Turn and face the strange* - TTG

*from David Bowie’s “Changes”

Keith Harbaugh recently posed the following question as a comment to my old post where, a few months ago, I confessed to being a latent SJW.

TTG, since you are 

a) a native New Englander, 

b) a Catholic, and 

c) have said in the past, I believe, words to the effect "I see no problem with immigration as long as it does not exceed the capacity of America to assimilate the incoming migrants", I invite you, if you are reading this comment made three months after your post above, to read and if you care to comment on, two articles discussing efforts, and results, of something called "Catholic Charities" (whose mission statement seems to epitomize the POV of the SJW) to increase the flow of immigrants to Portland, Maine:

"Such a Disgrace: How Ethan Strimling Betrayed the People of Portland", and

"The Way Life Should Be? Vol. I: From Parts Unknown to Streets Paved with Gold".

In particular, do you think the authors of these articles have a point in the concerns they express? Or are they expressing concerns that deserve no respect, in your view? Or perhaps some intermediate position. BTW, I sympathize with the concerns expressed. But as the saying goes "Your mileage may vary".

————

Kieth also posed another cogent question. “The issue, IMO, is: Should that culture be preserved or replaced (in the name of "progress", of course)?”

Well Keith, since you took the time to ask, I’ll take the time to answer. In general, I can find articles expressing support for the rapid influx of immigrants to Portland as easily as finding article expressing alarm such as the two you noted. The two you found do express valid concerns about real challenges. The influx of so many immigrants so fast is taxing social services in Portland and across Maine. Portland’s elected leaders acknowledge this cost and are addressing it. If the people of Portland disagree, they will vote in new leadership. A lot of Portland residents themselves stepped up to help as do private groups like Catholic Charities. Catholic Charities USA is a national network which does SJW work across the country. It helps poor and needy long term local residents as well as recent immigrants.

Another factor is that Portland is not a quaint New England seaside town. Most Mainiacs don’t even consider Portland to be a Maine city anymore, almost an extension of Boston. It is a liberal city, a historically liberal city. The non-immigrant professionals who moved into Portland made it even more liberal. It is also these professional newcomers who are raising the rent in Portland, not the immigrants from Africa.   

So, does Portland gain anything by taking in all these immigrants? Without these overwhelmingly young immigrants, the population of Portland and all Maine would be on the road to extinction. They are aging out. The money spent educating and supporting these new arrivals is an investment in the future of Maine. These immigrant families are initially content with a far lower standard of living as they take their place in the existing society. That’s how immigrants have always moved into our society. Of course they do change that society in the process of integrating into the society. And that’s the crux of the controversy.

New England has changed dramatically over its long history, but there is a continuity. The Puritans of the 17th century slowly gave way to the abrasive and insular New England Yankee. Although a caricature, the Yankees of the “Bert and I” stories did exist and, in rare corners of Maine, still do. Portland is not one of those corners. Today’s New Englanders are as different from those Down East Yankees as the Yankees are from their ancestral Puritan forefathers. Time and immigrants do that to a society. Both sides change and the way things were are no more.   

I saw that in my Connecticut hometown. The old community of rural Congregationalists more than doubled in size with the influx of Catholic immigrants from eastern and southern Europe. Those immigrants largely worked in the mills in nearby Waterbury. The character and culture of my town changed forever. One factor that eased the cultural transition was what I saw as an outsized effort to educate the newcomers (my family included) as citizens of Prospect, Connecticut. In our grammar school, we were infused with countless lessons in history, literature and citizenship. The Saint Anthony’s RC Church and the Prospect Congregational Church played an important part in this education. Tolerance, mutual courtesy and the imperative duties of citizens and Christians were common lessons from the pulpits. Through those efforts, Prospect became something new rather than a hilltop littered with abandoned houses, barns and fields. We newcomers were not totally assimilated, nor did the older residents remain unchanged. Since the attitude and actions of the people of Portland seem to mirror the attitude and actions of the original population of my hometown, I think Portland will enjoy (or suffer) a similar future. 

There are a lot of communities in the US that are in much worse condition than Portland ever was. The native people are aging out and what kids there are are moving out. They are becoming ghost towns. Refugees and immigrants might be a shot in the arm to those towns, but only if those townspeople are open to give it a try and SJWs like Catholic Charities USA pitch in. I guarantee a lot of the old timers will grouse about the newcomers and their strange ways. They will long for the old days. I guarantee there will be troublemakers among the kids. There always are. But as both sides change willingly or unwittingly, those dying towns may metamorphize into something new. 

OTOH, there is a chance that an influx of immigrants could be so large that the older population is simply driven to extinction. I see no reason to hasten that kind of outcome.

TTG

https://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2019/07/confessions-of-a-latent-sjw-ttg.html#comment-6a00d8341c72e153ef0240a4dd79c8200b  

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/23/us/portland-maine-african-migrants.html

Comments

[Vegetius]

>I see no reason to hasten that kind of outcome.

Why not resist?

When, how and why did ensuring the blessing of liberty to YOUR posterity take a backseat to delusions about equality? And cui bono?

If you ever come across the phrase "Day of the Pillow" remember this post and look out the window: increasing numbers of young Americans are disinclined to accept their own displacement with the same passivity which their elders are displaying at the moment.

[MP98]

The Governor and Mayor were elected.
People get the government they deserve.

[James Doleman]

Nice piece

[ted richard]

the pro mass immigration versus the controlled immigration is really the battle between nationalism and globalism. it is merely one aspect of the desire of globalists to erase national boundaries and nation states. it is happening throughout the west to the great detriment of those nations stupid enough to embrace globalism.

sweden is at this point on their way to extinction as an historic culture. france is going in that same direction albeit a bit slower because they are so much larger population wise.

imo if it was NOT for russia and china forming an alliance to defend themselves against the globalists using american military power as their ultimate muscle to get nations to knuckle under the world would be on the way to a dark neo feudal world order where anyone not part of the 1/10 of 1% would become no more than livestock to be culled as deemed necessary.

like them or not the handful of populist elected leaders in the west as well as russia, china and rising eurasia are all in response to the ugly face that is globalism. they are what stands in between a humane future of growth, optimism and progress versus the regressive feudalism of the globalists, environmentalists and all the other groups that see our world in zero sum terms

[turcopolier]

TTG

If you are in favor of an end to regulating immigration and controlled passage of our borders then you are in favor of "hastening that outcome." Umberto Ecco thought attachment to tradition, religion and similar things were "fascist" but I do not., but then i did not grow up believing that I was being assimilated into American culture even though my mother was a working class immigrant from French Canada up north of Albany. I have not favored an end to controlled immigration. Our law brings 1.2 million immigrants into the US each year. I think that is enough. Nor have I desired an end to giving TRUE refugees like your grandparents asylum but most of the people claiming refugee status now are economic migrants falsely claiming to be refugees from oppression. If economic deprivation is allowed as a basis for asylum, half the world will flee to the US and we will not be able to absorb them. They will absorb what is left of us, We will become what California is becoming. Am I correct in thinking that your acceptance of an ROTC scholarship after the VN war had ended was part of your process of assimilation? You and your father were both born in the US?

[Steve G]

TTG
From what I have read from other sources the majority of new “migrants”
“Refugees” in Portland and Lewiston are sub-Saharan Arfricans who
Had the wherewithal to fly to South America then travel through
Central America on to Mexico and eventually Maine.
What specific jobs and enterprises will they fill in their new home
That the “Mainiacs” refuse to do? I thought automation and AI will
Replace entry level jobs forthwith? Think Amazon warehouse robots.

[turcopolier]

All

I remember Portland from my high school days in Maine in the 50s as a crumbling provincial city. Sanford, the crumbling little town I lived in was also moribund having lost its textile factories to North Carolina. The New People were the French Canadian mill and shoe factory workers. They were half the town and were in the process of taking over the government. The tension between the Yankees and the French was eventually resolved through intermarriage and out migration. My relatives on my mother's side have since nearly all moved away and show little affect of French-Canadian culture or language. Isn't that right, Babelfish? The town is still moribund but looks a lot worse (Googlearth) than it used to.

[The Twisted Genius]

My father had a part time job as the tool maker at a small manufacturing company in Waterbury owned by a French-Canadian. Whenever I was home from college, I would work there on the night shift running the injection molding machines. The press operators were all French-Canadian women. They were always trying to hook me up with someone as their "Sweet Baboo."

[The Twisted Genius]

I am not in favor of ending immigration regulation or open borders. I've never said I was. Current controlled immigration is less than a half percent of our population per year. If our culture and traditions are so fragile and weak that a flow of such a small percentage of foreigners would cause it to crumble and disappear, it may not be a viable culture. Best move it to a living history museum for future historians. I think controlled immigration could quadruple without ill effect, especially if resettlement is handled smartly rather than imprisonment at the border. I have faith that our culture can absorb this flow without collapsing. Control of this immigration is necessary to stop criminals and disease. I do agree that we can't take in everyone who wants to come here. It probably would sink the lifeboat.

My father's first language was Lithuanian. He didn't learn English until he went to school. I think his assimilation was largely accomplished at Parris Island in 1945. He enlisted in the Marines at 17 years of age. I felt I was pretty much assimilated in grammar school, but I never lost all vestiges of my father's old culture.

[turcopolier]

TTG

"I think controlled immigration could quadruple without ill effect, especially if resettlement is handled smartly rather than imprisonment at the border." You seem to have confused legal immigration and the faux asylum seekers at the border. Legal immigrants fly into an airport or drive up to the border and display their immigrant visa and are admitted to the US. They are then free to go wherever they like in the US. You seem to believe that all faux asylum seekers should be released into the US. after screening out criminals and the diseased.

[Jack]

TTG

How do you feel about a merit based system like I believe New Zealand, instead of our current preference for “chain migration”?

I agree with Col. Lang that the majority of asylum seekers currently are economic and not those suffering political persecution. In any case if we don’t have secure borders how can we have a nation? I think illegal immigration is over a million people annually and if they come with no respect for our laws how do we expect them to honor our laws in the future?

[Fred]

Jack,

Why do all our politicians keep suggesting we let people buy citizenship rather than create incentives for Americans to have kids?

[The Twisted Genius]

Fred, BINGO! Now what could those incentives be? And what conditions are steering Americans to not have kids?

[The Twisted Genius]

We take in less than 100,000 refugees a year. We grant asylum to far less than that. Take in ten times that and we're still far below my quadrupling number. Asylum is for political refugees (my words). Refugees include asylum seekers, but also include those who face death in their homelands due to any number of reasons such as starvation due to environmental disaster and criminal violence. Granted those people don't fit the legal definition of asylee, but in my SJW mind, they should be considered for resettlement, not admitted automatically, but considered based on the conditions in their homelands and individual circumstances. A policy of “Screw ‘em. I got mine. Let ‘em starve.” doesn’t appeal to me.

[The Twisted Genius]

Jack, I do agree that merit based should considered, even prioritized over family relationship (chain migration). We're going to need a lot of doctors and elder care specialists since we sure aren't breeding them ourselves. I also strongly agree that ending illegal immigration should be a much higher priority than it is now. Overstaying visas is the cause of most this illegal immigration. We have to plug that system and have secure borders for a better immigration system to work.

[Fred]

TTG,

“Without these overwhelmingly young immigrants, the population of Portland and all Maine would be on the road to extinction. “

What incentive did the people of Portland and the State of Maine give to the young people to make new people the old fashioned way, you know, get married and have kids, rather than having the government screw them by creating incentives to move jobs out of state and out of country then spend tax dollars to move foreigners in? How many kids did the local Planned Parenthood clinic bring into the world in Portland? Apparently not enough. I wonder why?

"It is also these professional newcomers who are raising the rent in Portland, not the immigrants from Africa."

What school of economics were these ideas from, surely not the University of Florida, from which I earned a degree in Economics? Those "professional newcomers" aren't. They are "empty nesters" per the chamber of commerce's own website. They paid for their kids schooling in both time and money in a different state before arriving and they sure aren't living in bottom end housing made vacant over the decades the population of Portland declined before their arrival. As to the immigrants, where are they living? Are they building log cabins like the original settlers or "indigenous peoples"? Sod houses just like Laura Ingalls Wilder’s family did on the great plains? No? No.

Step right up, step right up! Get your Federal Funding: Catholic Charities USA,gets $1.6 Billion worth. That ain't local money from the collection plate, though there is certainly some of that.
"Catholic Charities USA, the largest charitable organization run by the church, receives about 65 percent of its annual budget from state and federal government..."
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/sep/24/catholic-church-collects-16-billion-in-us-contract/

Did Catholic Charities USA go to Baltimore, Detroit, or even Ferguson to help out Americans by relocating them to Maine? No. Sorry Black Lives Matter, you were born in the wrong country. Oh, and you guys and gals in the backwoods of Maine, I'm sure there were just tons and tons of efforts to help you from the people living in a city which is, as TTG describes, "almost an extension of Boston"

"Maine’s only refugee resettlement program, Catholic Charities Maine Refugee and Immigration Services (RIS) is dedicated to helping those seeking a new life in America...." That doesn't sound like they are going to rural Maine to help Americans in need.
https://www.ccmaine.org/refugee-immigration-services

"In our grammar school, we were infused with countless lessons in history, literature and citizenship. "
Monday, thanks to the left, is "Indigenous Peoples Day". You know what the founders of the Republic did to the indigenous peoples don't you? That, the Left’s version, is what is going to be "infused with countless lessons" in the woke schools of liberal Portland. I'm sure it will help assimilation. Just like the affirmative action benefits the new immigrants will receive immediately upon gaining citizenship. A benefit the "seperate but equal", i.e. white, students won't get because they deserve the privilege of the disparate impact from inheriting guilt from what the left considers ‘America’s original sin’. That is certainly going to help foster "tolerance".

"Tolerance, mutual courtesy and the imperative duties of citizens and Christians..."
Christianity has been removed from public school teaching as have the imperative duties of citizenship. Tolerant, yep. That's what I'll be reminded to be for disagreeing with resettling "refugees" rather than demanding our own government serve our own citizens.

" Since the attitude and actions of the people of Portland seem to mirror the attitude and actions of the original population of my hometown, I think Portland will enjoy (or suffer) a similar future. "

So people from Somalia are just like Christian refugees from Europe who knew they were coming to a Western Christian nation ? I think not. Feel free to help these people with your children's birthright, not mine. The Do Gooders and Empty Nesters should jump on a plane and go spend a year in Mogadishu or wherever to help. They might actually learn something, if they survive the experience.

[turcopolier]

TTG

An "asylum seeker" is someone who has not yet been granted "refugee" status. It has been our law that economic migrants are not "asylum seekers" who will be granted refugee status so that they can lead better lives. I take it you want to change that law. Your earlier comment about quadrupling the number of legal permanent immigrants clearly had nothing to do with "refugees." Are you now saying that we should admit 5 million economic migrants as refugees every year?

[j]

Whoa, wait just a minute!

Our college kids futures are being sold down the toilet by crooked members of Congress who want money in exchange for upping the Green cards, They're making back-room deals with foreign governments (India for one) so that they can expand their foreign economies and letting their foreign college types take U.S. jobs that should first be offered to U.S. college grads (Not foreign grads!).

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/09/18/gop-senate-plans-vote-to-outsource-college-graduate-america/

Sen. Lee (R-Ut) would change the cap for India from their yearly 20,000 to over 100,000 Green cards. And that's not counting the over 200,000 who currently are getting Green cards through the back-door option.

Fortunately this mess Senator Lee was trying to key-hole through, has been stalled by a lone Senator (for now). Our U.S. college grads were sold down the river by the entire House of Representatives!

[catherine]

Maybe I am a American romantic....I think we should take in 'actual refugees', people fleeing real threats...some who might be temporary, others permanent.
Do not think we should take in 'economic opportunist'..I don't care what their skill or expertise is.
And immigration should have a reasonable limit.
And it should be the responsibility of US education to make Americans out of them.....NO more hyphens.

[HK Leo Strauss]

TTG,

As a frequent traveler I spend time at favored diners and bars, where the service has trended down, the counters are not bused, the kitchens are slow and understaffed, and it might take awhile for the sole barkeep to notice an empty pint glass.

Before retiring to bed at the hotel with a check-in kiosk, I turn to the NHK channel and watch the latest installment of a country circling the drain as its population ages out. Whole shows on how the Vietnamese nursing care staff just isn’t popular with the nenpai. They’ll just have to wait for robots to get the bedpan, I guess.

The future is right there to see, but it’s clear many see the world in absolutes and not shades of gray.

[Johnb]

Here are the figures that need a political answer:-
“Hamilton and his colleagues found that the total number of births in 2018, at 3,788,235, was down 2 percent from 2017. The general fertility rate for 2018 was 59.0 births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44, another record low for the U.S.May 14, 2019”
The body politic can opt to accept a declining population and the consequences that logically follow or decide on what immigration policy is required and where are those numbers to come from. Whatever the number it can always include a percentage of asylum seekers, refugees as well as more orthodox immigration. America is not the only country to have to face up to these decisions but the uniqueness of the American story will produce a specific American solution.

[The Twisted Genius]

Yes, I would like to see our immigration and refugee laws changed to allow in many more immigrants and refugees. And I think our definition of refugees should include economic migrants, those who face starvation and death from natural disasters and environmental catastrophes. These aren't people who just want to move up the socio-economic ladder, they are people who want to come here rather than stay in their homelands and watch their children starve. I do think we can absorb up to 4 to 5 million immigrants, political refugees and economic migrants.

[The Twisted Genius]

Catherine, I would not call farmers facing consecutive years of crop failures and starvation economic opportunists.

[Fred]

TTG,

We should bring America to them, rather than bring them to America. How has that worked for the last 50 years?

[turcopolier]

TTG

"farmers facing consecutive years of crop failures and starvation economic opportunists." We cannot assume responsibility for all the unortunate o the world.