I'm not sure I understand your question in the way it's being phrased. I also don't think we discussed the legal immigration process in class, what people have to go through to get legal status, the money (if any) required, etc. I hear a common theme of people who say "well the legal process is too difficult." I believe that the legal process should be streamlined. However, we can't let just anyone in, however, it should not have to be based on socioeconomic status. There need to be venues for workers to immigrate and be able to work (as a documented worker) to earn legal residency status.

I also believe that part of the fact that workers must be undocumented to be able to work for wages and benefits below the minimum regulations. I am one of those people who believes that the minimum wage laws cause black markets for labor and should be reformed. I know that sounds like a cold statement, but minimum labor prevents some types of labor from being able to be legal, and labor laws like this should be relaxed.

Unfortunately the legal labor pool is not suitable for many unskilled immigration laborers. The government through its regulations and taxes has effectively legislated away many types of low skill, low wage employment from the legal labor pool. There are millions of unemployed Americans who would be happy to take low wage low benefit jobs, including some of the jobs that have been off-shored; especially recently with the recession.

I happen to believe that when the government creates black markets like this, there will be all kinds of unintended consequences. For example, drug prohibition may cause less people to use the drug but drives the market underground, forcing people to take incredible risks in a market that does not abide by the rule of law. Similarly, immigrants are forced to sneak in and risk being deported because low wage jobs such as this are illegal, and face intense, often violent competition for underground low wage jobs.

Immigrants are faced with a conundrum; they need legitimate, legal jobs that they can work in order to gain legal status, but don't have much available to them. Unless the immigrant has a marketable skill that they can enter the United States' higher education system or skilled labor pool, they are pretty much forced to work illegal jobs under constant threat of deportation. The problem is that the low skill legal jobs have effectively been legislated away.

In addition, I believe that the public should become more educated about the legal immigration process, why it is so cumbersome, and how it can be reformed to be more fair and give poor immigrants a chance to move up and succeed; though I suspect that the basic underlying cause is the patchwork of restrictive wage and benefit laws that discourage hiring.

**they only have the most powerful army because we send them money and weapons**

First of all, you have opened up a can of worms with this issue, and many in the class would be offended by what you said. Nevertheless, my opinion on the whole thing is that our country can no longer to afford to geopolitically and economically dominate the world. So much capital has been poured into defense, finance, and other unproductive industries that the rest of the country's economy is crumbling and produces little of value any more. So, my opinion is that if the U.S. is to renounce its global empire, it should start with pulling out of the Middle East. That includes stopping the transfer of weapons and money to Israel. It will require significant belt-tightening on the part of Americans but I for one think that there is a lot of belt-tightening that can be done in America (by the wealthy and politically connected socioeconomic classes that is, not the growing underclass that is increasingly including whites). Our budget would have money for manufacturing, education, healthcare, and infrastructure (i.e. a REAL economy, not a FIRE economy) if our money stops going to the military, the banking system, the mortgage industry, and to foreign governments such as Taiwan and Israel.

How can one not expect this? Our media puts out propaganda about the extremist Muslims, portraying them as if every Muslim is like that, and claiming that the Muslim world has declared war on America and Israel. Only when Sam asked us to envision ourselves in Middle Eastern shoes, the Christian Invaders propaganda seemed much more real. Of course it is still propaganda but the effects are much more real to them and hit home in the way it most definitely doesn't in America. I think the reason for that is...voila...it IS much more real!! Arab extremists have caused, what, 5000 American civilian deaths? Most of whom were in the WTC? Compare that to the US troops in Iraq (the Gulf Wars and the Iraq War) and Afghanistan, and the numbers don't even compare. Our invasion and occupation is on a order of magnitude bigger than any coalition of Arab nations or extremist groups could muster up. When Sam asked in class whether I'd take up arms or support the insurgents, my answer is an emphatic YES. If you are in MY land killing MY people, I WILL shoot back. NO questions asked. Think about it. If America were invaded and occupied by China, I would muster up as much weaponry as me and my friends could find. No joke.

If I went over to the Middle East as a citizen, it would not surprise me in the least bit if I were looked at funny or met with hostility from Arab citizens. We all say this war must end, but how can us ordinary Americans end it if the people at the top in the banking and defense industries benefit from making loans to governments to finance wars, and manufacture weapons for lucrative sums of money?

i disagree completely, see my post below

First off, I can tell you right now, we don't NEED their oil. We don't need their oil any more or less than we need the Canadians' or Saudis' or Iraqis' or anyone else's oil. Our government and our society in general has made the collective decision to base our entire economies on oil. We could do with a whole lot less. Cutting our consumption in half or even three quarters is completely doable. For one, our zoning laws often require the separation of uses (retail must be segregated away from residential in most places) to the degree that we see today which has helped cause us having to drive miles for anything. State College is unique in this regard that you can get by without a car; international students on this forum take note of this, and realize that 80% of America's is NOT designed in this low energy intensity manner, and much of America that IS designed this way has been abandoned for the more "desirable" (a SUBJECTIVE term through and through) suburbs. You can see it in inner city Philadelphia for example, if you were to replace the poverty with middle class citizens with the same density, many people could get by just taking the bus or walking. That is a huge chunk of our consumption and in my opinion is a huge misallocation of resources.

A large chunk of our oil budget powers the U.S. Military. Yes, the same military that is there to defend the flow of oil to the U.S. is consuming a large chunk for themselves. Not only is it oppressive around the world but it is a huge drain on our AND the rest of the world's resources. If we didn't access foreign oil and instead relied on our own resources, our reserves would have been drained long ago (they are mostly gone anyway) and we would have no fuel to power our international military empire.

Perhaps I should mention the US trade deficit. Us Americans seem rich. But we really aren't. The average American has CLOSE TO ZERO or NEGATIVE household equity, correct me if I'm wrong. That is not called being rich. That is called living above your means. Half of the trade deficit is our oil imports. If we were forced to consume only what we produce, we'd all feel a heck of a lot poorer than we do now. We live in houses much too large for our needs. The average middle class family does not need 4000 square feet, or even 2500 for that matter. Just thought I'd throw that out there. But of course, we view our standard of living as the QUANTITY of things we have, not HAPPINESS and QUALITY of life.

People here hope for a co-existing world. I fear that it is impossible to achieve. I'm not saying this to be pessimistic, but it has been this way throughout human history and I hate to say this but it doesn't seem to me like we are moving towards global peace. In fact it seems the opposite. During 2008, when the recession was in full force, we still increased our military budget. I believe that this system will come crashing down at some point; I'm not going to put a time table on it because that is nearly impossible but it must occur eventually.

"Asian" is a HUGE group. Bigger than black people I believe. But yes, the stigma holds true for Asians too. For example, in my fraternity there is one Asian guy and one black guy. If I were to tell someone, "Talk to Josh about that", and they would ask, "Whose Josh", I can see myself saying, "He's the short Asian guy." If you are in the minority people will use that to describe you. I have had the same thing happen to me.

As for the Asian American/Asian difference, it reminds me of the time when Sam said how he and his wife could pick out Americans from a distance just from the way they walked and acted. I usually would like to think that I don't have to hear their accent to know that they are American. When I'm walking around and an Asian guy passes by me I usually tell myself whether I think he is American or if he's an immigrant. I don't really think about it but I subconsciously notice. Usually I am right. I can't really describe it, but I think I can tell before they open their mouth and say something.

Both men and women believe that the bleeding thing is an issue that shouldn't be talked about. I am personally very apprehensive about talking to a girl about her cycle. I would assume that she wouldn't want me to bring it up. But then turn it around. If I were a girl I would be apprehensive about talking about it, because I would think that a guy I'm talking to wouldn't want me to bring it up. It is one of those stigma, like the black and white thing, that runs deep among everyone no matter their gender. And yes, it is very much a man's world. Although there are forces today that seem to indicate that the gender division is shrinking (like for example the unemployment rate for men is higher than the unemployment rate for women), but men still hold the position of power.

I like many others here got teary-eyed when I saw this. It goes to show the notion that runs deep in society; that white people are good, superior, and somehow better than everyone else. When black kids show this so early on, it really means that this notion runs deeply in our society, from the elites all the way down to young minority children. I thought for a second that one of the factors may have been the idea that the color black symbolizes darkness, evil, and ugliness, while the color white symbolizes purity, goodness, beauty. Hell is dark and heaven is bright, the darkness is dangerous and the daytime is safe, etc. Then I thought about it again, and wondered how can symbolism like that be extended to children of such age. And then again, it's not just a black and white thing. It's a white and minority thing; like for example, how some of the posters above explained situations with not wanting to even play with Asian or Hispanic-looking dolls. I would also imagine that most white kids would pick the white doll. You could also say that hey, that's a given, but is it really? I am curious; does this happen in other countries besides the US? Do young children born and raised in China also pick the white doll over the Asian doll? Do young black children born and raised in sub-Saharan Africa also pick the white doll over the black doll? I would hope not, but it also wouldn't surprise me in the least.

Young children pick up on things like this. When everybody plays the race card so much, it must be hard to avoid as a minority child. Being brought up in an environment where black and white people alike play the race card all the time, especially as a minority child, practically guarantees that we will have issues like this. Take the tea party protests in Washington for example. The left points out people at the rallies who make racist signs and yell racial epithets to stigmatize an entire half of the US populace as racist. And the people involved in the Tea Parties on the right blame the idea of infiltrators from the left sneaking in and trying to frame the tea partiers as racist. I don't know what to believe, given the partisan nature of the mainstream media. I suspect that there are both infiltrators AND tea partiers that are truly racist. And I can't help but believe that both sides are using the situation to their advantage and to try to exonerate themselves from being racists, when the truth is, deep down, there is a great deal of hatred among everyone involved. There is as much hate as ever in this country and I don't know whether to blame the people at the top, the people at the bottom, or both. But partisan politics and the mainstream media doesn't help the situation at all, and keep everyone hateful and divided. I can just picture African American parents sitting their children in front of the TV and saying, "See that? Those white people spat on the black man at the rally." At a young age I would imagine that children would think to themselves that maybe the white people are right and maybe the entire black race is bad or inferior.

Parents teach their children at a very young age. And unfortunately this translates into a stubborn belief system later in life that traverses generations upon generations.

The closed environment is the first step for many people who wouldn't dare come out of their shell in real life and consider even facilitated discussion a step forward. Being in the facilitated discussion, there is at least an agreement that the members will try to have an open mind. There is no expectation about that out in the world. The fact is that even if you are comfortable about talking about race, others aren't. Being comfortable about talking means that you are prepared for whatever consequences may come your way should you say such things. And if you are inexperienced or reserved about it, it probably means that you overemphasize that risk to yourself considerably or are unwilling to have to deal with it. If you are capable of talking about these things, some will look at it and think it's racist. I feel like many people are not comfortable with those risks that come along with coming out of their shell.