Comment by purerandomness
17 hours ago
> immigration should be slow enough that they can be thoroughly assimilated before they change American culture
I support your idea. Would you agree that all immigrants that arrived in America after, let's say, 1493, have to leave America and apply for citizenship?
If you don't agree, can you propose another immigration year after which you'd have to leave America again? Would you agree on 1783?
Your joke inadvertently shows the error in your logic. “America” (in the sense of the nation) didn’t exist in 1493. Various Indian nations existed in this land. British people didn’t “immigrate” to those Indian societies. They created a new society on the land. They were settler colonizers, as the kids say these days.
> Your joke
I'm not amused. Are you amused?
> They created a new society on the land.
I see my message didn't quite get through.
You're almost there however. Think one step further: What stops the next "immigrants" from renaming your cute "society" that you currently have there, and declare a proper, civilized society, with a proper culture for once?
Nothing! If a superior civilization comes to America and wipes it out and builds a new society in its place, then those people will also be “settlers” not “immigrants.”
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> Think one step further: What stops the next "immigrants" from renaming your cute "society" that you currently have there, and declare a proper, civilized society, with a proper culture for once?
Nothing, but it is our right, as Trump does, to call that an invasion and forcibly reject it.
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The legally correct term is “Indian.” Obviously they had their own names for themselves. “First Nations” and “Native” are terms that are not rooted either in Indians’ names for themselves nor in the U.S. government’s name for them.
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I like how you think you’re dunking on immigration restrictionists but in your hypothetical you implicitly admit there’s a hierarchy of belonging and claim to a nation, and temporal proximity to its discovery and founding is quite obviously one of the most important.
Certainly not, but it would have been natural for the American Indians to desire this. They lacked the means to carry it out of course.
That tracks, elsewhere:
~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Chi