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Have you ever noticed that many in of the immigrant groups that faced anti-immigration sentiment and discrimination, once they got in, wanted to close the door behind them to other groups. That has been true of many second and third-generation immigrants, including the Italians, the Irish, the Eastern Europeans,, the Cubans, among others. Is that not ironic and shameful?

wordywalt 9 July 1
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I think it is fear that is preached by politicians. Their divide and conquer system tells folks that the new comers might take what they have recently achieved. "they're different" When you have been deprived it is hard to let go of the fear, they don't realize it isn't pie, there is enough for all; and different is not evil or bad, it is just not what you're used to.

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It's shameful to point the finger solely at immigrants.

Some non immigrant working class people (but not many) have gone on to become multimillionaires.

An extreme example is J K Rowling. She was once society's "pariah"; a single mother surviving on Democratic Socialist government provided welfare.

Without that lifeline who knows what would have happened to her. A hundred years earlier she might have ended up in a Victorian workhouse and died an early death.

Now that she's made her millions, she's pulled the ladder up from behind her. She ridicules the politics that once protected her.

Capitalism is selfishness.

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I can't speak for all groups, Italians in New York, etc.... but my family, on both sides has German ancestry and they all landed in Missouri. Most of the folks back there in Missouri that I know with similar backgrounds seem to back Trumps efforts. And I think a real driver in that is their ancestors tended to keep very few connections to their German roots.

Maybe WW2 snuffed alot of that. Heck, maybe it was WW1!!!

I'm 54, and when I was a very small child, late 60s and very early 70s there were still a few very OLD people in town that sounded German and probably spoke German. They were bi-lingual and first generation. I am talking people born before 1900. When they came over, they learned English and they did NOT teach their kids German. They lived in towns like New Hamburg, Diehlstadt, Dutchtown, Van Buren,... but overall, no one in these areas continued to embrace their German roots. They really assimilated. My grandparents, all born between 1905 and 1915 didnt speak a word of anything but English.

I KNOW the people in those areas today feel like, "If you wanna come here and be Americans... THEN BE AMERICANS!" Is becoming mono-lingual required to be a good American? Clearly it isn't but I can assure you the people I know look at people who are here for years and still clinging to their previous culture, speaking another language at home, etc... as not really trying to become American.

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Except the Mexicans, since we were already here

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