Why Immigrate to the United States?

I view the "American Dream" to involve some of the following:

(1) Education - Part of the American Dream is the opportunity for you and your children to receive a quality education, starting with the public elementary education, quality high school, and high level colleges and universities. Education is affordable and accessible to all.

(2) Employment - Part of the American Dream is the opportunity for secure employment with respectable living pay.  Hard work, loyalty, and innovation are rewarded with respectable pay and job security.  Long term employment is a real and achievable goal.  A retirement with respect is attainable with hard work and loyalty.  Small business ownership is attainable and a goal of the business community.

(3) Home Ownership - Part of the American Dream is the opportunity to afford an appropriately sized home.  This is to both keep a permanent roof over your head, but also to have a permanent stake in this society.  Not just for yourself, but for your children and grandchildren.  It doesn't have to be an extravagant home by any stretch, but a permanent one that you can keep with security and get with financial responsibility.

(4) Health - Part of the American Dream is health and its many forms.  Its the personal health of your family.  Its health safety in the workplace.  Having a safe, clean hospital in your community or city.  It means access to health in all its shapes and forms, including access to a doctor.  It also means clean air, food, and water. 

(5) Freedom - Part of the American Dream for many outside of this country is the freedoms we offer.  It involves being able to speak your mind without fear of repercussion, including from the government.  It means being able to protest and assemble without fear for your own safety.  Its the freedom to practice your own religion safely and without fear.  It is the freedom to participate in the political system without fear for your own safety or even fear of losing your vote.

My parents immigrated to this country for most of if not all of the above reasons.  My own experience and their experiences lead me to believe that those are what the American Dream consists of.  They lived it.  They succeeded within the framework of the American Dream.  They left their home country for a better life and got it. 

My father got higher education and started his own small business which is still open over thirty years later.

My parents saved up money and own their own home.

They sent all three children to affordable colleges.

They had access to insurance and hospitals when they got ill and when my mother had to give birth to my siblings and I.

They worked hard to become naturalized American citizens and exercise their right to vote in every election, not just presidential ones.

They believe their children can live within this framework.  They believe that their children can still achieve their dreams within this framework.  They believe that the American Dream is alive for the society of the United States.  They are "minorities" (Jewish).

I am seeing cracks in their thinking.

For example...

They think its atrocious that not everybody has access to health care, even the poor.

They think its a shame the college education has become financially unattainable for so many compared to when they got their degrees.

They think that attacks on retirement, social security, and medicare are appalling.

They still worry about practicing their religion openly with representatives and presidential politicians speaking about the United States as a Christian Country.

Even they, the responsible homeowners who only bought within their means and extremely carefully, are beginning to wonder how it is that so many people are being foreclosed by Wall St. and the Banks.

My mother typically votes Republican, my father typically votes Democrat.  They are registered independents.

If they are having doubts, if there are chinks in the armor, what are people outside the country thinking?  What are potential immigrants thinking?

 Why should they consider moving to the United States and not elsewhere?  What do potential immigrants have left as reasons to move to this country anymore?

It seems that all of the aspects of the American Dream are under attack, being destroyed, or are close to being dead.  This comes from the super wealthy and corporate interests, who have no interest in watching the American Dream survive, for that comes at the expense of their own wealth.  And if you are a foreigner who is considering starting a new life in the United States, this is a frightening prospect.

So I wonder, from children of immigrants and children of non-immigrants, why would people want to move to the United States?

"The owners of this country know the truth.  Its called the American Dream, cause you have to be asleep to believe it." - George Carlin

PEACE

Corporations and the F word

Oh my, what could I be talking about?  Do I dare mention it?  Could it be happening in this country?  No, it only happened in Germany, Italy, Spain, and elsewhere.  It could never happen here.  Corporations could never exert so much power in this country.  But...

Fascism?

Ah yes, the dreaded F word.  Up until now, most of the talk has been in this country of an oligarchy or a plutocracy.  Here is a perfect example of what I'm talking about from Bill Moyers.

It would seem that wealthy corporate interests and democracy don't mix too well.  Democracy is a system of government that looks out for the needs of the majority of its people and the benefits of all.  It is also a system of government that is run by the people.  A plutocracy is where the corporate interests run the show, where the wealthy make the decisions that help only the wealthy, not the people.  So it would seem pretty easy to see where these two don't mix.

But Fascism?  The slow erosion of our rights have made me think of this.  It's the slow erosion of our rights all to protect the corporate interests.

As the Occupy protests continue around the United States, it has been the police who have been cracking down on the people's right to freedom of speech under the first amendment.  With arrests at the protests surpassing 4000, what have these people done other than exercise their freedom of speech?  As far as I'm concerned, the Constitution doesn't say that freedom of speech ends when the sun goes down.

What other right has been suppressed?  The right to the freedom of the press.  Mayor Bloomberg blocked reporters from covering the crackdown on Zucotti park and when reporters tried to cover it, they were arrested.  Reporters all across America have been arrested for covering these protests.

“Sometimes they are arrested and then set free almost immediately. Sometimes they are arrested and, before being released, are charged with unlawful assembly, disorderly conduct or lack of press credentials.

Journalists covering the Occupy Wall Street movement’s protests and marches are not only exposed to police brutality but also to a sort of judicial lottery when detained. The situation varies from state to state, according to local laws, but the freedom to report news and information is being violated almost everywhere, not only for professional journalists but also for bloggers and for activists who want to cover the protests themselves."

What is the role of the police?  To protect the rights of the people?  Or to protect the rights of the corporation? 

That's why I bring up the dreaded F word.  Fascism.  In a 2003 study of fascist regimes around the world and in history, fourteen defining characteristics of fascism were found.  The following is one of them.

"Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite."

Sound like something that might be happening here?  Even in NYC, Mayor Bloomberg is the 12 richest man in America with a net worth of 19.5 BILLION dollars.  It would seem that he has interests that need to be protected.

Or how about the fact that one of the largest multinational banking and investment firms in the world, also located on Wall St., gave a private donation of $4.6 million to the NYPD, the largest donation to a public police force ever?  Whose interests do you think they were looking out for?  The people?  Think they made this donation so that our first amendment rights to freedom of speech and freedom of the press could be protected?

I will close with the following words from a fellow blogger of mine TeacherKen:

"The use of sonic weapons, the use of massive police, the changing of the rules of access to the park after the fact in violation of the agreement by which the park was created, the refusal of the authorities to allow access to the press, the arresting of journalists, the continued incarceration of people including a city councilman without bringing them to the courts  -  all of these are indicators that basic rights apparently no longer matter to those in control of power.

How the people as a whole respond to what has happened, including the coordination across multiple cities and the inappropriate intervention of the Department of Homeland Security into this situation, may represent the last chance to prevent this nation from slipping into fascism -  corporate domination of the system without regard to the rights of persons ostensibly guaranteed by the Constitutions of the United States and the several states."

Don't think this can't happen here.  Don't think that fascism and corporate interests can't dominate the interests of the people.  We can either keep ignoring what's happening here, or speak out against it and act out against the corporate interests.

PEACE