That's the problem with the views expressed by the GP. It's rights for me but not for thee right up until the moment that the knock on the door comes and then suddenly they're wondering why nobody stands up for them.

In general kicking the door shut behind you is bad form but I can understand it, especially if you're financially successful, then you don't want to be associated with all of those really bad and embarrassingly poor people from $COUNTRY that you or your parents emigrated from. But ultimately it is an intellectually dishonest position, those illegal immigrants are no less people for trying to improve their lives and since they are not a drain on the system (healthcare, voting and other rights are closed off to them) their net positive effect is actually a massive economic boost for the country.

But that is not something you'll be able to explain to someone who has set their mind on 'illegal immigrants bad'. It is interesting that this is now the 'conservative viewpoint' when actually it is just racism masquerading as enforcement of the law. If and when that difference manifests in the GPs life it will be too late.

My position is only hypocritical or contradictory under your unstated assumptions about how society works. You believe that cultures are fungible. You think that if you took 10,000 people raised by Dutch mothers and had them build a city, it would turn out the same as if you took 10,000 people raised by Bangladeshi mothers. I reject that premise. I think if you ran that experiment, with all else being equal, the city founded in Dutch culture would be more prosperous, better governed, less corrupt, and more orderly.

Since I don't accept your cultural relativism, then there is no contradiction in my view. Quite rationally, I want to live in the city founded on Dutch culture rather than the city founded in Bangladeshi culture. And there is nothing contradictory about moving to a place but opposing mass migration of people behind you that changes the character of the place that you found attractive to begin with. That's the mindset of literally everyone who moves to a quaint little town in the country.

> You think that if you took 10,000 people raised by Dutch mothers and had them build a city, it would turn out the same as if you took 10,000 people raised by Bangladeshi mothers. I reject that premise.

Are you trying for some kind of world record in strawmen? If so this one should definitely be nominated.

No, you can add whatever crap you want after that it is founded on something blatantly dishonest.

And you are apparently in love with some aspects of dutch society while you ignore the fact that - just like in your country - we have a massive issue with racism, have a huge problem with drugs and drug related crime as well as with human trafficking. Bangladesh, I'm sure has problems but they are just different problem. Food, clothing styles and architecture are not superficial, neither are family and friendship bonds, etc. Besides that we also have a massive pollution problem, have some of the largest CO2 emissions on the planet per square meter on account of our incredibly successful but also ridiculously dense pig, cow and chicken factories and associated slaughterhouses and so on.

Yes, Bangladesh is poor, and yes, there are issues there. But those issues have nothing to do with immigration and there is zero chance that Bangladeshi immigrants would recreate the society they left behind. Just like you and your family did not.

Not to pile on, but I think part of the issue is that the GP's argument has cause and effect reversed. He believes Bangladesh is poor and unpleasant in various ways because of their culture, while in fact it runs the other way. Culture is in many ways downstream of economics, not upstream.

Of course it's more complex than that in total, and it can go both ways, but that's my view.

You're correct that the direction of the causality is the key question. I'd argue that your view, however, suffers from results-oriented thinking. You assume cultural equality as axiomatic. That forces you to assume that Bangladesh's culture is caused by poverty and not the cause of its poverty.

I think most of the evidence points in the other direction. Bangladesh today has a per-capita GDP, adjusted for purchasing power, of over $12,000 (in 2024 U.S. dollars): https://www.worldeconomics.com/Processors/Economics-Countrie.... That's about where the U.S. was at the time of World War I, adjusted for inflation. Despite having economic productivity comparable to WWI-era U.S., Bangladesh is a vastly inferior society in terms of governance, political stability, cleanliness, law and order, etc. It excels in a few areas (low homicide rate and surprisingly good health indicators) but otherwise lags far behind.

You can also compare across countries that were similarly poor until recently. When my dad was born in what was then Pakistan, China was poorer than Pakistan. Today, China is much richer, more stable, cleaner, and more advanced. And Bangladesh, as bad as it is, is pulling away from Pakistan.

The resource curse, geographic location and climate are huge factors as well as those 'successful' western countries usually taking advantage of being a few decades ahead on the tech curve. That alone accounts for a huge fraction of the wealth and perceived advantages of one country over another. Bangladesh has a very rich history and was at times way ahead of the curve but the combination of various western (mostly British) influences in the region as well as a series of wars and coups have left it in shambles. But no Bangladeshi born today had any part in that, just as no Dutch person born today can take credit for where NL sits (not that there is all that much to take credit for, if anything my national pride extends as far as the waterworks and ASML but not much further than that and I'm well aware of the history of both).

> The resource curse, geographic location and climate are huge factors as well as those 'successful' western countries usually taking advantage

You have a theory of why some countries are rich and others are poor. I also have a theory. How are you so stridently confident that not only is your analysis is correct, but so obviously correct that my contrary view somehow is outside the boundaries of debate?

> Bangladesh has a very rich history and was at times way ahead of the curve but the combination of various western (mostly British) influences in the region as well as a series of wars and coups have left it in shambles.

Britain didn't conquer the subcontinent through superior weaponry. The Mughal Empire was one of the gunpowder empires: https://www.thoughtco.com/the-gunpowder-empires-195840. Britain was able to conquer the subcontinent using superior institutions and organization. In contrast, the Mughal Empire lacked such institutions, or any sense of nationalism. Indeed, the British East India company conquered India with an army largely comprised of Indians. https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/armies-east-india-company.

Instead, the technology that enabled Britain to succeed was cultural technology. In Britain, nuclear families were the norm back in the 13th century. Those weak family ties--which, frankly, I find upsetting even as someone raised among Americans--spurred the development of civic institutions to perform functions that in other societies were handled by extended family networks.

You're correct that I think you're entirely wrong about how culture works, but that's not what I'm asking you about.

My point is that under your rules and worldview, you should not have been allowed to come to the US, because you are from the "bad" culture.

Why should an exception have been made for you? Why are you and your family special and different from everyone else in your home culture? Under your own rules, that makes no sense.

That's a tough one. Because I think to let this crap stand unopposed is degrading HN and I should either stop using this site (which I've already done for well over a year) or keep speaking out. Not speaking out while continuing to use the site would make me a 'good German' and that's not something I'd be comfortable with.

But between the likes of drysine and rayiner HN is poorer and even though the motto is 'curious conversation' this isn't that and it is making me wonder to what degree 'curious conversation' and 'rage driven engagement clicks' are the same thing but with a nicer name.

Context for this claim: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44882722

What’s there to reconcile? My view of what’s good for America doesn’t need to validate my cultural identity or serve my personal interests. My dad left Bangladesh even though we were rich back home because he didn’t want to raise his kids in the culture. So nobody is hurting my feelings by saying that we should resist importing that culture into the U.S.

And to be clear, I don't view myself as an exception! My mom never really assimilated--culturally, she's a Bangladeshi elite--and children mostly receive their culture from their mother.

I ended up replying a little further up in the thread to a related point you made, but to sort of restate:

Have you considered that under your own rubric, you're "bad for america" because you're from a "bad" culture? It sounds like by your rules you shouldn't have been allowed to come.

You say you don't view yourself as an exception, but clearly you are, so why are you special? If people like you and your dad can come from cultures like the one you left, how is it that culture is stagnant and unchanging as you say?

> Have you considered that under your own rubric, you're "bad for america" because you're from a "bad" culture? It sounds like by your rules you shouldn't have been allowed to come.

Correct, but so what? I think it's important to be objective and detached. It would be intellectually dishonest of me to color my thinking by trying to come to conclusions that would validate my own presence in the country.

> You say you don't view yourself as an exception, but clearly you are, so why are you special? If people like you and your dad can come from cultures like the one you left, how is it that culture is stagnant and unchanging as you say?

Societies aren't monoliths. Even Bangladesh has people like my dad, who arrive everywhere early, are horrified by corruption, and love waiting in line. But immigration isn't about individuals, it's about populations in the aggregate. And the evidence shows that populations have identifiable cultural averages that are durable over generations.

"Trust, for instance, is one of the more commonly studied attributes: economic cooperation relies upon it, yet it varies substantially from culture to culture. Mr. Jones, an associate professor of economics at George Mason University, notes that, even after four generations in the U.S., immigrants continue to hold attitudes toward trust that are significantly influenced by their home countries. On a host of other matters, such as family, abortion and the role of government, fourth-generation immigrants on average converge only about 60% of the way to the national norm." https://manhattan.institute/article/the-culture-transplant-r...

"Analyses using data from the World Values Survey and the cumulative General Social Surveys indicate that the civic attitudes of contemporary Americans bear a strong resemblance to the civic attitudes of the contemporary citizens of the European nations with whom they share common ancestors." https://cis.org/Richwine/More-Evidence-Cultural-Persistence

> Correct, but so what? I think it's important to be objective and detached. It would be intellectually dishonest of me to color my thinking by trying to come to conclusions that would validate my own presence in the country.

But you and your family are by your own metrics evidence that your line of thinking - "people from culture X are not worth bringing to the US" - is false.

> Societies aren't monoliths. Even Bangladesh has people like my dad, who arrive everywhere early, are horrified by corruption, and love waiting in line. But immigration isn't about individuals, it's about populations in the aggregate. And the evidence shows that populations have identifiable cultural averages that are durable over generations.

If you believe the first sentence, the second sentence doesn't follow. Isn't the whole point of immigration laws to construct systems by which people whose traits are desirable are allowed to immigrate?

If your dad exists in Bangladesh, surely he's not the only one. If Bangladesh, with ~170 million people, has 500,000 of your dad (or whatever), surely it's to our benefit as a society to get as many of them as possible here?

But the people in control of policy on this issue, frankly, are people who are so bald-facedly hypernationalist that they see "Bangladeshi" and think "not American," and stop there. They do not care to implement a system that would work better. They don't want a system at all.

If you think societies aren't a monolith, whether they can change or not, then allowing movement between societies to help people find ones they fit into better is a good thing. If you think the US is better off with you in it, then "just reject everyone from country/culture X" is not the right approach. That is not the position current immigration policy espouses. My original point was that the US immigration system is designed to make it impossible to immigrate legally. Not just difficult or subject to scrutiny - effectively impossible.

Is that what you want, given your beliefs?

(To be clear, I still hold to my original point which is that I think your fundamental view of peoples and cultures is misguided and wrong, but we're not going to agree on that, so I don't see a point in arguing it. If it were up to me the system would be very very different, but as others have pointed out, it isn't currently up to me.)

You ignored the things I was actually trying to ask you about and instead focused on a point where I specifically called out that we wouldn't agree - a point I specifically conceded for the purpose of this discussion because I didn't think arguing it was productive.

When you say:

> You'd never accept the immigration system we had back when Fazlur Kahn came here, because you believe in magic soil. If we implemented such a system, immigration proponents would immediately shift their focus to eliminating any bargained-for restrictions, which is exactly what they've been doing since 1965.

I am not talking about what I'd accept. I'm asking why you aren't advocating for it as something you would accept. The critical point is:

> the people in control of policy on this issue, frankly, are people who are so bald-facedly hypernationalist that they see "Bangladeshi" and think "not American," and stop there. They do not care to implement a system that would work better. They don't want a system at all.

> If you think societies aren't a monolith, whether they can change or not, then allowing movement between societies to help people find ones they fit into better is a good thing. If you think the US is better off with you in it, then "just reject everyone from country/culture X" is not the right approach. That is not the position current immigration policy espouses. My original point was that the US immigration system is designed to make it impossible to immigrate legally. Not just difficult or subject to scrutiny - effectively impossible.

> Is that what you want, given your beliefs?

You may say that you don't actually think "people from culture X are not worth bringing to the US," but given the above, that is what you are functionally advocating for. You are advocating that the ladder be pulled up behind you, and me, and everyone else in this country who is successful as the child of immigrants.

If you think that an immigration system that isn't just "disallow all foreign immigrants" is worth fighting for, even if the system you want at the end isn't the one I want, you should be fighting for it instead of arguing it's OK we don't have it.

Your consistent refusal to engage with the Bengali population here before 1965 is telling