Senator Ted Kennedy collapses

[Ramo]

People who are concerned about the "ethnic mix" of America tilting in the wrong direction are racists, yes.

And much of what you bolded is debatable. For example, the last sentence is true; immigration liberalization didn't cause American workers to lose jobs in the aggregate. It made us wealthier. Yay Kennedy.

[Kuciwalker]

Sigh, you just don't get it.
It makes sense for a sorority to bar men from a building where naked women can be found.
Same for a fraternity.

That's a terrible argument. At least, we don't hang out naked around each other, I don't know what your college experience was like. We're pretty much normal college housing, except messier.

The only reason it's acceptable is because it's people living together.

There are plenty of fraternities that don't have their own house (mostly new ones).

YOU WILL note that they're not allowed to bar blacks. Since the naked arguement doesn't stand there.

Dude, your naked argument is a massive strawman. It's okay for fraternities to ban women because they are inherently male organizations, and there are comparable organizations for females to join. Universities have no good reason to be segregated by sex, so they aren't and shouldn't be.

If you think it's acceptable to belong to a country club that bars blacks from joining then you're a ignorant bigot.

Massive strawman AND a WTF.

If you think it's ok to exclude women but not blacks, that's not any better in my book.

For a social organization whose ENTIRE PURPOSE is to provide a place for men to socialize with other men... no.

Your point is ridiculous.

[Kuciwalker]

Actually Kuci is only succeeding in showing that he's got nothing on this one. Anyone that reads the timeline after the accident will be able to judge his character. Yes, a young men might be allowed a indescression but not like this. Being responsible for a girls death through cowardice is not a youthful prank to be easily forgiven.
Even being forgiving of a single error, paying someone to take a college exam for you. Pretty bad.
Not many people get banned from Harvard's campus. It takes some effort.

Nothing in this post has anything to do with anything I've said in this thread.

[TCO]

You farking liberals like to let a woman die in the car. Maybe you like to smoke Al Queda pole too? While they cut your children's heads off and broom rape your wife? [/drinkin]

[RGBVideo]

spinning ted kennedy's self-pwnage

first off, you be a racist! spin spin

ok, let's concentrate on his first point of this first example of your "important bills we have thanks to kennedy" -list:

[..]"First, our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually. Under the proposed bill, the present level of immigration remains substantially the same" [...]

On an intellectually honest level, how the **** can anyone seriously defend this statement? At the time, was it possible for him to be more wrong?

[Ramo]

1. Are you admitting that you have issues with society having the wrong ethnic tilt? I clearly didn't call you a racist earlier, but if the shoe fits...
2. I didn't say that everything in that statement was right. I said that some of what you claimed was "180 degrees wrong" was debatable, or on the money (i.e. the jobs claim). I'd also point out that a lot of people didn't properly predict the consequences of the legislation.

[Ramo]

Was googling the legislation. It has some interesting history...

All Things Considered, May 9, 2006 · As Congress considers sweeping changes to immigration law, nearly all the debate has centered on the problem of illegal immigration. Little discussed are the many concerns of legal immigrants, the estimated 3 million to 4 million who are, as it's so often been put --"already standing in line."

The current system of legal immigration dates to 1965. It marked a radical break with previous policy and has led to profound demographic changes in America. But that's not how the law was seen when it was passed -- at the height of the civil rights movement, at a time when ideals of freedom, democracy and equality had seized the nation. Against this backdrop, the manner in which the United States decided which foreigners could and could not enter the country had become an increasing embarrassment.

An Argument Based on Egalitarianism

"The law was just unbelievable in its clarity of racism," says Stephen Klineberg, a sociologist at Rice University. "It declared that Northern Europeans are a superior subspecies of the white race. The Nordics were superior to the Alpines, who in turn were superior to the Mediterraneans, and all of them were superior to the Jews and the Asians."

By the 1960s, Greeks, Poles, Portuguese and Italians were complaining that immigration quotas discriminated against them in favor of Western Europeans. The Democratic Party took up their cause, led by President John F. Kennedy. In a June 1963 speech to the American Committee on Italian Migration, Kennedy called the system of quotas in place back then " nearly intolerable."

After Kennedy's assassination, Congress passed, and President Lyndon Johnson, signed the Immigration and Naturalization Act. It leveled the immigration playing field, giving a nearly equal shot to newcomers from every corner of the world. The ceremony was held at the foot of the symbolically powerful Statue of Liberty. Yet President Johnson tried to downplay the law's significance.

"This bill that we will sign today is not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions," Johnson said at the signing ceremony. "It will not reshape the structure of our daily lives or add importantly to either our wealth or our power."

Looking back, Johnson's statement is remarkable because it proved so wrong. Why? Sociologist Klineberg says the government's newfound sense of egalitarianism only went so far. The central purpose of the new immigration law was to reunite families.

Klineberg notes that in debating an overhaul of immigration policy in the 1960s, many in Congress had argued that little would change because the measure gave preference to relatives of immigrants already in America. Another provision gave preference to professionals with skills in short supply in the United States.

"Congress was saying in its debates, 'We need to open the door for some more British doctors, some more German engineers,'" Klineberg says. "It never occurred to anyone, literally, that there were going to be African doctors, Indian engineers, Chinese computer programmers who'd be able, for the first time in the 20th century, to immigrate to America."

Predictions Based on Ignorance?

In fact, expert after expert testified before Congress that little would change. Secretary of State Dean Rusk repeatedly stressed that the number of new immigrants coming to the United States was not expected to skyrocket. What was really at stake, Rusk argued, was the principle of a more open immigration policy.

When asked about the number of people from India who would want to immigrate to the United States, Rusk told the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization: "The present estimate, based upon the best information we can get, is that there might be, say, 8,000 immigrants from India in the next five years. In other words, I don't think we have a particular picture of a world situation where everybody is just straining to move to the Unites States."

Historian Otis Graham, professor emeritus of the University of California at Santa Barbara, says that when he first started studying the 1965 immigration law, he assumed that politicians at the time had lied about the law's potential consequences in order to get it passed. But he says he has since changed his mind.

"In the research of my students, and in the research I've been able to do," Graham says, "so many lobbyists that followed this issue, so many labor-union executives that followed this issue, so many church people -- so many of those involved said the same thing. So you find ignorance three-feet deep. Maybe ignorance is the answer."

Karen Narasaki, who heads the Asian American Justice Center, finds the 1965 immigration overhaul all the more extraordinary because there's evidence it was not popular with the public.

"It was not what people were marching in the streets over in the 1960s," she says. "It was really a group of political elites who were trying to look into the future. And again, it was the issue of, 'Are we going to be true to what we say our values are?'"

In 1965, the political elite on Capitol Hill may not have predicted a mass increase in immigration. But Marian Smith, the historian for Customs and Immigration Services, showed me a small agency booklet from 1966 that certainly did. It explains how each provision in the new law would lead to a rapid increase in applications and a big jump in workload -- more and more so as word trickled out to those newly eligible to come. Smith says a lifetime of immigration backlogs had built up among America's foreign-born minorities. These immigrants would petition for relatives to come to the United States, and those relatives in turn would petition for other family members. Demand from post-colonial countries in Asia and Africa, she notes, jumped after World War II.

The Families Factor

The influx of refugees and of millions of illegal immigrants over the last several decades have certainly contributed to the United States' profound demographic transformation. But the chief driver of this change remains the system of family-based immigration put in place in 1965. Over time, in a process critics call "chain migration," entire families have re-established themselves in the United States. Historian Otis Graham thinks the policy has been a terrible mistake.

"Family reunification puts the decision of who comes to America in the hands of foreigners," Graham says. "Those decisions are out of the hand of the Congress -- they just set up a formula and its kinship. Frankly, it could be called nepotism."

In fact, President Kennedy's original proposal made skills-based immigration the priority. But Graham says a broad lobby pushed for the greater emphasis on families. It included churches, ethnic groups whose members had family in the old country, and the AFL-CIO. Graham says the union worried about competition from too many highly skilled newcomers.

But the Asian American Justice Center's Narasaki thinks the family focus makes sense. She notes that in the Asian community, extended families often function as a close-knit unit. Parents will help raise children, while siblings will pool their money to buy homes and businesses together and to help finance college for the younger generation.

"A family is very important not just to the social and emotional well-being, but also to the economic well-being of these communities," she says.

At a recent naturalization ceremony, 32 immigrants gathered for their oath of citizenship in the ornate rotunda of Washington's National Archives. Of them, three were from Western Europe. The rest were overwhelmingly from Africa, Latin America and Asia.

Later, at a basement reception, the new citizens posed for pictures, holding tiny American flags and a gift bag that included a refrigerator magnet of the U.S. Constitution and an AT&T prepaid calling card. One older woman, dressed in her Sunday best, with a broad-brimmed hat, introduced herself as Hannah Ndubuisi. She is from Nigeria, and her name means "life is first." Ndubisi was sponsored by her U.S. citizen son, Samuel.

"Everybody in the world -- I don't know if you know this -- wants to come to the United States of America," she says. "All you need to do is go to the embassy, any embassy, and see long, long lines of people who want to come here."

In fact, Ndubisi has a long line of relatives still in Nigeria who'd love to come. It's the same with another brand-new citizen at the reception, Emad Ali from Sudan.

"I have my parents, I have sisters, I have brothers," Ali says. "I'm going to apply for them to come here soon -- definitely. I hope they will be here soon."

It may not be soon at all, though. The immigration system set up specifically to reunite families is so overwhelmed with applicants, that relatives who wait their turn must endure being divided for years.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5391395

[Jon Miller]

Considering the number of people who send money home to their families, bringing their families here makes a lot of sense.

JM

[Verto]

The sleazeball and the racist, what a loss that would be..

[Ramo]

I've been looking at the raw data of American immigration. If you normalize by the population size, the immigration rate is actually pretty similar to what it it was just prior to the enacting of this legislation, particularly if you only look at only the next couple decades. Compared to the total variation over America's history (including pre-1920 when it was far higher), Kennedy's absolutely right: the rate remained substantially the same.

http://www.economics.ucr.edu/papers/papers01/01-40%20PP%20Graph-%20immigration%20for%20wp.pdf

[Imran Siddiqui]

Because he was assuaging racists

Is pandering to racists (even, or especially, when you don't believe it) considered ok now?

[Ramo]

It got our parents into this country, didn't it?

By the standards of the day, it's not so bad. What exactly do you think LBJ was telling Southern Senators when he was pushing civil rights legislation?

[rah]

For a social organization whose ENTIRE PURPOSE is to provide a place for men to socialize with other men... no.

Your point is ridiculous.

That statement is sexist. The entire purpose of the organization is based on sexism.
Do you believe that if the entire purpose for a social organization is to provide a place for white men to socialize with other white men that it's not racist.

I'll concede single sex fraternaties and Sororities due to the living facilities. But as more dorms go coed and learn to deal with mixed facilities, I may change my mind on that also. Currently, the facilities at my daughters sorority would not accomodate mixed sexes very well.

I don't believe any general organization should be allowed to bar women (or minorities). INCLUDING PROFFESIONAL SPORTS teams. I do find this at odds that that I think it's ok for Womens leagues should be able to exclude men. But I'll rationalize that one as a physical abilities fairness thing.

While I won't comment on legality, if you're a politician that has to worry about perceptions, it would probably be best not to belong to any such sexist appearing organizations. (Most politicians are smart enough to do this) ESpecially if you're going to attack others qualifications by calling them inferring that they're sexist.

[Grandpa Troll]

I think I should have named this thread the Collapse of Ted Kennedy

[Kuciwalker]

That statement is sexist. The entire purpose of the organization is based on sexism.
Do you believe that if the entire purpose for a social organization is to provide a place for white men to socialize with other white men that it's not racist.

No, because there's no good reason a white guy wouldn't want to socialize with any black guys. There are plenty of good reasons a guy would want to go hang out with just some other guys.

I'll concede single sex fraternaties and Sororities due to the living facilities. But as more dorms go coed and learn to deal with mixed facilities, I may change my mind on that also.

Then your problem is actually just that YOUR OPINIONS ARE COMPLETELY RIDICULOUS.