Make your land like ours!

[Marius_Ursus]

Hi,

I can follow the opinion of Tom (Ursus) a little bit, but not the whole way. I agree that people who have chosen to live in a country that is 'new' for them, should (try to) integrate and not try to alter it completely to their customs and culture. E.g.: only two years ago a political party of Arabic immigrants in my country (Belgium) wanted to impose Arabic as an official language! This I think is quite absurd and demeaning towards the guest-country. In saying this they denied their will to become part in our community.

But on the other hand we (the 'original' inhabitants) should allow them to integrate, which we often aren't really open to do so. E.g.: Just yesterday a television program revealed that a belgian of foreign origin (Maroccan) was refused as a member of a gym-club. The (western) owners of the club said that they were full and no new members were accepted. Just ten minutes later they send in a belgian of local origin and he was immediately accepted with no questions asked.

So there are always two sides of the same story.

Hans

Unless I'm grossly misunderstanding your post, we agree 100%. I'm not pro-segregation. I'm not anti-foreigner, and I'm certainly not anti-immigration. My own family came here from Ireland...and I grew up, lived in, and visited more countries than a lot of Americans have even heard of. (Lichtenstein??? Is that near Pittsburgh???)

I'm pro legal immigration. I'm pro productivity, harmony, and increasing the standard of living for anyone willing to put the hard work into creating a prosperous life. I'm also strongly pro-integration but not forced integration (Take a look at the bussing controversy of the US in the late '60s and see what that did to our education system as a whole. We've never recovered.) and very much in favor of majority rule as long as those rules don't oppress anyone (self-imposed oppression withstanding).