Newsom vetoes a proposed ban on caste discrimination in California

South India it's pretty impossible, since it went through the self respect movements and basically got rid of surnames. Most south indians have surnames based on their fathers names.

But it is definitely common to use surnames as proxies in North Indian communities (unfortunately)

No, I just understand how precedence works in a Common Law system.

First, by default things are legal unless specifically forbidden. Being forbidden is based on some theory based upon the law, the Constitution, and a web of precedent called Common Law.

In this case, there is no law specifically written covering caste. There is no precedent regarding caste. Therefore any case alleging that it is illegal to discriminate on caste must be based on an untested theory based on the law. There is no particular reason to believe that a judge will accept your theory about the implications of the law, rather than some other theory that the other side comes up with.

If you take your theory to court, the other side will almost certainly come up with an opposing case. The judge will be weighing two theories. And likely will also be presented with the argument that the untested theory that discriminating on caste is illegal is untested exactly because other lawyers have consistently concluded that the law doesn't say that it is illegal.

This argument is not without merit. I do not know of a clear argument from the law. Maybe there is one that I don't know. But if there was, then I'd expect some prosecuting attorney to have brought it long ago. It doesn't help my confidence that the only attorneys to have brought such a case turned out (as you point out) to have been stretching the facts. What are the odds that they were also stretching the law?

Therefore the lack of cases really is evidence that the law really doesn't cover caste. (I'm quite confident that federal law doesn't cover it.)

Yes, and I want to keep it that way.

I ask again: What is the obligation for America, or Americans, to host intra-South Asian arguments and their arguers? Arguments that do not, in theory, involve any non-South Asians whatsoever? Is the only allowed outcome one in which the number and volume of said arguments hosted by America increase?

As I said:

>Like all immigrants Indians should be evaluated on their potential to contribute to the US in positive and negative ways.

There is no inherent right for South Asians to enter the US other than on the US government and its people's sufferance of same. If Americans decide that the disadvantages from the presence of South Asians (or Kenyans, or Danish, or Guatemalans, or New Zealanders) exceed the advantages, there can and should be consequences regarding immigration, visa, and naturalization laws. What should not happen is to preemptively squelch any efforts toward determining this as "blanket racism", any more than existing laws that apply uniformly toward all of a particular national origin are such.

This person might wanted to point out that the people who argue about the bill (which is certainly not 1.5B people), can't escape from and leave behind their mental prison of casteism, and they import a new form of racism into the US, which is not ideal.

"racism, also called racialism, the belief that humans may be divided into separate and exclusive biological entities called “races”; that there is a causal link between inherited physical traits and traits of personality, intellect, morality, and other cultural and behavioural features" (Encyclopedia Britannica; emphasis mine)

I assume the original poster means to keep out the discussion of the caste system by keeping out its supporters. Disregarding the feasibility of such a plan [1] it does put this proposal in a different light: keeping out supporters of a system or ideology which divides people based on unalienable characteristics is something which those who claim to be against racism should welcome.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/06/29/attitudes-ab... shows that support for the caste system is less prevalent among higher educated Indians who are more likely to immigrate based on employment opportunities so in that respect it would be feasible. Given this fact a rule to keep out caste supporters could be easily construed as an attempt to keep out less educated people by those seeking to weaponise identity for political purposes.

We Americans can certainly, should we choose to do so, reduce or even eliminate the entry of South Indians or any other nationality/ethnicity. That is not an American peculiarity, but that of any nation to protect its borders as it sees fit. It goes back as far as the concept of the Westphalian state, and really much further than that.

That some Americans deny or have forgotten that we have this right—no, obligation—does not mean that it does not exist.

If there is a real problem with caste-based discrimination among and between South Asians in the US, I am pretty sure (at least, I hope) that it is not being committed by the American-born among them.

>Free speech rights granted by the US constitution doesn't care if you are a citizen or not.

I am not talking about censorship.

Funny that you should mention the Chinese. Although China is 91% Han, the Han are themselves very divided by language and regional origin/culture. The emergence of Taiwan added another division to the mix; as I understand it, there are significant tensions between the mainland and Taiwanese Chinese communities in the US. (It would be a surprise if there were none.)

That said, there are zero calls for a need in the US for legal protection of the mainland-born Chinese from Taiwanese, or vice versa.[1] They have (and certainly their children have), in the US, by and large moved beyond such divisions. Just as Catholic and Protestant Irish did so in the US and the rest of the Anglosphere outside the UK and Ireland. I bet that if everyone of South Asian ethnicity in the US were born and raised in the US, there would similarly be zero calls for this law that Newsom vetoed.

You mentioned the Indian dominance of the California tech sector. I know you intend that to be a veiled threat, but that to me says that unwary Americans unnecessarily imported caste divisions en masse in a place where such divisions did not previously exist (and there was and is no shortage of other, preexisting divisions). From this non-Indian, non-Chinese perspective, if (again, if) there is a real problem with caste-based discrimination in the US among South Asians, it seems like South Asians aren't doing as well as the Chinese in terms of assimilation.[2] Is this really the place you want to make a stand on?

[1] Maybe I've overlooked rampant blatant instances of discrimination. But I doubt it.

[2] Again, I am not differentiating between the alleged oppressors and alleged victims. As I have said, their dispute should never have occurred on American soil in the first place. It is not our business and not our concern.

I didn't say that. I even noted

>Boston Irish support for the Nationalists in Ireland may not have been a wonderful thing to other Americans, but at least Americans did not have to deal with the conflicts on their own soil.

And yes, I am well aware of the Fenian raids, as well as the (myth of) the "no dogs or Irish" signs, and other aspects of Irish American history. I can tell you what "26 + 6" means.

My point is that the Irish Americans that supported NORAID, and predecessor organizations in earlier decades, at least did so regarding activities that occurred outside the US. Same with the Fenian raids; Irish Catholic Americans did not launch quasi-military expeditions against British/Irish Protestant entities located on US soil. And, more importantly, as the decades passed the American assimilation engine won out, just as I expect any intra-South Indian conflicts that go beyond name-calling to go away as long as giant waves of newcomers don't keep arriving and refreshing the impetus.

>No, the onus is on my country to uphold the charter of rights for every citizen. If I was the victim of caste based discrimination I would absolutely expect my government to protect me, not deport me or reduce my rights in any way, simply because the issue originated abroad.

I agree that the Canadian or US government's responsibility is to defend your rights as well as those of others.

That is not the same thing as, if intra- or inter-ethnic conflicts become a serious societal concern—a concern great enough to require the enshrinement of yet another protected class (to use the US legal term; I am sure Canada has some equivalent) into US law—being willing to indefinitely support the entry of the group or groups that are involved in such conflicts, whether they are the victims or oppressors. It is always possible for the people (speaking collectively) to decide that the net benefits to their society do not justify the continued fueling of such conflicts through the indefinite entry of the kindling, so to speak. As I said, it is their right to do so.

Further, as a non-US citizen your rights are legally limited in the US. Unless you have a green card you do not have the right to indefinite residency in the US, and even if you do, said right comes with some requirements (such as being present in the US for a certain number of years for each given period, and otherwise obeying the law). Beyond which, the US can at any time change the law and remove indefinite residency, and tell any non-citizen (whether permanent resident or not) to leave immediately. Canada can do the same for its landed immigrants. Ultimately, any country can change the rules as it sees fit for non-citizens within its borders (or those seeking entry) at any time. Again, it is the country's people's right to decide to do so.

>Keep in mind she is non-Hindu, and grew up in a big city more insulated from caste based identities & issues. Nevertheless, any kind of blanket prejudice would apply to her (and me) as well.

Interesting. From what little I know of caste I gather that it is a Hindu-specific thing? That Christians are excluded from it?

I don't think that was quite the argument. Per Sen. Wahab: >It’s largely believed that California’s civil rights law does cover caste to some degree, because some people will put it under the concept of ancestry or race. But caste is very specific; it encompasses more than just those two factors. We are just trying to clarify the law to explicitly include protection against discrimination based on a person’s caste, which we define as a system of social stratification, in which people are characterized by hereditary status, social barriers and other forms of segregation.

The intent seems to be to ensure no future confusion based upon something we all presently read in the law. Given how Gavin Newsom has recently been publicly at odds with judges over the interpretation of laws and that we've seen interpretations change radically over time (2nd amendment!), it's hardly without precedent.

>predictable second-order effect of this explicit enumeration... and those doing the accounting will find the easiest path through it.

Rather than comparing to consumer labeling laws, what about comparing to other presently enumerated forms of discrimination (and information collection requirements). Do you think we are presently harming minorities with these same second order effects from explicitly listing race and requirements to measure race in hiring? Or that non-heterosexual folk were harmed by explicitly adding sexual orientation (courts had previously inferred it based on prohibiting sex based discrimination)?