What happens to them? Anybody got any follow-up? Are they welcome in their “native country”? How’s their Spanish? Do the actual residents of their “native country” regard them as “gringos”? How are things these days in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala? After all those years of our paternal concern and affection, how we gently guided them from the paths of turmoil to the calm silence of graveyards?
To send young people to a land where they are not welcome, amongst ruthless people ever alert for a new victim, is unspeakably cruel. Hell, when their street gangs infiltrate, they scare the shit out of our own home-grown thugs. They will be seen (or perhaps already are) as cash cows who probably know somebody in America who will pay a thousand dollars not to get a finger in the mail.
Don’t want them to vote? OK, no problem, maybe just permanent status, all the rights and obligations of citizenship but that. Sure. Its a deal. Not proud of it, but at least it isn’t so ruthlessly cruel I need be ashamed of it.
And may be blessed baby Jesus shut your mouth and open your heart, amen.
I don’t see it. Because if they truly believe that accruing national debt in order to provide economic stimulus is the path to prosperity, then they let the entire country suffer through eight years of recession just to block the Democratic President from success.
And if they don’t truly believ it, then the recently passed tax bill is nothing but a bold-faced heist of the Treasury.
It’s like half the country has turned into my idiot uncle who relentlessly believes the Nigerian scammers.
If so, what their actions show they believe is best is to reflexively oppose anything the Democrats try to do. Do you really think the Republicans no longer have principles of their own that aren’t automatically in opposition? Do they really not define Democrats as the enemy of “the citizens of this country”? It’s no longer apparent that they can be given credit for independent thought and principle higher than simple obstruction and vandalism. Or that they, or you, mean “*all *citizens”.
Dreamers won’t leave the country. They will just retreat to the shadows, living off others or working under the table. We are going to have to fire bilingual education teachers and replace them with unqualified permanent subs (because we can’t fill those slots without dreamers) and qualified teachers with college degrees will go scrub floors for cash while subs hand out worksheets to blank faced kids.
This, somehow, if a fair and just situation and anyone objecting to it best remember that they are a supplicant and remember first and foremost that anything other than a polite request for a legislative solution is ungrateful attention whoring.
Another important distinction is that it was not illegal for the folks to sit at that Woolworth’s counter in the first place. They weren’t breaking any law. They were protesting the business practices of a private company, and to the extent that business was interrupted, it was the decision of the company that made it so.
As for protests that “essentially shut down cities”, that’s too vague a reference for me to say whether I agree or disagree. I’d need to see what specifically was done in specific instances.
The dogs and hoses were used on peaceful-but-technically-illegal protesters in Birmingham–not inside lunch counters, but to prevent protesters from getting to lunch counters. People were absolutely arrested for trespassing during sit-ins–including in Greensboro.
There is a fundamental misunderstanding that the Civil Rights Movement was a matter of people protesting private policies and social customs. Segregation was enshrined in law and actively enforced by the State. Before desegregation, it wasn’t like black people walked an extra 2 miles to use a restroom because they didn’t want to be rude, or get yelled at. They walked an extra 2 miles to find a restroom they could use because they didn’t want to be arrested. Because it was a crime not to.
Civil Disobedience has always been about radical, illegal interference. It aims to destabilize the machine to the point that the injustice must be addressed. And Thoreau is clear that it should be saved only for truly severe injustice:
So I mean, if someone want to make the argument that situation --these 800K people who did nothing wrong, and came out of the shadows when they were assured it would be safe to do so—is “normal friction” and that sacrificing them is just acceptable friction, well, I disagree with that, but fine.
But don’t say that shutting down a cafeteria is the wrong sort of thing for someone to do in pursuit of civil disobedience, that it isn’t what Thoreau or Ghandi or King would do–well, that’s just incorrect. It’s entirely in the tradition of civil disobedience.
People get “arrested” for all kinds of stuff. The test as to whether someone has done something illegal is whether they are tired and convicted. And note that your History Chanel cite says that “many of the protesters were arrested for trespassing, disorderly conduct or disturbing the peace” without noting how many were arrested for each.
I don’t have that misunderstanding. The lunch counter protests in Greensboro were about the policies of Woolworth’s, which that company changed without the need to change the law in NC. Birmingham was different, where segregation of private businesses was required by law. Also, the Birmingham protests were huge, all-encompassing protests, aimed at that all encompassing law (not targeting one company to change its policies).
Rosa Parks, otoh, was arrested and convicted of violating the segregation law in Montgomery, AL. The difference between her actions and what is proposed by the protestors in the OP is that she didn’t shut down any businesses, preventing anyone from using it, and she especially didn’t shut down a business unrelated to the law she was protesting nor block legislators from entering their offices.
It’s easy to be compassionate with other peoples money. If I could tax everyone in my city $20 then give some of it to a food bank, is that compassion?
Well, it isn’t other people’s money, its our money. From sea to shiny sea, the deed reads "We, the People: Ours. All of it. Not his, not hers, ours. Private property is an important thing but it is not the only thing, not even the main thing.
And its to take care of our people. If they aren’t our people, who’s people are they?
I keep hearing this defense of inadvisable protest tactics. And it’s true that many protest movements used poor tactics but won anyway because of the justice of their cause. However, three other things are also true:
The cause was undoubtedly just. The idea that people who came here illegally have a RIGHT to stay, is not at all clear cut.
Not all such movements are successful, and how much they piss the people off who they need to support them matters. Backlash is real, and historically immigrant rights demonstrations have been a primary example of how not to advocate. Which is why they haven’t done so well.
Successful protest movements note public response and are flexible about changing tactics to appeal to more people. And not just overall public opinion, but simply numbers of dedicated supporters. It’s better to have a million people marching peacefully for something than 5000 making asses of themselves.
They don’t actually have a right to be here, much less participate in our policymaking. They can’t vote. So yes, they can POLITELY ask voters to consider supporting their desire to stay here.
Since this is specifically about children who were brought here when they were too young to make a choice and were forced to come here by their parents,I can’t think of a good reason they shouldn’t be allowed to stay.
As has been brought up before, in many cases, they’re culturally American. They want to stay here despite the fact that (currently) they will never be allowed American citizenship.