Asian "illegal aliens"

[realFedUp]

or non-citizens. Since this "illegal alien" discussion
seems to be centered on Latinos...

In some areas of Los Angeles and for
some years mainland Chinese and Taiwanese adults have bought
houses, sent their children and a maid or older adult
to supervise them, and sent their children to the local
public schools. They pay property and sales taxes on consumer goods
but that's about it. No participation in the community
and no investment in the schools. This has been a source of friction in
those communities but little discussed in the media.
The children aren't citizens but are enjoying the
public education provided by American taxpayers.

[RagingInMiami]

1. But the Asians are not threatening to take over as the majority population

That is the real issue at hand. Fear of suddenly becoming the minority race.

[realFedUp]

3. there is quite a large population in this country

I don't think the issue is caucasians being
afraid to be in the minority...

[RagingInMiami]

6. I do

[realFedUp]

8. If you look at the U.S. Census....Whites are 80.4%

http://www.census.gov/population/pop-profile/dynamic/RACEHO.pdf

In 2004:

Whites are 80.4%
Blacks are 12.8%
Asian are 4.2%
American Indian or Alaskan are 1.0%
Hawaiian or Pacific Islander are .2%
Hispanic 14.1%

Whites are still the largest ethnic group

[RagingInMiami]

9. That's interesting

But what does it mean that whites are 3.5 percent?

[realFedUp]

11. That figure is non-mixed whites

Lots of interracial marriages and births in this country
and that is a different %.

[realFedUp]

19. I revised the numbers...take a new look at them. nt

[harlinchi]

12. You might want to re-read that Census report.

Asians have gone from 3.8 percent of the population to 4.2 percent, a 16.4 increase. Blacks are 12.8 percent and Latinos are 14.1 percent.

You numbers jumped out at me since I knew Blacks were a higher percentage.

[realFedUp]

13. Oh, thanks...I'll look at that again and will revise.

Thanks for catching it. :-)

[RagingInMiami]

21. Then they have nothing to fear

However, in certain cities, whites are becoming the minority.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/24/AR2006032402005.html

I think over time, people will just interbreed and it's not going to be a problem, but I do know many whites feel threatened. I've talked to them about it. They say they don't want to feel like a foreigner in their own country.

[pitohui]

2. this caused an end to the belize passport for sale program

the small nation of belize used to raise funds by basically selling you citizenship/passport for $50K

they had to end the program because they discovered in recent years that a huge number of mainland chinese, who had never even visited their nation, were buying the citizenship

the problem became that belize feared that their small nation (pop 200K or so) would completely lose its culture and become inundated by foreigners in event of a crisis in china that caused them to abandon china for belize in great numbers, hell, they would even lose their own language (english)

you have to decide if your culture is worth preserving or not, if you decide not, i guess it doesn't matter, but even tiny belize -- which i'm sure could have used the cash from continuing to sell passports -- decided to toughen up and be sure that new citizens do participate in some meaningful way

seems little enough to ask

[realFedUp]

7. interesting... nt

[BrklynLiberal]

4. Anyone every hear of Malcolm Gladwell's book "The Tipping Point"?

http://www.gladwell.com/tippingpoint/index.html

That is what these Conservative Fundies and racists use to fuel their fires.

[sweetheart]

5. My daughter is to one of those chinese immigrants

and i assure you, she's a citizen.

Clearly you're not going to hear me complain about
the chinese scourge, and i hope your fallacious straw man
falls flat. The real cost to the american taxpayer is
trillions for an imperial military, and no simple little
tax savings elsewhere makes any difference when the
country is bankrupting itself on bombs and guns.

[realFedUp]

10. I think it just needs to be part of the discussion on immigration

Certainly this country is made up of immigrants
and each group has given to this country and
has taken its share of racism and bigotry.

I don't think of any population as a "scourge".

Your argument about military expenditures doesn't really
address the original thread.

[sweetheart]

22. 1 divided by 4 is less than 1 divided by 2

Sharing the big american pie with too many other citizens
spoils the picture, we can't afford it anymore, we're streched to the
breaking as it is, and all that thinking, a meme of contraction,
selfishness, pulling back, "always look out for number 1", darwinian
faux-independence from the masses, as if your frozen strawberry dessert
was not picked by immigrant labour.

I really don't care about the skin colour, the religion or anything
else of the immigrants. I care that they have a fair shot as much as
can be offered, and the justice system, the drugs war and other such
violations of human rights by the prison state, more power to a person
if they can make a happy life in prison state USA. Its hard workin'
the hamster treadmill of a disintegrating middle class, with outrageous
gateway costs of the time and money of university, to uplift ones life
to the officer tent. A culture so military never deviates far from the
army model.

Our problem is militarism, and rahter we should be blind to the colour
or the identity papers of people in our society. THat is what freedom
is, the freedom to know that "justice for all", universal envranchisement
is real... but ha, a joke a farce. Militarism, walls, wars, prisons,
enforcers, border police, homeleand terrorist security, searching through
sewage to discover who's doing what drugs, monitoring internet mutterings,
tracking dissident mind, watching each other with binoculars, to see who
is the terorist, who will detonate the bomb, a zero sum game, kill or
be killed, take a job at wall mart or die, accept jesus or be cast out.

Its gone bonkers, and escape from the prison, or switching to an open
cellblock before a major lockdown....

Sharing my bread with another man is twice bread. I read that somewhere...

un-christian nationalist irony

[sweetheart]

23. and it is about the guns

The military budget is betting on force over parley, shaking of hands, and
peacemaking. Peacemaking is the solution to immigration. Peacemaking in
the drugs war, peacemaking in the war against labour rights, peacemaking
in the war of invading other people's space for the imperial want
of men who've proven over long years to be investors in warcraft,
leaving an outrageous trail of opportunistic gunboat explorations
as glorious and worthy of a tied laureate tennyson, as any
charge of the 600 in to the iraqi guns of death.

Its been so long, i don't think people know what a peacemaker is, a person
who sorts out upsetting conflicts by giving people a good life, a rising tide,
that the whole benefits of the experimentation...

At this point, a leader that did nothing, a post of wood for 4 years, would
be a far more efffective president. Its too bad we can't elect inanimate objects.

[Gormy Cuss]

14. If the parents own a house, they're investing in the schools

at least in the $$ sense. I understand your point thtat they aren't participating in the community but the same can be said for many citizen parents. Unless these Chinese parents are complete idiots the only reason to send your child to public school in the states is that it's a high performing district and thus similar to sending them to a private school. High performing districts tend to have school bond measures and parcel taxes on top of the regular tax rate. Those can add up (20% of my property tax bill this year went to these special measures to bolster funding for the local school, for example.)

So, in this case, those children who aren't citizens are enjoying a public education provided by American taxpayers and the taxes paid by their own parents.

[realFedUp]

15. so any non-citizen group in your opinion is paying for public schools

if they own a house.

[RagingInMiami]

16. Aren't public schools funded through property taxes?

[realFedUp]

18. Yes

but what else is happening is the states are
reducing that funding back to the cities and towns.

[Gormy Cuss]

20. They are paying for the local portion of public school funding, yes.

That's not opinion, that's a fact wherever property taxes are used to fund education and that is the case in California. Of course those parents aren't paying the entire cost because federal education funding derives from other taxes such as income tax, and some areas add funding through other local taxes, but citizen parents don't pay the full cost either. There are many property owners and other tazpayers who pay for schools yet have no children. Most citizen parents don't complain about that.

[sam sarrha]

17. get ready for a BIG migration when China threatens to call in their markers

if we dont take a couple extra hundred million of their excess men, having killed off all the baby girls...