You’re dead wrong on the politics and the economics of Latino immigration. A strong majority of Americans support a path to citizenship; and an immigrant getting a job on U.S. soil is absolutely not the same as that job being outsourced to another country, because the jobholder pays U.S. taxes, pays rent (or buys a home) in the U.S., shops for food and clothing in the U.S., goes out to restaurants, bars, and movie theatres…etc. All of those things then have a multiplier effect, supporting the local economy.
Which is why, as I said in the OP, part of the triangulation on the Syrian question should be a strong pivot to a pro-immigration position for Latin Americans, as a contrast to a Trump-type angle.
Yes, Americans do support a path to citizenship, but as part of a process that stops the flow of illegal immigration so that we don’t keep having to revisit this issue every 20 years. Democrats are actually going overboard now, opposing the very concept of deportations.
That isn’t so. You can’t prove that it is so, because it isn’t. At best, you can ferret out a Dem or two somewhere that do, and then claim that it is representative of the party as a whole. But you know it isn’t, because you can type, therefore you can read.
Notwithstanding that any arrest relating to terrorism should be taken seriously, but let’s put this in a little context. One of the men entered the US in 2012, the other in 2009.
Since 2012, the U.S. has vetted or resettled 286,000 refugees. Since 2009, the number is 526,000. With those numbers as context, I still don’t see what your suggested play to xenophobia is expecting to accomplish.
ETA: it’s also not clear to me whether these guys were associated with terrorist groups in or prior to admittance to the United States, or whether their involvement with ISIL is the only basis of the criminal charges, in which case it may be that they were radicalized after being admitted to the US.
I don’t have a strong opinion on this issue, but one comment caught my eye.
This seems … odd. Every Republican who voted for the bill did so to solve a problem. Every Democrat who voted for the bill did so out of cowardice.
Has the bipolarization of American politics become so extreme? Is it now impossible for a R and a D to legitimately reach the same conclusion on any topic?
We’re talking about politics here. If the point was simply to reduce deaths in the US, we could get a lot more done by increasing the safety of roads and vehicles, working harder to promote good nutrition and exercise, reducing air pollution, etc. But voters don’t think in these actuarial terms, and they never will–no matter how much you try to persuade them to. So “only a few of these Middle Eastern refugees are with ISIS or Al Qaeda” is not a winning political message, and never will be. That is a sure way to further convince voters that Democrats cannot be trusted on “keeping us safe” from terrorism.
P.S. How many of those 526,000 refugees are adult Muslim men from Iraq or Syria?
That’s a fantasy version of debating. In real life, people are stubborn and generally unwilling to admit they were wrong. So when they suddenly lack for counterargument, especially after a devastating piece of new information like I just provided, that’s a win.
And the idea here is not to score debating points with the SDMB, but to put out an urgent message of potential danger for Democrats who otherwise have a lot going for them at least on the presidential level.
Due to the evidence I earlier provided of the FBI Director and the Director of Intelligence (the top two figures in combating terrorism in the U.S.) both having grave doubts about the refugee vetting process, and now proof that it indeed does have major holes, no one can any longer just scoff and act as though there is no issue here that is even debatable. Nor, I think, could anyone ever really dispute that I was right on the politics–even if they have an idealistic (aka naive) view that one ought not to take political considerations into account when dealing with an issue like this.
then why does poll after poll show widespread opposition to more Muslim refugees? Altho I’m in the minority of my party (D), I’m in the majority or plurality of Americans.
Your link shows a small majority in favor of allowing Syrian refugees “as long as they go through a security clearance process”, and a huge majority opposed to banning Muslims from entering the country. So no, you’re not in the majority (or plurality). The numbers shift slightly when the question is asked differently, but when the clearance process is specified, the majority (or plurality) is with Obama.
Err… the entire point of a debate is to convince those opposed that they don’t have the right of it. If you aren’t here to convince (and “putting out an urgent message of potential danger” is inherently an argument, ie that one should be concerned about whatever it is you’re warning about) and you aren’t here to score debating point, what exactly to do you hope to do?