But then they’d have to be treated like human beings instead of vermin, and that’s unacceptable to the people who panic over “illegals”.
Under the present system they can be paid under minimum wage, abused in all sorts of ways, pay taxes without receiving services, and can even be deported before payday. So of course the Right doesn’t want to give that up.
Look, if you’re a cheap crook and you need staff for your business in, say, Bedminster, what are you supposed to do?
They’re emptying their prisons and asylums. Lately he’s been adding in terrorists. A large percentages of “illegals” are terrorists who have either been committing low key acts of terror, or they’re waiting for a trigger word to attack en masse. They haven’t quite been making the news like terrorists love to do. Maybe it’s the dread and uncertainty that’s terrifying- when are they going to attack?
It’s worth the time to understand the journey that Latin Americans (and those who travel to the US by way of Latin America) take to get to this country. It’s a hardship that defies description.
It also explains why so many appear to be “military-age males” (it’s an arduous journey, and they’re still in the prime of their working years).
The 9/11 terrorists?
“According to authorities, all of the hijackers who committed the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks were foreigners. All of them entered the country legally on a temporary visa, mostly tourist visas with entry permits for six months.”
Meaning: a wall at the Southern Border probably isn’t as important for national security as ramping up production at the Boeing plant(s) would be
<grin>
As always, tripping over dollars to whip up their overly-credulous base.
Haven’t people in lousy situations long undertaken such hardships?
Yeah, having lived my life here in Texas, I’ve always been a bit astounded at the notion that Mexican immigrants are somehow lazy. Those guys WORK, and work hard. They bust their asses like nobody else on the hottest, sweatiest, dirtiest jobs that there are.
Usually the grumping around here centers more around their tendency to live in Spanish speaking Mexican enclaves and (supposedly) not integrate into American society. Which always amuses me because with the exception of the English speaking immigrants, that’s exactly what the rest of them did. San Antonio had a German-language paper until the early 20th century. There were entirely German-speaking towns in Texas as well. And other nationalities/languages as well. And I don’t doubt that Americans elsewhere do the exact same thing.
It just takes a few generations for that to change and for their descendants to be more and more comfortable.
I feel like the propaganda around the “swarms” is more centered around the idea that rather than immigrants coming in a few at a time, it’s now some sort of organized thing with large numbers being headed up, pointed our direction, and helped by Mexico. Almost like a human cattle drive, with the US as the destination. And then this huge number of people become OUR problem when they get here- we’ve got to process them, give them asylum, or ship them back, etc… None of which is a problem when it’s onesy-twosy immigrants, but when several thousand show up on the Mexican border, it strains the resources of everyone on our side of the border, and it seems to be a no-win situation. Either we tell them to F-off and it becomes the Mexicans’ problem and a human rights nightmare as a result, or we let them in, and we end up with breathless news stories about terrible conditions at the detention centers, etc… and political hay making about letting immigrants in (or if we don’t, about how they were abandoned in Mexico).
I think there’s a material difference between
“This scenario was far different for third class passengers, commonly referred to as “steerage.” These immigrants traveled in crowded and often unsanitary conditions near the bottom of steamships, often spending up to two weeks seasick in their bunks during rough Atlantic Ocean crossings. After the steamship docked in the Harbor (typically along the west coast of Manhattan), steerage passengers would board a ferry to Ellis Island for their detailed inspection.”
and
The Beast and the Darién Gap
We also have to remember that much of the early European immigration occurred under very different laws and regimes than we have today:
I tend to think Trump is being short-sighted when he denigrates CA and SA immigrants “coming from prisons, insane asylums, and mental institutions.”
In the immortal words of GW Bush, “I call you my base.”
This article is a little bit old, but I’ve heard that Plattsburgh, NY is an immigration hotspot.
Kind of funny how, in the one case where a Latin American country really did empty out their prisons and asylums, those are the only Hispanic group that Republicans have embraced.
And, even then, the Cuban-Americans which they embraced weren’t really the ones from the 1980 Mariel boatlift; they were the ones who fled Cuba when Castro took over, and had emigrated from 1959 through the early 1960s.
The Cuban-Americans who came here during that time were educated, middle-class to wealthy Cubans, and they fit in well, from the start, with the pro-business, anti-Communist Republican mindset of that time. They were integral in the GOP’s long-standing opposition to any normalization of relations between the U.S. and Cuba.
Don’t forget the “languages no one has even heard of” that, once again, keeps Trump up at night (he mentioned it again, in his plots-conviction blather session). Why he’s scared of languages, I have no idea. It’s like being scared of foods.
(I know, “language” has somehow become a weird code word for “scary dark-skinned foreigner”).
Let them know that 95% of the illegal drugs entering the country come through ports of entry. If that’s their pet concern, focus on customs, not the largely fine people crossing the border for a better life.
And they all had passports, which means that racist “Real ID” thing has nothing to do with security.
Deleted post.
Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes. The claim that immigrants to the U.S. commit more crimes has been going on for more than a century and a half. It’s never been true. It’s a way for the ethnic groups that mostly emigrated before that point to blame problems on the more recent ethnic groups.
It’s impossible, as Trump claims is true, for immigrants to not speak languages.
Yeah, but they’re shit-hole languages.
Add me to the list of folks curious about the countries we’ve never heard of where they speak languages no one knows.
Sorry, it’s impossible to pronounce their names.
Maybe “Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan.”