Happy Native American Heritage Day to Elizabeth Warren and everyone else who celebrates.
As Native Americans have experienced some of the most dramatic effects of immigration, let’s look at an X post that compares Evolution-denial to denial that low-skill immigration can and will cause a country or society to evolve.
Excerpts:
Evolution deniers accept that “microevolution” happens. They also agree that different species exist. They just don’t think that a large number of small mutations over time can lead to a new species.
Both groups of deniers often demand to be shown direct evidence of transformation in progress. For example, “Show me the monkey turning into a human” or “Show me that California has turned into Mexico.” A snapshot may not clearly reveal an ongoing process, but that doesn’t mean the process isn’t taking place.
In general, people find it difficult to intuitively understand the impact of many small changes over time. This difficulty, combined with ideological beliefs that lead them to want to deny it, is why many otherwise sensible people deny that evolution takes place.
Also from X (immigration-loving New Yorker magazine), “Few forces have transformed our planet as thoroughly as the introduction of invasive species.”:
A bit of Science, from the local manatee lagoon, regarding the immigration of lionfish and some plants to South Florida:
From Joe “Open Borders” Biden, 2007:
Kamala Harris offers an accounting of the cost to taxpayers of being enriched by low-skill immigrants:
Does evolution, driven by random mutations (because there is no intelligent design, right?), always produce better adaptations? Or do the vast major random changes produce worse outcomes whose spawn quickly die off? Similarly, do all “small changes over time” from immigration to a country always produce better results?
Evolution in Europe due to migration seems to have produced better adaptions. The Europeans created generous welfare states and now they have a population perfectly adapted to collect welfare benefits. The same thing is happening in the U.S., of course, but maybe a little slower.
I prefer red dot Indians to the white feather variety!
I take issue with your comparison with Lionfish ‘immigration’. I think that when a group of humans immigrates, there’s an immigration of ideas, not just instincts like is the case when animals immigrate. The assumption I have is that we are more rational than animals and have better control of our instincts. But, if you think we’re getting less-rational by the day, your comparison seems apt.
PF: That’s a good point. People may differ on the value of those imported ideas, though. Let’s consider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honour_killing_in_Pakistan for example. All Americans will, I hope, agree that honor killing is an idea, but not every American will agree that honor killing is a good idea.
Indeed! There has to be an acceptance of certain core ideas in order to sucessfully immigrate, like in the case you suggested, demoractic principles and the law.
Perhaps if one were to expand human rights watch’s definition which defines honor killings to be mostly family-related, to killings occurring due to a belief in non-scientific ideas, one could classify ‘euthanasia’ as honor-killing as well. The idea that’s being honored being that one should be able to perform most of the normal bodily functions without anyone’s help. In the extreme, almost all killing is honor-killing, you’re either honoring an idea like nationalism when fighting soldiers from another country, or honoring your sentience over that of an insect when killing it.