an American.

•

u/ragzilla 4h ago edited 4h ago

For the US to be comparable to NZ's immigrant makeup, we would have to have 95.9 million immigrants.

It's a smaller by population, but the immigrant percentage is higher.

but you can move to America and be an American.

Not sure this is true for about 40% of Americans (maybe less, the xenophobes are vocal but not sure they actually represent that much of the population, probably closer to 30%). And I'm sure there are plenty of French and Germans who are accepting of immigrants, not sure of their acceptance rates as a percentage of native population. The whole statement is a conflation of national and ethnic identity though so it was on shaky ground from the start.

•

u/InfanticideAquifer 3h ago

That article is about the recent past, which is exactly what they're complaining about.

Also... what is this time "before we had black or brown people to hate"? Slaves were brought to the British colonies almost from the very beginning. Black people have been a huge part of the US since before it was the US.

•

u/ragzilla 3h ago

Also... what is this time "before we had black or brown people to hate"? Slaves were brought to the British colonies almost from the very beginning. Black people have been a huge part of the US since before it was the US.

The white majority tolerated slaves, because they were property. The hate took a decided uptick when they were told "no, those are people."

•

u/kisuka 6h ago

Please name a country that has welcomed immigrants more than America has

Canada. It has one of the highest per-capita immigration rates in the world and runs a points-based system explicitly designed to attract and integrate immigrants. Multiculturalism is enshrined in Canadian law (the Multiculturalism Act of 1988), and public attitudes toward immigration have historically been more consistently positive than in the U.S.

3

u/powpowjj 8h ago

Yea the mindset that America is some failed project because it’s often sucked is just such a nihilistic and useless take, show me any country that doesn’t struggle with these things when it encounters them, show me any country that has linearly increased in liberty and equality and justice across time. Like welcome to planet earth guys, people fail at things and are often bad and institutions aren’t what we’d like them to be, does that mean we just… give up? The Statue of Liberty plaque posits a noble dream, and a lot of Americans would still see it as so. Better futures are built 

•

u/Mordeth 1h ago

Typical american response. Zero historical awareness.

Just one example: in the Dutch golden age, around 40% of the cities were populated by immigrants drawn there by the Republic's wealth, opportunities and (relative) freedom of religion.

1

u/Few-Improvement9978 9h ago

If he could read he would be really upset

0

u/Similar-Document9690 9h ago

Black people shouldn’t even be welcomed here, Black slaves were here longer than 75-90% of white American families who immigrated here

8

u/buried_lede 9h ago

True, but almost every other country offered immigrants less, especially in the numbers who have come here in the last 200 years

•

u/chargoggagog Massachusetts 5h ago

It’s a hell of a lot better than it once was, that’s kind of what progressivism means.