American political culture - assessment

[Hans de Vries]

This topic is adressed to our members living in the United States of America. How do you judge the current US politics? All areas of US domestic politics - upholding the rule of law, nature of inter-party relationship, administrative efficiacy, protection of freedoms I would be interested in comparison with EU and comparison with United States in the past.

 

 

[CharonY]

Do you mean comparison? Judgement is typically something very subjective. That being said, your general area of interest is very broad and one has to define a clearer subset to allow comparison. For example, what are the aspects that allow to asses upholding the rule of law? Which metrics could we use? Also a comparison USA-Europe is probably not very useful as the European countries have quite different systems. There are European laws of course, but they concern themselves with certain subsets.

For example, in Germany the jury trials contain a mix of lay and professional judges, the former being selected by the municipal council. In the US and a number of other European countries a jury system is used instead. Typically in these cases the jurors are selected from a random list of candidates.

With regard to freedom, there are various freedom indices that can be used, but again there is some disparity within Europe. Would you like to focus on particular European countries to facilitate a more tighter discussion?

 

While we are at it, I would also propose to add immigration policies as I definitely see very interesting differences between US (and Canda for that matter) and in this case actually most of Europe.

Edited February 21, 2015 by CharonY

[MigL]

The simplest metric to use is 'illegal' immigration.

Which country is the rest of the world trying to get into ?

And what is the reason for that ?

 

I haven't actually researched it, but I think you'll find the US is right up there.

[CharonY]

I am not that sure about that. Geography will be a major concern as well as stability of neighboring countries. Moreover, many illegals are actually overstayers, thus the visa process may also affect how common illegal immigration is in a given country. Finally, the ease in which one can enter and stay in a given country will influence that.

It is likely true that the US will be pretty high on any list, though. But also Syria for example (prior to the war) had a sizable population of refugees who entered illegally. This includes over a million refugees from Iraq after the US invasion. Conversely, in Canada the number seems fairly low (though I cannot find many reliable sources), but I presume that the majority will be overstayers, as it is kind of tricky to physically get into Canada (other than from the US).

[Afraid of Time]

That's an incredibly open ended question that most likely warrants an explanation of several pages long. With that being said, the general consensus of our government's operations is very poor. Party politics has seen it's better days and our presidential approval rating is lower than ever. Personally, it's hard to judge if the government is always at fault or if we are members of a hyper-sensitive society who feel if something doesn't go our way we must be heard as if we don't already get listened to. I find the following issues more important than the attention their receiving from our government:

 

Public Education System

Illegal Immigration (specifically from Mexico)

Lack of interest in scientific subjects (I'm a physics student I will always find this an issue)

 

Issues that receive way too much attention IMO:

 

Gender Equality

Race Equality

Stimulating Our Economy Via spending (Reaganomics go!)

[John Cuthber]

The simplest metric to use is 'illegal' immigration.

Which country is the rest of the world trying to get into ?

And what is the reason for that ?

 

I haven't actually researched it, but I think you'll find the US is right up there.

That's not a bad metric but I think total migration is a better one because the difference between an illegal and a legal migrant may change overnight because of a change in the law.

.

And, through the wonder of Wiki, we even have an answer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migration_rate

The US is 40th just behind the UK and Brunei

[MigL]

But it doesn't measure the 'desire' to migrate to a particular country.

Total immigration also includes people forced out of their home countries by circumstances such as wars, famine, etc.

There are a few undesirable countries in the top ten that I wouldn't even visit.

Yet I've paid money to go to St. Lucia, and its very far down the list. I could certainly see myself living there.

 

I live very close to the US borber ( 10 min ) and the number of people coming into Canada as landed immigrants or on a Visa, and subsequently trying to 'sneak' into the US is high.They must still think that the US is the 'land of opportunity'. And Canada seems ( to me anyway ) to be a very desirable home country.

[CharonY]

I do not think that short of making a world-wide poll there is an easy way to directly measure desire. There will always a mix of circumstances including political and geographic situations (how close is it, how easy is it to obtain visa legally from your home country etc.), extreme situations like wars or catastrophes, economic situation (how much does it cost to immigrate, relative to the the money you earned in your home country) etc.

However net migration is a decent indicator of the relative desirability within a sphere of influence, I would say, although some weighting would be necessary.

 

Do you have numbers about illegal border crossing to the US from Canada, btw.?

[John Cuthber]

I'm not sure I should be posting in this topic, since I'm not based in the US but...

If I was planning to emigrate to anywhere it would need to be somewhere that I spoke the language.

As it happens, my first language is English so I can get by just fine in the States (as long as I don't try to talk about pavements)

My second language is French, so I might consider going to a French speaking country.

 

I would hardly consider anywhere else.

 

Now look at the number of people in the world who speak English as a second language (directly or indirectly due to our colonial past).

I suspect that explains part of the reason why the US is reasonably popular and why the UK does "better" than France or Germany- who have comparable weather, economies and so on.

 

There are of course lots of reasons.

I don't think Lebanon is gaining so many people because it's a wonderful place to be; I think the fact that it's the next country along if you are leaving Syria has a lot to do with it.

 

The big problem with checking numbers of illegal immigrants is that they are, by their nature, difficult to count accurately.

Some poor souls probably still think of America as "the land of the free"

[CharonY]

That is an excellent point. With English being the de facto lingua franca the anglosphere does have an advantage to begin with.