Monetarily Mining the Value of Citizenship

Posted by James Bowery on Tuesday, 01 May 2007 23:44.

There is an important article posted to VDARE today by Randall Burns titled: “Immigration Policy Squanders The Value of Citizenship” exemplified by this passage:

If we take the current theoretical value of citizenship at a midpoint estimate of $225,000: we can ask ourselves, is the American public really getting $1.4 trillion per year in value for current levels of legal immigration? I would argue that it isn’t. In fact recent immigration—which is often unskilled, uneducated and often actively hostile to the existing US population— is creating nowhere close to that level of benefit.

It also isn’t surprising that the predatory wealthy like Bill Gates can make money when they have something to dangle in front of prospective foreign employees—the perquisites and privileges of US residency and citizenship, paid for by the rest of us.

To underscore the importance of my point: If we look at the median level of privately- held wealth, it was only about $61,000 per citizen family in 1998. (The average level of privately held wealth is around $270,000 per family). That means decisions regarding immigration policy and the definition and value of citizenship are far more important to a clear majority of Americans than any personal savings or earnings they are likely to have over their lifetime.

If we use a higher value on citizenship, immigration swamps even our currently absurd trade deficit as a liquidation of American assets.

As we move towards a saner immigration policy, we need to think of policies that maintain the current value of US citizenship and broadly held private property levels for those already here-and that are calculated to attract those immigrants who really do bring something to America.

Americans deserve at least the consideration from their political leaders that property owners would get from a real estate developer.

Part of the importance of this article is that it attacks the fallacy of hypocrites claiming to be libertarians who demand open borders. It does so by treating citizenship itself as a property right with estimable monetary value.

Now, agreed, it ignores the enormous value most people attach to kinship, however it is the first time someone has called the bluff of self-proclaimed “libertarians” by putting numbers to the asset that we know as national citizenship.

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Comments:

Posted by Luke the Drifter on Wed, 02 May 2007 19:43 | #

I apologize for posting an off-topic comment, but check this out:

http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&rlz=1B2GGGL_enUS203US203&q=
P.O.V. - Hiding and Seeking: Faith and Tolerance . Trailer | PBS
P.O.V. / American Documentary, Inc. - 6 min - Feb 22, 2006

Skip over the introductory platitudes to 2:20, shortly before the following statement is made by the aged patriarch regarding gentiles at large:

“Only when you see he’s dead, can you believe he’s a decent Gentile.”

The entire broadcast is a nauseating must-see. I caught it when it was first broadcast on PBS a few years ago. This clip is only the tip of the iceberg. In essence, it’s an objectively anti-Jewish film made by a pro-Jewish filmmaker who has deluded himself into believing that it’s pro-Jewish. KM’s theories validated once again. It’s available at my local specialty video-rental place, and I’d rent it and excerpt all the most telling snippets if I knew how.

Posted by Luke the Drifter on Thu, 03 May 2007 05:25 | #

I don’t know why the link was wrong. Here’s the right link…

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=Hiding+and+Seeking:+Faith+and+Tolerance&hl=en

Posted by Luke the Drifter on Thu, 03 May 2007 05:28 | #

Well that’s strange- it doesn’t work either.

Just do a search on google video for:

“Hiding and Seeking: Faith and Tolerance”

Posted by Luke the Drifter on Thu, 03 May 2007 19:04 | #

The partriarch says the only good gentile is a dead gentile despite the fact that a polish couple hid his three in-laws in their barn for 28 months during the war. The filmmakers facade of reasonableness (always tenuous at best) slips completely at the end, (not seen in this clip) when his view of “reconciliation” is revealed to consist of indoctrinating modern Polish schoolchildren with feelings of guilt and obligation for the “sins” of preceding generations. He graciously lets them begin to assuage their guilt by laboring as landscapers at a Jewish cemetery.

The Polish couple who risked their lives is awarded with an Israeli medal denominating them “righteous gentiles” (not seen in the clip). They seem befuddled and less than impressed- the filmmaker just uses them as props.

At another point in the film, (not seen in the clip), one of the Jews who stayed in the Poles’ barn is interviewed. He moved to NY after the war and became quite successful. He’d expressed his undying gratitude to the Poles during the war, and admits that he never even made any effort to contact or thank them afterward. He “assumed they died.” The Poles ask about him, expressing genuine interest, and a little bit of resigned resentment, since they’d suffered badly under Communism.

Posted by onetwothree on Thu, 03 May 2007 23:24 | #

Offtopic:

I dare you to read the post and comments for the latest ‘hate crimes bill’ over at the dailykos:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/5/3/171142/8119

Step by step, the law will have two classes of people: White males, and all others. The “all others” will be protected to a degree 10x that of white males. Blah, blah, you already know this. It’s blisteringly obvious. But read those comments, and it’s just chilling how malevolent stupidity can become.

Posted by Luke the Drifter on Fri, 04 May 2007 04:53 | #

Unfortunately you have to watch the actual video, not just the clip, to see the segments I describe. The only interesting part of the clip is the patriarch venting his poisonous hatred of gentiles. (That and the “reasonable” filmmakers admission that he encourages his children to spend as much time as possible with this patriarch, so that they will absorb his values - with the alleged reservation that the patriarch’s venom against whites might be passed onto the next generation).

Honestly, Fred, this was one of the most infuriating things I’ve ever seen on PBS. If Soren is going to be doing videos, I’d nominate this as a topic. I believe that the entire video can be rented at specialty video rental shops. Parts could be excerpted, interspersed with commentary/analysis, and posted here.

Here’s another outrageous pro-jewish video that will turn any rational person against jews:

“The Free Voice of Labour - The Jewish Anarchists”
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8999267144305867270

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Voice_of_Labor
The Free Voice of Labor: The Jewish Anarchists is a 1980 documentary by Steve Fischler and Joel Sucher of Pacific Street Films. It memorializes the story of the Fraye Arbeter Shtime, and the Jewish anarchist movement of the early 20th century. The movie contained a short interview with a very young Joe Conason [nee Cohen]. Paul Avrich was a consultant on the film. As of 2006, AK Press has begun distributing it as part of a double DVD release with Anarchism in America, named after the latter.

Here’s some comments I found on the web:

- This movie represents a type of hubris that is seen again and again in Jewish history. They celebrate their success at undermining the status quo and the established order, holding up their self-serving actions as worthy of admiration, but society at large views their actions with disgust and offense. Contrary to the hagiographic intent of the videographers and interviewer, this video functions as anti-Semitic “propaganda.” Yet it is nothing more than the truth.

- Note the admission that Jewish Anarchists formed the backbone of the Communist Party in the United States.

- Note their pathologically self-delusional beliefs and attitudes - (utopia can exist on earth, and in order to obtain it, we are morally authorized to destroy American society).

- Do you think that there are any Jewish Anarchists in Israel? Hardly. Jewish Anarchism only makes sense when it is deployed in parasitical opposition to a societal order established by “the other.” In their own society, there’s no room for Jewish Anarchism.

- Note the admission that “Anarchism was born out of their revulsion for America.”

- Do you think that Israel would permit Palestinian Anarchists to conduct themselves in Israel as Jewish Anarchists conducted themselves in America? No way. The Palestinians would be imprisoned or dead within days. While these Jews expect Americans and Palestinians to give way to a foreign agenda, most of them believe that Israel has every right to be a racist, apartheid, fundamentalist theocracy that needn’t give an inch for anyone.

- Note that back in the day America actually had the backbone to deport spies, foreign enemies, and alien seditionists: he says that 250 (Jewish) anarchists were deported back to Russia on a single boat in 1919. Can you imagine such a thing happening today? No- they’d have to arrest every member of AIPAC, every member of the ADL, 40% of college professors, and 95% of Congress and deport them all to Israel.

- Note the guy saying that a German/Jewish judge gave him preferential treatment “otherwise I’d have been in jail for years.”

- It seems to me that these folks are just congenitally pushy and aggressive- far more so than traditional Americans (ie as represented by the founding fathers).

- As documented by Macdonald and others, their descendants didn’t “assimilate,” they continued a radical assault on America: they led the counterculture movement, the communist movement, the open-borders movement, the civil-rights/affirmative-action movement, the Freudian movement, and the Neocon (Judeocon) movement. Nothing but trouble. A shape-shifting, many-headed hydra.

- Note the blatant double standards and hypocrisy: the Jewish Anarchists proudly admit to smuggling illegal Jewish aliens (i.e. invading occupiers) into Palestine. So much for the anarchists’ supposed opposition to colonialism, nationalism, and nations. That’s just window dressing to gull and entice the masses: for them, a nation of their own.

- Note that the Jewish Anarchists collected large sums of money to send to Jews in Russia. If their utopian beliefs were sincere and not self-delusional, why were they so nepotistic in dispensing aid? People all around the world need help, but they only offered assistance to their co-ethnics. Quite a betrayal of their allegedly universalistic principles.

- Note that they are rabidly insular and ethnocentric, publishing their flagship newspaper in Yiddish until it finally closed down in the mid 1970’s. I don’t doubt that a major reason it was published in Yiddish was to prevent the wider society from easily learning what was being published.

- Note that the interviewer Paul Avrich begins by expressing doubt as to whether he’d be accepted by these people. I almost laughed out loud: as a Jew himself, of course he would have known he’d be accepted with open arms. And indeed he was. I think he put on this act to make it seem like these people were just very friendly and welcoming in general.