Have you ever lived and worked outside the United States? If you have, you know you are considered an outsider and can even be discriminated against. It will change your viewpoint of “others.” Let me give you an example from a country that is probably the most like the US, Canada. It is a little under hundred miles from where I am sitting to the Canadian border. When I would visit friends in the past, I’d cross into Canada and go to a grocery store to get butter. I can’t now because of the virus. Canadian butter is higher in fat content, and it tastes deliciously better than US butter. What has happened is that the US dairy industry wanted to lower the price of butterfat, so it could be added to make ice cream. It’s just one of the many things that are different in Canada than in the US.
With that said, I found there were more differences in parts of the United States than between Canada and the US. For instance, the differences between Minnesota and Mississippi seemed to me to be more significant than differences between Canada and the US. I lived and worked in the city of Toronto, Ontario. I am not a fan of cities. That’s why I choose to live in the country, but Toronto is the nicest, friendliest city I have ever lived in. Like all big cities, there are traffic jams every morning and evening, even with the 8 lane highway like the 401 inner ring road and the 409, which is a bit further out. Canada is truly a land of immigrants. On the city block I lived on, there was only one family that was native Canadian. All the rest of the families on the block were immigrants.
I was taken as a native Canadian on less I revealed that I was from the US, thus a Yank. For most Canadians, there is a love-hate relationship with its big neighbor to the south. I would have people say to me that you think you’re better than us. You should go back to where you came from and save your job for one of us. Their comments to me sounded very much like people in this country talking about immigrants. Canada is essentially an empty land. Most of the population lives within 100 miles of the US Canadian border. The Canadian government policy on immigration is driven by the fact they realize they need more people.
The US needs more people because the number of children born is less than the number of people who die each year. We will become like Japan if this pattern continues. Without immigration, there won’t be enough workers to support those who have retired on Social Security. It makes me wonder why so many people are opposed to immigration. It seems like an argument only to benefit a group of politicians. Every year we used to get more immigrants into the doctorate level in high tech fields than native Americans. I saw that when I worked at the University of Pennsylvania in the electrical engineering department. That is one of the reasons why we became so dominant in technology.
We are losing our technological advantage because of our immigration policy. We are losing the ability to support retired workers because of our immigration policy. Needed low-level jobs are going vacant because of our immigration policy. I could go on. It won’t make any difference. Some politicians are using the immigration policy not for the good of the country but for their reelection. Why?!?!
