Excellent posts, Carol!

Regarding discrimination against immigrants from Latin America, you say, "This is because they are largely from the lower levels of the social/economic strata and they compete with the people here for jobs."

I would add that, for the most part, this discrimination is unfounded, because most of the jobs they take are the menial, low-paying jobs that most Americans, even those in fairly desperate straits, simple will not take. Most Americans would find wearing a paper hat and asking "Do you want fries with that?" is acceptable, but swabbing out toilets in public rest rooms is not, even though the two jobs might pay the same. Or the classic, farm labor, down and dirty, all day long in the blazing sun. You'll find a whole lot more Gomezes and Moraleses out in the fields and orchards than you will Smiths and Joneses.

And WAV,

". . . what about the law of the land matching the culture. Examples such as the following sometimes make the news here - a school with a strict no-jewellery policy (similar to all French schools now having a no-veil policy, I think) ends up in court because a student insists that a bracelet is very important to her culture and religion. . . ."

First of all, such things as the French school regulations are, as I understand it, not the law of the land, they are regulations of the schools themselves, and they tend to be arbitrary and draconian. Even if they were the law of the land, they would still be arbitrary and draconian, and since it can be construed as a form of religious oppression (forbidding the wearing of jewelry, such as a necklace with a cross, or items such as a yarmulke or a headscarf), that is what needs to be addressed.

I would object to a tax-supported educational institution promoting or suppressing any expression of a student's religious belief as long as that expression was passive, such as the wearing of a headscarf. Proselytizing, either by the student or by the school, would be another matter. But how does a student wearing a yarmulke in class affect any other student—unless that student it bothers harbors the seeds of religious bigotry?

And WAV, the idea you have that the United Nations should regulate immigration/emigration, especially for economic reasons (the individual or family seeking a better life than what is possible for them in their country of origin) shows that you have little or no understanding of what the UN is all about.

I would like to see a world in which such things as passports, border guards, check points, and barbed wire fences are simply eliminated and people can come and go anywhere they want, anytime they want.

I don't anticipate this happening in my lifetime, but being (for some bizarre and unfounded reason) optimistic about the future of humankind, I think that time will come.

After all, science has found the missing link between early primates and Civilized Man.

It is us.

Don Firth