hitler youth or true-blooded american kids?

@Setanta,

ran into them in the greenhouse industry too, had a few polish workers come through, came for a visit and just stayed, worked the farm labour system for cash, also a few albanians

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There's a **** load of Russians and Poles in Trana . . .

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@Setanta,

Funny thing Setanta (as I am sure you know), the original Border Patrol wasn't interested in the brown-skinned "hordes". Mexicans in the early 1900s were pretty much allowed to cross the border freely to work.

Back then the hordes of invaders were "yellow" (as in "yellow peril").

The Border Patrol would patrol the southern border looking for people who looked too Chinese.

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Same thing in China, with Chinese and Japanese exclusion laws, and then a head tax on Chinese entering the country.

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Same thing in China, with Chinese and Japanese exclusion laws, and then a head tax on Chinese entering the country. Now, with the excellence in education and the assiduous application to business, both countries are only too happy to welcome the legal Chinese, and to look the other way at imported Chinese slave labor.

The eastern Europeans slide right in, fit right in, and never get questioned. They look like they belong here.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

Slim, about 5'10", blond hair, blue eyes . . . what's not to love? He claimed he ran into Russians, Poles and other speakers of Slavic languages all the time--and gave them hints on how to get along.

What is not to love is that they are overstaying their legal visit to the U.S.

And, not subscribing to Nordic criteria of physical beauty, being tallish, blond, with blue eyes are no criteria for caring about a trespasser into the U.S., in my opinion. Not that that is why you said, "what's not to love?" But, the physical characteristics you mention might be my reason to be wary of these foreigners, since some Nordic looking people may have a certain superiority complex in societies that historically over-valued those physical traits.

Getting back to whether Explorer Scouts are being utilized appropriately - I do not see this as brainwashing youth, a la the Third Reich. The part of the country that these young people are living in has a regional culture that is very involved with patriotism/American historical values/Mom's apple pie, etc. So, no one is brainwashing these young people, in my opinion. Many are already oriented, I believe, to the values that reflect these training exercises. And, it is not brown skin versus white skin; it is citizens versus trespassing foreigners. Every potential opponent in these exercises are likely law breakers.

I do not believe the Eastern Europeans "fit right in" completely. Many have thick accents, that is an instant sign of not being American born; this and the comparatively small immigrant quotas from Eastern Europe is why they cannot settle down to relax, about their status in the U.S. They either marry an American, or they will likely remain illegal. If they eventually go, and remain gone, based on better control of our borders, I would consider that a blessing.

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Jesus . . . what a dipshit.

Blond, blue-eyed illegal immigrants don't get swept up by INS precisely because they are blond and blue-eyed. Who gives a rat's ass what, if any, aesthetic values you have?

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

Jesus . . . what a dipshit.

Blond, blue-eyed illegal immigrants don't get swept up by INS precisely because they are blond and blue-eyed. Who gives a rat's ass what, if any, aesthetic values you have?

Now the above makes more sense than, "what's not to love?"

As far as my aesthetic values go, I do not care who subscribes to them. At least I do not subscribe to values that, in my opinion, are oftentimes skewed. I mean, many female blondes are considered prettier, just based on the blond hair, in my opinion. I do believe that facially, more brunettes are "pretty." For some reason, perhaps due to blondness coming from northern Europe, a percentage of blondes are sort of homely. However, often being taller, and lankier than their southern European sisters, many may therefore consider them more attractive, again in my opinion. So, it might not just be my personal aesthetics that I am referring to. There just might be more "facially pretty" brunettes, than "facially pretty" blondes?

But, if you do not give "a rat's ass" as to my aesthetic values, there may be other readers that do find Foofie's aesthetic values of interest. May I remind you this thread is not all about you. Nor, is it all about me. But, your blaspheming, and using His name in a blasphemous way proves nothing.

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@Foofie,

I think people may be guilty of assuming that eastern or northern European immigrants are in the US legally moreso than they'd assume the same to be true of people of hispanic descent, because of the distances involved.
I understand this isn't always true- but this assumption does or might spring from a certain amount of undeniable logic- and so may not be solely based in bias or prejudice.

Speaking of blondness and blue eyes being viewed more positively - this is an interesting test you can find at- implicit.harvard.edu
It's called the implicit association test and measures perceived, subconscious or innate bias - although critics of the test feel that it may only measure 'familiarity' of lack of familiarity with a with a group of race, as opposed to prejudice or negative bias.

My only criticism of it is that I think they should have switched the order in which they presented the pairings. The first tasks, I think, may have influenced muscle memory, so that with the second pairings, the amount of response time - which is where the real test resided (for the majority of people who are white and of European descent who took the test) may have been influenced by a factor other than bias.

It was really interesting - I came out with no preference. I was surprised. I thought I definitely had a preference - but I'm glad that I don't-(seeing's how my whole extended family and most of my friends are white, I was happy to learn I wasn't even subconsciously biased against them). Laughing

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@aidan,

Quote:

I think people may be guilty of assuming that eastern or northern European immigrants are in the US legally moreso than they'd assume the same to be true of people of hispanic descent, because of the distances involved.

And this has nothing to do with their coloring. If a brown-skinned person told me he or she had emigrated from India or Spain or Iraq - I'd assume they'd gone through the process and had the papers.
It just seems like a long, long way to come and a lot of family upheaval to make to take the chance of doing it illegally and getting kicked out.
That'd be my reasoning.

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I see a gross error which i made earlier. My remarks about Chinese and Japanese exclusion laws and the Chinese head tax referred to Canada, not to China. There were such laws, of course, in the United States, and California was particularly vicious. I don't know that there was ever a head tax in the U.S., though.

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Aidan's remarks are, as usual, goofy. It has nothing to do with whether or not people think eastern Europeans are here legally or not. It has to do with the fact of their appearance, which means that people don't even think in terms of immigrants, and the INS doesn't bother them. If you can't tell them apart by looking, then the issue of immigrants is never going to occur to you.

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@ebrown p,

Quote:

A friend of mine was on a Greyhound bus traveling from Chicago to Boston (a domestic trip). The Border Patrol enters the bus and pulls of the two brown-skinned passengers for questioning.

I would have to see some sort of documentation about this.
What had those 2 people been doing, where were they coming from, where were they going, etc.

There are many reasons those 2 were pulled off the bus.
The Border Patrol may have known they were on that bus and knew that they were illegally in the country.
You only know half the story, so its hard to judge the truth of what you were told.

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@mysteryman,

First Mysteryman, a pat on the back...

The questions you are asking indicate you get the problem with picking people out for questioning based solely on skin color.

However this is exactly what happens over and over again. They will enter a bus and check the papers of any brown-skinned person- ignoring anyone who doesn't look Hispanic.

Whether the Border Patrol should be checking papers of American citizens and non-citizens alike on trips that don't cross the border is one thing.

For them to offer this service based solely on racial appearance is infuriating.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

Aidan's remarks are, as usual, goofy. It has nothing to do with whether or not people think eastern Europeans are here legally or not. It has to do with the fact of their appearance, which means that people don't even think in terms of immigrants, and the INS doesn't bother them. If you can't tell them apart by looking, then the issue of immigrants is never going to occur to you.

You might know the specifics on what I thought was the ability of ex-Soviet Jews to immigrate to Israel (to unite family), and then a percentage do stay in Italy for some specific period, before they can come to the U.S., and get permanent residency. Meaning a percentage of the ex-Soviet citizens we see here are legal residents, perhaps because someone in the family married a Russian Jew, and then most, or part, of the family may have then skedaddled asap to the U.S.

I thought it was Stalin that officiated over this law back in the late 1940's?

Anyway, I have my reservations about these ex-Russians, since many come with their emotional baggage, reflecting the culture they lived in, and as you would have to admit, while there is still anti-Semitism in the U.S., in Russia, being Jewish was not just a religion or ethnicity, it was a nationality. Sort of quite offensive to American Jews, would you not think? So, you might be able to see my feeling that judging a book by its cover would be foolish for me. And your point about them blending in by looks alone is quite true, I believe. I would hope the majority go out west and become cowboys.

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@ebrown p,

ebrown p wrote:

First Mysteryman, a pat on the back...

The questions you are asking indicate you get the problem with picking people out for questioning based solely on skin color.

However this is exactly what happens over and over again. They will enter a bus and check the papers of any brown-skinned person- ignoring anyone who doesn't look Hispanic.

Whether the Border Patrol should be checking papers of American citizens and non-citizens alike on trips that don't cross the border is one thing.

For them to offer this service based solely on racial appearance is infuriating.

You are saying that there is no statistical correlation between Mexicans of Indian descent, and illegal border crossings? I thought the vast majority of illegal border crossers are of Indian descent.

The color of one's skin and being an illegal border crosser is possibly not what attracts the investigator. Could it be Indian features, if that is the correlation?

The position you take, I believe, is also missing the reality that Mexicans of Indian descent have often been relegated to the poorer classes, in their own country, so they come to the U.S., specifically because we do hire people with brown skin and Indian features. Not like their own country, where they might have been effectively disenfranchised. Have you seen the color of the skins on the tv novelas. If not as white as snow, fairly light complected; interesting?

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@Setanta,

Setanta said:

Quote:

If you can't tell them apart by looking, then the issue of immigrants is never going to occur to you.

Right - if you're ignorant of the fact that immigration is what built our country and until they open their mouths.
Whatever Setamta- I grew up in a metropolitan area where probably every tenth house housed a family where the parents, at least, and many times the kids, had not been born in the United States.

There were two major universities nearby and New York and Philadelphia within an hour's commute. This location drew a whole hell of a lot of people from all over the world. Two of my best friends were blond haired and blue-eyed and spoke Russian. My pediatrician (when I was a child) wore a turban. My father's cardiologist is called Vijay. When we deliver food and clothing to the elderly, it's to a senior citizen housing unit in which NO ONE speaks English- they all speak Polish and Russian.

So yes - in my mind - an immigrant does not always have darker skin than I do.
And I'm sure the INS is just as informed about the status and fact of European immigration- you think?

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@aidan,

Quote:

So yes - in my mind - an immigrant does not always have darker skin than I do.

The fact that someone could be an immigrant, despite how well they blend in and assimilate may also occur to me when I look at other people who look just like me and are in the same country, because I happen to be an immigrant myself.
You should really just concentrate on speaking for yourself.

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@aidan,

Just because you have a stereotypical view of what an immigrant looks like doesn't mean everyone else does.

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@Foofie,

Foofie,

I get it. You have no problem with a Federal Agency singling out people of Hispanic descent in the wake of illegal immigration. But, would you have a problem with bank regulators focusing on People of Jewish descent in the wake of the Bernie Madoff scandal?

Singling out people for investigation and harsher enforcement based on their ethnicity is wrong.

Do you really want to make the claim it is more wrong for some ethnicities than others?

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hitler youth or true-blooded american kids?

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