I read with interest the article titled “Where do Descendants of Immigrants Stand on Modern Immigration?” written by Brent Currie and published in the Armenian Weekly on September 11, 2019. For years now I and, I would guess, many other Armenians have read interviews with Mark Krikorian, Executive Director of the Center for Immigrati
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You skew what he is saying to what you believe he is saying in your echo chamber. Illegal economic migrants are no where near comparable to Armenian refugees. Did USA make mistakes in the past? Yes! So did every country in WWI, then they repeated that mistake again in WWII. I was a refugee. I didn’t flee Azerbaijan because the economy wasn’t doing good. I was fleeing because they were going to murder my family and me. So to compare my family to some Salvadorans that want to make a quick buck is like spitting in my face. We were in a basement for 2 years waiting for our paperwork while Jose and Yolanda and their 1 year old dreamer kid can jump the border and its OK with you, they become immigrants(legal) and their kids are dreamers! They get health care on the tax payer dime? Free college, don’t have to pay taxes…etc..etc.. To be blunt, no one is trying to kill Jose and Yolanda because they are hispanic. There isn’t a genocide in Ecuador, Guatemala, Colombia, El Salvador, etc. etc. However, I am all open to opening quotas for the United States for Legal Refugees and Legal Immigrants. But you better put a limit on it, if you don’t, how many? 1000, 100000, 1000000 per year? Because in the end, this will change America you Love. It will morph into something else, it will lose what America is. Suppose Armenia opened its borders and let in a bunch of Kurds from Syria to resettle throughout Armenia. Would it still be Armenia? Would it still be your homeland or something else? I’m asking you sincerely.
I look forward to comments because because I know this issue strikes at the heart of many of us. Clearly, you have personal experience that informs your opinions. However, let’s not make assumptions. I am not saying refugees should pour in unfettered and not have to pay taxes. What I am saying is when human beings find themselves under permanent existential threat, when their children are being murdered–wherever they are–when families are being destroyed, whether by violent criminal gangs or genocidal mobs, the rest of us must take notice. I am not arguing that such refugees deserve free college; I am saying they deserve to live.
Also I don’t believe that anyone deserves free college. I also didn’t say refugees, please don’t mix illegal immigrants and refugees in the same context that’s just disingenuous of you. Asylum seekers and illegal immigrants are no way near comparable to a refugee is my point. Also I forgot to ask, how many immigrants in your mind or asylum seekers or refugees since you pile them all into one category. How many per year is enough, you know 2 million, 3 million, what number is good enough for you?
Its seems you have a skewed image of immigrants today. Perhaps listening to the confused Krikorian, Mark. Your struggles don’t make you less or more deserving to be here! You seem just as hateful as mark as well. Sorry you are miserable
Well said!
I’m often dismayed by Armenians who show so little compassion for the ‘other’.
May our nation’s tragedy teach us compassion – let it make us better humans.
It’s all too easy to fall into the traps of hatred, fear and xenophobia.
But show me your actions poppy, actions are what defines us. I can say all day long that I am a better person and virtue signal all my little virtues I’ve assigned to myself. Thoughts and Feelings don’t equate to actual hard evidence of helping people. I don’t see the upper middle class San Francisco Americans opening their homes to Juan and Julia from “name a country”. No the poor have to give up their homes for these illegals. But the leftists say they are fleeing some fake conflict that was fed to them by leftist lawyers that support illegal immigration. In the end the leftists can get more bottles of wine for a lot cheaper than if the winery had to pay an American to do it. So in the end the middle class suffers, in the end you are only as good as your actions versus your feelings of dismay.
America should let in any Turk who wants to flee Turkey because of Erdogan’s repression and the poverty in “eastern Turkey”.
Yes, let’s invite in a few million poor, repressed Turks (and Azeris who are repressed by Aliyev) in order to be compassionate and tolerant.
Armenians should be in favor of that since we had to leave Turkey too.
In fact, Armenia, which is losing people, should take in a million or two Turks and Azeris.
They can contribute to the Armenian economy and bring about reconciliation with Armenia’s neighbors when these Turks and Azeris come to outnumber Armenians in Armenia.
I have nice tolerant ideas towards immigration, don’t I? I think so. I’m a liberal Armenian American and proud of my ideas.
I think American ideas should apply to Armenia.
After a few years Armenia can switch its name from Republic of Armenia to Republic of Eastern Turkey. Sounds festive. I love your sarcasm.
Wow. Right-wingers call other people “snowflakes” yet look how triggered they get at the mere mention of immigration.
One does not have to be fleeing genocide in order to qualify for asylum or refugee status. Judges have adjudicated that some of these Central Americans qualify for asylum, therefore, they have the right to be here. Those who do not qualify are deported.
As for all the slippery slope arguments (“why doesn’t the U.S. let in millions?” “why doesn’t Armenia let in millions of Turks?”), drawing the line on a given spectrum is precisely the role of adults in government. Otherwise no argument could survive because it could always be reduced ad absurdum using a “slippery slope” rebuttal. For example, to those right wingers who advocate for lower taxes (on the rich): Why don’t we just cut taxes to zero? Wait that would not work because then we couldn’t fund the army, fire department, police, etc. Well, I guess that means your argument for lower taxes is wrong. See how easy such disingenuous argumentation is?
My argument wasn’t slippery slope. My argument was a question. How many is enough? How many is enough until the very notion of nationalism in the American sense changes to another? The identity of this country will change, it will no longer be USA but something else and I don’t want to live in Something else. Leftists always want to help until they are drowning in problems but no solutions.
Sorry- typo in my previous submission. Resending.
Sireli Alex: Covert entry into N. America by inverted aliens and visitors who marry Green Card holders in order to stay in the US are both out of control so I would not say that our adults in government have this situation under control.
Professor Emerita MacCurdy tells us quite a bit about why she thinks Mark Krikorian is a bad man, but she does not tell us anything about why his ideas are wrong. In fact, she skips telling us what his ideas actually are or why she objects to them.
As to the claim that he is a bad man, the Professor relies on the fact, primarily, that SPLC has classified his group as a “hate group,” chiefly because its founder was a supposed white supremacist. This surely proves too much about too little – the founder of Planned Parenthood was a vicious class- and racist, but that does not blind most of us from the good it performs today irrespective of what Ms. Sanger asserted about people like us (She hated immigrants of the day). And, a “Professor of Writing” should have dealt with Mark Krikorian’s response to the SPLC piece on which she relies, as if it was dispositive. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-labeling-my-organization-a-hate-group-shuts-down-public-debate/2017/03/17/656ab9c8-0812-11e7-93dc-00f9bdd74ed1_story.html
Nothing doing.
Neither does the Professor tell us what a good solution to unchecked immigration is. She is chock full of useless anecdotes, such as one about a skilled surgeon, but that proves nothing because even if every illegal immigrant was a Chopin, DeBakey or Obama, these problems remain: [1] the law is bring violated and [2] the size of illegal immigration is immense, and burdens especially the border states. The Professor downplays [2] but she has not had kids in the LA School system, been to an El Paso ER lately, or looked at the high percentage of California prison convicts who entered illegally. Moreover, she might ask any economist if the menial workers whose presence she applauds depress wages. They do, and they thereby harm the poorest Americans.
Apart from all of this, the MacCurdy piece rankles for a completely separate reason. If Krikorian was German, she would never have written anything about him. Yet, she feels herself free to criticize Krikorian because she thinks he is untrue to his heritage as an Armenian. Not so. I was not aware that Armenians came here in the 1890’s, or 1915-1955 because they were victims of domestic violence, which the Professor thinks is a recognized ground for asylum. They were not illegal entrants. They did not come here in these years looking for work.
But in the most fundamental sense, Armenians, Mexicans, Central Americans et al are free to articulate arguments against laissez Faire immigration without scolds telling them that they are peculiarly disabled from making those arguments due to their ethnicity.
I would grade the Professor’s pierce a D. But then, I don’t grade on a curve.
Another leftist AW piece.
Professor,
Your first mistake was accepting anything the SPLC says as fact. The SPLC is a radical far-left smear organization that paints everyone they disagree with as a racist, a bigot, or an extremist. They even do this to liberal Muslim reformers like Maajid Nawazz. They go after people who stand up against Islamic terrorism, but not the terrorists themselves. As an Armenian woman who knows the history of Islamic oppression against our people, you should not take anything this sham organization says seriously.