[OldManRyan]

"Original value Canadians" sounds like a dog whistle to me but ignoring that, I grew up in a melting pot city and all of the different cultures intertwining ends up creating a unique culture in itself. LA is different from NYC. Seattle is different from Toronto. All of these cities have many different types of immigrants co-mingling but none of them are the same.

[JumpCrisscross]

Eh, democratic values and norms are not universally held and essential to the health of a republic. The proper question is whether the inbound population is statistically different from the native one; in America, I’d argue immigrants strengthen our democracy.

[lanstin]

The people I grew up with in North Carolina are much less committed to democratic norms than the immigrants I currently live with and among. As well, those "native" folks were virulently anti-intellectual and tormented me for loving mathematics and working hard to learn mathematics and computers, something very few immigrants seem to find sensible.

Many immigrants do come in order to work extremely hard to gain prosperity for themselves and their families, which honestly seems pretty in line with US values, but many come explicitly for the culture of freedom, freedom to do and think as they choose without having to constantly battle neighbors relatives over every little thing unconventional thing they want to do. They have given up the convenience of living near family, often given up the social status of being top in their society, for freedom, as embodied in the US culture of fast cars, eccentric geniuses, rock and roll, artistic and intellectual freedom and expression, and so on. The very living avatars of the US thirst for freedom, free of the entitlement and fear of hard work that seems to be a common outcome for growing up here.

[anon291]

I don't think it's surprising in all this debate about free speech on the internet over the last few years, a lot of the 'anti-free-speech' enforcers that Americans complain about are immigrants. To be frank, some of them like Vijaya at Twitter and Sundar Pichai at Google have expressed views on free speech (not the legal concept... the social one) that rightfully shock most Americans. And yet, when I've asked other H1B holders about how they view 'free speech rights' (A very basic American value) many of them seem to agree that their ought to be legal limits on non-threatening political speech! Most are shocked to learn the United States has no laws against shocking the public conscience (which are common in Asia and Europe).

Being a second-generation immigrant of Indian-American parents myself, I see how different the H1Bs are compared to my own family. My family left India because we were mistreated. Now, the very people that mistreated them are coming here and bringing their regressive values with them. We value the rights we have in this country because they were denied to us in the old country. We honestly need less skilled migration, or if we do have skilled migration, we need to show that those skilled migrants are from a class that is being oppressed in their own country. The last thing we need are high-status foreigners with the means and social capital to bring their own foreign values. Better to have poorer immigrants, like my own family, who adapt to the culture. Moreover, those who fled their own country don't need to be re-terrorized here.

So many times my dad has been told to basically go to hell by other Indian immigrants because we're not the right caste. Once we had a wife of coworkers pretend to feel ill just speaking to my mother because of the caste difference; in professional environments! Hearing white people speak about all these things in the abstract is one thing. Having them actually play out is another. To come to this country, you should have to prove that you were not a racist, casteist nutjob in your own country. And realistically, many Indians are going to fail that test.

[quags]

I was about to respond similarly - original Canadian (children of past immigrants) may need to deal with an influx of immigrants. Immigration has more benefits than downsides especially for aging countries with low birth rates and the ability to pull highly educated immigrants is a net positive for a country and I haven’t got to the cultural benefits that they bring.

[djkivi]

Our last Prime Minister called them "Old Stock" Canadians.

[suggestion]

Only dogs hear dog whistles. Nice Kafka trap

[symlinkk]

They don’t co mingle though. They segregate themselves into “Mexican neighborhoods”, “Indian neighborhoods”, etc. They marry and socialize amongst themselves.

[brewdad]

Ignoring the inherent racism in your repeated use of "they", the second generation absolutely joins the "melting pot". Say what you will about Texas, I'm not sure I've ever encountered more mixed race/mixed culture couples than I did during a week spent in Houston. And I've lived in at least four different major US metros in my lifetime.

[howinteresting]

And what is your contribution to addressing that? It is easy to call entire groups of people "they", but they are people to and maybe the rest of society needs to welcome them with an open heart before they'll integrate.

[hot_gril]

I think you're overestimating how sensitive immigrants are to this stuff. Comarriage is way more about preserving their family culture than it is about finding someone accepting. Religion and spoken-at-home language will matter.

Sizeable chunks of some immigrant populations simply won't melt, which IMO is fine in a place like Canada or the US. They'll still work with everyone else, and I feel like profession and class are both way bigger dividers than ethnicity anyway. A white SWE probably knows more Indian SWEs than white janitors.

[howinteresting]

Religion is somewhat a concern, but it's completely dwarfed by issues around the religiosity of non-immigrant populations.

Speaking a different language at home is a really good thing. Kids are going to pick up English through immersion anyway, so they're going to turn out bi/multilingual. That's great.

[hot_gril]

So, most of my extended family is from the Middle East, mostly Christian with some Muslim in-laws. My understanding is that those immigrant groups are far more religious and traditional than the average non-immigrant (though less than the extreme parts), which of course I'm fine with cause they're my own. But I'm not sure what you're expecting from them.

[howinteresting]

I'm not expecting anything from them! Just pointing out that the actual problem with religion in, say, the US, is white Christian nationalism, with fundamentalist Islam a distant second.

[olyjohn]

Even if that was true for all immigrants... So fucking what really?