I can eat sushi, pizza, samosas, kebab (kabobs, döner or shawarmas depending on your frame of reference), gyoza/pot stickers/tortellone/pasteczki (or whatever), noodles/ramen/spaghetti, knödeln/kroppkakor and so on and so on. Leaving lots of cultures unsaid.
I can enjoy music, cringy cultural movies (animated and not), fun cirque sessions (even without animals being endangered), go to festivals for various cultures, enjoin then in our cultures of scouting, mountaineering, hiking and share my love of enjoying nature.
I can drive electric cars, communicate on Internet forums, keep in touch with new friends as well as loved ones across the world.
I would be in a much poorer world without you all.
Agreed 100%. Unfortunately the people who need to read this are not on Lemmy.
I’ve seen a few anti-immigrant comments pop up around here that have been upvoted and they’ve made me pretty sad.
This thread makes my immigrant ass happy though so thank y’all.
No, I’m pretty racist and needed to read this. /s
Reminds me of this for some reason
That is pretty on the nose, but still an interesting perspective.
It might be on the nose, but we sure as hell have regressed in my short lifetime.
I dunno, the left path looks far easier because it’s far less uphill
Completely agree! The concept of Culinary Diplomacy is actually practiced by a few countries around the world and is often implemented in partnership with emigrants from those nations. South Korea did this with their “Kimchi Diplomacy” back in 2009 and it was considered very successful. It is one of the reasons Korean food became so popular here in the U.S. around then. Culinary Diplomacy
I think the Chinese government also supported the Chinese restraunt industry similarly in the US
Never read about SK or China (just not familiar, not to say it doesn’t exist) doing this but Thailand went all in.
https://www.foodrepublic.com/1318428/how-gastrodiplomacy-brought-thai-food-world-stage/
Hollywood and the anime industry have done much the same - helping people around the world normalize the feeling of living in their home societies.
Looking back at the history of England. We have had wave after wave of immigrants/invaders. Each wave brought a period of tension. That period was followed by a period of innovation.
The new people, with new views means old ideas are re-evaluated. New skill, flavours and modes of thought became part of our culture.
Even our language improved. Part of English’s power is the level of nuance with word choice. A loft of that comes from melding multiple root languages in.
Obligatory Stewart Lee routine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y38pbfJ4i_U
Some for me. So many cultures, languages and cuisines mixing. But in my case even im an immigrant but the plot twist is im european. Overheard someone talking about how bad immigrants are and they proceeded to say “but youre one of the good ones”. Only context you need to hear is im white.
“Unser Jud’ ist eh gut.”
That’s a sentence that was often used in Nazi Germany/Nazi Austria. It means “Our Jew is good anyway, [but the others are evil]”. It basically means that you keep believing the propaganda, even if the people you know don’t fit to the propaganda at all.
Nowadays this sentence is used to satirize the statement you posted.
Good to know. It is exactly like this. Ive seen people say things like this while they had 5 friends who were from 5 different countries basically next to them. Its really sad when even some of the immigrants believe this shit.
Many immigrants think they can get on the good side of the xenophobes by becoming the “good” immigrants while putting the “bad” immigrants down.
The problem with that tactic is that xenophobes and especially xenophobic laws don’t distinguish between “good” or “bad”.
If immigrants badmouth other immigrants, the only thing that xenophobes take from that is “even the immigrants think immigrants are bad”.
You see a lot of that happening in the USA, where frequently family members of MAGA voters are taken by ICE, because they aren’t going after the “bad” immigrants, but after immigrants, period. Even if their family voted for the people who are now taking them.
And that’s the real take-away. When it comes to lawmaking, you can either be for immigrants or against them. There’s no nuance. Because lawmakers don’t put any in.
Some of those who burn crosses
Are the same that love kebab bossesI immigrated to the US when I was too young to make that decision myself. Now I’m immigrating to another country. I literally don’t know what it’s like to not be an immigrant, and I’m tired of receiving nothing but hate for it. At least my new city is more welcoming.
Which country now?
dont let the fascist whoresons read this, they will frame you mentally deranged and a danger to their homogeneous society
Theirs is not a homogeneous society. They are demented and fragmented.
America would be a boring ass country if it was just white America. I have been saying this
It wouldn’t even be white America. Europeans are all immigrants
Fascism always promotes blandness and boredom. When the dust of chaos settles, that’s all that is left.
Never forget, the rest of the world is on the internet too. As I am. Not American. ❤️
My apologies 😘
Thank you… uh… please leave those sharks alone…
Fun fact for you: All döner is kebab, but not all kebab is döner. Because döner is just a type of kebab (grilled meat on a stick). Which also means that shawarma’s status as kebab is questionable, as it’s
usuallysometimes roasted or pan fried, as far as I know.Pan fried shawarma is something Im still trying to get used to. The Lebanese Shawarma places in Ottawa all stack the chicken on a stick rotisserie and it is cooked exactly like the lamb or beef kebabs, they then slice thin portions off of it just the same.
It wasnt until I moved out west that I ever saw Shawarma done any other way, and everything out here has been disappointing by comparison.
The name shāwarmā in Arabic is a rendering of the term çevirme in Ottoman Turkish (چيويرمى [tʃeviɾˈme], lit. ‘turning; hence, roughly synonymous to döner in this context’), referring to rotisserie.>
So maybe it depends whose version of shawarma you’ve had. All the ones I’ve seen so far (in different European countries) have been with rotisserie /doner kebab.
Names seem interchangeable in many places, in my experience. When I was a kid the difference between kebab and shawarma used to be that one was in a bun and the other was a wrap, for some reason. The bun has been phased out, unfortunately, and now it’s only wraps everywhere.
Thanks for that etymology bit. I wonder why I never bothered to check, but it makes perfect sense, as I know Turkish.
And yeah, I should have used “sometimes” not “usually”. Pan fried shawarma is a thing, while döner isn’t, so depending on the way it’s prepared it may technically not be kebab.
Btw, kebab doesn’t need to involve any bread element whatsoever. In fact, in places that use the term natively, it usually isn’t. Kebab is just any grilled meat on a stick, and often is just the equivalent of BBQ.
The problem is when immigrants from countries with lower labour standards and poorer conditions are effectively used as “scabs”, to suppress wage growth and unionization. And I fear the capitalists who benefit from this are pushing the “you just hate immigrants” narrative to protect it.
And how do you propose the solution?
I would say make sure people have a clear way of becoming legal immigrants. If they are legal, make sure the labor laws are enforced. So no paying under minimum wage, make sure the workplace is a safe place, etc.
Lobby the government to stop doing that. In the meantime, teach them their rights, how to unionize, help them with food security and finding a place to live, so that they aren’t in such a precarious position that makes exploitation so profitable.
I think a very important step is to start holding businesses responsible for employing undocumented migrants and immigrants. Stop punishing the employees and punish the ones breaking the law by employing them. They’d lobby so hard to make the path to citizenship easier.
We definitely see a gross incentive where companies don’t want people to become citizens because it allows their labor to be cheaper.
I think back in Trump’s first term, he had one policy that I genuinely agreed with - that the H1B Visa program should have a very high minimum salary to it, returning it to its intended purpose of being used for rare, high-talent specialized positions. As it stands, HR will just invent overly specific criteria so that they can deny local citizens jobs, claim they can’t find anyone, and then hire cheap H1Bs - and threaten them with deportation anytime they complain.
Needless to say, because it was a good idea and anti-corp, Trump dropped it almost immediately.
Yeah but good luck holding a sign that says “Don’t shop here, they hire immigrants”.
That’s not my point. I’m saying that law enforcement is being targeted at the wrong people.
Seize the means of production?
Besides all of that valid stuff, immigration is the only reason the US doesn’t have slowing/declining population numbers like many developed countries now have.
The irony is most Americans are descendants of immigrants.
“You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”
What a godless country.
I fucking love the diversity of the United States. It enriches us all.
Diversity is everywhere, the US isn’t special (in any good way, at least).
I didn’t say it was. Thanks.
Immigrants make a country great. One of the reasons why I’m happy about the increased immigration in the USA, and why I’m sad about the decreased immigration in Canada.
100% agree. The biggest overlooked benefit of immigrant culture is the mirror it offers us on our own practices and beliefs. When seeing what others do it gives us the chance to reaffirm that our actions are correct, or even more important, modify our actions for the better by adopting their view on something. We get to cherry pick the best parts of cultures around the world and discard bad practices that are perhaps “traditional” because we see our immigrants have a better approach. In the end of either we get the chance to be the best versions of ourselves with constant exposure to new ideas and ways of doing things.
