RateItAll: The Opinion Network

The land of opportunity. If you want to jump in your car and drive 2,000 miles to the farthest coast you may do so. If you want to open your own little corner store and try and turn it into Wal-Mart you can do it in the US! If you want to sit around and live off of the Government you can do it here! If your a woman and want to walk around without a veil covering your face you can do it! If you want to openly practice whatever religion you want without having your head cut-off, you can do it here!

While opportunity does exist outside the borders of the United States, it is the breadth of opportunity that exists within those borders that makes the United States stand out. As a young man in his mid-twenties, I have been able to build an independent and comfortable life for myself. In contrast, if I were living in France, I would more than likely be scraping by on a meager welfare check. (I have seen it firsthand) If I were Italian, I would probably be living with my parents for another ten years. No thanks. I am very grateful for the opportunities that America provides.

What opportunity? Why does the so-called richest country of opportunity have such a rich criminal history? I'll tell you why, from day 1 with the slaves, to the Irish in the 1800's, to the Italians, to the Polish, to the Mexicans and Chinese illegals today, this country was founded on flooding the labor market with cheap labor, tricking these immigrants with promises of "opportunity" and "streets paid with gold." Of course, what happens when those people won't or can't legally work cheap anymore? They're dumped for the next batch of immigrants, which leaves them to fight it out on the streets for a living. It doesn't help that many of these immigrants are not exactly the best and brightest. If you carefully observe the attitude of Americans today of all backgrounds, it's clear it is a culture that embraces the low-class, criminal mentality. That's how a lot of successful people here have gotten ahead, look at Joe Kennedy. America's education system, just to give an example, certainly does not have the nation's people in its best interest. Any foreigner who has been to school here and back home at the pre-college levels can truly see that. If the US doesn't even give their students the best opportunities with education, what does that say for the rest of what goes on in this country? Let's not even talk about college, many international students from all kinds of "third world" countries have little problem in top universities... Now with the American corporations and government scheming for more ways to get rid of jobs, I can't see why anyone would want to immigrate here. So no, America has no opportunity, and never has. It's just a clever marketing plan for cheap labor.

While mnany who live here will tell you different...the lazy ones with their hands out that is, there is opportunity for anyone with the desire to make it for themselves.

This has been probably the single most important reason for immigrants to move to the U.S. for decades, if not centuries. Yes, there are large scale lay-offs at various companies, but that is probably part of a large, but overall gradual, shift in the economy that is moving us away from manufacturing jobs and further into service and other value-added sectors. The opportunity to succeed is wide-ranging and diverse too. Immigrants can acquire jobs with little or no skill that pay three or four times the amount it would in their home country. It is not just about the entry level positions either. Nowhere on Earth are there more millionaires and in so many different fields.

Better take advantage while you can...with recent layoffs at Ford it appears these magnificent ops are shrinking at a faster rate than many of us may think.

Compared to Europe, we have more opportunity to strike it rich, but less opportunity to avoid becoming homeless.

One reason why our ancestors immigrated here from other parts of the world....we've got more opportunities for a better way of life.