My world is so much better because of immigrants
I can eat sushi, pizza, samosas, kebab (kabobs, döner or shawarmas depending on your frame of reference), gyoza/pot stickers/tortellone/pasteczki (or whatever), noodles/ramen/spaghetti, knödeln/kroppkakor and so on and so on. Leaving lots of cultures unsaid.
I can enjoy music, cringy cultural movies (animated and not), fun cirque sessions (even without animals being endangered), go to festivals for various cultures, enjoin then in our cultures of scouting, mountaineering, hiking and share my love of enjoying nature.
I can drive electric cars, communicate on Internet forums, keep in touch with new friends as well as loved ones across the world.
I would be in a much poorer world without you all.
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How dare you not pledge your undying allegiance to the spot of dirt that you were born on!??!?!?
What's it called when you live on the right side and agree with the labels?
Woke. I think.
Ah, the original, unironic meaning, now largely extinct through misuse.
A shithole.
Exactly don't people understand these foreigners steal our jobs, while at the same time they are all lazy and live on welfare?
And 'defend' it by destroying all other lifeforms nearby (regardless of whether they precede you)??
Agreed 100%. Unfortunately the people who need to read this are not on Lemmy.
I've seen a few anti-immigrant comments pop up around here that have been upvoted and they've made me pretty sad.
This thread makes my immigrant ass happy though so thank y'all.
Well, by the look of this comment section there’s at least one who really needed to hear the message, but seemingly didn’t take it to heart.
No, I'm pretty racist and needed to read this. /s
Reminds me of this for some reason
That is pretty on the nose, but still an interesting perspective.
It might be on the nose, but we sure as hell have regressed in my short lifetime.
I dunno, the left path looks far easier because it's far less uphill
Completely agree! The concept of Culinary Diplomacy is actually practiced by a few countries around the world and is often implemented in partnership with emigrants from those nations. South Korea did this with their “Kimchi Diplomacy” back in 2009 and it was considered very successful. It is one of the reasons Korean food became so popular here in the U.S. around then. Culinary Diplomacy
I think the Chinese government also supported the Chinese restraunt industry similarly in the US
I think Chinese food spread was more organic, they helped each other immigrate, shared recipes, and acted almost like a franchise in how new restaurants were chosen in unserved areas and given a general playbook
And then the Thai government did it more formally, Korean culinary movement copied the success (or maybe the other way around)
Yup, and we have so many different regional cuisines but you'll mostly just find north Indian and a little bit of south Indian restaurants in the US
I mean... They kind of didn't though
In major cities, sure. Even smaller ones will have Indian places. But they're proportional to the amount of Indians in an area
Because there's a big difference... Everyone can go to a Chinese restaurant and confidently order. Everyone knows what sushi is, even if some people don't eat it. Thai foods are less known, but the menus are very Americanized, so you go once and you get the idea
I know the good Indian restaurant back home, but I only know the dishes by color. Lots of naan and wet dishes... They were good, but I couldn't tell you what they were. And if the sign says Indian food, I don't know what they serve. So I've only been to the one place
Vindaloo and curry? That is everywhere, but I've never had an Indian version of it. The British spread vindaloo and curry spread itself
Never read about SK or China (just not familiar, not to say it doesn't exist) doing this but Thailand went all in.
https://www.foodrepublic.com/1318428/how-gastrodiplomacy-brought-thai-food-world-stage/
and so many korean markets chains opened up, and people are lovign it.
Seriously, HMart is the shit. The produce is generally WAY better than you can get at “normal” markets - largely because their stock actually gets cleaned out and turned over on a regular basis.
yea our parents go to it alot, we have jagalchi recently opened up, but i think its to pricey, for its limited selections.
Hollywood and the anime industry have done much the same - helping people around the world normalize the feeling of living in their home societies.
The world would be a lot poorer without the music genres that spawned from the USA and UK, too. And most of those were only possible because people from Africa were (forcefully) brought to the USA.
I don't think that logically follows.
Music genres that came out of poor black sharecroppers in the Mississippi Delta could have just as easily come from middle class black manufacturing workers in Congo or Nigeria, if the continent had been integrated with the industrial west back in the 19th century rather than raided and plundered for 400 years.
Hell, maybe it would have come from middle class American Natives in the Mississippi Delta. Or Chinese rice farmers in a country not ravaged by opium. Or Iranians not ground under by the Shah's dictatorship. Or Austro-Hungarians who weren't cannibalized to fight the Napoleonic Wars or the 30 Years War that caused the Caucasian Exodus across the Atlantic.
The Peace Dividend reaped across the Gulf Coast and the Mountain West that gave us modern western music could have been collected anywhere.
There's little chance that immigration wouldn't have been involved somehow in your scenario(s). But true, maybe we could have gotten blues and jazz from a thriving, industrialized Congo, Nigeria etc.
They might have invented interesting musical genres that merge mainstream european music with their own more rhythm-focused music styles, but I really doubt any of them would have invented something that closely resembles early black music. Maybe one of them could have invented techno, but blues, jazz, soul, and blues-derived rock music as we know it? Very improbable. Music genres don't spawn out of thin air.
Immigrants approaching the US from a position of common interest, a la French foreign investors or Chinese manufacturing interests or Saudi oil companies. You won't just have people crossing the Atlantic to (be made to) make music, you'd have them coming over to distribute it under home-grown record labels and on contractual terms that favored their domestic interests.
Maybe they'd have made something just as compelling, but different. Maybe they'd have made something better. It's very hard to say. But the claim that you have to whip people and chain them up to synthesize European folk melodies with African base rhythms seems at once absurd and sadistic.
If music history has proven anything, it is that great art flourishes when people have more leisure and more material resources. The Blues and Jazz traditions that eventually gave birth to modern Rock were the consequence of a rapidly expanding middle class. And that came out of unionization, urbanization, the modern entertainment industry, and the eight-hour work day.
Absent prior centuries of pre-industrial slavery and emiseration, we may have achieved this musical tradition sooner and developed it more fully, before the 21st century flattened and assembly-lined its production.
Cool, I never made that claim. They probably needed to immigrate to a western country to invent it and popularize it, that they went there as slaves is a different matter.
How do you think Africans came to be in the New World?
Brits didn't need to immigrate to the US in order to learn about American rock music.
I did write that they came as slaves, but that's not the necessary part. I'm starting to think that you just really want me to be racist, facts be damned.
Yeah, because american rock music already existed, and USA and UK have a long shared history. Inventing rock music without close personal proximity is much less likely, and inventing a style is one thing but popularizing it is quite another. It wouldn't have gotten as popular in the USA and Europe if all the early blues and jazz musicians were in Africa.
I don't think you're racist. I think you're clinging to this idea of the Transatlantic slave trade as some kind of necessary evil.
Cultural traditions have cross-pollunated without mass migrations on plenty of prior occasions. The Silk Road didn't need to move legions of displaced people in order to bring food, clothing, and music into the Mediterranean. Neither did Dutch traders need to flood into Japan in order to convey their art and technology.
The idea that you need a mass resettlement in order to mix musical traditions doesn't bare out in practice.
Southern blues really were the catalyst that brought about rock and country music. There are some good clips of people playing rock solos in a jazz form. The chord progressions and phrases are the same, they're just played with a different feel. There's one guy on YT who's short I've seen a lot of that does it fairly frequently. A bit clickbaity title like, "rock guitarist plays a jazz gig" and then he'll solo something like slipknots psychosocial over a jazz backing. It's pretty awesome.
I was gonna say this, but not specific to USA and UK. Other countries have thriving music cultures born of immigration we just don't hear about. Nigeria, for example, had a progressive rock scene in the 70's and it was kinda baller. Check out the Lijadu Sisters.
I've been listening to Creole music all morning as "research" for my next writing project.
Made me think about the volume of information we take in about other cultures through stories, art, music and food without ever opening a history book.
Edited for context and to clarify I don't think slavery was a necessary evil. Because I have to do that now.
I included foreigners such as the US and UK too.
Looking back at the history of England. We have had wave after wave of immigrants/invaders. Each wave brought a period of tension. That period was followed by a period of innovation.
The new people, with new views means old ideas are re-evaluated. New skill, flavours and modes of thought became part of our culture.
Even our language improved. Part of English's power is the level of nuance with word choice. A loft of that comes from melding multiple root languages in.
The Normans did fuck things up, though.
As did the vikings. The long term results were generally an improvement however.
The Normans were third generation Viking settlers of France, so the Vikings did have a huge impact on the British isles for a few centuries there.
Obligatory Stewart Lee routine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y38pbfJ4i_U
dont let the fascist whoresons read this, they will frame you mentally deranged and a danger to their homogeneous society
Fuck their homogenous society, its total lack of art, its dog shit food, and its boring everything. Plus its queerphobia and intellectual stasis. Stillness is death. They have guns; they can get that for themselves any time they like.
Plus I'm kind of autistic. People already look too much the same. If they stopped being different colors and sizes with different types of hair i would not be able to go outside.
Theirs is not a homogeneous society. They are demented and fragmented.
I immigrated to the US when I was too young to make that decision myself. Now I'm immigrating to another country. I literally don't know what it's like to not be an immigrant, and I'm tired of receiving nothing but hate for it. At least my new city is more welcoming.
Which country now?
Some for me. So many cultures, languages and cuisines mixing. But in my case even im an immigrant but the plot twist is im european. Overheard someone talking about how bad immigrants are and they proceeded to say "but youre one of the good ones". Only context you need to hear is im white.
"Unser Jud' ist eh gut."
That's a sentence that was often used in Nazi Germany/Nazi Austria. It means "Our Jew is good anyway, [but the others are evil]". It basically means that you keep believing the propaganda, even if the people you know don't fit to the propaganda at all.
Nowadays this sentence is used to satirize the statement you posted.
"He's one of the good ones," is how people have always explained liking a minority that they know, while still being prejudiced against the rest of their race.
Good to know. It is exactly like this. Ive seen people say things like this while they had 5 friends who were from 5 different countries basically next to them. Its really sad when even some of the immigrants believe this shit.
Many immigrants think they can get on the good side of the xenophobes by becoming the "good" immigrants while putting the "bad" immigrants down.
The problem with that tactic is that xenophobes and especially xenophobic laws don't distinguish between "good" or "bad".
If immigrants badmouth other immigrants, the only thing that xenophobes take from that is "even the immigrants think immigrants are bad".
You see a lot of that happening in the USA, where frequently family members of MAGA voters are taken by ICE, because they aren't going after the "bad" immigrants, but after immigrants, period. Even if their family voted for the people who are now taking them.
And that's the real take-away. When it comes to lawmaking, you can either be for immigrants or against them. There's no nuance. Because lawmakers don't put any in.
The problem is when immigrants from countries with lower labour standards and poorer conditions are effectively used as "scabs", to suppress wage growth and unionization. And I fear the capitalists who benefit from this are pushing the "you just hate immigrants" narrative to protect it.
And how do you propose the solution?
I would stop normalizing the theory that immigrants are here only to do badly paid jobs.
I've hear too many times "without immigrants who would work in insert miserable badly paid job?".
Immigrants are not here to do the most miserable jobs without getting properly paid for it.
I think progressive forces should stop with that discourse. I find it a little dehumanizing. If you don't want to do that shitty job I don't know why anyone would think that a person, only because they are an immigrant, want to do it for you.
But that's a response to "they took our jorbs!". It's a reframing for immigrants targeted at the reactionaries. But it is the reality - immigrants, particularly undocumented or agricultural visa recipients, are the bedrock of our society
It's terrible that they are in such unethical conditions. It's terrible that they have a carve out for child labor for seasonal farm workers. The entire power dynamic is akin to indentured servitude at best
But what we have to do is give them legal status and protections first.
They are not working the worst jobs because that's what we tell them they can be, they're working the worst jobs because they're extra exploitable
You make a good point.
Seize the means of production?
Lobby the government to stop doing that. In the meantime, teach them their rights, how to unionize, help them with food security and finding a place to live, so that they aren't in such a precarious position that makes exploitation so profitable.
We definitely see a gross incentive where companies don't want people to become citizens because it allows their labor to be cheaper.
I think back in Trump's first term, he had one policy that I genuinely agreed with - that the H1B Visa program should have a very high minimum salary to it, returning it to its intended purpose of being used for rare, high-talent specialized positions. As it stands, HR will just invent overly specific criteria so that they can deny local citizens jobs, claim they can't find anyone, and then hire cheap H1Bs - and threaten them with deportation anytime they complain.
Needless to say, because it was a good idea and anti-corp, Trump dropped it almost immediately.
Yeah but good luck holding a sign that says "Don't shop here, they hire immigrants".
I would say make sure people have a clear way of becoming legal immigrants. If they are legal, make sure the labor laws are enforced. So no paying under minimum wage, make sure the workplace is a safe place, etc.
Right now there are legal paths to immigration, and that's who ICE is deporting- people trying to do things 'the right way'.
We should make sure the labor laws are enforced for everybody regardless of their immigration status, that would go a long way towards addressing the issue you are talking about. It's not the fault of people desperate enough to accept being exploited, it's the fault of companies doing the exploiting, they are what needs to be fixed.
You realize that there are other countries...
I do realize that. What does that have to do with my comment?
Your comment for me reads as every legal immigrant is getting deported by ICE, not some but all and as the US isn't the only country that has immigrantants, it reads as false but maybe I just can't read which wouldn't be surprising.
It's a significant number of them so far and I see no signs of it slowing down. Perhaps the goal is to deport every legal immigrant? At any rate it's enough of them to expose the lie that MAGAts have been spouting for the last decade that they "have no problem with immigrants, they have a problem with illegal immigrants." Clearly that isn't the case.
Besides even deporting just one LEGAL immigrant is one too many. Especially when they aren't just being deported, but being thrown in foreign prisons/ possible death camps.
I'm still not sure what you are getting at, what does other countries having immigrants have to do with how we treat immigrants in the U.S.? Other countries also have authoritarian dictatorships, that doesn't mean we should have one here.
Some of those who burn crosses
Are the same that love kebab bosses
Well done.. Hat tip to you, my friend.
great point, and many countries would be literally poorer as well.
even undocumented immigrants pay about $100 billion in taxes to the US each year.
I loath people that claim immigrants aren't paying taxes and just taking free money. If they have an official job, they're paying taxes and every time they make a purchase, taxes are paid, just like everyone else that's not rich.
and they believe they are also using medicaid and care too.
Seems weird that an illegal immigrant would have an official job that taxes are paid on. Seems like it would be a big risk for both
For sure, it is. But, if they do have one, they are likely paying taxes. They could be filing exempt, but I do feel that may be even riskier. Obviously if they are cash under the table, then it's only on purchases, not income.
Because if they paid into it, but don't file then the government got money it won't have to refund. A lot less risky than asking to pay your refund.
for which the only benefit they enjoy is to be underpaid for their essential contributions to US society & economy
Fun fact for you: All döner is kebab, but not all kebab is döner. Because döner is just a type of kebab (grilled meat on a stick). Which also means that shawarma's status as kebab is questionable, as it's
usuallysometimes roasted or pan fried, as far as I know.Pan fried shawarma is something Im still trying to get used to. The Lebanese Shawarma places in Ottawa all stack the chicken on a stick rotisserie and it is cooked exactly like the lamb or beef kebabs, they then slice thin portions off of it just the same.
It wasnt until I moved out west that I ever saw Shawarma done any other way, and everything out here has been disappointing by comparison.
So maybe it depends whose version of shawarma you've had. All the ones I've seen so far (in different European countries) have been with rotisserie /doner kebab.
Names seem interchangeable in many places, in my experience. When I was a kid the difference between kebab and shawarma used to be that one was in a bun and the other was a wrap, for some reason. The bun has been phased out, unfortunately, and now it's only wraps everywhere.
Thanks for that etymology bit. I wonder why I never bothered to check, but it makes perfect sense, as I know Turkish.
And yeah, I should have used "sometimes" not "usually". Pan fried shawarma is a thing, while döner isn't, so depending on the way it's prepared it may technically not be kebab.
Btw, kebab doesn't need to involve any bread element whatsoever. In fact, in places that use the term natively, it usually isn't. Kebab is just any grilled meat on a stick, and often is just the equivalent of BBQ.
America would be a boring ass country if it was just white America. I have been saying this
It wouldn't even be white America. Europeans are all immigrants
Fascism always promotes blandness and boredom. When the dust of chaos settles, that's all that is left.
Never forget, the rest of the world is on the internet too. As I am. Not American. ❤️
My apologies 😘
Thank you… uh… please leave those sharks alone…
plus the lack of economic size, stems/military it is today.
It didn't take long before they started deporting anyone and everyone. By no means just violent criminals. Horse shit.
What happened to the bull(shit)?
You want to diversify your shit.
But careful not to go apeshit.
No, that's fine if it's sufficiebtly processed. You want it to be from a vegan though.
Oh ok.
Besides all of that valid stuff, immigration is the only reason the US doesn't have slowing/declining population numbers like many developed countries now have.
The irony is most Americans are descendants of immigrants.
"You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God."
What a godless country.
I fucking love the diversity of the United States. It enriches us all.
Diversity is everywhere, the US isn't special (in any good way, at least).
I didn't say it was. Thanks.
no, but we could make a special place that is extra welcoming to diversity and immigrants, and I would like to live there and call that place America
I live in London and immigrants have made it the best place in Europe for trying all the food 😍 I’ve been saying for a while I wish I could vote for more of them they’re so nice and they bring pizza recipes
The only reason there is to love American culture is the blending of different immigrant cultures.
Immigrants make a country great. One of the reasons why I'm happy about the increased immigration in the USA, and why I'm sad about the decreased immigration in Canada.
100% agree. The biggest overlooked benefit of immigrant culture is the mirror it offers us on our own practices and beliefs. When seeing what others do it gives us the chance to reaffirm that our actions are correct, or even more important, modify our actions for the better by adopting their view on something. We get to cherry pick the best parts of cultures around the world and discard bad practices that are perhaps "traditional" because we see our immigrants have a better approach. In the end of either we get the chance to be the best versions of ourselves with constant exposure to new ideas and ways of doing things.
Just out of curiosity: what are pasteczki?
If they meant paszteciki, it looks like what the anglosphere knows as a sausage roll?
As long as the anglosphere doesn't include the USA. Most people here would be able to guess what a sausage roll is but most wouldn't have seen one.
They're just mystery meat with herbs, rolled in crumbly pastry.
The mystery is part of the fun.. Is it beef, pork, or roadkill? We don't care!
Yeah I was thinking that maybe they mean paszteciki but I was really confused
I think polish doughnuts
These would be called pączki ;)
Well, i call then delicious
You can have culinary trends without migrants. Like sushi, the best sushi IMO is still the authentic sushi. Its neat I can get it in my vicinity though.
Street food fusion is a whole other level though. With that you couldn't be more right. Craving late night street snacks now
I'm from the bike/pedestrian-friendly community of /fuckcars. It's a far whiter immigrant mentality, but I imagine trends like that wouldn't have occurred if not for Dutch immigrants; or even American immigrants visiting the Netherlands, most specifically the Not Just Bikes channel.
Ah yeah isn't that nice to have underpaid third world wage slaves cooking for us? So wholesome
I really doubt that's what OP meant, but if you want to fight allies to weaken the left as the right unifies to kill us, I can't really stop you.
Should we start rewriting the comment to inform but not interfere? With a FTFY and strike through?
At least would be a fun trend to see I think
Well, I think the issue is companies underpaying, not those people coming.
Hell, the whole concept of wages is contradictory, and instead we should focus on needs being met by the community.
Couldn't agree more except one little nitpick. Pizza was invented in America.
Not in Canada. Unless they want to go out of business.
Not sure where you got that idea. Pizza was brought to America by Italian immigrants, but it has existed for long before that. Modern pizza is well known to have originated in Naples.
Hmmm, I've "known" that for a long time. I know pizza in Italy is not the same as pizza in America and is typically eaten with a fork and knife. Maybe that's what I was thinking or maybe I'm confusing it with a different supposedly Italian food.
You might be thinking of the classic spaghetti and tomato sauce with ground beef?
I believe that one originated with Italian-American immigrants
Could be. Really thought it was pizza. Gonna be hard to unlearn this.
But either way, Italian immigrants freakin' rocked the American culinary world and I'm eternally grateful
Absolute agreement there.
Afaik that varies by region
You American's lost your manners the moment you sent off that declaration of independence huh? The civilized people on this side of the pond do tend to use utensils for their food.
LOL. Yeah, we're animals man.
I can enjoy homophobic attacks with threats of punishments for apostasy,
Even witnessing with my own eyes an acid attack in Clapham, London.
The cool part is, that's just due to extremists, not immigrants. Planned parenthoods were bombed by white right assholes. Try better next time.
Noone says immigration is evil. The whole discourse in US is all around illegal immigration specifically. Lot of people conflates these two things
...so you just haven't been paying any attention at all? We've already dropped the "illegal" part and are targeting legal immigrants and, in some cases, even actual citizens (if they're brown, of course).
and also political dissidents, probably soon. considering that trump doesn't care about the law, and has actively threatened to do so.
That's a bold claim.
You do know they're rounding up and incarcerating/deporting legal immigrants and talking about denaturalizing citizens, right? They left that argument behind about only going after "illegals" after the inauguration. Now we've got Stephen Miller basically recreating internment camps and Laura Loomer talking about feeding 65 million Hispanics to alligators.
Ah yes. That must be why ICE is ambushing people as they attend their immigration court hearings that they are required to attend in order to be here lawfully.
Go back to sucking on paint chips and leave the discourse to people who arent completely brain damaged.
But then the moment someone tries it legally, they get assaulted by ice 5 seconds after being rejected.
Doesn't solve the problem that most people immigrate, illegally or otherwise, due to some desperation. Humans will always move to where they believe their life will be better. Has been like that for the past 10,000 years.
Uhh... I am pretty sure a big portion of people see immigration as something bad in the USA. There is a reason they are deporting so many "non-illegal" immigrants.
they’ve swallowed the racist FlavorAde a long time ago
It's about people who aren't white.
Brexit wants a word.
Do all y'all just have a text to cut and paste from?
are you lying to me or to you
according to trump, all immigration is illegal.
how much does the current federal administration care about the legal/ illegal dichotomy in their blatantly cruel & unnecessary actions against the most vulnerable of our neighbors & associates?
In this thread alone there are two people calling all immigration bad.
The problem is that the right do not consider asylum seeking to be legal even though it is infact legal. So you get the right deport people who are legally in the country while saying they're only deporting illegals. Its a fracturing of reality.
The billionaires have you convinced. Congratulations. Now only billionaires can benefit from cheap labour. I wonder how that happened? What kind of forces would possibly make it so that only the rich would benefit? Must be the immigrants, right?
I’m only in mid-six figures and I’ll admit I benefit and the poor suffer. If there was no immigrant labor general goods would cost more, and I’d feel the drag paying more for what is cheaper… like I will soon when we’re all competing with dollars for a share if smaller harvests. I predict we’ll feel it hard around thanksgiving.
The only solutions locally are discovery of more economic ways to produce, or importing from cheaper parts of the world. We’ve been covering our eyes on where the chicken comes from for years, and we’re going to learn a hard lesson by going cold turkey.
Gurl. It's resource management. We have people destroying goods to inflate price. There's plenty for every human on the planet. It's literally the people in control, my six figure friend, purposefully creating false scarcity and fear mongering.
No, just no. You're missing the point. Poor people are poor people, some are immigrants, some are not.
Anything that benefits poor immigrants will also benefit poor citizens. Anything that enriches white nationals, will enrich the rich immigrants that can become nationals just paying money anyways.
It is your boss taking away your job and giving it to the lowest bidder. It doesn't matter who the bidder is. There will always be someone poorer than you, willing to work for less out of desperation. Sometimes they ar immigrants, sometimes they are white nationals.
Ah, my bad. Lol. I should have noticed the troll earlier.
Man you are fucking hella indoctrinated and spouting some of the most racist drivel I ever heard
Your post is highly racist, so yes you are believing propaganda for whatever fucking reason.
Pay and conditions were not destroyed because of immigrants, but are a side effect of globalization. Production facilities were offshored, leading to a collapse of local manufacturing and low skill jobs (where no prior education is required, low skill jobs can and sometimes do require a lot of skill). Reshoring those jobs is incredibly difficult because it also means reconfiguring the supply lines. For urban areas this is not a huge issue, as those can switch to a service based economy, but for small towns this often meant that the main economic driver of the town left and people lost jobs.
Anyway, not caused by immigration. As a matter of fact, immigrants are a significant driver of economic activity and partly offset that.
Thanks for the insight, grok
It's the Republicans who consistently vote against paying people a reasonable minimum wage and against protections for working people who are clearly to blame, but sure blame immigrants. Talk about not dealing with reality.