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Is there any point for current US-based "skilled immigrants" to stay in the US? (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
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By "skilled immigrants" I mean people with advance degrees (PhD, MD, ...) holding all types of highly technical and managerial positions.

Asking this because skilled immigrants, at least in theory:

  1. knows, and has first-hand experience of how much bullshit one has to go through to immigrate,
  2. has enough bargaining power to move to another immigration-friendly country,
  3. let's just say that the upcoming US policies don't seem to be friendly to any immigrants at all...

But then US tech and research are supported largely by the same skilled immigrants. So I'm curious how that is supposed to play out...

Sorry this is a bit of a strange question.

P.S.: I'm... not asking for a friend. I've been constantly worried for the past two weeks; I try not to rush to conclusions, so the fact that I'm still worried concerns me. Double quotation marks because in the US it's literally the same government agency that manages all immigrants no matter how they got in the country (highly skilled worker, family of citizen, asylum, literally just crossed the border, ...)

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[–] 13 points 2 years ago (1 child)

Hell, the native Americans are immigrants too, they're just the descendants of the first ones to get here.

I'm not saying this to detract from the point of the land being stolen by invaders from Europe, I'm saying it to point out that every nation in North, South, and Central America was populated by groups moving here looking for a good place to live. It's the single most fundamental fact of the continents that we are all, all linked by something; we're all one big, extended family.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

    I wouldn't go that far. Might as well say anyone outside of Africa is an immigrant at that point.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Well, yeah, that's the point. I didn't bring Europe and Asia into it since the original thing was about the U.S., but it applies there too. It applies everywhere.

    We aren't some magically unique group because of where we live. There's no inherent barrier between people just because someone got somewhere first.

    I'm not saying that there's no point in borders, or that nations don't/can't have rules about such things.

    I'm just saying that when it comes to the U.S. and the rhetoric around immigration and immigrants, there's a lot less differences between everyone over on these continents than differences.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    Natives are pre-colonization, by definition

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Well, yes and no.

    Wherever the first humans existed are fully native, if the people there descend from the first humans in a relatively straight line. Which, we all come from them, but anyone that moved away and their descendants came back, it would be hard guy else descendants in particular to claim to be natives there.

    Anyone and everyone else had ancestors that colonized somewhere. Like, the mayans were descendants of colonists, just not European colonists. Same for Cherokee, Cree, Inca, Hopi, whoever. Their ancestors got here first for sure, and they colonized these continents. So, they're native, but not pre-colonization because nobody was here until they came here from somewhere else.

    So, yeah, in one context, if you only refer to the people that came after whoever got there first as colonists and pretend that that's the only meaning of colonization, then that definition fits. But it isn't the only definition, and it's not the one under discussion here.

    To give a different view on it, what would we call the first humans to go to Mars and stay there? Colonists, right? We'd have a colony on mars.

    You can use the word native to mean the people born on mars, and that's what you were saying, that the people born in a place are native to that place, and any further waves are called something that. But with other definitions of native, it's impossible for there to ever be human natives on mars at all, because nobody evolved on mars that we know of.

    And that's what I'm getting at. Here in the U.S. in specific, and across the Americas in general, everyone came from somewhere else originally, regardless of how long ago that was.

    Which is why I personally prefer the way Canada refers to the people that were here first, as First Nations. They conquered and colonized this side of the planet first. The rest of us need to respect that, but we also need to recognize and respect that being an immigrant isn't a bad thing at all because everyone here is either an immigrant or the descendants of immigrants. We're connected in that way, and should treat each other more as neighbors and family than insiders and outsiders.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Sure, you can use those terms symanticlly to go all the way back in time, but with respect to world history, the "era of colonization" was between the 15th century and 1960. And native/indigenous people were the people that existed in their respective regions before the 15th century. By definition.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Dude, you're off on a tangent about semantics (That's the spelling, btw), which is not at all the point.

    Which is fine, or if you didn't keep saying "by definition" as though there's only one fucking definition and usage. So, while I respect the inaccurate pedantry effort, I'm not interested. If you want to argue about semantics, it might be useful to actually understand what they are, and why your insistence on one single usage isn't accurate semantically.

    One aspect of semantics is the study of usages of words, or the multiple meanings and interpretation of words.

    And, by definition in the common internet available dictionaries, rather than the field specific jargon you keep repeating like it's useful for the discussion here, you aren't using an actual definition in common usage.

    So, my homie, again, I appreciate some pedantry, but you're not just being tangential, you're inaccurate, which means there's no point to further interaction about this. I'm done

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  • [–] -1 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    The term indiginous wasn't even used in the English language until the late 1500s, it was literally created for this purpose. Sorry homie, you are wrong, and the English language, by definition, agrees with the timeline of colonization with respect to the definition of native/indigenous people.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Dude. Why you gravedigging? This conversation was dead, and it ain't rising again.

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