After I commented, I did read the original post. I even left a comment there, which I thought was on topic but that no one responded to:

“A question this raises to me is, how do you measure the health of a family, or loyalty to it? In an extended family, does covering up/ignoring/excusing the actions of an abuser strengthen the family or weaken it? Is it really loyalty to let it continue?”

To expand a bit; it seems to me that accepting abuse in such a family structure is seen as maintaining loyalty to the family, which is superior to taking care of oneself by involving the authorities. But as has been well documented elsewhere, that also tends to perpetuate the practice in future generations on the part of both genders. On a long-term basis (if not a short-term one), that seems to me to weaken the family structure, not strengthen it.

Of course there’s another factor at work; if various members of the family are in the U.S. illegally, engaging the authorities’ intervention can end up with disruption of the family structure by loss of income and deportation of at least some of it’s members, leaving the rest to determine whether they will go back to Mexico or whatever country they are from (this is a problem in the Irish community in Chicago - we’ve got plenty of Irish illegals here as well as Latino) or accept the split in the family so as to maintain residence in the U.S. and the concomitant economic, educational, etc. advantages.

But I wonder how much of this acceptance of abuse is due to their immigration status and how much of it is due to cultural factors? What happens in the areas these folks come from in such a situation?

we won’t have problems with this generation of docile helots, it’s the grandchildren who’ll cause trouble.

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I don’t feel I have a lot to contribute to the conclusions of bfp’s post, because I don’t understand international economics that well. Or well at all. Or at all.

But I thought the post had a brilliant and thoughtful cultural and personal analysis, written beautifully. I’m very glad you linked it.

I was kind of hoping that this would turn into a complicated conversation about open borders, since I don’t understand them, but alas, I guess I’ll have to do my own research rather than getting the crib notes version here.

I’m fairly certain that none of you have read brownfemipower’s post, and if you have, that this is the way you respond offends me.

There’s a lot of this kind of thing going around throughout Europe; imams preaching for the destruction of Western society and imposition of sharia law. There’s not a lot of attitude that it’s an immigrant’s duty to adopt/adapt to the culture of their new society these days, it seems.

The left should support the free movement of human beings, and in particular labor. There are considerations however for the economic well-being of the 1st world workers. I think that’s where the rub is.