Our ghost of Christmas future is spending the season in Sweden

Back in our early days in the U.S., my parents made a few things clear. First, and most important, you learn English. Two, you stay out of trouble, because we don't want to give Cubans a bad name. Third, we learn about U.S. history, because we want to be respectful to this nation.

My parents understood that integration or assimilation is essential to a successful life in a new country. They understood it because they were the children and grandchildren of Spanish immigrants who flooded Cuba in the first half of the 20th century. In other words, they all kept Spanish traditions, specially Christmas and Easter, but were Cubanized with mambo and baseball.

Over in Sweden, we see what happens when "assimilation" is not a priority. This is from Andy Ngo:

My sister in law is over in Sweden now as her daughter and her husband live there. Her daughter is a teacher outside of Stockholm in a village. The students are 99 perccent Muslim. The immigrants there get free apartment, free car and monthly stipend. People in SWEDEN pa half their income to taxes to support free college, healthcare for their people and to support immigrants.

Immigrants come there because of all the free benefits. Swedes get up and go to work and pay for their housing, food, etc. To get a drivers license there it’s like 2500 dollars. They want people to use mass transit and not personal vehicles

My gramma was first generation American, and she fluently spoke three languages. Her mother spoke 2 languages, and learned English when she migrated to tje US. The English they spoke was heavily accented, but I loved to listen to them. I never could master their home language.

Gramma was able to break languages down so she was able to also able to understand other languages because she knew the roots of the words.

I thiught that was pretty kewl. She was also well versed in history as was my first generation American Grampa. His parents were business owners, so he grew up learning his parent’s trade.

These people all grew up in an America without welfare, and they learned trades which kept them out of the breadlines during the depression. They even took in the children of other family members who weren’t as fortunate.

The immigrant parents never expected handouts, brought their trades with them, became home and property owners, put all of their children through decent schools.

Their stories are common place for tje era of time in which they migrated...around mid 1800’s, and their kids are typical of the first generations of migrants.

I once asked my grampa how the current day (1980’s) compared to the depression, and he said it was worse currently than the depression. His answer surprised me. His reasoning was the need for foodstamps. Without them, people would have starved to death.
During the depression, people were hungry, but they didn’t starve.

There’s no way we can feed and provide for immigrants without trade skills, indefinitely. It’s crazy to insist we do. America is broke.

In grampa’s day near the turn of the century, 90% of employed people were self imployed. Today, 90% of people work for someone else. That’s a huge loss of independence and personal productivity.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

The good news is that Swedes are number three among Europeans in having babies. The bad news is that 1.85 is not enough to maintain your population.