Current migrational patterns and economics: Why Paris is screwed

[flow]

Well, although i'm not in the US to see by myself, and i understand that these Mexicans seem to bring lots of problems to your country,

1st: Out of true misery and poverty, if you heard of an Eldorado just next, what would u do?

2nd: A drunk Mexican illegal immigrant killed some natives on the road. That is a terrible thing. But on the same day, how many native Americans did kill on the road for the same reason?

3rd: Who's guilty, the illegal immigrant or the native who hires him? Would they come if they knew no one would give them work?

4th: With regards to the honnest illegal immigrants (i mean who do not disrespect the law in any other way than by their illegitimate presence in your country) that work like hell for miserable wages, while some live luxury lifes sitting on their asses earning enough money to feed Africa, don't you feel a little bit of compassion and empathy?


I'd be happy to get a better insight of this issue and to hear from US natives on the subject. Thanks

[Wang Lang]

I'd like to know how he could afford an SUV?

[doc]

From today's news:

LOS ANGELES - A driver arrested after the crash that killed “A Christmas Story” director Bob Clark and his son pleaded not guilty Friday to two counts of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated.

Prosecutors say Hector Velazquez-Nava, a 24-year-old Mexican national, was drunk when he steered his sport utility vehicle into the wrong lane of Pacific Coast Highway early Wednesday, and struck Clark’s sedan. Clark, 67 and his son, Ariel Hanrath-Clark, 22, died at the scene.

Velazquez-Nava had a blood-alcohol level of 0.24 percent, three times the legal limit, authorities said. Both he and his passenger were treated for minor injuries.

“The family of Velazquez-Nava ... are very much hurt and they want to offer their deepest condolences to the family, to the Clark family,” said defense attorney John Borges.

Velazquez-Nava was being held on $200,000 bail, although a federal immigration hold prevents him from posting bail. Immigration officials have said he is in the country illegally.

If convicted, he could face at least 10 years in state prison,

Sad, that this being so common, I accurately predicted it.

[doc]

LOS ANGELES - Film director Bob Clark, best known for the beloved holiday classic “A Christmas Story,” was killed with his son Wednesday in a car wreck, the filmmaker’s assistant and police said.

Clark, 67, and son Ariel Hanrath-Clark, 22, were killed in the accident in Pacific Palisades, said Lyne Leavy, Clark’s personal assistant.

The two men were in an Infiniti that collided head-on with a GMC Yukon around 2:30 a.m. PST, said Lt. Paul Vernon, a police spokesman. The driver of the other car was under the influence of alcohol and was driving without a license, Vernon said.

The driver, Hector Velazquez-Nava, 24, of Los Angeles, remained hospitalized and will be booked for investigation of gross vehicular manslaughter after being treated, Vernon said. A female passenger in his car also was taken to the hospital with minor injuries and released, police said.

Typical story in the southwest of the US now.

Drunk, immigrant, illegal?, uninsured healthwise and automobile wise...?

[flow]

I'm a French who lives in the UK, so i could help.

First of all it's true that Paris' suburbs are ****ed. Real bad. I have lived near one of them - 4 years ago, iand Doc din the south, and it was pretty hardcore. I am now in Paris on a vacation and i can confirm that it hasn't changed, maybe even wortsened.

The police has always been unfair to Arabics and blacks in France. They would beat them up with phone directories or with wet towels so as to not leave any marks on the body. There is a long history of racisn in France, going back to the Regine of Vichy who collaborated with the Nazis and helped with the extermination of Jews. The mainl Arabic immigration started after the war and it is definitly uner Mitterand's regime that things got worst eqch year.

They needed workers to reconstruct the country after WW2, they brought thousands of them from north Africa, quickly built hudge coumpounds without even thinking about the consequences of living in such an environment (far away from everything, packed in bulky and ugly towers out of town). However, the first generations enjoyed life i France (still better than in Algeria or Tunisia or Marroco) and their children started loosing their identity and did not feel integrated or accepted by the locals -and this is very very true (Doc has already mentioned it).

France is a relatively racist country. Recently, a documentary was made, where a white family would be transformed in Blacks and a Black family i White, using expensive make up and wigs. Unbelivably it worked. Both families where from an educated and whealthy background. They were then filmed in the street, looking for jobs, flats, going out in restaurants...It was striking: the white got the jobs, the flats, the best table in restaurants straight away and the black struggled real bad (with equal CV's and recommandations). It showed very well how these black and Arabic people had been treated and what they could feel in their everyday life. This has raised the temperature in the country for years. Add constant discrimination, lower income, limited access to education, drugs and violence, and you get a whole population who's fed up, ready to burst. When the prents are hard workeres, honnest ad respectful people, the kids are in the street whereyou hqve two choices, be bullied or bully. They, 99% of the time, choose to be the bully. They are strong, organised, in groups, and use their teens so the law becomes powerless, and they are always released because kids don't go to jail here. People here fear them, and they know it, use it, and terrorise others. A real hip hop culture too, was born. Frnce is the second country for Hip Hop, after the US!!!and French rap is exellent though...But that's not the topic.

It's easy to say that France is ****ed but it's not specific to France, this hip hop culture is spreading everywhe, and this negativeness touches everyone even from the higher economical backgrounds...Money doesn't always save us.

I have lived in London for 4 years, and it is catastrophic too. Kids have no respect, spit on bus drivers and teachers everyday, kill each other with blades or guns, education is poor, people work more and more so the children are let behind...In my neighborhood i London, kids smoke and drink beer, their older brothers take cocaine and steal or bully, when the parents pobably work their asses like hell to manage to pay the huge rents and taxes and all the rest. London is not safe either, but no need to mention Manchester or Birmingham where it is even worst. And as these kids drop out of school, foreigners donùt only do the dirty jobs (the jobs English didn't want of) there are lots of qualified people coming from all over the world to take these vcant jobs...When the British end up without work... The UK, and it has nothing to do with race, is ****ed too. People are scared too. Suburbs too, are dangerous, maybe not as much as in Paris but it looks like ti's going the right way. There is racism, there always has been in the UK, but i have to admit that it still is easier for Africans and Asians to setle and work in the UK, where if u work hard you get respect whatever ur colour is. It's not always true but thats how i felt it.

I sill think Paris is a great city, beautiful, and safe as long as you stay in town. I just came bqck from a day ou and it's great, u guys should get there one day.

If only people where not such cowards and if the government had just a tiny understanding of the situation, things could get better. The question is, is it too late? I think it might be.

Enough struggle tiping with this strange keyboard§

Cheers

[baiwanxi]

You make a strong point Chicken, but I still don't think that makes it O.K. to allow immigrants to come into a nation illegally and remain there illegally. It's just the situation like a car accident or healthcare provided for these "illegals" that creates a drain on the system. The tax dollars of the "legals" go to pay for the people who aren't paying any taxes. That's true of any place where this occurs, be it the U.S., France, or the U.K.. I don't think it's something that should be justified.

But it's also not something that will change anytime soon, and your point does ring true. So,,,, ahhh welll.... What can you do but accept and deal with it...

[Firbolg]

Imaging the UK without curry

England without its national dish?! Never!

Reminds me of an episode of Auf Wiedersehen Pet where the lads go to a curry house in Düsseldorf and Oz can't understand how the indian waiter doesn't speak english since he's "one of us".

[Chicken]

Baiwanxi,

I know pretty well what I'm saying and I'm more than informed and experienced in what's going on in the US... I have lived in US for 18 months in the last 5 years.

If you are in china... do you not get that everything is dirt cheap over here, and that by the time it hits our retail outletss in the West the prices have multiplied by a factor of 10?

Well guess what.... the reason why your friend's father is losing work is because someone else will do it for lesst, who just happens to be an illegal immigrant. That happens to be called competition. with in the context of market economics.

It is inevitable that world prices have to come down to compete with China, and as China's ability to produce higher order goods continues to develop, we are all going to have to deal with competition not just from Central and South America, but from China as well. You can all put your heads in the sand about how out of control prices have gotten in the western world fueling our materialism, but soon you are gonna get bitten on the bum by it.

We in the UK have been dealing with this for the last 30 years, as we've had to adapt to a customs union within the EU... basically the economy had to re-structure... your friend's father has to find another job that he's more suited to that an illegal immigrant isn't suited to. In the UK we embraced it and stimulated competition by denationalising and licensing everything. If we haddn't, well today we'd also be like France.

US dudes your turn has come. You should be grateful that Central and Southern America has eased you into this gently... when China takes over, they won't tiptoe in illegally... they do it silently from the otherside of the world, whilst you sit there trying to blame that fact that your order book has dried on illegal aliens.

Chicken

[baiwanxi]

Chicken, you're trying to use the method of how the U.S. was founded as a excuse for how we treat illegal immigrants as if that has anything to do with it.

All across the U.S. jobs are taken away from legaly born Americans by illegal immigrants. You talk about a "two-tier" society that has the same effect as slavery but that couldn't be further from the reality of how Americans view this situation. When my best friends father is laid off because his boss hired an "illegal" for a cheaper wage you think I would view his father or the man who now has his job as on another "tier" as a "slave".

You should watch the words you use. Saying that is simply putting words in the mouths of a people you obviously think you understand better than you do.

The situation in the U.S. is simply a more complicated issue than you can fully grasp unless you live there and experience it first hand.

My ex-girlfriend is an illegal immigrant and was put there because of how rediculous our INS is, and how inefficient they handle the situation. Even though she was my girlfriend, I never liked the fact that her employer preffered to hire illegals to pay lower wages as well as not have to claim as much on his taxes and pocket more cash. Oh, and her boss was her step-brother, a former illegal himself. Talk about a self-perpetuating problem.

It's not the type of problem you can claim to understand unless you live there.

As far as you ex, I'm sorry for the racism he had to deal with but that's not always the situation either. These people are most certainly not viewed at as "slaves".

[Chicken]

Oh I forgot to point out that my schitzo-ex is also Central American / Hispanic, and we had to deal with an amazing amount of racist abuse. Despite the fact that he is one of the US's brightest immigrants. Yup so I am all over this issue both in the UK and in the US...

So you are telling me that if I go to an up til now undiscovered area (from the western view point), and create a legal system, and turn that legal system against the indigenous people, that's OK is it?

I don't see what you guys are doing with Central Americans, as anything different to the Australian's treatment of the aborigines, before they enlightened and could percieve the damage that this was doing to the Australian psyche. Perhaps that's now why you consider them to be

some of the nicest, most respectful and respectable people in the world.

?
I think its apalling that your lot can use tags such as "illegal alien", it facilitates you using a two-tier society that has the same function as slavery, and ignore and dehumanise the plight of these people, something which goes completely against the founding principles of the USA.

All you want to do is protect want you've appropriated from the indigenous American people, and I think that all this discussion about legality is just a fudge / smoke and mirrors to deflect away from the real problem, which is that the US has become elitist and this is the most harmful aspect of the American culture both nationally and internationally as we observe it today.

Doc this all said, and more for the benefit of judgemental readers, I don't think this makes you a bad person, or implies that I don't like & respect you.... just that we very clearly differ on this matter!

B/rgds!

Chicken

[doc]

Well, the problem is one of terminology. I'm an American; I was born there, my forefathers are of Eastern European descent. I'm still a native.

The Mexicans that are flooding the southern US, are not immigrants. They are illegal aliens. As such, there is no way to keep track of them, financially or otherwise. If they get into a car accident, which they tend to do because they are unlicensed (and uninsured), they get taken to the police station and released. I have one friend that was killed by one eight months ago in Utah, and my sister in law was hit by another yesterday morning. Immigration does not try to capture them,as there are too many; if they get into trouble, they go back across the border for a month or so, and then return.

From what I'm told by my British friends, England has no problem with becoming more English. In fact, the whole concept of the old style English Gentleman is becoming extinct in that country. Which, is a shame, because I've found over the years that the English (and Australians) are some of the nicest, most respectful and respectable people in the world. Their culture, along with that of France's, is being altered quite dramatically, by the large influx of invited and noninvited immigrants, and, the influx if illegal aliens.

I turn out to be an "anti-illegal immigration" crusader. Is there a problem with being against illegal activity? Are you for illegal immigration?

[Chicken]

Canada's social system is nothing to be proud about; just ask any of the thousands and thousands that drive to the US to get their "emergency" heart surgery. Most of them don't want to wait the one to two years to get their procedures done. They have a burgeoning Chinese population that is out of control in the western part of Canada, to the point where they finally got very strict with their immigration.

Never said that Canada's social system is anything to be proud of... and can't see what that's got to do with the discussion on migration and cultural integration?

Australia handles their immigration well, from what I've been told. They keep people that they don't want, out, LOL.

Indeed right from the very beginning they were very picky about who turned up, and have not been pursecuted at all by the immigrants.

Everyone who is in the US unless native indian, is an immigrant relatively speaking. What gets me is that you think you have more right to be in the states than someone who's relatives were occupying that land mass for 100,000s of years before yours were.

Doc I'm not an immigrant, but I'm married to one, and most of our friends are also immigrants or of immigrant descent, and in London less than 25% of the people you meet's relatives were in the UK 70 years ago. But does that imply that we should kick out 75% of the people there? I don't think so, as I think we are a better country on account of the diversity that these new-English people brought with them.

Surely you should get this Doc, I mean imagine England just with more Englishness... its hard to conceive and quite frightning. Imaging the UK without curry, for example, it would be such a lesser place, and it was, what we have now is vast improvement.

So I couldn't disagree with you more, and I also am amused that you turn out to be one of those anti-illegal immigration crusaders.... we call it "grumpy old man" syndrome over here.

Chicken

[doc]

I don't think its healthy to point the finger and hold the immigration populations to blame for this. Especially since you can go to other countries, eg. Canada, the USA, Australia and see to different degrees how much more successfully they have managed immigration and societal integration.

Yes, the US has done a WONDERFUL job with "immigration" these past twenty years. Which is why Las Vegas is "officially" 25 percent Mexican (and unofficially probably 40 or higher, most of whom are not paying taxes, who are driving without insurance, and who use up the health care system for free. California is a basket case because of this, and Nevada / Arizona are fast on its heels. Many other parts of the US are also struggling under the financial burden of these people. The ever increasing Chinese immigrant and illegal population, ever notorious for running cash businesses to avoid US taxation, are just another example. There are areas in California where Chinese signs overwhelm English ones. Immigration in the US these past twenty years are far different than immigration over the previous eighty. Far different.

Canada's social system is nothing to be proud about; just ask any of the thousands and thousands that drive to the US to get their "emergency" heart surgery. Most of them don't want to wait the one to two years to get their procedures done. They have a burgeoning Chinese population that is out of control in the western part of Canada, to the point where they finally got very strict with their immigration.

Australia handles their immigration well, from what I've been told. They keep people that they don't want, out, LOL.

I don't know where you get your information from; you're right, you must be young, or an immigrant yourself to feel the way you do. Or, you just don't see these things around you.

And for your information, I am not a baby boomer. Nor are most of my friends and contacts here in Thailand. I speak with younger (and older), educated, well to do, businessmen from all over Europe, on a regular basis. There are many of them here in Thailand; many come here, for various reasons, one of which, I hear predominantly, being, getting away from the shit that's happening in their home countries.

[baiwanxi]

When I said that "Paris is f**ked" the lower income level sub-burbs are what I was reffering to. The French guy, 17 years old, and his mother, 52, both stated that the city, and many other large French cities, is on a steady decline thanks to these lower income level peoples. Much of what we see in the States of a lower income neighborhood is apparently similar with what is happening in France, but apparenty it's happening in France at a much faster rate, ghettos, gangs, pointless violence, and a faster rate of population increase among these people.

I'm sure the main downtown of Paris is still a very "romantic" and beautiful place. It's just what makes up the majority of the city, and many large cities in France, is a shitty situation. Not a nice place to be. So I'm told....

[doc]

Racism has nothing to do with it. And you confirmed what I said. Your native population is in decline. Your economy is being run by immigrants.

I don't have a problem with that. I love the mexicans that work for me; I couldn't afford to do it without them. But, that's only part of the issue. With all the good ones that come, many others come that don't assimilate properly into the population. That's where the problems arise.

Granted, as generations of these immigrants continue, they assimilate language wise. Or used to.... We're seeing in America something new. A British person lecturing an American about immigration, LOL. You guys are just starting to deal with it, my country was created by it. And in the past, the first generations of Italians and Irish had trouble getting assimilated; the next few generations did, and did well. However, now, things are different. We're seeing that in America, we are starting to change our language to fit them. Go into any Home Depot, Wal Mart, etc. More and more shit is in spanish. Call any bank, or other public office. More telephone stuff has spanish options. In fact, I called my bank, of 20 years, and asked them to speak to a manager so that I could wire transfer money to myself; I was forwarded to a completely spanish speaking phone menu.

Things are changing. People don't assimilate into societies when they immigrate as much as they used to. We see it with the Mexicans who are overwhelming our system in America. The French are seeing it with the Muslims who are overwhelming their society in Paris.

And from what I hear from my British friends here in Thailand, it's starting to show in Britain, but not that badly.

Yet.