Show me where anyone in this thread – or anyone, anywhere – is saying “Let’s just let this whole caravan into the country with no vetting or screening.”
AFAICT, they’ll be stopped at the border and treated just like the other hundreds of thousands of people there waiting for their applications to be processed. Until this throng acquires assault weapons and armored vehicles, calling them an “invasion” is nothing but race-baiting fear-mongering.
In pyramids. Duh.
You’ll note that the main concern cited by the people in that article is that hundreds of migrants are drowning in the Mediterranean each year, not that the migrants are an invasion threatening to overwhelm European culture.
“Many people are saying”. A familiar turn of phrase.
So you’re saying Trump got elected because of an overreaction by people exaggerating a situation to stoke xenophobia?
Do you know what has made America so prosperous? (Hint: ten letters, starts with “I”)
America has seen waves of immigrants throughout its history - from England, France and Spain, from Germany, from Ireland,and Italy, from China, from Scandinavia, from Eastern Europe, and now from South and Central America. And at each wave the reactionaries have had hysterical hissyfits and claimed that the country was going to be overrun by poor, uneducated and illiterate immigrants who were going to take our jobs, engage in rampant criminal behavior, and destroy our way of life. And what happened in each instance is that once the hysteria died down the vast majority of the immigrants turned out to be perfectly normal people just looking for a quiet place to work and raise their families like everyone else, who worked hard and contributed greatly to their new home. And a generation or two down the line they had all completely assimilated and no one really cared where they were from (or, like the Irish who were once seen as a menace to be feared and scorned, their origins were seen as a source of pride). And when the next immigration wave came along, their descendants were the ones complaining about how the new immigrants were a threat to their way of life.
And the screed of “accusations of racism are just used to stifle debate” is a well-worn ploy of the right and is used to deflect from actual racism.
That would explain the frantic flopping around going on.
Our “cultural identity” is a nation of immigrants. Any other “cultural identity” you may be imagining is likely based on a rather blinkered view of history.
Just to add that, obviously, the initial waves of immigration from England, France and Spain were a genuine threat to the way of life to the people already living here. But that’s a different subject.
*snip. The problem with than analysis, and I agree with it, is that this immigration which made us a melting pot occurred before the establishment of the social welfare system.
At that time, if a guy and his family came to the U.S. from Italy, we knew he wasn’t coming to leech off of the system because there was no system to leech from. He came here to work and provide a better opportunity for his family. And he better damned well better because there was no government support coming his way.
Further, during the industrial revolution, there were many opportunities for these immigrants to be worked to death in shitty conditions in factories and coal mines. If 300 immigrants get killed in a coal mine explosion, well, just order up 300 more immigrants.
We don’t act that way today and would not and should not tolerate such attitudes under a system of legal immigration. We regrettably tolerate it under the current system of illegal immigration, but once we open the borders, the laws apply.
We have many high school educated U.S. citizens who cannot find gainful employment and must rely in part on the social welfare system. What jobs are these immigrants going to find to support their families? Through NAFTA, we have sent many of these jobs to Mexico.
I don’t doubt that many of these people are coming here with the intention to work hard and don’t intend to leech off of the system, but I’m sure a significant portion of them do. But even for those who wish to work, they are illiterate, don’t have anywhere near a high school education, and cannot speak the common language in the United States. Where are their opportunities? They would be second at McDonalds to a teenage kid. The kid has more education and can speak English. And even if they do get that McDonalds job, they will need to rely on the social welfare system to make up for the deficiencies in their income.
Obviously for them it is better than living in the hellhole they came from, but for the United States, what is the benefit to us? You can call that Nationalism or America First, but that’s what every country on the planet does: looks out for its own.
Look at how protective France is, for example, about its culture. Look at how Canada won’t let a guy in the country to take his family on a three day vacation because he had one DUI in 1987. But we are excoriated for not taking in thousands, and in the aggregate, millions of people who at the current time offer no substantive benefit to us letting them in.
The United States is the most powerful country in the history of the world. We do not conquer people, indeed, we provide foreign aid in money and in American blood. I am not unsympathetic at all to these people, but for the same reason you don’t let five homeless people sleep in your house each night, we should not let them in this country.
Why are you so sure of this? Is it because you want to be?
The irony of what you’ve written is that the reason for the economic situation you’ve outlined is not immigration or the social welfare system but rather Republican economic policies starting in the Reagan era. Up to then, the benefits of economic and business growth were reflected in increases in the standards of living of both the workforce and the management class. But Republicans in the 1980s made a concerted effort to break the power of labour and to ensure that an increasing percentage of economic gains was funnelled to the wealthiest members of society and away from the working class. The level of income inequality skyrocketed, and as the workforce struggled to keep up with rising costs but stagnant or decreasing economic clout the same people benefiting from the changes also put in place a robust right-wing propaganda machine (it’s no accident that this period also saw the rise of right-wing radio and FoxNews) to tell people that their problems were all the fault of immigrants and minorities who were just lazy scroungers trying to steal their stuff (hey, remember “welfare queens”?).
Or, if you prefer a shorter but more colorful way of explaining this, the Republicans have got the working class bent over and are merrily rogering them while telling them that the pain in the backside they are feeling is caused by immigrants sneaking up on them from behind.
And here you are, parroting their message. And voting them in again and again.
But I thought joblessness was at an all-time low? I keep getting told this and how great Trump is making America. Yet crops are rotting in the fields and fish hauls are rotting on the docks for lack of immigrant workers. Sounds like there are plenty of jobs out there at the moment.
I refer you to my previous message: in every generation the reactionaries have claimed that the incoming immigrants were going to be leeches scrounging off the public purse, and every time the subsequent cost-benefit analysis has shown that immigrants contribute to the national economy not only far more than they take, but also far more than native-born Americans do. They not only work hard, they create new businesses themselves, which creates even more jobs.
And look how badly that always ends up for them. Why do you want America to emulate France?
So…you’re using a random anecdote about one guy this one time in Canada?
We reject people all the time for criminal records. This is a red herring.
You keep asserting there’s “no substantive benefit to us letting them in”. It continues to be an unsupported assumption contradicted by actual economic data.
Debateable, especially now. But that’s another tangent.
Again with the characterization of them as valueless scroungers and a menace to our nice middle-class way of life. You need to let go of that strawman if you really want to understand what’s at stake here.
Y I K E S
Just… Yikes. Everything about this post. Yikes. And of course it’s not racist - what would be racist about referring to 4,000 unarmed asylum seekers as an “invasion force”, complaining that we’re “losing our cultural identity” because of them, and insisting that we should really care about having dual language signs in public places and having to press one for english. (By the way - go to any country in Europe that doesn’t have english as a native language, and you will find plenty of people who you can talk to.)
First of all, you’re off in your numbers by a factor of 3-4. Secondly, 3,000-4,000 (the 14,000 number is wildly off)? On average, the USA has dealt with about 67,800 asylum applicants per year over the last 6 years (discounting 2018, as the numbers aren’t fully in yet). The number of people caught crossing the southern border illegally number in the tens of thousands per month. The comparison to Pickett’s charge is just… what? What?! We’re looking at a couple thousand people, about half of which are women and a non-trivial portion of which are children, who are unarmed and come in peace. They are on foot, they are 900 fucking miles away from the border, and even assuming it doesn’t dwindle significantly (which it is expected to), the border patrol is more than capable of handling it, and people are unlikely to have much success sneaking in in such large numbers.
Nobody in any position of power is advocating to just “let them march in”. I’m sure the imaginary leftist in your head is, but there’s just the slight problem that he’s imaginary.
But even beyond that, you have this image in your head, one you make very clear throughout your posts. That these immigrants are, by and large, leeches on the system. That they won’t learn english. That they take more than they give. That the melting pot no longer works because of welfare. These concepts are just all kinds of wrong. And they feed into this narrative that paints these people as an other, as a danger, as an… “invasion force” (wow I cannot say that with a straight face).
Just one thing, buddy. You’re not racist? Okay, fine. But remember one thing for me. This is exactly the argument a white nationalist would make if they were trying to hide the fact that they were a white nationalist.
For those complaining that the US is full and just can’t handle any more people, I would like to point you to the Republican speaker of the house
I find it interesting that Ryan is saying that American needs more workers at the same time doing everything he can to prevent immigration. The clear implication is that what he really means is that America needs more White workers.
It’s 4500, not 14000. You got that number inflated by 300%.Next do you know how few even 14000 is?
Let us assume every single one moves into the Greater Los Angeles area. How much would that increase the population, % wise?
.0007
Racism shows thru when you say "uneducated, and illiterate " Honduras has a 85% literacy rate, that is slightly better than Alabama. Let me make that clear-* the average person in that caravan is better educated than the average person in Alabama.* “uneducated, and illiterate” indeed. :rolleyes:
And the “cultural identity” of the USA has always been that of a melting pot.
Your not from here are you?
Actually yes, I live in Overland park Kansas. what used to be some of the best farmland in the state. Fifty years ago this was farmland but now its all developed. Overland park keeps gobbling up more land.
So while You, might look at a map of Kansas and see open space, you have never been to those spaces have you. They are fields growing food, pastures for livestock, and open grasslands. Yes, their arent people crowded together nose to nose like in New York and California. But the land is very much used.
No, We are full.
We have those same jobs today- agriculture. In fact the Agriculture business depends upon South of the border migrants.
No, unemployment is at record lows.
Agriculture. And no, we haven’t send those jobs to Mexico. And those American High School grad you mention- they dont want jobs picking strawberries. Those jobs go wanting among Americans.
More Hondurans speak English than American speak Spanish. And they are more literate and have better education that the average person in Alabama. Racism shows thru by calling them “illiterate”.
No, there are 5,000 and while some may drop out, others have joined in, like the ones who have been previously deported. Plus there are other caravans starting up.
See, this is what happened in German a couple of years ago. They opened their doors to a few asylum seekers and they crowded the roads to cheer them on. then they noticed - that line wasnt ending. Soon they had a million new rivals to deal with.
If we open our borders this little caravan of 5,000 will soon be 5 million or more as half of central america and the world move to get away from the mess those countries are.
*Fake news follows migrant caravan’s journey northA row raging over the migrant caravan travelling towards the United States is being fuelled by misinformation and false statements online.
Thousands of migrants have got as far as Mexico, after the caravan which set out from Honduras has travelled north and grown in size.
The caravan’s progress towards the US southern border has become the subject of intense speculation and discussion on social media.
A number of false or misleading assertions are among those to be shared widely.
Claim: ‘Unknown Middle Easterners’ among caravan…Claim: Migrant caravan funded by Democrats and George Soros…Claim: Mexican police assaulted by migrants.*
Which is why I think it’s a mistake for Donald Trump to cut foreign aid to those countries, as he has threatened to do. If anything, the US should increase foreign aid to those countries. If they were more stable, less corrupt societies, people would be less interested in making such a long, dangerous trek.
I’ve never been to Overland Park, but I did just google some pictures of it. It is certainly much denser than I would have expected.
Then I read about the Sheels Overland Park Soccer Complex. It made me think of that scene in the Matrix.
Now I fully understand whence the “urban” in the handle you have chosen. I can only imagine how loud the subway is outside your window at 2am on a Sunday!
You think welfare is new? All that’s new is how much it’s been scaled back. These immigrants, if they can fill out all of the necessary paperwork (and there’s a lot of it, and it’s intimidating even for someone who doesn’t face the threat of deportation), might get maybe food stamps and Medicaid. But there was a time when the welfare system consisted of giving away 40 acres of farmland, to anyone who asked, including immigrants. And not only did we not try to stop immigrants from taking advantage of this, but we actually advertised it in other countries.
I’m sure that if there is a holocaust in Guatemala, creating the largest refugee crisis the world has ever seen, then we’ll see a big uptick in asylum applications. I hope we’ll accept them, and I’ll fight to see that people like you don’t prevail in closing the borders.
But that isn’t actually what is happening in Central America. Instead, we are seeing a fairly typical stream of immigrants and refugees. It looms large in your brain because of Fox News, not because of facts.
If you can’t see a difference between allowing someone to homestead undeveloped land and taxing individuals to give out favors, maybe you aren’t very bright.
One is government trying to get out of the way of human ingenuity, the other is organized violence.
Welfare was miniscule before SS and LBJ.
All immigrants should either pay their way and support themselves or be sponsored on a voluntary basis. Same with citizens.
This is an insane statement. One dot in Kansas has two Dunkin’ Donuts so now we are at capacity?
I could not imagine the hubris it would take to make such a statement.
Again, these people, like their Mexican brethren are coming to work, not get on the dole.
We have plenty of Ag work for them.