[hackinthebochs]

>I believe they belong here as much as I do.

This sentiment is just so utterly foreign to me that I can't comprehend how someone could rationally think this way. I mean, I'm a black man whose ancestors have lived in America since the slave ships, and I easily recognize that some people are more American than others. And Americans only have like 1% of the cultural and ethnic identity that most European nations have. Why are you blind to the importance of the deep historical roots that bind a nation together? Why do you think the very force (namely kinship ties) that has driven humanity forward for the last hundred thousand years has, in the blink of an eye, become irrelevant?

[b40d-48b2-979e]

As a blacker man whose ancestors found their way to the Americas before the year of our Lord Jesus, what are you even talking about? America has never had "deep historical roots" to bind us together.

[tastyface]

I come from a family of recent immigrants. We're considered white so we get a pass for behaviors that our nonwhite peers get side-eye for. My ethnicity has its own enclaves. Those enclaves get treated as a cute cultural artifact rather than a threat -- even worth visiting on a tourist trip. My ancestral culture lives under the protective umbrella of "Western culture," but in practice, the overlap with prevailing Protestant/Anglo culture is absolutely minimal along almost every axis.

And yet, we are all American by almost any reasonable definition. If anything, the people beating their chest for having some random ancestors on the mayflower or whatever are the impostors here. What have they actually done for this country?

Also, I'm kind of surprised that you believe these things as a black man. You do realize that a large percentage of the country doesn't consider you "true" American either, right? They can't kick you out, but they will do everything in their power to disenfranchise you and turn you into second-class citizens. The signaling could not be any more clear.

[Capricorn2481]

> This sentiment is just so utterly foreign to me that I can't comprehend how someone could rationally think this way

For someone who is so befuddled by the idea of being unbothered by a heterogeneous culture, you don't make any convincing argument against it. Why are you complaining about leftists who see immigration as inherently "good" if you can't even explain why it's bad? If it's so obviously bad, surely you can outline what will tangibly happen?

> I'm a black man whose ancestors have lived in America since the slave ships, and I easily recognize that some people are more American than others

If it's so easy to recognize, then what is it? What makes you American, and what makes you not American enough to be worthy of deportation? You aren't "easily recognizing" anything, you are having a feeling about people different from you and trying to rationalize it afterwards.

There is an obvious argument for immigration as an inherent good. It brings business, it brings talented specialists, it brings new ideas, it brings a bigger market. We are one of the most powerful countries on earth. If immigration was so obviously bad, do you think a nation of immigrants would be able to get to this point? Culture is our main export. We are a cultural powerhouse. We are envied by other countries for our soft power. That's what the Riyadh comedy festival was about. We are strong arguably because we are such a melting pot, and we have a rich cultural tapestry. Black culture exists specifically because people didn't assimilate to white culture, and it's fascinating to enough people that Koreans halfway across the world are emulating it.

The idea that we suddenly have a homogeneous "way to act" that is easily identifiable, and we need to deport people that don't act that way, is farcical and stupidly self-defeating. It's also laughably overconfident for a country that can't make cars or keep employed, tax paying citizens from drowning in medical debt. We should probably play to our strengths, not self-sabotage.