"Robert J. Bradbury" wrote:
>
> Mike has the right idea, "How do you determine who is going
> to be a positive contributing member of the crew and who is
> going to be a detriment?". Randy is trying to apply the
> filter of education, Rafal is trying to apply the filter
> of wealth (or more properly the demonstrated ability to
> function productively in a capitalist economy).
>
> I'd suggest the best filter may require some aspects of
> those elements but *also*, quite seriously, needs to apply
> the filter of "who can you *trust*". I don't really have
> any good ideas as to how you would do that unfortunately.
>
> We do have concrete evidence that immigrants from Arab
> countries have a negative trust quotient while immigrants
> from Canada or Mexico would seem to have a positive trust
> quotient. While I hate to say it due to its political
> uncorrectness should we not use that evidence to protect
> ourselves?
I think that we might develop some handicaps based on national origin,
but these should not be applied in all cases. For example, some of the
hardest working and most productive, loyal and patriotic people I know
came to this country as refugees from countries that have poor respect
for markets, democracy, and individual liberties. More properly, perhaps
a series of personality tests could be mandated for permanent residents
and those seeking citizenship, to test each individual on their own
merits rather than biasing against them because the rest of their
countrymen are bad people.
Today, we do try to prevent those with criminal records, for example,
from coming into the country, but this of course depends on the
cooperation of the government of their home country to be honest. This
tends to work, and we do have automatic flags pop up for extra scrutiny
of those coming from certain countries like Sudan, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon,
Syria, etc. who have a record of supporting terrorism.
So here are some ideas:
a) those claiming refugee status are treated differently than
opportunity immigrants, in that they only have personality tests to
detect moles. They get free ESL and history/political science courses.
b) opportunity immigrants (relatives, employment, wealth, etc) are
handicapped by their country of origin and are subject to personality
tests as well as citizenship requirements (public service or military
service, history and political courses, and possibly even ESL (they pay
for their own tests and coursework)).
c) temporary visitors get an international background check (Interpol as
well as their countries of birth and origin), must provide a letter of
invitation from a US citizen that is notarized by a city or court clerk,
and we scale back the list of 24 countries that get visa exemptions.
d) all visitors and immigrants are equipped at the border/customs
station with a wrist transponder like those used by electronic home
detention systems, only these work via satellite (GPS and satphone) to
help law enforcement locate each immigrant/visitor. Immigrants can have
the unit removed when they attain citizenship. Visitors who have visited
the US at least once per year for ten years are not required to wear the
transponder.
Outside of these requirements, I'd let the door open, no quotas except
for some countries that have poor trust handicaps.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat May 11 2002 - 17:44:14 MDT