Seriously... I often shrug when people ask me to pay more for public schools / child programs to encourage births. The claim is often that 'You're investing in our future'. Except... we're not. The data are pretty clear. A lot of the important jobs are being done by people not raised here. The same people will often brag that immigrants pay more taxes than native-born Americans (not sure if it's true, but it's an argument I hear). Thus, unless my taxes are going to pay for public education / child welfare in another country (like India, Mexico, Guatemala, etc), is it really an investment in our future? A good portion of 'our future' will be people coming from countries where we've actually forced other people to be taxed to prepare these kids. Is that really right? We need to have a solid discussion of what we're actually doing here, but no one seems to want to do it.
Being specific. Working in tech (as I'm sure many here do), most of my colleagues are foreign born. That's fine, but basically, my parent's tax dollars did not go to their education. Someone else's did. That means we did not 'invest in our future'. Americans are not taking these jobs / are unable to do them at the rate I'd expect given our expenditure (having been in the hiring manager position, I'd say more are 'Unable to do them' then unwilling).
I'm not anti-immigration (far from it... I'm the child of immigrants myself). I'm just wondering what the point of all the child welfare programs and such is if, at the end of the day, we're expecting children and adults raised in third-world conditions to take on the most important jobs in 'our future'. It's pretty clear to me that the immigration system is exploitative. My parents and family spent thousands of dollars, thousands of hours, etc to become productive members of this country. A similarly situated American was well taken care of their whole life and many are now benefiting from the taxes my parents and aunts and uncles paid. It seems to me that if our grand strategy is to subsidize American welfare by the mass importation of migrants, we should be paying the migrants to 'invest in our future'.
> I often shrug when people ask me to pay more for public schools / child programs to encourage births. The claim is often that 'You're investing in our future'. Except... we're not. The data are pretty clear. A lot of the important jobs are being done by people not raised here.
You should make this same argument in front of the millions of faces doing the "unimportant jobs" and their children, see then if people would still have the patience to work on your car or even sell you one in the first place
This is an argument to improve our education and social safety nets so that our citizens develop into the people who do the most important jobs in our country, not an argument to keep immigrants out.
Being specific. Working in tech (as I'm sure many here do), most of my colleagues are foreign born. That's fine, but basically, my parent's tax dollars did not go to their education. Someone else's did. That means we did not 'invest in our future'. Americans are not taking these jobs / are unable to do them at the rate I'd expect given our expenditure (having been in the hiring manager position, I'd say more are 'Unable to do them' then unwilling).
I'm not anti-immigration (far from it... I'm the child of immigrants myself). I'm just wondering what the point of all the child welfare programs and such is if, at the end of the day, we're expecting children and adults raised in third-world conditions to take on the most important jobs in 'our future'. It's pretty clear to me that the immigration system is exploitative. My parents and family spent thousands of dollars, thousands of hours, etc to become productive members of this country. A similarly situated American was well taken care of their whole life and many are now benefiting from the taxes my parents and aunts and uncles paid. It seems to me that if our grand strategy is to subsidize American welfare by the mass importation of migrants, we should be paying the migrants to 'invest in our future'.