I’m headed to L.A. to join Real Time With Bill Maher this evening, for a discussion that will include Reason editor Katherine Mangu-Ward. Katherine’s also a staunch defender of speech rights, and has written about a lot of other themes touched on in this space, so it could be interesting. Since it might come up, I’m curious to know any thoughts you might have on immigration - is there anything obvious the U.S. could or should be doing differently, policy-wise, something we maybe don’t hear from pundits? Anyway, back soon, and apologies for going dark for a few days.
This isn't something I haven't heard a pundit talk about. Peggy Noonan opened my eyes on this issue in August of 2016. But as far as I'm concerned it's the most important thing to discuss vis a vis immigration.
I'll preface these observations by pointing out that I am an open borders guy. Not in the backdoor "catch and release" manner of Democrats, but rather in the philosophical belief that charting one's own destiny is the most fundamental of all people's rights. If people *want* to come here, I think they're likely to be better Americans in the end than many of the people I grew up with.
But that doesn't mean I'm ignorant about the downsides of this philosophy. For all of the positives I can list ... economically ... philosophically ... historically ... there are many downsides that are always ignored by we of the open borders mindset and ignored even by people who SAY they don't support open borders but whose ACTIONS indicate tremendous support for open borders.
To sum up ... we have tens of thousands of people coming to our borders every month. Look at where they are going. Just track it for a few hours one day in all of the articles that talk about finding "affordable housing" for immigrants and refugees. "Affordable housing" ....
They are not moving in next door to Joe Biden. Nancy Pelosi. Alexandria Cortez. Or any of the virtue signalling "We must welcome these people seeking refuge!" politicians currently trying to harness this issue for political gain.
They are moving in next door to poor white, hispanic and black neighbors with the least resources to absorb this cultural change. We are asking the people with the least capacity to absorb societal and cultural change to do all the changing. Always. It's who we always ask.
And then we call them racists when cultural differences lead to confrontations. Because when a fight breaks out at the dumpsters over a cultural difference, it will be the working poor citizen that will be the bad guy. Not the rich politically connected elite who pulled strings and arranged things bureaucratically to place the immigrant next door to the working poor citizen. Finding the non citizen "affordable housing" while the citizen struggles to pay the rent.
While the virtue signalling wealthy elites continue their lives uninterrupted and write yet even more speeches castigating the working poor citizenry for not being tolerant and inviting and accepting.
I don't know what or if there is any solution to this conundrum. But at the very least it should be acknowledged. It should be discussed.
And we should stop listening to the speeches of politicians spreading hate about our citizenry on this issue and perhaps start listening to our citizenry before we wind up with someone far worse than a carnival barking clown in charge of our immigration system.
+1000. When immigrants come here for a "better life" guess where they end up? The bottom of socioeconomic totem pole. The bad parts of town, the crappy jobs, on welfare (no disparagement intended here), many times with a language barrier, the worst schools. Guess who is also at that place? A metric crap-ton of people who are already American citizens.
If you are for all the extended understandings of asylum that have led to our current border mess, how would you like to invite some of these poor families from gang and drug infested neighborhoods in the US to live with you? Set up a tent in your backyard. No? You are a hypocrite.
ALSO, what if I, as an American, think America is crap, and I want leave, try to waltz over the border and start working and living in Europe/Canada/ANZ illegally, I'll get kicked out post haste. Why aren't Americans afforded the same measure of freedom in migration? You want to open borders? Open ALL the borders!
AND.... just because the people coming over aren't armed doesn't mean it isn't an invasion. Just sayin. At some point you lock the gates, or risk giving the whole thing away.
Ireland forces you to yearly declare that you are capable of taking care of yourself financially to even move there. I looked into it, and likely wouldn't have been able to meet their standards.
I don't know if this problem has a solution, nor any of the problems that burden the poor and so-called disenfranchised. I was raised by an immigrant father, who instilled in me a fear of becoming poor by failing to work hard and be clever. It never occurred to him that life should be fair; especially since fairness is such a subjective term.
I think just describing the problem shows how intractable it is. For the same reason that economic elites are happy to take advantage of cheap menial labor offered by immigrants, while poor people have to suffer the downsides of unchecked immigration, we can guess that all the apparent concern for society's neglectaroonies is mere virtue signaling. While we live in complex civilization, we are still using the same tribal brains we evolved with, as we evolve rather slowly.
Not to be mean, but I don't think it makes sense [from an evolutionary view] for humans to feel strong empathy for anyone outside our familiar social groups. I think the debate about such things is mostly posturing to impress our peers. There are poor and homeless people everywhere, if anyone wishes to spend their own time and resources on them directly. But hardly anyone does; and those who do are not always happy with the results.
What we mostly do is blame those richer than us for failing to support a social safety net for those poorer than us [and it's always nice if we can drink some of the nectar as well]. When we speak of immediate action on climate change, it is always We The People [meaning me] who should organize to vote for leaders who will compel The Greedy Oligarchs [anyone who has a lot more than me] to Do The Right Thing [give more money to solve problems that are contributed to by everyone].
Obviously this is a simplistic description of human behavior, but so are all descriptions, and those that gratify our moral intuitions are no better than fairy tales. Sure, it would be nice if people who were smart, charismatic, and lucky enough to become fabulously wealthy were to distribute their assets more generously. But I've been to places where people have dirt floors and bedsheets for walls and milk crate chairs; I'm sure they have some ideas about how to redistribute my wealth that I wouldn't be too pleased with. Welcome to humanity!
We need to make examples of people in power. Anybody who works for the federal government who doesn't declare their childcare/nanny/housekeeping/eldercare to the IRS to the penny needs to go to jail. For a long time.
Thank you, kind sir. Here's a short article I found that summarizes the mismatch between our tribal instincts and modern civilization. Hope you find it useful...
Bingo! That's what I need for continuing education. So far I have been focused mostly on evolutionary [tribal] psychology: Jonathan Haidt, Robert Sapolsky, and Leah Cosmides & John Tooby at UCSB. Here are some interesting talks I found:
An excellent point, if Martha’s Vineyard and Greenwich, CT had to take in their share, the virtue signalers might rethink their position on immigration.
Open borders ignores the benefits of shared culture and shared values that bind a people together and help with cooperation rather than conflict.
I doubt you leave your doors and gate open for anyone to "chart their course" through your garden and bedroom. Hell, Nancy Pelosi put up razor wire fencing around the capitol to keep out those people of a different political tribe.
Sorry... multiculturalism has been proven to be a dismal failure for the natives. Controlled immigration with assimilation is perfect.
I agree with this. Immigration is a burden, at least in the short run, and we should be able to talk frankly about that. It's born unequally in our society - it's part of the inequality but not the part the left likes to talk about. If we want to have immigration, the impacts should be noted and mitigated. The right pushes a zero-sum, austerity-oriented mentality; the left is idealistic and promotes wonky solutions not actual community control and how to share burdens, and what kind of benefits we can actually expect - and when.
And to pick up on one thing Jeff says above, people who don't support open borders are often generous personally, through donations, their churches, etc. to help others in need, whoever they may be. I think Americans are generous. They just don't want to see things play out in a bad way for them, or their neighbors, or their community, and have no control over it. Too much of that "no control" experience and they'll say, enough.
As a leftist who became libertarian last year, I feel that the "wonky" solutions of the left are no more grounded in the "science" they like to flog than conservatives adhere to the teachings of Jesus they often endorse. The left uses compassion as brand identity the way the right uses traditional values. Both of those concepts get very nebulous in a hurry when push comes to shove. This strikes me as a significant hurdle to reaching consensus, when there are huge numbers of people waving opposing flags; the last thing most people are interested in is to be aware of their own hypocrisy. But to be a mature human, it is necessary. I notice myself doing it all the time, and try to correct my behavior when I catch myself slipping. Not a popular pastime, I'm afraid.
Your flag-waving reference has another connection not thought about often enough: you see a lot of folks waving the flag that represents the very country they left to live in the United States. I'm not sure what they mean by that: Are they proud of the government they left? Are they hoping others from their home country see the flag on tv and wish for their countrymen to illegally join them in the US? Perhaps it's an in-your-face intentional insult to the people who followed the immigration rules before them? If so, why'd you leave? I can't imagine waving the US flag in another country except for perhaps an international sporting event.
I get the keep-the-culture idea, especially for family gatherings and never forgetting your heritage. For me the difference is flag waving for Mexico or Guatemala compared to Cuba, for example. We know flying the Cuban flag in Florida is an in-your-face statement to the Cuban government. Flying the Mexican flag on Cinco de Mayo doesn't have the same connotation. It's understandably cultural in nature but it also comes across as in-your-face to the people who came from Mexico by legal means...the same folks that have no desire to live as a Mexican National after they've arrived; similar to many of decedents of European heritage. (I don't know what day Poland gained statehood in 966, but I don't recall having a national day of celebration in the United States with Polish flags raised and flown across the country.) Hence the question being asked.
I'm sure you're referring to the Republic of Ireland flags everywhere on SPD and Polish flags all over on pulaski and dyngus, multiple generations past immigration.
Good point, that's another thing that doesn't get much attention. It's an odd thing to do outside of sporting events. My father emigrated from Austria, but he kept his cultural pride to himself, as people of his generation tended to.
I would add, critically, if people actually wanted to actually deal with a lot of racism towards immigrants, these worries need to be addressed instead of just dismissing these people as racists and trying to shame them for it -- that only sows further disunity and greater problems while fixing nothing.
A fascinating thing that it has taken me most of my life to learn is that when any creature -- it doesn't need to be human let alone a specific group there of -- feels sufficiently resource threatened ("feels" being key here, it doesn't matter what the reality is, it is the perception, true or not, that matters), it aggressively turns on the other members of its species that it feels are furthest from its in-group. Often a creature's greatest cruelty and savagery is for other members of its species when it feels resource threatened.
I was living in England, before, during, and after the Brexit vote. What was revealing to me was that the poor working class Brits were using the *EXACT* same language and words for the poor Eastern European immigrants who were getting first in line for affordable housing and (unofficially so) for jobs (more useful to companies than working poor natives because their more precarious life situation makes them more exploitable), etc... as the working poor American's were using for Southern Latino immigrants. The working poor Brits then voted for Brexit to try and reduce the white immigrant influx that made them feel so resource constrained just shortly before their American counterparts voted in Trump to "Build the wall" for exactly the same reason. Of note, there were a non-trivial number of second and third generation Latino immigrants who also voted for Trump for this exact reason; not because they are racist against fellow Latinos or "self hating Latinos" or whatever, but because now they too were now part of the American working poor and feel resource constrained and thus threatened by competition from the next wave of immigrants for the same limited and precious resources they and their family need to survive.
Once one really sees this one realizes this form of antiimmigration is not really racism. Sure its indistinguishable in its external effects and symptoms, but the underlying disease here is actually just the perception of resource-limited desperate competition against a growing number of competitors from an out-group. Solve the resource constraint problem and the "racism" problem will start to go away too. Don't and they will eventually be forced to take matters into their own hands which at best will be "build a wall" and heavy immigration crack-down, and at worst can easily become roving gangs murdering immigrants in the streets and even their own homes. That unfortunate possibility is indistinguishable from savage "hate crime" but would actually be "crimes of destitution and desperation."
This is true down to even bacteria. Many people think of E. coli as vicious flesh eating bacteria -- surely humans/mammals must be where they met out their worst savagery right? But as aggressive and dangerous to humans as certain wild strains are, all of them have an extra cruel biological weapon optimized and usable primarily only against other E. coli and totally ineffective against humans or other mammals. It is a little package of proteins, a part of which sticks to the outer cell wall of other E. coli with one of the strongest binding constants measured in nature (off the top of my head the equilibrium constant for binding is on the order of magnitude to the tune of something like 10^50) thusly it is understood to be heavily optimized specifically for other E. coli, and it injects a special endonuclease through said cell-wall into the other E. coli that cuts their DNA after every "T" thereby liquidating their genome extremely quickly. If you want to see the most savage "racist" "hate crimes" for out-groups check out E. coli -- but like most people, it is only motivated by via a distressing sense of competition over constrained resources with out-group E. coli, it isn't "racist" or even "self hating E. coli."
I am firmly of the mind that if the working poor didn't feel like their affordable housing, limited job opportunities, etc... put them in direct competition with immigrants, the vast majority of their attitudes that get taken as racist would likely evaporate before too long. Only the few actually racists among them would remain so and one would find those numbers are actually shockingly small.
I think this is an intended feature, not a bug. Accuse resource-constrained Americans of being racist, domestic terrorists, extremists, then you don't have to cut them a bigger piece of the pie.
Wow! Your answer took it to some other levels. Now I gotta go look up that amazing E.Coli gene weapon.
You make an excellent point, one which can be observed by anyone traveling through Latin America, about how every cultural group feels nervous about the proximate poor who might compete for resources [but who also provide them affordable services].
There is an Arabic saying that captures this sentiment parsimoniously: "Me against my brother; me and my brother against my cousin; me and my cousin against the world."
I am embarrassed to say I am having trouble finding a reference or more info at the moment. I was in a conference about 7 years ago when someone presented research on that and the concept stuck with me even though the details are getting a little muddled with time. Perhaps it was some other pathogenic bacteria besides E coli -- Staph has a bunch of DNA "Weapons" as well that reduce biofilm formation (and biofilm is the product of dense bacteria cohabitation) so maybe it was them. I am still having trouble searching it at the moment, embarrassingly, or I would link you to something. I really hate failing to be able to properly link people to more info on topics I put forth when asked like this. Sorry about my failure here.
I am not suggesting they are wrong. I just wanted to avoid a debate about that perception being true or not. As you suggest I think their perception is very much true, but stating so often summons some particularly rabid individuals who will accuse me of racism and things for making that claim -- and I just don't feel like dealing with that at the moment. Thus, I (cowardly) avoided making the stronger statement.
"I don’t see how working poor are supposed to stop acknowledging reality regarding their competition."
I am not saying they need to change their views based on nothing. What I am trying to imply is the easiest and most reasonable way for society to get them to change their perception would be for society to alleviate their problems that are actually creating this perception -- i.e. make jobs, affordable housing, and all other critical life resources that they are feeling so squeezed on more plentiful and accessible for them. If they aren't feeling resource constrained they won't be hostile to immigration, and the most reasonable and strait forwards way to make people not feel resource limited, is to help them get the resources they need to live.
I am not at all implying resorting to brainwashing or something. I mean I suppose all morality and decency aside that could also theoretically work, but I find that morally reprehensible and would be hugely personally opposed to such practices.
In completing the full circle of what I was saying: if one wants to actually fight antiimmigration sentiment and the majority of attitudes of what superficially appear to be racism -- we need more jobs, housing, and other critical life resources made more easily available to the working poor. If and when that happens, most of the complaints about immigration and the majority of what looks like racism, will actually just go away on its own. No critical race theory retraining courses or trying to shame people out of these views will alter them -- even though those and related approaches represent like 100% of what society is foolishly trying to solve the problem with (and instead is likely only making the problem much worse by doing so.)
AND, how is it better to ship the newcomers to places where they WILL compete in labor markets, rather than to places where the populace has wealth and resources, and which populace has already politically expressed a positive *attraction* to our self-invited new neighbors.
The latter would increase the diversity of the host communities in several ways, including wealth and class diversity. We should ship a few thousand, or tens of thousands, of walkovers to them and envy their cultural enrichment.
I'm visualizing some of the comfortable, "No, we're not *rich*!?" kind of communities where everyone knows exactly what opinion to have on the issue, but where, if those new Americans start trying to operate businesses, sell things, live or make money there, they'd very soon find themselves inspected, zoned, fined, and basically chased back across the tracks, if not the border.
Those folks need to host the immigrants. No excuses.
Yes. Ideally I'm for open borders. But immigrants, extra people in the workforce, might inhibit wage-raises to already-here Americans.
But I also realize the USA's responsibility for WHY these people are coming here: because we fomented coups, the overthrow of left-wing leaders in central and south America, Haiti, to make them more friendly to American business (see marine-general Smedley Butler's, "War is a Racket"). Hillary supported a coup in Honduras that now murders dissidents/ecologists. Nowadays we've put sanctions on Venezuela thus making their lives harder. And we're interfering in Nicaragua because the Sandinistas aren't corporate friendly.
When vulture-capitalists get their way, indigenous people suffer.
Most of that is fiction. Name a central or South American county that works well. None do. So they are attracted to El Norte where they bring their same first generation bad habits so that also can become like those places they fled from. The only thing that saves us is their kids assimilate. But that is not working well now… too many. And event the American kids are no assimilating these days.
Here it comes. Let's just register them to vote as they step over the border, right? All those folks traveling here just so they can vote in Democratic primaries.
Not responding to TKN. Replying to "Its taxation without representation. . . they can not vote even though they pay taxes . . ." Sorry. I guess I was triggered by the comment that people who have only been in this country illegally for hours should have the right to go to the ballot box to protest their inequitable treatment by America.
You portend to be replying to "Craig" due to being "triggered" by his comment, but he said nothing about people here illegally voting Democrat.🙄
While his equating people currently here illegally with our forebearer's issue with being taxed by Great Britain without representation may be a bit of a stretch, there is also no reference to any immigrant voting after being here "for only a few hours" for any reason. 😜
What does any of this BS have to do with Matt's request for his readers to submit suggestions for reasonable & informed discussion❔
All of these problems can be worked out, one way or another--if and when you eliminate the influence of the predator class and their political agents. There is no point in even discussing it as long as the system that serves at the whim of a predatory oligarchy remains in place. If that obstacle is removed, then it's just politics--not easy but possible. As it is, the neoliberal system has no reason to find a solution.
We just had an election in Canada and as I was at the voting booth showing my electoral card and photo ID (e.g. drivers license or Medicare card) to prove my identity, I tried to understand again the argument that instituting voter ID in the US would somehow be racist. We Canadians have always required ID to vote, and have never thought anything of it. It seems like a no brainer to me. It’s funny how the left down there constantly talks about emulating our health care system but conveniently ignores the fact that we also have voter ID and merit based immigration for that matter.
I agree, Chris, that we are a nation of stupid contradictions. My wife was born in Canada, but has been a U.S. citizen for more than half a century.
When we visit our relatives in B.C. I am always aware of how it is possible for a mostly "liberal" population to support such reasonable ideas as showing ID to vote and merit based immigration.
Now, if only Canadians could remain polite and civil during hockey season 😋
The party positions here are no longer based on principles, but power. Rest assured the Republicans would support even for Medicare for All if it would enable them to knock down the Democrats. The Democrats would renounce abortion rights if it would defeatvthe Republicans.
In Ohio, we accept anything north of a Chuck E Cheese rewards card as acceptable ID for voting. A modicum of civic responsibility is not too much to ask.
In order to understand why that charge is made, you'd have to be more familiar with the history of voting requirements in the post-Reconstruction South than you probably are as a Canadian. Long story short: Southern governments used voting qualifications that were facially neutral like "you have to pass a literacy test" in order to prevent blacks from voting. These voting restrictions were not explicitly discriminatory; you don't have to be explicitly discriminatory in order to be intentionally discriminatory. In fact, you'd only be explicit if you were an idiot and didn't realize that coming right out and saying it would get your voter ID law struck down on Equal Protection grounds.
Drivel of course. Study after study has proven that blacks are not, despite what Democrats believe, actually too stupid to get ID cards, and such laws have no effect on black disenfranchisement, not even in Blue states that have them like Biden's own. This isn't something open to interpretation or blathering. The facts are quite clear.
No, it is. You just won't listen to any arguments from the other side about the disproportionate burden that (which isn't one of intelligence, you dope, it's one of means) contradict what you want to believe.
Once upon a time in Quebec we were an ultra conservative Catholic corrupt society and from the time of buying indulgences in the Quebec I grew up in to get a drivers license you had to go through the correct channels like the "right" driving school to get a license. Quebec is now a secular human liberal democracy and the only political crime is corruption. We turned out the best government we ever had because we started sensing the beginnings of the decay of corruption.
You cannot have democracy without trust and when there is no trust there is no democracy.
Reagan destroyed American democracy whatever else one believes about him is moot.
I owe America more than you can imagine but I know she cannot be trusted.
You're correct. The facts ARE quite clear. It's your fuzzy, jaundiced vision that's preventing YOU from seeing them clearly. Solution: more carrots, stronger spectacles. Impossible to exaggerate the importance of diet and proper optometrics in this matter.
Fair enough. But how does that tie in with a hypothetical requirement now in 2021 to simply have photo ID to vote? It doesn’t sound like a high bar for something as important as voting. Again I don’t live in the USA so I won’t pretend to understand all the factors involved.
I think that's a fair point. The argument has to do with how burdensome it is to acquire a photo ID and the degree of discretion that election officials would have in determining if an ID is valid for voting purposes (and how lengthy the appeals process to challenge such a decision would be.)
The general thrust of the argument goes something like this: (1) black people are disproportionately poor, (2) obtaining a photo ID requires time, money, and proof of residency (difficult for homeless or transient people), and (3) therefore the burden that would befall black people (and also Hispanics) is greater than most people realize and is not justified.
Personally I find this argument less convincing than the fact that after the section of the Voting Rights Act requiring federal preclearance was struck down by the Supreme Court (again, you wouldn't know about this in Canada and it requires a fair amount of background to understand), the states that were previously covered by it for having a history of racially discriminatory voting practices all immediately passed voter ID laws.
Interesting. Now that I consider it a little more, every Canadian citizen gets free government issued photo ID as a Medicare card. It would seem like a simple and relatively cheap thing to do in the US as well. How much could it possibly cost to just give everyone an ID? Definitely less than a foreign war lol.
Hey look at us having a civil conversation online lol. It IS possible.
It is all the more remarkable because I usually like to insult the intelligence (and frequently the penis size) of my online debate counterparts. Nonetheless, you have done nothing to deserve such treatment and I have therefore refrained from doing so!
As it stands right now, the only photo ID that most people get is a state-issued (not federally-issued) driver's license. There are some other obstacles to voter ID requirements too: for one thing, some people (like your's tryly!) move fairly frequently. In the past several years, my address has changed multiple times. Imagine you had an election official who insisted that the address listed on your ID had to match your current address. For people who live in one place, that's a piece of cake. For people who have had three or four different addresses in the past year, this is a problem.
An additional issue that influences the voter ID debate in the states is the fact that the left believes that the right have proposed it in bad-faith, because actual voter fraud is virtually non-existent. Proponents of voter ID have been able to find virtually no cases of it (despite giant incentives to do so), much less evidence that it is actually affecting any electoral outcomes, much less at a large scale.
I have had to renew my driver's license in the past six months. I moved from the state where it was issued to a new state. I applied to get a new one over two months ago and the DMV STILL!!! hasn't called me back.
I look younger than I am so I haven't been able to use my ID to go to bars or clubs if the bouncers decide to be picky. It's stupid because there is no reason why an expired driver's license cannot prove your *identity*. The reason you show a DL in these circumstances is to prove your identity, not to prove that you're legally entitled to drive.
Anyway, I imagine that certain jerkoff election officials would have little problem denying my right to vote at the polls based on an expired license.
So it's the fault of THE STATE that poor people have trouble getting ID (unproven)?
Still, po' folks can get around, and picture ID is a good thing to have.
Maybe we could just have the Prez mandate that everyone who doesn't have proper ID will be fired if they don't get it. Maybe he could also mandate that state services be delivered efficiently (like where I am) while he's got his mandatin' wand out.
Added bonus: American leftists have no trouble understanding why Canadian customs officials are not particularly friendly to Americans, since we've all heard tales of people visiting Canada in the past to take advantage of their free health care [I'm not sure how accurate that is, but it's a persistent idea]. But when it comes to our own southern border, they somehow see restrictive policies as racist, rather than economic. When I mention the fact that Amnesty International has written reports on the terrible things that happen to migrants sneaking across Mexico's southern border, nobody wants to hear it. People are people; I don't know why that's such a difficult concept. When I traveled through South America, everywhere I met people who were suspicious of immigrants from poor neighbor nations. While it's frowned upon to think in these tribal terms, it's just how we evolved.
I know many of our border guards. The reason Americans are so disliked is because America has abandoned even the pretense of a social contract. "In God we trust" has given way to "What's in it for me?"
In God was trust was a simple betrayal of the establishment clause but; but "What's in it for me" is a denial of everything our species holds dear.
I first worked as a scrutineer in a Canadian election 55 years ago when Pierre Eliot Trudeau was running in my riding. This was the first time I required a photo ID and I am in the midst of composing my letter of disapproval to my MP.
Canadian Philosopher John Ralston Saul said in his The Doubter's Companion that cynicism is Democracy's greatest threat.
There is no reason to question Canadian voters that is why Elections Canada monitors voting throughout the world. Deliberate fraudulent voting is not a problem and has never been a problem because the punishment is far more severe than any possible crime.
America is sick and probably needs only palliative care. We don't need voter IDs just saying I am eligible to vote should continue to suffice when we go to vote.
There is reason we have a loyal opposition and that is without a loyal opposition we have no country worthy of our loyalty and service.
Another reason is that in the United STATES, each state makes up their own rules. In Canada, the rules, regulations, mail in ballots, ID, scrutineering regulations and even physical method of voting, etc are completely identical across all provinces and the three territories. It is a basis to trust an election result, if not the politicians themselves.
It's a little more complicated in the US but that's generally right.
It was once the case that states essentially set their own election rules entirely. Then, after the American Civil War, the 15th Amendment to the Constitution prohibited states from denying the ability to vote based on race. The governments of the South were controlled by the federal government for about a decade after that during a time-period called Reconstruction. The Southern political elites then retook power and later imposed a series of voting restrictions that were facially neutral (i.e. they didn't explicitly say "black people can't vote") but which were intended to disenfranchise blacks. Similar issues existed in other states with respect to Asians, Mexicans, and later Puerto Ricans voting. Long story short: states used their ability to set election rules to effectively disenfranchise non-whites for decades.
Following the Civil Rights Movement, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act in 1965. This law gave the federal government much more power relative to the states in terms of setting election rules. Among other things, the Voting Rights Act required several Southern states (and a couple of other localities) to get pre-clearance from the federal government before they could enact any changes to their local voting practices. This provision of the Voting Rights Act was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013 (I might be getting the exact year wrong, but it was about then) and many of the states that were previously covered by the VRA immediately introduced voter ID laws in their state legislatures. In fairness, many states in the Midwest and Mountain West which were never covered by the VRA also have voter ID laws now, based on a narrative that started emerging in rightwing media following Barack Obama's election that Democrats in big cities were stealing elections, voting the graveyard, etc. It has become a hyper-partisian issue because of the context surrounding voter ID laws. It's not that voter ID laws are inherently discriminatory, it's about who has proposed these laws and why, and what it echoes from history.
There’s no equivalent of Elections Canada here; our election laws are largely designed and administered by cynical partisans for their own advantage, and both parties by and large try to create a situation in which they choose their voters rather than vice versa. So, politicians arguing for voter ID are not actually arguing for a good governance measure that would eliminate a minor and largely theoretical problem, they’re angling to suppress turnout for their opponents. This is pretty clear from their extremely negative stance on universal voter registration, which would eliminate the voter roll irregularities they never tire of bemoaning but remove an obstacle to voting that makes it more difficult for Democrats to win elections. And they wouldn’t support issuing voter ID to everyone at birth or naturalization either, for the same reason. All of the abstract technical problems at issue are fixable, but you’d have to have politicians admit that they are the real problem and agree to hand over a lot of power to a non-partisan body, and American politics is too stupid and pathological for that to happen at the moment.
I lived and my wife voted in a Southside Chicago congressional district that voted for the same useless Democratic congressman by a 93% to 7% margin every two years decade after decade. I never accused the USA of being a liberal democracy but once upon a time it showed signs of evolving into one.
Yeah, and from experience, those incumbent Democrats stop being pious about voting very quickly once you try to run a primary against them (or, say, nominate Bernie Sanders for President).
In my 20+ years of first-hand knowledge of immigration policy, I can tell you it absolutely rewards the scofflaws and punishes those who play by the rules.
I went through the years-long process with my wife - an educated, law-abiding woman who speaks four languages. An asset. Meanwhile she knew people who jumped ahead of her with fraudulent marriages or illegally crossing the border. In one case a guy from a well-to-do Senegalese family came here falsely claiming asylum, got in, and later fraudulently married an Algerian to get her in. He currently sells counterfeit goods on eBay. He's not an asset.
Meanwhile, my brother and sister-in law, both professional, educated, hard-working, law-abiding and lovely people would love to emigrate here. If I were to sponsor their visa, it would take at least 14 years.
This exactly. Adding my other comment to provide quantitative support to your personal experiences:
I've directly worked in the immigration system within the USG. One of my main pet peaves undiscussed amongst the punditry is the single-minded focus on undocumented/illegal aliens patently excludes all the stakeholders seeking to immigrate LEGALLY to the United States. I did a quick review of this backlog in 2020, which has only gotten worse post-pandemic:
In the F1-F4 immigrant visa category alone, there are 3.76 million future immigrants (not including their derivative families), which means there are close to an additional 3.76 million Amcit/LPR petitioners. (Note: This does not include the unlimited priority IR1-5 priority categories of immigrants - spouses, minor children, and parents of Amcits -- who number around 750K who are r). If you total all of the potential accompanying family members derivatives together (plus the 215K employment-based immigrant visa beneficiaries waiting in line), there are likely well over 10 million stakeholders in the immigration debate who have been completely ignored -- stakeholders who have paid high fees, navigated the cumbersome bureaucracy, and most importantly waited patiently in line.
Nothing I've seen in the current media coverage or congressional immigration reform proposals (from either side) address these people, focusing the debate solely on illegal/undocumented immigrants and asylum claims. As a legal immigrant myself, and also someone who has filed immigrant visa petitions for family, the complete lack of respect for those who waited in line seems offensive and smells like virtue-signalling. Tell that to the 1.22 million Mexican nationals who are currently patiently waiting for their legal immigration documents (which doesn't even include their derivative family members). Tell the Filipino sibling who has waited and unbelievable 25 years (!) for his immigrant petition to be interviewed. Without PRIORITIZING debate about these 10 million+ foreign and Amcit stakeholders already following the rules in our system, we are not really serious about immigration reforms.
Also the pundits and the broder American public seem to misunderstand the difference between refugees and aslyees. We have always and SHOULD have a generous refugee intake, as they are processed in third countries and often wait years to be vetted and find a slot to enter legally into the United States (at the peak during Obama, it was about 100K/year - we should increase that number). However, the aslyum system is for people who make their claims of persecution AFTER they arrive, are unlimited, and are FULL of misrepresentations and abuse (with 80-90 percent invalid claims), both by human traffickers and cartels. Because of the long adjudication wait times, aslyees get to remain in the U.S. and work legally for years, even though the vast majority are not qualified (unlike refugees, where ALL are prequalified before entering the United States.)
In 1776 you sent us 50,000 refugees whose only crime was their being conservatives. I can never forgive America for sending us what would be the base of the Canadian Conservative Party till 2021.
Good luck, Matt! I point out to people that it seems too coincidental that our "immigration policy" makes it relatively hard to come here legally and permanently, but relatively easy to come illegally and stay for a shorter time, during which the undocumented person is maximally vulnerable to exploitation. I dont think its a mere coincidence that our failure to meaningfully reform our immigration policy results in a default situation that happens to be great for the business community, but is one more thing working to disempower labor rights in the US. The fact that the democratic party not only ignores that angle, but actively tries to smear that conventional, labor party perspective as inherently racist and xenophobic, when its actually rooted in a compassionate and practical awareness of the economic realities in a capitalist society, tells you who the democratic party is truly serving these days.
DNC-hooked unions are actually out there bleating about "the rights of the undocumented." And there's an ongoing campaign to conflate refugees who are fleeing persecution with illegal immigrants who come here to conspire with capital against the native US labor force.
Caesar Chavez, who well understood the law of supply and demand, and its consequences with regard to illegal immigration, would now be looked upon as a hopelessly xenophobic, anti-Hispanic nativist.
This exactly. Bumping up my other comment to add quanitative data to your argument:
I've directly worked in the immigration system within the USG. One of my main pet peaves undiscussed amongst the punditry is the single-minded focus on undocumented/illegal aliens patently excludes all the stakeholders seeking to immigrate LEGALLY to the United States. I did a quick review of this backlog in 2020, which has only gotten worse post-pandemic:
In the F1-F4 immigrant visa category alone, there are 3.76 million future immigrants (not including their derivative families), which means there are close to an additional 3.76 million Amcit/LPR petitioners. (Note: This does not include the priority IR1-5 priority categories of immigrants - spouses, minor children, and parents of Amcits -- who number around 750K and are processed within 1-2 years). If you total all of the potential accompanying family members derivatives together (plus the 215K employment-based immigrant visa beneficiaries waiting in line), there are likely well over 10 million stakeholders in the immigration debate who have been completely ignored -- stakeholders who have paid high fees, navigated the cumbersome bureaucracy, and most importantly waited patiently in line.
Nothing I've seen in the current media coverage or congressional immigration reform proposals (from either side) address these people, focusing the debate solely on illegal/undocumented immigrants and asylum claims. As a legal immigrant myself, and also someone who has filed immigrant visa petitions for family, the complete lack of respect for those who waited in line seems offensive and smells like virtue-signalling. Tell that to the 1.22 million Mexican nationals who are currently patiently waiting for their legal immigration documents (which doesn't even include their derivative family members). Tell the Filipino sibling who has waited and unbelievable 25 years (!) for his immigrant petition to be interviewed. Without PRIORITIZING debate about these 10 million+ foreign and Amcit stakeholders already following the rules in our system, we are not really serious about immigration reforms.
Bill Maher's view of American foreign policy is basically akin to his view of how other people should treat him: he wants people to regard him as a king. He is a miserable little prick who is incapable of having healthy relationships with other human beings.
Greenwald owned him. It was quite beautiful, actually... Wish Matt would have given a lil more pushback on Maher's Reaganomics & xenophobia as opposed to laughing at his lame jokes...
I really didn't know Maher was a neocon but I suppose it shouldn't surprise me. Was Hillary his ideal candidate or is his brain just as stiff as he looks?
I've worked on refugee and migration issues globally for 20 years. The main reason they keep coming illegally is called pull factor. Simply put the USA keeps allowing it. Once they get here and there are no consequences and they get jobs then everyone back home finds out and more come. It basically is now reached the point where it is totally out of control. It started off like a small storm and now spun out of control into a Cat 5 hurricane. The media and advocates never want to talk about pull factor. The other thing the media never talks about is that most countries actually do protect their borders and do not allow illegals in. When they need workers to fill jobs, they issue work permits and visas and they hold the employers and immigration sponsors responsible for the immigrant. Once they are done working they retire and go back to their country. Until you hold everyone accountable the system will remain broken. The other thing they don't talk about is that probably about 50 to 90 percent of the people claiming asylum are just making it up and scamming the system. I do care a lot about refugees but ultimately the scammers and rule breakers and the ones that end up hurting the real refugees that try to follow the rules. Until we approach this broken system we are headed toward being a 4th world country where anything goes and there is no common culture. That always ends in dysfunction and violence.
Last month, I returned from an international human rights delegation in Honduras exploring the root causes of migration.For 10 days, we met with a range of Honduran communities including rural communities, subsistence farmers, Indigenous groups, community radio leaders, feminist activists, and relatives of disappeared migrants. We asked these communities – What can the United States do to mitigate the violence, combat corruption, and stem the flow of outward migration?
First, the United States must end its funding for the Honduran military and security forces. This aid is sold to the American public as necessary to fight gangs and organized crime, but what we saw is that the guns, training, and drones that we supply are used to suppress activists, organizers, and political opponents who are defending their land and rights.
Second, the United States must end its economic aid to Honduras. This aid is not helping the ordinary people of Honduras. Instead, it is fueling massive development projects such as hydroelectric dams. These projects foster corruption among elites, cause environmental damage, and displace people from their land ultimately resulting in outward migration.
While we only visited Honduras, I think the lessons from our delegation apply to other countries in the "Northern Triangle" (i.e. Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador).
US-based Latin American solidarity groups are pushing Congressional action. There was an amendment introduced by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (MI-13) to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to prohibit “capacity building” funds for foreign security forces (Section 333) in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Unfortunately, that amendment failed a couple of weeks ago and the NDAA passed the House. However, there are still important resolutions in Congress such as the Berta Cáceres Human Rights in Honduras Act (H.R. 1574) and the Honduras Human Rights and Anti-Corruption Act of 2021 (H.R. 2716, S.388) that should be passed.
Demanding justice for Berta Cáceres and so many other Hondurans affected by the US military and security aid to Honduras is the first step towards addressing the root causes of migration.
This is such important information that needs to be widely disseminated. It is becoming increasingly difficult, and deadly, to be a land defender, a journalist, or a human-rights activist in many countries around the world precisely because of these massive mining and development projects.
But, these massive development projects - like hydroelectric power, and massive new mining to supply the needs for EV batteries - are what we're simultaneously told we need to do immediately on an unprecedented global scale to save the climate.
Just because something sounds like 'leftist propaganda' to you doesn't mean it's wrong.
Something is driving immigration, and the US fetishization of war and violence is certainly suspect, and ought to be investigated, along with predatory US-assisted capitalism. We know what happened in the Middle East as a result of US interventions, but the resultant immigrants / refugees moved mostly to Europe and the countries the US had neglected to destroy, like Turkey, so the US public doesn't seem to care. But what's happening in Latin America? The US is hardly paradise, especially for poor people. The case of Honduras is just one of many. Don't let the war industry and their right-wing fans and suckers dominated the conversation. Let's have the facts.
What exactly is "US fetishization of war" more left buzzwords. If you live in the US, you have no idea what poverty looks like. It doesn't really exist in the US. Not like in India, or other third world countries. So you talk around a litany of buzzword sins committed by the US, which have nothing to do with Honduras today. Do you have an actual thing? or just lots of concepts? How about facts?
"predatory US-assisted capitalism" is polysyllabic, but meaningless.
"We know what happened in the Middle East" is what people say when they are repeating something without actually having facts.
Certain illusions are continuously promoted by the mainstream media, and a surprising number of otherwise reasonable people believe in them. I have even met people who had faith in the _New York Times_.
You’re too young to remember, but in the ‘80s people openly discussed in the press:
- What’s the optimal rate of immigration for economic growth?
- Where does immigration depress wages (its effects are NOT all benign despite the gross national averages I’ve heard you quote; ask construction workers in the southwest)?
-Why shouldn’t we demand skills to resettle here the way “progressive” countries like Canada do?
-What is the cost or benefit of concentrated immigration from a single country or region? Why shouldn’t immigrants be more diverse?
-What is the justification of privileging family relations?
-Should voters really have no say at all in immigration policy?
Yes, these topics actually appeared on TV and in newspapers and magazines. Imagine.
Having immigrants assimilate into the culture and understanding of the common values embodied in the Constitution, makes for a more harmonious society. It prevents clusters of poverty like Minneapolis and speeds the economic advancement of the immigrants.
Sevender - Excellent questions. Immigration is such a complex issue, laying out a list of questions like this is very appropriate. I have pretty strong views on many issues, but immigration isn't one of them. Our current system is most likely not actually capable of making solid policy around issues of this level of complexity.
Let’s get back to focusing on LEGAL immigration. Good, honest, hard-working people all around the world are waiting obediently for their green card applications to be processed. Meanwhile we are rewarding throngs of illegals by releasing them into the country, most of them never to be heard from again.
Adding my other comment with quantitative data to your argument:
I've directly worked in the immigration system within the USG. One of my main pet peaves undiscussed amongst the punditry is the single-minded focus on undocumented/illegal aliens patently excludes all the stakeholders seeking to immigrate LEGALLY to the United States. I did a quick review of this backlog in 2020, which has only gotten worse post-pandemic:
In the F1-F4 immigrant visa category alone, there are 3.76 million future immigrants (not including their derivative families), which means there are close to an additional 3.76 million Amcit/LPR petitioners. (Note: This does not include the priority IR1-5 priority categories of immigrants - spouses, minor children, and parents of Amcits). If you total all of the potential accompanying family members derivatives together (plus the 215K employment-based immigrant visa beneficiaries waiting in line), there are likely well over 10 million stakeholders in the immigration debate who have been completely ignored -- stakeholders who have paid high fees, navigated the cumbersome bureaucracy, and most importantly waited patiently in line.
Nothing I've seen in the current media coverage or congressional immigration reform proposals (from either side) address these people, focusing the debate solely on illegal/undocumented immigrants and asylum claims. As a legal immigrant myself, and also someone who has filed immigrant visa petitions for family, the complete lack of respect for those who waited in line seems offensive and smells like virtue-signalling. Tell that to the 1.22 million Mexican nationals who are currently patiently waiting for their legal immigration documents (which doesn't even include their derivative family members). Tell the Filipino sibling who has waited and unbelievable 25 years (!) for his immigrant petition to be interviewed. Without PRIORITIZING debate about these 10 million+ foreign and Amcit stakeholders already following the rules in our system, we are not really serious about immigration reforms.
First generation legal immigrant / naturalized US citizen- been here since 1993.
1. H1 B Visa is a huge fraud committed by corporate America to depress wages, fire people at will, replace IT departments with outsourced labor etc etc - just follow what Disney did to their IT department it'll be enough to make your blood boil - all native born, legal immigrants need to fight H-1B tooth and nail.
2. Increased immigration of all kinds legal and illegal will lead to labor suppression, recent immigrants of all kind will be willing to work for less in more difficult conditions that makes things harder for all a good field we just slash working conditions
3. Just Google and find out how many grad students in US universities are foreign born I bet it will be more than 80%
The reason universities have these programs open even though they cannot attract any native born/legal immigrants is because they can charge full out of state tuition to grad students who after the finish their studies by paying full tuition will want to stay in US to get H1 b and hopefully green cards - however they use a loophole called OPT that lets them stay in the country for 2-4 years after they finish their graduate studies till they get H-1B / green card - this is adding a large number of students on OPT student visa extension who are willing to work for almost peanuts that depresses wages for everybody else
I have nothing against foreign students however this does two things - it's supports the already obscene tuition that universities charge,( don't get me started on higher education and high tuition scam in this country 😡😡) supports graduate programs that none of the native born / legal immigrants want to join, feeds huge number of additional bodies into the labor force that corporates love because it gives them the upper hand to continue to screw people
In technical fields, Americans don't pursue advanced degrees because the economics doesn't work. The pay for an Engineer right out of school would lose by pursuing a graduate degree isn't made back up for many years. The exception is top first tier schools, which are worth the time.
If you are in China (probably paid by Gov) or India, the economics of the situation are completely different. You wouldn't have earned much anyway, and grad school as a route to visa is a good combo.
When I was in school there was a lab in Mechanical Engineering where all the grad students were chinese all well as the Faculty advisor and they actually had meetings in Chinese... So regardless of ethnicity, Zero english speakers other than the Prof and he probably enjoyed exercisign the language skills.
Exactly, except the top tier schools all other grad programs are basically about feeding more people into H-1B / Green card pipeline and depress wages for all native born/ legal immigrant kids who paid out of their noses to get a college degree - which will be made worthless because of unending skilled labor competition from all over the world due to grad school programs in second tier universities.
I build homes and do remodeling for the elite in the Washington DC suburbs. Most of the people on my constructions sites these days are Latino and usually only the crew lead speaks English. Since these are all subcontractors I have no idea of citizen status but my guess is a significant portion are here illegally. When I was in my teens on job sites working for my dad (about 25 years ago) the job sites were a mixing bowl of races and cultures. As a result of this huge influx of cheap and illegal labor, pay for those jobs, especially starting pay for apprentice positions have stagnated. Most of those positions are no longer solid blue collar jobs unless you have tons of experience. The working class people I know from all backgrounds, including Latino hate it. They don’t dislike illegal immigrants themselves but they hate what the huge influx of cheap labor has done to the job market. Add the additional burden it puts on the school systems in mostly poorer areas and it’s a disaster.
You have to control the border and set some type of merit based system. People tend to confuse merit based with education but that isn’t the case. Merit based is looking at labor shortage data and bringing those types of workers in, whatever that skill set might be. You just have to be careful to not make the same mistake with the h1b visa program where tech companies used it as a way to bring in cheaper labor even though labor existed here, just at a higher price. Those coming into the country under a merit based program must be paid equal to their American counterparts.
None of this means we can’t accept refugees or have allotments for other types of immigrants, it just means the bulk majority should be by a merit based system that protects American salaries. Also, 90% of republicans I know support allowing people to stay that have been here a long time and contribute to our society. They also support DACA.
It seems the major talking point on the left is that all these poorer white Americans became trumpers because they just woke up and realized they were racist but it’s so far from the truth. They just got sold a really crappy set of goods from Democrats. The combination of tilting too much power to unions, combined with horrible trade deals evaporated most of these “good paying union jobs) Then add in a huge influx of cheap manual labor via our immigration policy (if you can call it that) and blue collar, manual labor Americans saw their livelihoods, most of which was passed down through generations disappear over the last 30 years. You’d be pissed too.
As far as deterring illegal immigrants from making the trip, I don’t really see a great way to do it that isn’t going to be incredibly unkind to the people trying to enter our country. It’s kinda the nature of deterrents, they are unpleasant.
The other option is really holding companies responsible for hiring employees that are illegal, the penalties should be steep.
People who deny that unfettered immigration depresses wages on the low end, disproportionately harming working class minorities, are making such a profound statement of ignorance and fantasy land residence. Of course the cretin elected class will deny economics and try to use opposition to mass illegal immigration as a cudgel crying "racist!"
What's so hard to understand is how actual human beings who work for a living because they have to fall for such bullshit guilt trips.
I have a question. How do Haitians afford the time and money to get to the Mexico / Texas border? Who is funding this? And why here? If the USA is a systemically racist, white supremacist, cops hunting down black people such that Lebron is afraid for his and his progeny's lives ... why would anyone from Haiti come here?
We have a country that is now a net importer of both food and energy and we have open borders? Let me repeat that. We can no longer feed the people who live here with the food we grow ourselves. We also are no longer capable of manufacturing the majority of the products needed to run our country, ourselves. We have a water shortage in America that is growing. We've passed peak food on the planet and peak conventional oil. And people are actually debating whether or not open borders is a good idea? Pinch me. There's a complete disconnect with reality, going on here. This is going to end badly. Very, very, badly.
p.s. The only reason America hasn't gone to hell yet is that the dollar is still the world's reserve currency. The minute, it gets knocked off that perch, which it will be, things will get really really ugly here... You don't want to find yourself in an overpopulated country, that can no longer feed itself.
This is a stupid point. Autarkey is the road to poverty. I don't grow my own food. I'm not starving. Funny enough, now that people are able to trade for food more freely than they were in the past, starvation is much less of an issue. My goodness, Delaware doesn't produce its own bananas or oranges! There's no way that Delaware will be able to feed itself, because it cannot possibly just import food from other places that have a comparative regional advantage making food!
Get your head out of the 19th Century and into the 21st.
You don't have a substantive point you nationalistic dope. "I can't argue with what he says but I can claim that he must be on the take because I'm too stupid to understand that other people have different worldviews!" Yet dopes like you get to cross state lines at will.
There's massive starvation on the planet right now. 600 million are malnourished and the hungry number well over a billion... Globalization only works when energy is cheap. And it's getting less cheap by the minute...
Humankind's ability to feed itself isn't the issue. Our ability to trade freely is the issue. The solution to starvation where it exists consists of removing sanctions and other barriers to trade. We do not live in the age of Malthus, we live in the age of Norman Borlaug and have for some time. The issue isn't "there's not enough food" it's "there's too many legal and political obstacles involved in getting it from where's there's too much to where there's too little."
The standard generally accepted business models/theories are about to collapse since they are all based on the idea that you can have unlimited growth forever on this planet. We do indeed live in the age of Malthus. It's starting to unfold in front of our very eyes. It's simple math. The number of people on the planet keeps increasing. The amount of food the planet is producing is decreasing. Starvation and food insecurity are on the uptick. The oceans are been fished clean of fish. We've entered one of the planet's biggest extinction events. The mammals are going, going, gone, the insects are down by 1/3rd since the 1970's, the Amazon rain forest is starting to die back. We're in deep-sxxt trouble... The slide into the abyss has begun.
Well, the problem is that we actually don't. Humanity has more than enough damn food, particularly in the area of renewable agricultural resources. See Borlaug, Norman.
The problem is simply that we can't trade in order to connect supply with demand. This is a political issue, not a scarcity issue. Scarcity was much more of an issue 200 years ago when people in America and Western Europe were routinely dying of starvation during winter in rural areas.
Other commodities might be different (they certainly don't seem that way in practice but maybe they are in principle) but food ain't one of 'em.
There's certainly a lot of waste, and I agree with you that we could feed everyone on the planet right now, if we wanted to. But I don't think the waste is going to go away... Aside from the more theoretical arguments for and against open borders right now, I've driven into L.A. a couple of times this week and the homelessness is staggering. There are people camped EVERYWHERE. On bridges, on sidewalks. EVERYWHERE!!! Our homeless population is exploding. We've got shortages of a lot of goods in our supermarkets. There's even a sign at the local del taco saying they are having supply shortages. Car parts--when I fix my car I'm having to wait much longer for parts than I used to. Everything is starting to break down in America. I'm seeing poverty and need on a level I've never seen it in my life. And we've got open borders?
I know it’s not fashionable these days, but how about simply enforcing the imigration laws on the books. I recall the President took an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution”. The Constitution provides that the President shall “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”. Seems Biden’s policy to ignore Congress’ statutes is facially unconstitutional…why isn’t anyone taking him to court on this? Reminds me of an old HL Menckin quote: Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it GOOD AND HARD!
Something you don’t hear from the pundits on immigration is that much of the trade/foreign policy the u.s. imposes on some of these countries can Be very politically and economically disruptive And directly result in immigration.
So, look into cia involvement in Central American in recent years. Or how big u.s. agricultural subsidies and trade policy puts the Mexican agricultural worker out of a job. Then they come up to the u.s., get this, to work in agriculture.
If you don’t want immigration from these countries, stop implementing policies that cause immigration. Seems obvious to me but you never hear pundits say this. It usually something along the lines of they are coming here because they want our jobs, etc.
Anyway, hopefully that’s helpful....let me know if you want more details.
Or just go ahead and abolish the CIA. I'm sure we can start an agency that hires operatives who actually want to focus on, say, catching real Chinese spies instead of tyrannizing Americans and fomenting civil unrest.
I have no problem changing US policies and, as someone below notes, abolishing the CIA immediately. But there is no way US policy changes are going to be sufficient to turn Mexico and Central America into flourishing countries where residents no longer see the US as a place worth immigrating to on a time scale that addresses hundreds of thousands of people streaming into the country every month right now. You're talking about reforms that might have the desired effect in a a generation. I don't thi k it's fair tk the average working citizen in the US to say sorry, you have to accept the lack of any meaningful border control for a few more decades to make up for the evil actio s of your country's elites.
I think the question was “is there anything obvious the U.S. could or should be doing differently, policy-wise, something we maybe don’t hear from pundits?”. I think I answered that, especially the part about the pundits.
I think you might be addressing/expressing something else...which is okay, of course.
Also, you covered a lot of ground in your short statement; timing, fairness (fairness? Are you really gonna open that can of worms?), meaningful border control, etc. This makes it difficult to respond. Especially in the forum.
We've been looking into citizenship in Canada, Ireland, and France. If one is young and in a desirable field, chances seem fair to good. In Quebec, which I love, one has to speak French- if you are over 40, forget it. In most Western countries, older applicants must show proof of considerable funds, pay for health care, and in many cases "invest" in the host country to the tune of $500,000 to $ 1 million. Above all else, applicants may not be a burden on host country citizens. That is fair for the country's own citizens. The amounts also seem extortionate. Want to get out of the US? Hand over a million. In some countries, you get it back after 5 years. One realizes that America has been enormously generous and open-the same America that's constantly accused of being racist. At the same time, it's obvious that that generosity has been abused, that immigrants, not the United States, are determining our policy by flouting laws. There's a difference between being generous and overrun. Compared to other Western countries, the U.S. hasn't much cared about its own citizens for quite a long time. It's time to care, and time to cut back. In terms of cohesion, things are pretty much a mess, thanks to CRT and precursors. The activists stoke division. That's a shame; many Hispanics are enterpreneurs-- they like capitalism.
We should admit those who can be self-sufficient, educated, are needed by industry, who apply legally, who will not be a burden on U.S. citizens, who either pay for their own health insurance or who have jobs lined up. We should spread out the countries applicants come from. With leftists pitting groups against one another, California protests with raised fists and shouting the primacy of "ethnic studies," we need to worry about cohesion and stability-- a bona fide refugee program, legal immigration based on U S need, and enforce the law.
It is in the news this morning that DHS has issued new directives that preclude deportation of certain groups, elderly, etc. and which includes "activists." Just what this country needs more of.
1) U.S. should have a points system for potential immigrants like Canada and Australia. The Green Card lottery is a joke.
2) Mass immigration has been a key component in the war on the middle class. What happens when you increase the supply of anything? The price drops. Letting China into the WTO and immigration, both legal and illegal, have devastated the wages of the American middle class. And "the elite" who have benefited are laughing all the way to the bank.
Immigration is very much our business because mass infusions change the outcome of our elections, inexorably, state by state. New Jersey used to swing between Democrat and moderate Republican governors, some of the moderate Republicans, not the awful Christie, were really good on wildlife and the environment, better than the Dems. Given demographics, say experts, New Jersey is now impermeably blue -- there is no more choice, like California. No more choice us a strange feeling, and not a good one. Immigration demographics made the dismantling we are seeing today possible. The black/brown/gender axis replaced the hoped for but never obtained revolutionary working class to achieve the farrago of Marxism and nihilism we see today They provide the necessary numbers to smote the dominant society. The Democrats seem to be led by the nose by its radicals. The Republicans are feckless and anti - environment. Only a third party can save the U. S. The first presidential candidate must be known and loved.
Just to clarify, some of our setups- like industry regulating itself/ so cozy with major state and federal regulatory departments, need changing. People including me are chisling that down through existing channels of a liberal democracy. You had most people at hello in race. We didn't need Marxist collectivism to fix these things. We simply needed to really, really follow our own founding principles and constitution.
We must be the only country which is easier to immigrate into illegally than legally. But it is too much of a political windfall for both parties for them to fix it. We could accommodate many more legally and avoid some of the border issues if we wanted to.
I am an immigrant who has lived here for 30 years. I am also very conservative so I believe US laws need to be respected and enforced. That being said there seems to be a great need for labor force and there are jobs that Americans don't want to do or don't do well. It includes me.
I believe there is one thing we can do to resolve this issue. Something Eisenhower did in the 50s. Most of the immigrants coming here from Central and South America don't care about the citizenship or being able to live here. They are here for purely economical reason-they want to work, earn and support their families. Why cant we offer them multiple entry work visas. They wont have to deal with coyotes, will earn fair wages and pay taxes. What's most important they can leave their kids at home knowing that they can come and go any time they want to. It is expensive to support their extended families here. Dollar has a lot more value at their home countries. This way they don't have to live of the government tit, we know exactly who is here and where. Doesn't this seem like a sensible solution? Both Repubs and Dims will lose their election talking points. It will help the economy even if they send their earnings home.
I could agree to this, esp if there are some criteria for who is needed for what work. One problem is that the Dems are feeding big business and affluent homeowners with plenty of cheap and scared labor (they're here illegally and afraid of getting noticed). Flooding the low income low skill work force with cheap labor kills incomes for Americans who are trying to get into the workforce and live off low incomes while learning how to get better jobs. Employers don't like paying higher wages or actually having to change how they do things (like providing ongoing skills training to their work force). The Democrats of today are indeed not the liberals of yore. They're despicable. And I keep thinking of the upheavals in Europe since the Syria killing started and Europe went to open borders (because Germany thought it was a good idea - not a really democratically arrived at choice). I also like the idea below - incentivize growth and manufacturing in Central America rather than China - you won't have data theft or trade secrets theft to contend with either.
The reality is that both sides of the aisle are complicit in this mess. The reason that the GOP objected to Trumps logical wall strategy was because they are in the bag with big manufacturing to meet the need for low wage worker supply. These manufacturers want to keep the flow of illegals for their own economic reasons but on the face of it scream to the rafters when the duplicitous dems want them here to fill voter pools. What’s clear to everyone is that speeding up the legal immigration process and placing restrictions on the standards and qualifications we use for assessing new citizens needs to be reevaluated and enforced. Right now no one really wants this fixed because it serves too many useful purposes both financial and political for a solution to be implemented.
Better forget about that 'aisle'. As George Carlin said, 'They got a club and you ain't in it.' There's no aisle in the club -- just one between the club and everybody else.
Go get em Matt! Not sure my wiring allows for watching a full episode of BM but at least he, like yourself, has begun to recognize the dangers and inconsistencies of the progressive movement. On immigration it is not that hard. Dont tell me you are not all in on open borders when every policy prescription you advocate directly results in just that. It is also glaringly obvious that Trump was far better at managing this situation than any of his predecessors and certainly better than the current clown car. It is amazing, given their supposed concerns gor the Black community specifically and lower class Americans generally, that allowing millions of unskilled laborers into the country is a hill they are willing to die on. Every hardworking Mexican I know is steadfastly against this policy and the polls of the last month indicate that my random sample is consistent with the broader trend. What are the D’s possibly thinking? As I disagree with their approach to governance in general, i take solace when their fecklessness plays out so openly for all to see. So please dont be too hard on them. What is that old maxin for dealing with adversaries? Never interrupt them when they are digging their way out of a hole? Safe travels.
Simple - do what we can to stop all illegal immigration, and deport thoe who are here illegally.
I am a blue-collar worker and these hordes of 3rd world people depress wages for people like me. You journalist types can sit in your ivory towers and type on your keyboards and you are unaffected.
Meanwhile, the big corporations feed off of this source of cheap labor and make oodles of profit, allowing them to squeeze out small businesses.
Just admit it already - Trump was right. We need to build a wall. And we should have done it decades ago.
Since Bill had become so completely out of touch - a limousine liberal - I’m hoping you bring some subversion to the table. Please shoot for something between a full-on Greenwald and a Krystal Ball smirk.
America cannot remain America if it does not have secure borders. It will, and already is becoming, something else. It’s the same with the Constitution, it’s only value is in people willing to follow its statutes. If you desecrate the very tenets that make America and it’s Constitution worthy, as many are, then you destroy those protections that gave you the right to destroy it. In other words we are experiencing self destruction, we are the enemy within.
The Constitution does not have "statutes." Statutes are laws passed by legislatures. The Courts strike down statutes if they violate a provision of the Constitution.
I have a sneaking suspicion that this elevated rhetoric about "the Constitution" is coming from someone who has not read the actual written document and is instead using "the Constitution" as a metaphor for "the cultural norms that I am used to, even though those are not written in the actual Constitution."
In 1789 laws, or statutes, were written at large by the legislature. Statutes derive their power from the Constitution, the two are not mutually exclusive.
Your suspicions are unfounded, I have read and studied the Constitution since I’m an immigrant waiting to become a citizen here. It behooves me to study it, unlike most natural born citizens.
By the way, your “cultural norms” are enjoyed because you have a written Constitution unique to America. You do not enjoy them by fiat, they are there because someone fought for you to enjoy them and bothered to enshrine them in writing.
No, they are two separate things. The Constitution doesn't have statutes. Those words in fact mean separate things. The Constitution has "clauses" and "provisions." Statutes are laws passed by legislatures. They mean different things.
I do not believe that you have actually read the Constitution. If you have read it, you forgot what it said. You are instead substituting what the actual document says for what politicians and the media tell you it says, and since that's what you think it *should* say, you probably don't question it. If you really are familiar with the Constitution, you would know Article III cold or the holding of Wickard v. Filburn cold. You might even know that the Bill of Rights didn't apply to state or local governments prior to the Civil War. Didn't know this off the top of your head? Then you don't know what you're talking about, which explains why you couldn't even use the word "statute" correctly a moment ago.
The "cultural norms" you are probably talking about are things that simply have no relationship to the written Constitution. Are you afraid of FOREIGNERS moving into the United States? Guess what? The Constitution doesn't say anything about immigration or cultural change. It's the law of American government, not the law of American "culture," which bears virtually zero relationship to what it was in 1789 as evidenced by my ability to marry a black woman and the fact that I cross state lines every day for work.
Thank you. But I suggest you don’t engage with this poster, they’re behavior is crass and arrogant. Adds nothing to civil discourse. Shame they claim to be a constitutional expert, yet can’t practice basic rules of civility.
The fuck does "civility" have to do with the Constitution? I'd say things like "knowing what Article III is about" is a tad more significant to the subject matter.
Hahahaha, you clearly use these spaces to strut your self proclaimed superior knowledge over others. Statutes are made pursuant to the Constitution, I can’t help you if you don’t, or won’t, understand that. By the way, getting things down “cold” doesn’t necessarily indicate an understanding of any subject. But I’m very heartened by your interest and knowledge of the Constitution, well done you.
As to your absurd accusation about my fear of “FOREIGNERS”, if you knew me you’d know that’s laughable too. But you don’t know me. So here’s a suggestion, try not to make so many assumptions about others you have no idea about, it’ll help you in the future. You have a good day now.
My assumption that you don't know dick about the Constitution or how to use legal terminology correctly have been confirmed by your repeated failures to do so in this exchange. Ain't nothing "self-proclaimed" about my superior knowledge of the Constitution, you have demonstrated that you don't know diddly squat about the document, can't use terms correctly, and don't know basic facts about the document or American Constitutional law more generally that indicate any level of credibility whatsoever. You're engaging in political rhetoric about "the way things oughtta be" which ain't Constitutional law, jack.
The lawmaking authority of the legislature is codified in Article I; this doesn't mean that the Constitution "has statutes," dummy. The Constitution has sections, Articles, clauses and provisions. It doesn't "have statutes." This is the kind of thing someone who is making things up based on what he heard from politicians and cable news would say.
This conversation is over as far as I’m concerned. I don’t engage with people who stoop to hurling insults and name calling. No one needs it, it edifies no one, and it’s puerile and peevish behaviour. Bye.
I have a sneaking suspicion this comment is written by an anti white racist looking to guilt wash his privilege by calling white working class americans "racists" while overly praising his Costa Rican lawn boy.
Ah yes, no one is more put upon than The White Man. You're just bitter that white men don't have the same respect and status in society that you've grown used to, and you sure as hell haven't read the Constitution. By the way, I live in a cheap apartment. I don't have a lawn, and if I did I sure as hell wouldn't call someone a "lawn boy."
To others: this is the literal insanity that coddled minds have been driven to by the woke madrassas operating out of what used to be our schools. Every word of this robotic script is part of the catechism of the so-called “critical”cult, and its adherents must mindlessly repeat their nostrums to tamp down their poorly controlled and ever rising anxiety. This is what you get when you vastly overpraise mediocre children, leave them struggling to find value in their lives and tolerate their tantrums in the vain hope they’ll grow out of them. Unfortunately, they won’t. They just get worse and worse, and respond ever more poorly to treatment.
No one needed to teach me how to recognize the psychology of bitter white people. I learned it through being exposed to them and you're one of them. You feel that you are losing your status in the society that you feel entitled to so you blame minorities and claim it's everyone else who is sick in the head. It's pathetic. Face it, you're falling behind and it's no one's fault but your own.
Thomas Jefferson would be appalled that Mexico and Canada were not part of the union...the only way the US can survive is by spreading, not retracting.
The US tried -- at least one invasion of Canada, and various operations on Mexico that removed about half of its territory. It turned out that the inhabitants of these countries did not want to be ruled by the US and put up sufficient resistance to avoid that fate. Nor, apparently, did all those White American Protestants want to put up with a lot of Roman Catholic people speaking Spanish and French.
I'm a legal immigrant to Britain (25 years now). What needs to happen is that the government gives a sh*t about its own people. As soon as wages in one sector go down on account of mass immigration, this sector needs to be protected. You see it in reverse right now. There is a painful absence of lorry drivers which means we experience fuel and some food shortages (food shortage = you have to select from fifteen rather than sixteen different types of cheddar).
The Remainer psychodrama unfolds like this: we warned you this would happen with Brexit! Those wonderful Eastern Europeans have all left ... they don't want to live in your racist, homophobic hellhole. Three cheers for the country going to the dogs!
The truth is that of course companies were hooked on cheap labour and dreadful working conditions, and now wages and conditions need to correct (upwards), which might mean that your latte costs five p more.
I think a state should operate along the assumption that they owe their citizens if not a living, then at least the conditions to earn one.
Sincerely appreciate the invitation, but when are we average Americans allowed to have thoughts on immigration? I would love to hear the rationale for why American nurses, 12-year olds, NBA players, and pregnant women are required to be vaxxed and masked, but thousands of illegal border crossers with unknown medical histories are put on mass transit and shipped throughout the country. I would love someone to tell me why Afghans are willing to hand off their infants over walls to American soldiers, why millions of people of color are coming to this country, if it is so racist. I am entitled to know why I am supposed to follow every BS directive from my government, which by its immigration non-enforcement is an accomplice to the misery that is human trafficking. The only thing we average people get from the current regime and the pundits is, "shut up and sit down." And, you must wear a mask.
I could write something, but this sums up my thoughts perfectly. Most legal immigrants, imo, have more common sense, a better work ethic, and a greater appreciation of this country than a significant chunk of the populace. That said, having a hypocritical sewer grate on the Mexican border does no one-citizens or illegals a damn bit of good in the long run. I have seen estimates that say 20% of illegals have covid-yet the Biden admin does a work version of the 3 monkeys and willfully ignores common sense and it’s own mandates on the American people.
“I am entitled to know why I am supposed to follow every BS directive from my government, which by its immigration non-enforcement is an accomplice to the misery that is human trafficking.”
Stealing this, thanks.
Also, we must wear a mask, but our social betters and government officials (such as Cal. Gov. Gavin Newsom, and San Francisco Mayor London Breed) — they don’t have to, if the “spirit moves them” not to.
I have many thoughts about immigration but not a lot of time for more than a drive-by right now.
Biggest issue though is that the same people pushing for mass immigration - whether low-skilled illegal or higher skilled H1-B - is that the people that get the benefits aren't the ones paying the price. In the case of low-skilled illegal immigration, it's the poorest neighborhoods that pay the price via lowered wages, raised rents, costs on pressure on schools and hospitals. For higher skilled H1-Bs, it's the US population who have spent the money for a STEM education only to be laid off and replaced. The ones who get the benefits as a result of cheap labor award themselves virtue-signalling priviliges, while the ones who can least afford it pay the price.
One solution -which i generally offer to the sound of crickets - is for those who benefit to absorb some of the costs for a change. Open up their neighborhoods to the newcomers by building low-cost housing for them, welcome them into their schools, pay for their medical care.
I agree mainly. But this sentence of yours raises questions in my mind: "For higher skilled H1-Bs, it's the US population who have spent the money for a STEM education only to be laid off and replaced."
Are kids truly educated in STEM fields getting laid off? I doubt this. The issue this raises for me is the relentless drive by almost the entire educational power structure to dismantle standards and dumb down our curriculum in the name of a totally bogus "anti-racist" racial equity drive. No cops in schools and no racially disparate disciplining, so no real classroom control; eliminate high-stakes testing of all sorts; fill up even the math and science curriculum with CRT hectoring no matter how counter-productive of anything worthy it is. It is no wonder we NEED more H1-Bs. I am less worried about someone properly educated in a STEM field and doubt they have real employment problems. I am more worried about our refusal to give our own kids the basics they need to get properly educated in such fields.
It's not "kids" who get laid off. They never get jobs in the first place. If I am Microsoft, I can hire a Phd from India for $30k why hire an American with a BS for more money? The ones getting laid off are Americans with years of experience, who appear expensive. They appear expensive until you realize that the Indian education system teaches rote memorization and no problem solving. Large corporations run by MBAs ...
Increasing wage competition has always been a feature of American immigration from day one and a feature of complaints about it -- see the labor union role in exclusion of Asians in the late 1800s. I am willing to grant that pressure may exist higher up the wage scale levels among trained workers of all sorts. H1B problems no doubt add to this. But my concern is with the bottom of the society and that does not include people with meaningful STEM training and skills. Urban schools and dysfunctional underclass communities that result in 10 percent of kids reading at grade level (grade level being no big feat itself) result in workers already totally dependent on unskilled low-pay work which millions of unskilled illegals ensures will remain low pay. When I talk about STEM, I am not referring only to IT workers at Disney. I am referring also to skilled trades of all sorts, health care and medicine, engineering, etc. Our schools, K-12 and higher ed are not generating enough students competent in these fields. Meanwhile they are busy adding whole new layers of ethnic studies courses, racial re-education training, etc., with layers of parasitical DEI bureaucracies and dumbing down standards for everything. This is the social and economic crisis we face.
Yeah, you're totally right there. Although diversity can be a pretty lucrative field these days. Maybe that's the job market of the future it's a good time to be old.
Just because one may loathe Trump doesn’t mean he was wrong about everything. He seemed to have good control of illegal immigration before his admin left. New admin was hell bent on undoing everything he did because it was all demonized in the campaign. Biden admin needs to suck it up and go back to prior admins policies on this issue —“remain in Mexico” for one. Maybe even (dare I say ) finish the wall. Del Rio seems to be in obvious need of a barrier.
I've directly worked in the immigration system within the USG. One of my main pet peaves undiscussed amongst the punditry is the single-minded focus on undocumented/illegal aliens patently excludes all the stakeholders seeking to immigrate LEGALLY to the United States. I did a quick review of this backlog in 2020, which has only gotten worse post-pandemic:
In the F1-F4 immigrant visa category alone, there are 3.76 million future immigrants (not including their derivative families), which means there are close to an additional 3.76 million Amcit/LPR petitioners. (Note: This does not include the priority IR1-5 priority categories of immigrants - spouses, minor children, and parents of Amcits). If you total all of the potential accompanying family members derivatives together (plus the 215K employment-based immigrant visa beneficiaries waiting in line), there are likely well over 10 million stakeholders in the immigration debate who have been completely ignored -- stakeholders who have paid high fees, navigated the cumbersome bureaucracy, and most importantly waited patiently in line.
Nothing I've seen in the current media coverage or congressional immigration reform proposals (from either side) address these people, focusing the debate solely on illegal/undocumented immigrants and asylum claims. As a legal immigrant myself, and also someone who has filed immigrant visa petitions for family, the complete lack of respect for those who waited in line seems offensive and smells like virtue-signalling. Tell that to the 1.22 million Mexican nationals who are currently patiently waiting for their legal immigration documents (which doesn't even include their derivative family members). Tell the Filipino sibling who has waited and unbelievable 25 years (!) for his immigrant petition to be interviewed. Without PRIORITIZING debate about these 10 million+ foreign and Amcit stakeholders already following the rules in our system, we are not really serious about immigration reforms.
Legal immigration does not feed the war, imperialism, and cop industries; therefore, the US government and ruling class have little interest in it. Hence the phenomena you observe.
Also the pundits and the broder American public seem to misunderstand the difference between refugees and aslyees. We have always and SHOULD have a generous refugee intake, as they are processed in third countries and often wait years to be vetted and find a slot to enter legally into the United States (at the peak during Obama, it was about 100K/year - we should increase that number). However, the aslyum system is for people who make their claims of persecution AFTER they arrive, are unlimited, and are FULL of misrepresentations and abuse (with 80-90 percent invalid claims), both by human traffickers and cartels. Because of the long adjudication wait times, aslyees get to remain in the U.S. and work legally for years, even though the vast majority are not qualified (unlike refugees, where ALL are prequalified before entering the United States.)
A common argument by my Liberal colleagues is “how can you be against immigrants, weren’t your parents immigrants?” To that I always answer “my grandparents came through Ellis Island and were documented. No one is against immigration, what we are against is the conscious violation of our border to “skirt” the system. Biden’s policy supports Human Trafficking, the very thing that Obama set out to defeat. Human trafficking isn’t just young women in the sex slave trade, its paying $8,000 to a Coyote who might leave you in a sweltering trailer to die if he sniffs the authorities.
While all human beings should be, and legally must be, treated in as dignified a manner as possible and granted the ability to apply for - and receive when appropriate - asylum in the US, large scale movement of peoples is a symptom of a wider issue.
US foreign policy, both overt and covert, in particular through hard power such as military action, sanctions, coup plots and even 'aid', as well as via exploitative economic treaties such as NAFTA have played a major, if not the major, role in destabilising country after country in Latin America for generations.
The US behaves like an empire. A neo-colonial empire. And if people want to the reduce the flow of men, women and children from South to North then they should demand that the US (and other states) cease and desist all policies of exploitation and destabilisation towards those countries from which those human beings are fleeing.
Global warming and climate change is also fueling conflict and undermining the sustainability of life in many places already.
So, end imperialism and deal with global warming and we'll see a major reduction in people desperately fleeing their own societies and communities.
How about you stop worrying about the global warming fallacies and work on actual problems... Global warming is NOT fueling conflict. China is fueling conflict because of Xi's egocentric mania and a population bubble. Islam is fueling conflict globally in the psychotic pipe dream of establishing a caliphate, where women and infidels can be murdered at will.. How about dealing with actual problems? and letting go of fantasies.
Most obvious thing is we need to stop contributing to the problems that create the necessity for large groups of people to flee their home countries. We are largely responsible for the problems in several Central American countries and Haiti.
even though saying anything good about former president Trump is taboo, he actually early on in his administration suggested that the 1..5 million DACAS be given a path to citizenship,
of course he wanted the wall in exchange. Unfortunately no one wanted to discuss this proposal, democrat or republican. So there was NO discussion. I've always thought that was a good place to start.
If this is a reply to my comment I have to respectfully disagree. I think this would
have encouraged a real discussion on immigration policy which is badly needed,
and not easy. At the same time it would have allowed those DACAs who were interested in becoming citizens a pathway. My sense was that Trump thought of these people (DACAs) as being productive potential citizens.
Well yes and no. Saying we are responsible for Haiti is a joke. Some of the other countries sure. Also it’s generally not us, but a few elites and large corporations 80-100 years ago in a lot of cases. Don’t exculpate these countries from their own mismanagement. We have been a help and a hindrance at various times.
I Yeah I am well aware of it. The US did not mettle that much, and 90% of the wounds of Haiti were inflicted by themselves or France. The fundamental issue with Haiti is you had a large population whose sole economic value for supporting themselves was doing horrible backbreaking labor on sugar plantations. they rebelled, got their freedom, and collectively decided they didn't want to do that anymore.
Which is fine, but they had, and have no other main economic produce or way of supporting their high numbers, and that the other country's weren't particularly friendly with or eager to bend over backwards to help a poverty stricken country of rebelled slaves is not some giant surprise, nor should it have been the expectation.
Haiti is mostly full of poor people because it is too full of people and there is no real economic value to the country or its land/institutions. It was that way in 1830, 1850, 1900 and today, with or without US meddling.
The BEST thing that could have happened to Haiti and Haitians would have been MORE US meddling and colonization honestly.
Long ago in a galaxy far far away. Haitians have an extremely corrupt society. It is Nigeria on this side of the Atlantic. Involvement 2 centuries ago is interesting, but not a good enough excuse.
Ending the war on drugs. Profits from the black market drug trade are the primary funding source of the violent cartels and gangs in many central and South American countries. The violence they are committing are in service of securing their territory and future drug trade profits. This is in turn the violence that pushes so many migrants to flee these countries.
End the war on drugs and you end a major driver of refugees fleeing violence from Latin America.
I get a sense that the Democrats and Republicans are particularly dishonest on 2 issues; immigration and abortion. They both appear to find it convenient not to resolve these issues so that they can use them as distractions during their campaigns.
Big Agriculture and other large companies who rely on undocumented labor and the legislators they donate to turn a blind eye to the “ laws “. No citizen wants to work at the poultry factory . Would you chose to work there or at a Mc Donald’s if you had no skills or education ? Who will do all the jobs citizens don’t want to do ? So many undocumented people worked in the clean up at the WTC after 9/11. None of them got healthcare or compensation. After every disaster who is always present at the clean up ? The laws need to change. We can no longer turn a blind eye to the labor shortages and give legal status to the folks who have been doing all the thankless but necessary jobs.
Then elect people that will change the laws the way you want them. We are a nation of laws (unless you live in California, Oregon or Washington) and unless you want the U.S. to turn into California, we need to enforce the laws on the books. Your sarcastic comment about "laws" shows you how far we as a society have slid. Without laws, we will not exist for long. That's why progressives are trying to tear down our laws - they want to destroy America as it has existed and create their own social utopia.
Horrendous and low-paid jobs should cease to exist, along with economic wars that make life in neighboring countries intolerable. Given those conditions, a hefty fine could be leveled against employers who hired people without work permits.
In what universe is an "America first" foreign policy/immigration policy a bad thing? Would love to hear how a lefty kook answers that, aside from the comically predictable word salad with hamina-hamina-hamina dressing.
Well, one might start with the thought that most of the world is connected, physically, economically, and to some extent politically. And so, bombing the Middle East leads to trouble in Europe, for example. Just as on an individual level, it does not help me to impoverish and ruin my neighbors, so it does not help us as a nation to destroy other nations. Does that seem like word salad to you? It seems plain and obvious to me.
Those aren't foreign/immigration policies that those who favor an America First foreign/immigration policy would endorse, so I am not sure what you're getting at. Were we destroying other nations from 2017-2020 when a declared America First foreign/immigration policy was in effect? If so, please list them for scrutiny.
The policies and practices of the US ruling class and government have been pretty consistent at least since 1941 (see the Atlantic Charter) when the US took over the role of the British Empire. Mr. Trump may have soft-pedaled some of the triumphalist imperialism of his predecessors, but he didn't eliminate it -- indeed, he could not without being omnipotent. Several countries were attacked in one way or another on his watch, however. So we have a government and a ruling or leadership class who (1) consistently favor aggressive imperialism toward other countries and (2) consistently favor a seemingly contradictory immigration policy. That should tell us something.
that's all fine I agree to some degree, but what I was responding to was your (at minimum) implication that under a declared America First foreign and immigration policy we were "destroying other nations" and that's clearly not the case.
Okay. To flesh it out a little, 'America First' looks to me like a style note rather than a basic policy. The American ruling class is fine with America as long as it serves as their instrument; when it doesn't, they'll become globalists. The tension between the two strategies goes back to the beginning of the 20th century, where Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson neatly mixed together a brew of nationalist globalism, that is, the U.S. was supposed to lead the world, by example and suasion if possible, by force if necessary. The scheme required overcoming General Washington's counsel against foreign entanglements, with which many Americans then agreed. An empire is surely a foreign entanglement par excellence. But the primary purpose of the r.c., whichever foot they're standing on, is to make the world safe for capitalism and those who lead its institutions. As far as I can tell from far away, Mr. Trump did not deviate much from this program in material fact. Empire, of course, requires that one destroy a recalcitrant country now and then.
well that's the problem, then. you, for whatever reason, refuse to take a declared and defined (by actions, if nothing else) America First foreign/immigration policy seriously. so given that, of course you're going to add all kinds of context that lead to some kind of gripe against capitalism or whatever your larger issue is with the USA or its economic system.
the original point, however, that the US was "destroying" countries during the Trump years, remains invalid.
"As far as I can tell from far away, Mr. Trump did not deviate much from this program in material fact."
I respectfully, but forcefully, disagree. I can't imagine how anyone can come to this conclusion. His posture towards the trade and currency abuses of China alone are a major swerve from his predecessors. Not sure how you missed that, regardless of how far away you're looking from.
On immigration, My grandparents came here in the early 1900’s, went through Ellis Island and made their way to lower Manhattan to start their new lives. My wife is a first generation American so I am not anti immigration. Back in those days we had a much smaller population and a wide open country. Today we have 330 million or so citizens and over 11 million illegals. We can’t continue to just let everyone who walks in the door the ability to stay. Also, it is a little known fact but, back then you had to have a medical exam upon arrival and we either quarantined or sent back to the country you came from. We sent back over 1 mm people for various reasons. So first we need to enforce our border and adhere to the laws we have on the books. Then and this is not going to be popular in some circles but, most coming here illegally are not asylum seekers. They are simply trying for a better live. We need to stop giving illegals drivers licenses , free medical treatment, free education and in some instances other welfare that are for US citizens. That will discourage people from coming here illegally.
Now the real hard part, come up with new laws that make the process to immigrate to the US easier and faster. Our system has been has been broken for a long time. Politicians use immigration as a political football.
This is a great country, that’s why people continue to risk their lives to get here. This will take courage that unfortunately our current politicians lack.
We immigrated here back in mid-80s and I remember lots of requirements and paperwork needed to be met which took years. I took notice of a particular document titled “Affidavit of Support” and asked my father what it was. He simply answered that as the principal petitioner, he would be responsible for us (his family) and not the government. And if he lost his job or if he was in any kind of financial trouble, there should be another source of support, like his relatives. Even though it was a different time and climate, the US Immigration was pretty much strict and by the book. Which it should be.
Free speech is one of the topics? All my life, I’ve considered myself apolitical. I stayed away on any discussion about it just like religion. And then, they started to cancel stand-up comics… etc, and this new culture has gone off the rails. Thanks to a handful of journalists like yourself, still exist. who I can depend on to get my unbiased source of information.
I think the solution is for the US to quit overthrowing governments and let the people who are flocking here have their country back and that means their government and their resources and their land. We overthrow their governments, put puppets in who let us take their resources and leave nothing for the people to live on, land and resources including food. And then there was NAFTA. We sold corn to Mexico so cheap that 3 million farmers lost their land. Which our corporations then proceeded to buy up. What were those people suppose to do. Sit down and die. They came here to be able to live. This is how the US operates and then wants to throw immigrants under the bus. We suck
Yes, we do especially how the US-Mexico NAFTA agreement explicitly does not allow either 1) labor organization/striking nor 2) environmental justice. It’s way worse than any bad joke Bill Maher could make.
Thanks Matt! I'm so glad you are going to get another chance to stand up for free speech -- I really hope you share some of your most recent piece with a larger audience (how the media is the new religion)!
Also - would you please help draw attention to the awful treatment given to Lt. Col Schiller -- the military has thrown him in jail for daring to ask for accountability in the upper ranks.....it's outrageous - and the mainstream media is of course ignoring it.....Please help if you can to push back on this!
Open borders has resulted in importing the poorest of the poor to compete with the poor already here for jobs and lower wages due to supply/demand. Follow the money. Who has benefited the most from abundant, cheap labor and who's been most hurt?
This isn't something I haven't heard a pundit talk about. Peggy Noonan opened my eyes on this issue in August of 2016. But as far as I'm concerned it's the most important thing to discuss vis a vis immigration.
I'll preface these observations by pointing out that I am an open borders guy. Not in the backdoor "catch and release" manner of Democrats, but rather in the philosophical belief that charting one's own destiny is the most fundamental of all people's rights. If people *want* to come here, I think they're likely to be better Americans in the end than many of the people I grew up with.
But that doesn't mean I'm ignorant about the downsides of this philosophy. For all of the positives I can list ... economically ... philosophically ... historically ... there are many downsides that are always ignored by we of the open borders mindset and ignored even by people who SAY they don't support open borders but whose ACTIONS indicate tremendous support for open borders.
To sum up ... we have tens of thousands of people coming to our borders every month. Look at where they are going. Just track it for a few hours one day in all of the articles that talk about finding "affordable housing" for immigrants and refugees. "Affordable housing" ....
They are not moving in next door to Joe Biden. Nancy Pelosi. Alexandria Cortez. Or any of the virtue signalling "We must welcome these people seeking refuge!" politicians currently trying to harness this issue for political gain.
They are moving in next door to poor white, hispanic and black neighbors with the least resources to absorb this cultural change. We are asking the people with the least capacity to absorb societal and cultural change to do all the changing. Always. It's who we always ask.
And then we call them racists when cultural differences lead to confrontations. Because when a fight breaks out at the dumpsters over a cultural difference, it will be the working poor citizen that will be the bad guy. Not the rich politically connected elite who pulled strings and arranged things bureaucratically to place the immigrant next door to the working poor citizen. Finding the non citizen "affordable housing" while the citizen struggles to pay the rent.
While the virtue signalling wealthy elites continue their lives uninterrupted and write yet even more speeches castigating the working poor citizenry for not being tolerant and inviting and accepting.
I don't know what or if there is any solution to this conundrum. But at the very least it should be acknowledged. It should be discussed.
And we should stop listening to the speeches of politicians spreading hate about our citizenry on this issue and perhaps start listening to our citizenry before we wind up with someone far worse than a carnival barking clown in charge of our immigration system.
+1000. When immigrants come here for a "better life" guess where they end up? The bottom of socioeconomic totem pole. The bad parts of town, the crappy jobs, on welfare (no disparagement intended here), many times with a language barrier, the worst schools. Guess who is also at that place? A metric crap-ton of people who are already American citizens.
If you are for all the extended understandings of asylum that have led to our current border mess, how would you like to invite some of these poor families from gang and drug infested neighborhoods in the US to live with you? Set up a tent in your backyard. No? You are a hypocrite.
ALSO, what if I, as an American, think America is crap, and I want leave, try to waltz over the border and start working and living in Europe/Canada/ANZ illegally, I'll get kicked out post haste. Why aren't Americans afforded the same measure of freedom in migration? You want to open borders? Open ALL the borders!
AND.... just because the people coming over aren't armed doesn't mean it isn't an invasion. Just sayin. At some point you lock the gates, or risk giving the whole thing away.
Ireland forces you to yearly declare that you are capable of taking care of yourself financially to even move there. I looked into it, and likely wouldn't have been able to meet their standards.
I think the Irish might be racists.
Good at poetry.
lol
I don't know if this problem has a solution, nor any of the problems that burden the poor and so-called disenfranchised. I was raised by an immigrant father, who instilled in me a fear of becoming poor by failing to work hard and be clever. It never occurred to him that life should be fair; especially since fairness is such a subjective term.
I think just describing the problem shows how intractable it is. For the same reason that economic elites are happy to take advantage of cheap menial labor offered by immigrants, while poor people have to suffer the downsides of unchecked immigration, we can guess that all the apparent concern for society's neglectaroonies is mere virtue signaling. While we live in complex civilization, we are still using the same tribal brains we evolved with, as we evolve rather slowly.
Not to be mean, but I don't think it makes sense [from an evolutionary view] for humans to feel strong empathy for anyone outside our familiar social groups. I think the debate about such things is mostly posturing to impress our peers. There are poor and homeless people everywhere, if anyone wishes to spend their own time and resources on them directly. But hardly anyone does; and those who do are not always happy with the results.
What we mostly do is blame those richer than us for failing to support a social safety net for those poorer than us [and it's always nice if we can drink some of the nectar as well]. When we speak of immediate action on climate change, it is always We The People [meaning me] who should organize to vote for leaders who will compel The Greedy Oligarchs [anyone who has a lot more than me] to Do The Right Thing [give more money to solve problems that are contributed to by everyone].
Obviously this is a simplistic description of human behavior, but so are all descriptions, and those that gratify our moral intuitions are no better than fairy tales. Sure, it would be nice if people who were smart, charismatic, and lucky enough to become fabulously wealthy were to distribute their assets more generously. But I've been to places where people have dirt floors and bedsheets for walls and milk crate chairs; I'm sure they have some ideas about how to redistribute my wealth that I wouldn't be too pleased with. Welcome to humanity!
We need to make examples of people in power. Anybody who works for the federal government who doesn't declare their childcare/nanny/housekeeping/eldercare to the IRS to the penny needs to go to jail. For a long time.
Very well said, and I agree, sadly.
Thank you, kind sir. Here's a short article I found that summarizes the mismatch between our tribal instincts and modern civilization. Hope you find it useful...
https://www.humanprogress.org/stone-age-anti-capitalism/
Bingo! That's what I need for continuing education. So far I have been focused mostly on evolutionary [tribal] psychology: Jonathan Haidt, Robert Sapolsky, and Leah Cosmides & John Tooby at UCSB. Here are some interesting talks I found:
https://www.humanprogress.org/stone-age-anti-capitalism/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWFs71xkqFw
https://www.cato.org/events/socialism-human-nature
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRYcSuyLiJk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdiTwxUiIVY
Thanks for taking the time to let me know about Henrich; good stuff!
An excellent point, if Martha’s Vineyard and Greenwich, CT had to take in their share, the virtue signalers might rethink their position on immigration.
Open borders ignores the benefits of shared culture and shared values that bind a people together and help with cooperation rather than conflict.
I doubt you leave your doors and gate open for anyone to "chart their course" through your garden and bedroom. Hell, Nancy Pelosi put up razor wire fencing around the capitol to keep out those people of a different political tribe.
Sorry... multiculturalism has been proven to be a dismal failure for the natives. Controlled immigration with assimilation is perfect.
I agree with this. Immigration is a burden, at least in the short run, and we should be able to talk frankly about that. It's born unequally in our society - it's part of the inequality but not the part the left likes to talk about. If we want to have immigration, the impacts should be noted and mitigated. The right pushes a zero-sum, austerity-oriented mentality; the left is idealistic and promotes wonky solutions not actual community control and how to share burdens, and what kind of benefits we can actually expect - and when.
And to pick up on one thing Jeff says above, people who don't support open borders are often generous personally, through donations, their churches, etc. to help others in need, whoever they may be. I think Americans are generous. They just don't want to see things play out in a bad way for them, or their neighbors, or their community, and have no control over it. Too much of that "no control" experience and they'll say, enough.
As a leftist who became libertarian last year, I feel that the "wonky" solutions of the left are no more grounded in the "science" they like to flog than conservatives adhere to the teachings of Jesus they often endorse. The left uses compassion as brand identity the way the right uses traditional values. Both of those concepts get very nebulous in a hurry when push comes to shove. This strikes me as a significant hurdle to reaching consensus, when there are huge numbers of people waving opposing flags; the last thing most people are interested in is to be aware of their own hypocrisy. But to be a mature human, it is necessary. I notice myself doing it all the time, and try to correct my behavior when I catch myself slipping. Not a popular pastime, I'm afraid.
Your flag-waving reference has another connection not thought about often enough: you see a lot of folks waving the flag that represents the very country they left to live in the United States. I'm not sure what they mean by that: Are they proud of the government they left? Are they hoping others from their home country see the flag on tv and wish for their countrymen to illegally join them in the US? Perhaps it's an in-your-face intentional insult to the people who followed the immigration rules before them? If so, why'd you leave? I can't imagine waving the US flag in another country except for perhaps an international sporting event.
Cultural bonds are sticky and generally take at least a generation or two to break.
I get the keep-the-culture idea, especially for family gatherings and never forgetting your heritage. For me the difference is flag waving for Mexico or Guatemala compared to Cuba, for example. We know flying the Cuban flag in Florida is an in-your-face statement to the Cuban government. Flying the Mexican flag on Cinco de Mayo doesn't have the same connotation. It's understandably cultural in nature but it also comes across as in-your-face to the people who came from Mexico by legal means...the same folks that have no desire to live as a Mexican National after they've arrived; similar to many of decedents of European heritage. (I don't know what day Poland gained statehood in 966, but I don't recall having a national day of celebration in the United States with Polish flags raised and flown across the country.) Hence the question being asked.
I'm sure you're referring to the Republic of Ireland flags everywhere on SPD and Polish flags all over on pulaski and dyngus, multiple generations past immigration.
Check my reply to J Boone, below. Is that similar to your references?
It sounds like you don't know about stuff like this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Constitution_Day_Parade
Good point, that's another thing that doesn't get much attention. It's an odd thing to do outside of sporting events. My father emigrated from Austria, but he kept his cultural pride to himself, as people of his generation tended to.
This is an excellent Post.
I would add, critically, if people actually wanted to actually deal with a lot of racism towards immigrants, these worries need to be addressed instead of just dismissing these people as racists and trying to shame them for it -- that only sows further disunity and greater problems while fixing nothing.
A fascinating thing that it has taken me most of my life to learn is that when any creature -- it doesn't need to be human let alone a specific group there of -- feels sufficiently resource threatened ("feels" being key here, it doesn't matter what the reality is, it is the perception, true or not, that matters), it aggressively turns on the other members of its species that it feels are furthest from its in-group. Often a creature's greatest cruelty and savagery is for other members of its species when it feels resource threatened.
I was living in England, before, during, and after the Brexit vote. What was revealing to me was that the poor working class Brits were using the *EXACT* same language and words for the poor Eastern European immigrants who were getting first in line for affordable housing and (unofficially so) for jobs (more useful to companies than working poor natives because their more precarious life situation makes them more exploitable), etc... as the working poor American's were using for Southern Latino immigrants. The working poor Brits then voted for Brexit to try and reduce the white immigrant influx that made them feel so resource constrained just shortly before their American counterparts voted in Trump to "Build the wall" for exactly the same reason. Of note, there were a non-trivial number of second and third generation Latino immigrants who also voted for Trump for this exact reason; not because they are racist against fellow Latinos or "self hating Latinos" or whatever, but because now they too were now part of the American working poor and feel resource constrained and thus threatened by competition from the next wave of immigrants for the same limited and precious resources they and their family need to survive.
Once one really sees this one realizes this form of antiimmigration is not really racism. Sure its indistinguishable in its external effects and symptoms, but the underlying disease here is actually just the perception of resource-limited desperate competition against a growing number of competitors from an out-group. Solve the resource constraint problem and the "racism" problem will start to go away too. Don't and they will eventually be forced to take matters into their own hands which at best will be "build a wall" and heavy immigration crack-down, and at worst can easily become roving gangs murdering immigrants in the streets and even their own homes. That unfortunate possibility is indistinguishable from savage "hate crime" but would actually be "crimes of destitution and desperation."
This is true down to even bacteria. Many people think of E. coli as vicious flesh eating bacteria -- surely humans/mammals must be where they met out their worst savagery right? But as aggressive and dangerous to humans as certain wild strains are, all of them have an extra cruel biological weapon optimized and usable primarily only against other E. coli and totally ineffective against humans or other mammals. It is a little package of proteins, a part of which sticks to the outer cell wall of other E. coli with one of the strongest binding constants measured in nature (off the top of my head the equilibrium constant for binding is on the order of magnitude to the tune of something like 10^50) thusly it is understood to be heavily optimized specifically for other E. coli, and it injects a special endonuclease through said cell-wall into the other E. coli that cuts their DNA after every "T" thereby liquidating their genome extremely quickly. If you want to see the most savage "racist" "hate crimes" for out-groups check out E. coli -- but like most people, it is only motivated by via a distressing sense of competition over constrained resources with out-group E. coli, it isn't "racist" or even "self hating E. coli."
I am firmly of the mind that if the working poor didn't feel like their affordable housing, limited job opportunities, etc... put them in direct competition with immigrants, the vast majority of their attitudes that get taken as racist would likely evaporate before too long. Only the few actually racists among them would remain so and one would find those numbers are actually shockingly small.
I think this is an intended feature, not a bug. Accuse resource-constrained Americans of being racist, domestic terrorists, extremists, then you don't have to cut them a bigger piece of the pie.
I think you are correct. Its a classic divide and conquer approach to the "lower classes" that have been used throughout all societies of history.
Wow! Your answer took it to some other levels. Now I gotta go look up that amazing E.Coli gene weapon.
You make an excellent point, one which can be observed by anyone traveling through Latin America, about how every cultural group feels nervous about the proximate poor who might compete for resources [but who also provide them affordable services].
There is an Arabic saying that captures this sentiment parsimoniously: "Me against my brother; me and my brother against my cousin; me and my cousin against the world."
That Arabic saying is spot on.
I am embarrassed to say I am having trouble finding a reference or more info at the moment. I was in a conference about 7 years ago when someone presented research on that and the concept stuck with me even though the details are getting a little muddled with time. Perhaps it was some other pathogenic bacteria besides E coli -- Staph has a bunch of DNA "Weapons" as well that reduce biofilm formation (and biofilm is the product of dense bacteria cohabitation) so maybe it was them. I am still having trouble searching it at the moment, embarrassingly, or I would link you to something. I really hate failing to be able to properly link people to more info on topics I put forth when asked like this. Sorry about my failure here.
No worries, I couldn't find it either. But it sounds awesome! Let me know if you are able to locate it, but don't lose any sleep over it...
I am not suggesting they are wrong. I just wanted to avoid a debate about that perception being true or not. As you suggest I think their perception is very much true, but stating so often summons some particularly rabid individuals who will accuse me of racism and things for making that claim -- and I just don't feel like dealing with that at the moment. Thus, I (cowardly) avoided making the stronger statement.
"I don’t see how working poor are supposed to stop acknowledging reality regarding their competition."
I am not saying they need to change their views based on nothing. What I am trying to imply is the easiest and most reasonable way for society to get them to change their perception would be for society to alleviate their problems that are actually creating this perception -- i.e. make jobs, affordable housing, and all other critical life resources that they are feeling so squeezed on more plentiful and accessible for them. If they aren't feeling resource constrained they won't be hostile to immigration, and the most reasonable and strait forwards way to make people not feel resource limited, is to help them get the resources they need to live.
I am not at all implying resorting to brainwashing or something. I mean I suppose all morality and decency aside that could also theoretically work, but I find that morally reprehensible and would be hugely personally opposed to such practices.
In completing the full circle of what I was saying: if one wants to actually fight antiimmigration sentiment and the majority of attitudes of what superficially appear to be racism -- we need more jobs, housing, and other critical life resources made more easily available to the working poor. If and when that happens, most of the complaints about immigration and the majority of what looks like racism, will actually just go away on its own. No critical race theory retraining courses or trying to shame people out of these views will alter them -- even though those and related approaches represent like 100% of what society is foolishly trying to solve the problem with (and instead is likely only making the problem much worse by doing so.)
Very good.
AND, how is it better to ship the newcomers to places where they WILL compete in labor markets, rather than to places where the populace has wealth and resources, and which populace has already politically expressed a positive *attraction* to our self-invited new neighbors.
The latter would increase the diversity of the host communities in several ways, including wealth and class diversity. We should ship a few thousand, or tens of thousands, of walkovers to them and envy their cultural enrichment.
I'm visualizing some of the comfortable, "No, we're not *rich*!?" kind of communities where everyone knows exactly what opinion to have on the issue, but where, if those new Americans start trying to operate businesses, sell things, live or make money there, they'd very soon find themselves inspected, zoned, fined, and basically chased back across the tracks, if not the border.
Those folks need to host the immigrants. No excuses.
This is the way conversation has to take place. Thanks for writing this down for the world to read, maybe it will take root.
Thank you. You have articulated my thoughts on this perfectly.
This. This. This.
Yes. Ideally I'm for open borders. But immigrants, extra people in the workforce, might inhibit wage-raises to already-here Americans.
But I also realize the USA's responsibility for WHY these people are coming here: because we fomented coups, the overthrow of left-wing leaders in central and south America, Haiti, to make them more friendly to American business (see marine-general Smedley Butler's, "War is a Racket"). Hillary supported a coup in Honduras that now murders dissidents/ecologists. Nowadays we've put sanctions on Venezuela thus making their lives harder. And we're interfering in Nicaragua because the Sandinistas aren't corporate friendly.
When vulture-capitalists get their way, indigenous people suffer.
So what to do? Reparations to these countries?
I don't know.
Most of that is fiction. Name a central or South American county that works well. None do. So they are attracted to El Norte where they bring their same first generation bad habits so that also can become like those places they fled from. The only thing that saves us is their kids assimilate. But that is not working well now… too many. And event the American kids are no assimilating these days.
There is no legal work without legal work status.
Here it comes. Let's just register them to vote as they step over the border, right? All those folks traveling here just so they can vote in Democratic primaries.
@ DarkSkyBest 🦨
Where in Matt's request did you read that he wanted partisan BS suggestions❔
Not responding to TKN. Replying to "Its taxation without representation. . . they can not vote even though they pay taxes . . ." Sorry. I guess I was triggered by the comment that people who have only been in this country illegally for hours should have the right to go to the ballot box to protest their inequitable treatment by America.
@ DarkSkyBest ❔🤔
First of all, what is a "TKN"?
You portend to be replying to "Craig" due to being "triggered" by his comment, but he said nothing about people here illegally voting Democrat.🙄
While his equating people currently here illegally with our forebearer's issue with being taxed by Great Britain without representation may be a bit of a stretch, there is also no reference to any immigrant voting after being here "for only a few hours" for any reason. 😜
What does any of this BS have to do with Matt's request for his readers to submit suggestions for reasonable & informed discussion❔
As Usual,
EA😎
All of these problems can be worked out, one way or another--if and when you eliminate the influence of the predator class and their political agents. There is no point in even discussing it as long as the system that serves at the whim of a predatory oligarchy remains in place. If that obstacle is removed, then it's just politics--not easy but possible. As it is, the neoliberal system has no reason to find a solution.
We just had an election in Canada and as I was at the voting booth showing my electoral card and photo ID (e.g. drivers license or Medicare card) to prove my identity, I tried to understand again the argument that instituting voter ID in the US would somehow be racist. We Canadians have always required ID to vote, and have never thought anything of it. It seems like a no brainer to me. It’s funny how the left down there constantly talks about emulating our health care system but conveniently ignores the fact that we also have voter ID and merit based immigration for that matter.
I agree, Chris, that we are a nation of stupid contradictions. My wife was born in Canada, but has been a U.S. citizen for more than half a century.
When we visit our relatives in B.C. I am always aware of how it is possible for a mostly "liberal" population to support such reasonable ideas as showing ID to vote and merit based immigration.
Now, if only Canadians could remain polite and civil during hockey season 😋
Hockey triggers us lol
My wife's aged mother turns into something evil during hockey season!
What did she do? Put on a Habs jersey.
The party positions here are no longer based on principles, but power. Rest assured the Republicans would support even for Medicare for All if it would enable them to knock down the Democrats. The Democrats would renounce abortion rights if it would defeatvthe Republicans.
In Ohio, we accept anything north of a Chuck E Cheese rewards card as acceptable ID for voting. A modicum of civic responsibility is not too much to ask.
In order to understand why that charge is made, you'd have to be more familiar with the history of voting requirements in the post-Reconstruction South than you probably are as a Canadian. Long story short: Southern governments used voting qualifications that were facially neutral like "you have to pass a literacy test" in order to prevent blacks from voting. These voting restrictions were not explicitly discriminatory; you don't have to be explicitly discriminatory in order to be intentionally discriminatory. In fact, you'd only be explicit if you were an idiot and didn't realize that coming right out and saying it would get your voter ID law struck down on Equal Protection grounds.
Drivel of course. Study after study has proven that blacks are not, despite what Democrats believe, actually too stupid to get ID cards, and such laws have no effect on black disenfranchisement, not even in Blue states that have them like Biden's own. This isn't something open to interpretation or blathering. The facts are quite clear.
No, it is. You just won't listen to any arguments from the other side about the disproportionate burden that (which isn't one of intelligence, you dope, it's one of means) contradict what you want to believe.
Once upon a time in Quebec we were an ultra conservative Catholic corrupt society and from the time of buying indulgences in the Quebec I grew up in to get a drivers license you had to go through the correct channels like the "right" driving school to get a license. Quebec is now a secular human liberal democracy and the only political crime is corruption. We turned out the best government we ever had because we started sensing the beginnings of the decay of corruption.
You cannot have democracy without trust and when there is no trust there is no democracy.
Reagan destroyed American democracy whatever else one believes about him is moot.
I owe America more than you can imagine but I know she cannot be trusted.
You're correct. The facts ARE quite clear. It's your fuzzy, jaundiced vision that's preventing YOU from seeing them clearly. Solution: more carrots, stronger spectacles. Impossible to exaggerate the importance of diet and proper optometrics in this matter.
Fair enough. But how does that tie in with a hypothetical requirement now in 2021 to simply have photo ID to vote? It doesn’t sound like a high bar for something as important as voting. Again I don’t live in the USA so I won’t pretend to understand all the factors involved.
I think that's a fair point. The argument has to do with how burdensome it is to acquire a photo ID and the degree of discretion that election officials would have in determining if an ID is valid for voting purposes (and how lengthy the appeals process to challenge such a decision would be.)
The general thrust of the argument goes something like this: (1) black people are disproportionately poor, (2) obtaining a photo ID requires time, money, and proof of residency (difficult for homeless or transient people), and (3) therefore the burden that would befall black people (and also Hispanics) is greater than most people realize and is not justified.
Personally I find this argument less convincing than the fact that after the section of the Voting Rights Act requiring federal preclearance was struck down by the Supreme Court (again, you wouldn't know about this in Canada and it requires a fair amount of background to understand), the states that were previously covered by it for having a history of racially discriminatory voting practices all immediately passed voter ID laws.
Interesting. Now that I consider it a little more, every Canadian citizen gets free government issued photo ID as a Medicare card. It would seem like a simple and relatively cheap thing to do in the US as well. How much could it possibly cost to just give everyone an ID? Definitely less than a foreign war lol.
Hey look at us having a civil conversation online lol. It IS possible.
It is all the more remarkable because I usually like to insult the intelligence (and frequently the penis size) of my online debate counterparts. Nonetheless, you have done nothing to deserve such treatment and I have therefore refrained from doing so!
As it stands right now, the only photo ID that most people get is a state-issued (not federally-issued) driver's license. There are some other obstacles to voter ID requirements too: for one thing, some people (like your's tryly!) move fairly frequently. In the past several years, my address has changed multiple times. Imagine you had an election official who insisted that the address listed on your ID had to match your current address. For people who live in one place, that's a piece of cake. For people who have had three or four different addresses in the past year, this is a problem.
An additional issue that influences the voter ID debate in the states is the fact that the left believes that the right have proposed it in bad-faith, because actual voter fraud is virtually non-existent. Proponents of voter ID have been able to find virtually no cases of it (despite giant incentives to do so), much less evidence that it is actually affecting any electoral outcomes, much less at a large scale.
Hate to tell you that in Alberta we have no photos on our health care cards, and, gulp, they are just paper with not even a watermark for security.
I have had to renew my driver's license in the past six months. I moved from the state where it was issued to a new state. I applied to get a new one over two months ago and the DMV STILL!!! hasn't called me back.
I look younger than I am so I haven't been able to use my ID to go to bars or clubs if the bouncers decide to be picky. It's stupid because there is no reason why an expired driver's license cannot prove your *identity*. The reason you show a DL in these circumstances is to prove your identity, not to prove that you're legally entitled to drive.
Anyway, I imagine that certain jerkoff election officials would have little problem denying my right to vote at the polls based on an expired license.
So it's the fault of THE STATE that poor people have trouble getting ID (unproven)?
Still, po' folks can get around, and picture ID is a good thing to have.
Maybe we could just have the Prez mandate that everyone who doesn't have proper ID will be fired if they don't get it. Maybe he could also mandate that state services be delivered efficiently (like where I am) while he's got his mandatin' wand out.
Added bonus: American leftists have no trouble understanding why Canadian customs officials are not particularly friendly to Americans, since we've all heard tales of people visiting Canada in the past to take advantage of their free health care [I'm not sure how accurate that is, but it's a persistent idea]. But when it comes to our own southern border, they somehow see restrictive policies as racist, rather than economic. When I mention the fact that Amnesty International has written reports on the terrible things that happen to migrants sneaking across Mexico's southern border, nobody wants to hear it. People are people; I don't know why that's such a difficult concept. When I traveled through South America, everywhere I met people who were suspicious of immigrants from poor neighbor nations. While it's frowned upon to think in these tribal terms, it's just how we evolved.
I know many of our border guards. The reason Americans are so disliked is because America has abandoned even the pretense of a social contract. "In God we trust" has given way to "What's in it for me?"
In God was trust was a simple betrayal of the establishment clause but; but "What's in it for me" is a denial of everything our species holds dear.
Embrace reality. focus tribalism instincts towards something beneficial or at least neutral. However, it should never be denied
I first worked as a scrutineer in a Canadian election 55 years ago when Pierre Eliot Trudeau was running in my riding. This was the first time I required a photo ID and I am in the midst of composing my letter of disapproval to my MP.
Canadian Philosopher John Ralston Saul said in his The Doubter's Companion that cynicism is Democracy's greatest threat.
There is no reason to question Canadian voters that is why Elections Canada monitors voting throughout the world. Deliberate fraudulent voting is not a problem and has never been a problem because the punishment is far more severe than any possible crime.
America is sick and probably needs only palliative care. We don't need voter IDs just saying I am eligible to vote should continue to suffice when we go to vote.
There is reason we have a loyal opposition and that is without a loyal opposition we have no country worthy of our loyalty and service.
Another reason is that in the United STATES, each state makes up their own rules. In Canada, the rules, regulations, mail in ballots, ID, scrutineering regulations and even physical method of voting, etc are completely identical across all provinces and the three territories. It is a basis to trust an election result, if not the politicians themselves.
It's a little more complicated in the US but that's generally right.
It was once the case that states essentially set their own election rules entirely. Then, after the American Civil War, the 15th Amendment to the Constitution prohibited states from denying the ability to vote based on race. The governments of the South were controlled by the federal government for about a decade after that during a time-period called Reconstruction. The Southern political elites then retook power and later imposed a series of voting restrictions that were facially neutral (i.e. they didn't explicitly say "black people can't vote") but which were intended to disenfranchise blacks. Similar issues existed in other states with respect to Asians, Mexicans, and later Puerto Ricans voting. Long story short: states used their ability to set election rules to effectively disenfranchise non-whites for decades.
Following the Civil Rights Movement, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act in 1965. This law gave the federal government much more power relative to the states in terms of setting election rules. Among other things, the Voting Rights Act required several Southern states (and a couple of other localities) to get pre-clearance from the federal government before they could enact any changes to their local voting practices. This provision of the Voting Rights Act was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013 (I might be getting the exact year wrong, but it was about then) and many of the states that were previously covered by the VRA immediately introduced voter ID laws in their state legislatures. In fairness, many states in the Midwest and Mountain West which were never covered by the VRA also have voter ID laws now, based on a narrative that started emerging in rightwing media following Barack Obama's election that Democrats in big cities were stealing elections, voting the graveyard, etc. It has become a hyper-partisian issue because of the context surrounding voter ID laws. It's not that voter ID laws are inherently discriminatory, it's about who has proposed these laws and why, and what it echoes from history.
There’s no equivalent of Elections Canada here; our election laws are largely designed and administered by cynical partisans for their own advantage, and both parties by and large try to create a situation in which they choose their voters rather than vice versa. So, politicians arguing for voter ID are not actually arguing for a good governance measure that would eliminate a minor and largely theoretical problem, they’re angling to suppress turnout for their opponents. This is pretty clear from their extremely negative stance on universal voter registration, which would eliminate the voter roll irregularities they never tire of bemoaning but remove an obstacle to voting that makes it more difficult for Democrats to win elections. And they wouldn’t support issuing voter ID to everyone at birth or naturalization either, for the same reason. All of the abstract technical problems at issue are fixable, but you’d have to have politicians admit that they are the real problem and agree to hand over a lot of power to a non-partisan body, and American politics is too stupid and pathological for that to happen at the moment.
I lived and my wife voted in a Southside Chicago congressional district that voted for the same useless Democratic congressman by a 93% to 7% margin every two years decade after decade. I never accused the USA of being a liberal democracy but once upon a time it showed signs of evolving into one.
Yeah, and from experience, those incumbent Democrats stop being pious about voting very quickly once you try to run a primary against them (or, say, nominate Bernie Sanders for President).
In my 20+ years of first-hand knowledge of immigration policy, I can tell you it absolutely rewards the scofflaws and punishes those who play by the rules.
I went through the years-long process with my wife - an educated, law-abiding woman who speaks four languages. An asset. Meanwhile she knew people who jumped ahead of her with fraudulent marriages or illegally crossing the border. In one case a guy from a well-to-do Senegalese family came here falsely claiming asylum, got in, and later fraudulently married an Algerian to get her in. He currently sells counterfeit goods on eBay. He's not an asset.
Meanwhile, my brother and sister-in law, both professional, educated, hard-working, law-abiding and lovely people would love to emigrate here. If I were to sponsor their visa, it would take at least 14 years.
That's bullshit.
This exactly. Adding my other comment to provide quantitative support to your personal experiences:
I've directly worked in the immigration system within the USG. One of my main pet peaves undiscussed amongst the punditry is the single-minded focus on undocumented/illegal aliens patently excludes all the stakeholders seeking to immigrate LEGALLY to the United States. I did a quick review of this backlog in 2020, which has only gotten worse post-pandemic:
In the F1-F4 immigrant visa category alone, there are 3.76 million future immigrants (not including their derivative families), which means there are close to an additional 3.76 million Amcit/LPR petitioners. (Note: This does not include the unlimited priority IR1-5 priority categories of immigrants - spouses, minor children, and parents of Amcits -- who number around 750K who are r). If you total all of the potential accompanying family members derivatives together (plus the 215K employment-based immigrant visa beneficiaries waiting in line), there are likely well over 10 million stakeholders in the immigration debate who have been completely ignored -- stakeholders who have paid high fees, navigated the cumbersome bureaucracy, and most importantly waited patiently in line.
Nothing I've seen in the current media coverage or congressional immigration reform proposals (from either side) address these people, focusing the debate solely on illegal/undocumented immigrants and asylum claims. As a legal immigrant myself, and also someone who has filed immigrant visa petitions for family, the complete lack of respect for those who waited in line seems offensive and smells like virtue-signalling. Tell that to the 1.22 million Mexican nationals who are currently patiently waiting for their legal immigration documents (which doesn't even include their derivative family members). Tell the Filipino sibling who has waited and unbelievable 25 years (!) for his immigrant petition to be interviewed. Without PRIORITIZING debate about these 10 million+ foreign and Amcit stakeholders already following the rules in our system, we are not really serious about immigration reforms.
https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/Immigrant-Statistics/WaitingList/WaitingListItem_2020_vF.pdf
Also the pundits and the broder American public seem to misunderstand the difference between refugees and aslyees. We have always and SHOULD have a generous refugee intake, as they are processed in third countries and often wait years to be vetted and find a slot to enter legally into the United States (at the peak during Obama, it was about 100K/year - we should increase that number). However, the aslyum system is for people who make their claims of persecution AFTER they arrive, are unlimited, and are FULL of misrepresentations and abuse (with 80-90 percent invalid claims), both by human traffickers and cartels. Because of the long adjudication wait times, aslyees get to remain in the U.S. and work legally for years, even though the vast majority are not qualified (unlike refugees, where ALL are prequalified before entering the United States.)
In 1776 you sent us 50,000 refugees whose only crime was their being conservatives. I can never forgive America for sending us what would be the base of the Canadian Conservative Party till 2021.
@ Xanadu 👍💡
Truely, your informed and cogent suggestions are would be very interesting to see and hear Matt include in the discussion tonight on HBO.💥
As Usual,
EA😎
That reality strikes a note
Yes our immigration laws are bullshit!!
Good luck, Matt! I point out to people that it seems too coincidental that our "immigration policy" makes it relatively hard to come here legally and permanently, but relatively easy to come illegally and stay for a shorter time, during which the undocumented person is maximally vulnerable to exploitation. I dont think its a mere coincidence that our failure to meaningfully reform our immigration policy results in a default situation that happens to be great for the business community, but is one more thing working to disempower labor rights in the US. The fact that the democratic party not only ignores that angle, but actively tries to smear that conventional, labor party perspective as inherently racist and xenophobic, when its actually rooted in a compassionate and practical awareness of the economic realities in a capitalist society, tells you who the democratic party is truly serving these days.
DNC-hooked unions are actually out there bleating about "the rights of the undocumented." And there's an ongoing campaign to conflate refugees who are fleeing persecution with illegal immigrants who come here to conspire with capital against the native US labor force.
Caesar Chavez, who well understood the law of supply and demand, and its consequences with regard to illegal immigration, would now be looked upon as a hopelessly xenophobic, anti-Hispanic nativist.
This exactly. Bumping up my other comment to add quanitative data to your argument:
I've directly worked in the immigration system within the USG. One of my main pet peaves undiscussed amongst the punditry is the single-minded focus on undocumented/illegal aliens patently excludes all the stakeholders seeking to immigrate LEGALLY to the United States. I did a quick review of this backlog in 2020, which has only gotten worse post-pandemic:
In the F1-F4 immigrant visa category alone, there are 3.76 million future immigrants (not including their derivative families), which means there are close to an additional 3.76 million Amcit/LPR petitioners. (Note: This does not include the priority IR1-5 priority categories of immigrants - spouses, minor children, and parents of Amcits -- who number around 750K and are processed within 1-2 years). If you total all of the potential accompanying family members derivatives together (plus the 215K employment-based immigrant visa beneficiaries waiting in line), there are likely well over 10 million stakeholders in the immigration debate who have been completely ignored -- stakeholders who have paid high fees, navigated the cumbersome bureaucracy, and most importantly waited patiently in line.
Nothing I've seen in the current media coverage or congressional immigration reform proposals (from either side) address these people, focusing the debate solely on illegal/undocumented immigrants and asylum claims. As a legal immigrant myself, and also someone who has filed immigrant visa petitions for family, the complete lack of respect for those who waited in line seems offensive and smells like virtue-signalling. Tell that to the 1.22 million Mexican nationals who are currently patiently waiting for their legal immigration documents (which doesn't even include their derivative family members). Tell the Filipino sibling who has waited and unbelievable 25 years (!) for his immigrant petition to be interviewed. Without PRIORITIZING debate about these 10 million+ foreign and Amcit stakeholders already following the rules in our system, we are not really serious about immigration reforms.
More: https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/Immigrant-Statistics/WaitingList/WaitingListItem_2020_vF.pdf
Ask Maher why he’s afraid to have Glenn Greenwald on his show.
Oh, Maher had Glenn Greenwald on his show once. I won't say it was ugly .. . but it damn sure wasn't pretty.
Bill Maher's view of American foreign policy is basically akin to his view of how other people should treat him: he wants people to regard him as a king. He is a miserable little prick who is incapable of having healthy relationships with other human beings.
Greenwald owned him. It was quite beautiful, actually... Wish Matt would have given a lil more pushback on Maher's Reaganomics & xenophobia as opposed to laughing at his lame jokes...
I really didn't know Maher was a neocon but I suppose it shouldn't surprise me. Was Hillary his ideal candidate or is his brain just as stiff as he looks?
Maher’s not an atheist. His religion is zionism.
@ S.A. Smith 🤣
Are you absolutely sure you could not have made a dumber suggestion❔
☠
Ask Maher why he doesn’t have Christopher Hitchens on his show anymore?
I've worked on refugee and migration issues globally for 20 years. The main reason they keep coming illegally is called pull factor. Simply put the USA keeps allowing it. Once they get here and there are no consequences and they get jobs then everyone back home finds out and more come. It basically is now reached the point where it is totally out of control. It started off like a small storm and now spun out of control into a Cat 5 hurricane. The media and advocates never want to talk about pull factor. The other thing the media never talks about is that most countries actually do protect their borders and do not allow illegals in. When they need workers to fill jobs, they issue work permits and visas and they hold the employers and immigration sponsors responsible for the immigrant. Once they are done working they retire and go back to their country. Until you hold everyone accountable the system will remain broken. The other thing they don't talk about is that probably about 50 to 90 percent of the people claiming asylum are just making it up and scamming the system. I do care a lot about refugees but ultimately the scammers and rule breakers and the ones that end up hurting the real refugees that try to follow the rules. Until we approach this broken system we are headed toward being a 4th world country where anything goes and there is no common culture. That always ends in dysfunction and violence.
Last month, I returned from an international human rights delegation in Honduras exploring the root causes of migration.For 10 days, we met with a range of Honduran communities including rural communities, subsistence farmers, Indigenous groups, community radio leaders, feminist activists, and relatives of disappeared migrants. We asked these communities – What can the United States do to mitigate the violence, combat corruption, and stem the flow of outward migration?
First, the United States must end its funding for the Honduran military and security forces. This aid is sold to the American public as necessary to fight gangs and organized crime, but what we saw is that the guns, training, and drones that we supply are used to suppress activists, organizers, and political opponents who are defending their land and rights.
Second, the United States must end its economic aid to Honduras. This aid is not helping the ordinary people of Honduras. Instead, it is fueling massive development projects such as hydroelectric dams. These projects foster corruption among elites, cause environmental damage, and displace people from their land ultimately resulting in outward migration.
While we only visited Honduras, I think the lessons from our delegation apply to other countries in the "Northern Triangle" (i.e. Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador).
US-based Latin American solidarity groups are pushing Congressional action. There was an amendment introduced by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (MI-13) to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to prohibit “capacity building” funds for foreign security forces (Section 333) in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Unfortunately, that amendment failed a couple of weeks ago and the NDAA passed the House. However, there are still important resolutions in Congress such as the Berta Cáceres Human Rights in Honduras Act (H.R. 1574) and the Honduras Human Rights and Anti-Corruption Act of 2021 (H.R. 2716, S.388) that should be passed.
Demanding justice for Berta Cáceres and so many other Hondurans affected by the US military and security aid to Honduras is the first step towards addressing the root causes of migration.
This is such important information that needs to be widely disseminated. It is becoming increasingly difficult, and deadly, to be a land defender, a journalist, or a human-rights activist in many countries around the world precisely because of these massive mining and development projects.
But, these massive development projects - like hydroelectric power, and massive new mining to supply the needs for EV batteries - are what we're simultaneously told we need to do immediately on an unprecedented global scale to save the climate.
Is this US ‘aid’ actually in support of US corporations exploiting resources of underdeveloped countries, as the US has always done?
This sounds like leftist propaganda and invoking the name of Tlaib doesn't help make your case...
Just because something sounds like 'leftist propaganda' to you doesn't mean it's wrong.
Something is driving immigration, and the US fetishization of war and violence is certainly suspect, and ought to be investigated, along with predatory US-assisted capitalism. We know what happened in the Middle East as a result of US interventions, but the resultant immigrants / refugees moved mostly to Europe and the countries the US had neglected to destroy, like Turkey, so the US public doesn't seem to care. But what's happening in Latin America? The US is hardly paradise, especially for poor people. The case of Honduras is just one of many. Don't let the war industry and their right-wing fans and suckers dominated the conversation. Let's have the facts.
What exactly is "US fetishization of war" more left buzzwords. If you live in the US, you have no idea what poverty looks like. It doesn't really exist in the US. Not like in India, or other third world countries. So you talk around a litany of buzzword sins committed by the US, which have nothing to do with Honduras today. Do you have an actual thing? or just lots of concepts? How about facts?
"predatory US-assisted capitalism" is polysyllabic, but meaningless.
"We know what happened in the Middle East" is what people say when they are repeating something without actually having facts.
@ Addd 👍
That's no joke, that's pretensive stupidity.😜
☠
Certain illusions are continuously promoted by the mainstream media, and a surprising number of otherwise reasonable people believe in them. I have even met people who had faith in the _New York Times_.
@ Jeff GFY‼🐭
Misuse of US aid funding seems like a real issue we hear nothing about. I would love to learn more.
You’re too young to remember, but in the ‘80s people openly discussed in the press:
- What’s the optimal rate of immigration for economic growth?
- Where does immigration depress wages (its effects are NOT all benign despite the gross national averages I’ve heard you quote; ask construction workers in the southwest)?
-Why shouldn’t we demand skills to resettle here the way “progressive” countries like Canada do?
-What is the cost or benefit of concentrated immigration from a single country or region? Why shouldn’t immigrants be more diverse?
-What is the justification of privileging family relations?
-Should voters really have no say at all in immigration policy?
Yes, these topics actually appeared on TV and in newspapers and magazines. Imagine.
Having immigrants assimilate into the culture and understanding of the common values embodied in the Constitution, makes for a more harmonious society. It prevents clusters of poverty like Minneapolis and speeds the economic advancement of the immigrants.
Sevender - Excellent questions. Immigration is such a complex issue, laying out a list of questions like this is very appropriate. I have pretty strong views on many issues, but immigration isn't one of them. Our current system is most likely not actually capable of making solid policy around issues of this level of complexity.
Let’s get back to focusing on LEGAL immigration. Good, honest, hard-working people all around the world are waiting obediently for their green card applications to be processed. Meanwhile we are rewarding throngs of illegals by releasing them into the country, most of them never to be heard from again.
Adding my other comment with quantitative data to your argument:
I've directly worked in the immigration system within the USG. One of my main pet peaves undiscussed amongst the punditry is the single-minded focus on undocumented/illegal aliens patently excludes all the stakeholders seeking to immigrate LEGALLY to the United States. I did a quick review of this backlog in 2020, which has only gotten worse post-pandemic:
In the F1-F4 immigrant visa category alone, there are 3.76 million future immigrants (not including their derivative families), which means there are close to an additional 3.76 million Amcit/LPR petitioners. (Note: This does not include the priority IR1-5 priority categories of immigrants - spouses, minor children, and parents of Amcits). If you total all of the potential accompanying family members derivatives together (plus the 215K employment-based immigrant visa beneficiaries waiting in line), there are likely well over 10 million stakeholders in the immigration debate who have been completely ignored -- stakeholders who have paid high fees, navigated the cumbersome bureaucracy, and most importantly waited patiently in line.
Nothing I've seen in the current media coverage or congressional immigration reform proposals (from either side) address these people, focusing the debate solely on illegal/undocumented immigrants and asylum claims. As a legal immigrant myself, and also someone who has filed immigrant visa petitions for family, the complete lack of respect for those who waited in line seems offensive and smells like virtue-signalling. Tell that to the 1.22 million Mexican nationals who are currently patiently waiting for their legal immigration documents (which doesn't even include their derivative family members). Tell the Filipino sibling who has waited and unbelievable 25 years (!) for his immigrant petition to be interviewed. Without PRIORITIZING debate about these 10 million+ foreign and Amcit stakeholders already following the rules in our system, we are not really serious about immigration reforms.
https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/Immigrant-Statistics/WaitingList/WaitingListItem_2020_vF.pdf
First generation legal immigrant / naturalized US citizen- been here since 1993.
1. H1 B Visa is a huge fraud committed by corporate America to depress wages, fire people at will, replace IT departments with outsourced labor etc etc - just follow what Disney did to their IT department it'll be enough to make your blood boil - all native born, legal immigrants need to fight H-1B tooth and nail.
https://www.epi.org/blog/disney-h1b-scandal-in-spotlight-meet-american-workers-whose-jobs-careers-were-destroyed/
2. Increased immigration of all kinds legal and illegal will lead to labor suppression, recent immigrants of all kind will be willing to work for less in more difficult conditions that makes things harder for all a good field we just slash working conditions
3. Just Google and find out how many grad students in US universities are foreign born I bet it will be more than 80%
The reason universities have these programs open even though they cannot attract any native born/legal immigrants is because they can charge full out of state tuition to grad students who after the finish their studies by paying full tuition will want to stay in US to get H1 b and hopefully green cards - however they use a loophole called OPT that lets them stay in the country for 2-4 years after they finish their graduate studies till they get H-1B / green card - this is adding a large number of students on OPT student visa extension who are willing to work for almost peanuts that depresses wages for everybody else
I have nothing against foreign students however this does two things - it's supports the already obscene tuition that universities charge,( don't get me started on higher education and high tuition scam in this country 😡😡) supports graduate programs that none of the native born / legal immigrants want to join, feeds huge number of additional bodies into the labor force that corporates love because it gives them the upper hand to continue to screw people
In technical fields, Americans don't pursue advanced degrees because the economics doesn't work. The pay for an Engineer right out of school would lose by pursuing a graduate degree isn't made back up for many years. The exception is top first tier schools, which are worth the time.
If you are in China (probably paid by Gov) or India, the economics of the situation are completely different. You wouldn't have earned much anyway, and grad school as a route to visa is a good combo.
When I was in school there was a lab in Mechanical Engineering where all the grad students were chinese all well as the Faculty advisor and they actually had meetings in Chinese... So regardless of ethnicity, Zero english speakers other than the Prof and he probably enjoyed exercisign the language skills.
Exactly, except the top tier schools all other grad programs are basically about feeding more people into H-1B / Green card pipeline and depress wages for all native born/ legal immigrant kids who paid out of their noses to get a college degree - which will be made worthless because of unending skilled labor competition from all over the world due to grad school programs in second tier universities.
I build homes and do remodeling for the elite in the Washington DC suburbs. Most of the people on my constructions sites these days are Latino and usually only the crew lead speaks English. Since these are all subcontractors I have no idea of citizen status but my guess is a significant portion are here illegally. When I was in my teens on job sites working for my dad (about 25 years ago) the job sites were a mixing bowl of races and cultures. As a result of this huge influx of cheap and illegal labor, pay for those jobs, especially starting pay for apprentice positions have stagnated. Most of those positions are no longer solid blue collar jobs unless you have tons of experience. The working class people I know from all backgrounds, including Latino hate it. They don’t dislike illegal immigrants themselves but they hate what the huge influx of cheap labor has done to the job market. Add the additional burden it puts on the school systems in mostly poorer areas and it’s a disaster.
You have to control the border and set some type of merit based system. People tend to confuse merit based with education but that isn’t the case. Merit based is looking at labor shortage data and bringing those types of workers in, whatever that skill set might be. You just have to be careful to not make the same mistake with the h1b visa program where tech companies used it as a way to bring in cheaper labor even though labor existed here, just at a higher price. Those coming into the country under a merit based program must be paid equal to their American counterparts.
None of this means we can’t accept refugees or have allotments for other types of immigrants, it just means the bulk majority should be by a merit based system that protects American salaries. Also, 90% of republicans I know support allowing people to stay that have been here a long time and contribute to our society. They also support DACA.
It seems the major talking point on the left is that all these poorer white Americans became trumpers because they just woke up and realized they were racist but it’s so far from the truth. They just got sold a really crappy set of goods from Democrats. The combination of tilting too much power to unions, combined with horrible trade deals evaporated most of these “good paying union jobs) Then add in a huge influx of cheap manual labor via our immigration policy (if you can call it that) and blue collar, manual labor Americans saw their livelihoods, most of which was passed down through generations disappear over the last 30 years. You’d be pissed too.
As far as deterring illegal immigrants from making the trip, I don’t really see a great way to do it that isn’t going to be incredibly unkind to the people trying to enter our country. It’s kinda the nature of deterrents, they are unpleasant.
The other option is really holding companies responsible for hiring employees that are illegal, the penalties should be steep.
People who deny that unfettered immigration depresses wages on the low end, disproportionately harming working class minorities, are making such a profound statement of ignorance and fantasy land residence. Of course the cretin elected class will deny economics and try to use opposition to mass illegal immigration as a cudgel crying "racist!"
What's so hard to understand is how actual human beings who work for a living because they have to fall for such bullshit guilt trips.
You lost me at tilting too much power to unions. Look at a fucking graph of US union membership over time before you speak again. Embarrassing.
I have a question. How do Haitians afford the time and money to get to the Mexico / Texas border? Who is funding this? And why here? If the USA is a systemically racist, white supremacist, cops hunting down black people such that Lebron is afraid for his and his progeny's lives ... why would anyone from Haiti come here?
Haiti is on a fucking island. Why is no one asking how all these people got to Mexico at the same time and moved as a group?
Thank you for your moment of honesty.
Almost like that narrative is a media-leftist created web of bullshit?
Whoops, that was more than one question.
Fetishizing black men. It really is all you people are about, isn’t it? And the children of course.
Perhaps you should Google a map.
We have a country that is now a net importer of both food and energy and we have open borders? Let me repeat that. We can no longer feed the people who live here with the food we grow ourselves. We also are no longer capable of manufacturing the majority of the products needed to run our country, ourselves. We have a water shortage in America that is growing. We've passed peak food on the planet and peak conventional oil. And people are actually debating whether or not open borders is a good idea? Pinch me. There's a complete disconnect with reality, going on here. This is going to end badly. Very, very, badly.
p.s. The only reason America hasn't gone to hell yet is that the dollar is still the world's reserve currency. The minute, it gets knocked off that perch, which it will be, things will get really really ugly here... You don't want to find yourself in an overpopulated country, that can no longer feed itself.
Wait until October 18 when Congress blunders into debt default.
Some corroborating evidence of your dire proclamations would be appreciated. Thanks.
This is a stupid point. Autarkey is the road to poverty. I don't grow my own food. I'm not starving. Funny enough, now that people are able to trade for food more freely than they were in the past, starvation is much less of an issue. My goodness, Delaware doesn't produce its own bananas or oranges! There's no way that Delaware will be able to feed itself, because it cannot possibly just import food from other places that have a comparative regional advantage making food!
Get your head out of the 19th Century and into the 21st.
It's funny how real idiots like you always show up in the second wave of commenters. And always smell paid somehow.
You don't have a substantive point you nationalistic dope. "I can't argue with what he says but I can claim that he must be on the take because I'm too stupid to understand that other people have different worldviews!" Yet dopes like you get to cross state lines at will.
There's massive starvation on the planet right now. 600 million are malnourished and the hungry number well over a billion... Globalization only works when energy is cheap. And it's getting less cheap by the minute...
Humankind's ability to feed itself isn't the issue. Our ability to trade freely is the issue. The solution to starvation where it exists consists of removing sanctions and other barriers to trade. We do not live in the age of Malthus, we live in the age of Norman Borlaug and have for some time. The issue isn't "there's not enough food" it's "there's too many legal and political obstacles involved in getting it from where's there's too much to where there's too little."
The standard generally accepted business models/theories are about to collapse since they are all based on the idea that you can have unlimited growth forever on this planet. We do indeed live in the age of Malthus. It's starting to unfold in front of our very eyes. It's simple math. The number of people on the planet keeps increasing. The amount of food the planet is producing is decreasing. Starvation and food insecurity are on the uptick. The oceans are been fished clean of fish. We've entered one of the planet's biggest extinction events. The mammals are going, going, gone, the insects are down by 1/3rd since the 1970's, the Amazon rain forest is starting to die back. We're in deep-sxxt trouble... The slide into the abyss has begun.
Well, the problem is that we actually don't. Humanity has more than enough damn food, particularly in the area of renewable agricultural resources. See Borlaug, Norman.
The problem is simply that we can't trade in order to connect supply with demand. This is a political issue, not a scarcity issue. Scarcity was much more of an issue 200 years ago when people in America and Western Europe were routinely dying of starvation during winter in rural areas.
Other commodities might be different (they certainly don't seem that way in practice but maybe they are in principle) but food ain't one of 'em.
There's certainly a lot of waste, and I agree with you that we could feed everyone on the planet right now, if we wanted to. But I don't think the waste is going to go away... Aside from the more theoretical arguments for and against open borders right now, I've driven into L.A. a couple of times this week and the homelessness is staggering. There are people camped EVERYWHERE. On bridges, on sidewalks. EVERYWHERE!!! Our homeless population is exploding. We've got shortages of a lot of goods in our supermarkets. There's even a sign at the local del taco saying they are having supply shortages. Car parts--when I fix my car I'm having to wait much longer for parts than I used to. Everything is starting to break down in America. I'm seeing poverty and need on a level I've never seen it in my life. And we've got open borders?
I know it’s not fashionable these days, but how about simply enforcing the imigration laws on the books. I recall the President took an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution”. The Constitution provides that the President shall “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”. Seems Biden’s policy to ignore Congress’ statutes is facially unconstitutional…why isn’t anyone taking him to court on this? Reminds me of an old HL Menckin quote: Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it GOOD AND HARD!
You saw it while cruising?
Something you don’t hear from the pundits on immigration is that much of the trade/foreign policy the u.s. imposes on some of these countries can Be very politically and economically disruptive And directly result in immigration.
So, look into cia involvement in Central American in recent years. Or how big u.s. agricultural subsidies and trade policy puts the Mexican agricultural worker out of a job. Then they come up to the u.s., get this, to work in agriculture.
If you don’t want immigration from these countries, stop implementing policies that cause immigration. Seems obvious to me but you never hear pundits say this. It usually something along the lines of they are coming here because they want our jobs, etc.
Anyway, hopefully that’s helpful....let me know if you want more details.
Or just go ahead and abolish the CIA. I'm sure we can start an agency that hires operatives who actually want to focus on, say, catching real Chinese spies instead of tyrannizing Americans and fomenting civil unrest.
I have no problem changing US policies and, as someone below notes, abolishing the CIA immediately. But there is no way US policy changes are going to be sufficient to turn Mexico and Central America into flourishing countries where residents no longer see the US as a place worth immigrating to on a time scale that addresses hundreds of thousands of people streaming into the country every month right now. You're talking about reforms that might have the desired effect in a a generation. I don't thi k it's fair tk the average working citizen in the US to say sorry, you have to accept the lack of any meaningful border control for a few more decades to make up for the evil actio s of your country's elites.
Thanks for the response James...
I think the question was “is there anything obvious the U.S. could or should be doing differently, policy-wise, something we maybe don’t hear from pundits?”. I think I answered that, especially the part about the pundits.
I think you might be addressing/expressing something else...which is okay, of course.
Also, you covered a lot of ground in your short statement; timing, fairness (fairness? Are you really gonna open that can of worms?), meaningful border control, etc. This makes it difficult to respond. Especially in the forum.
Okay nuff said:-)
Completely agree
Agree.
Totally agree.
We've been looking into citizenship in Canada, Ireland, and France. If one is young and in a desirable field, chances seem fair to good. In Quebec, which I love, one has to speak French- if you are over 40, forget it. In most Western countries, older applicants must show proof of considerable funds, pay for health care, and in many cases "invest" in the host country to the tune of $500,000 to $ 1 million. Above all else, applicants may not be a burden on host country citizens. That is fair for the country's own citizens. The amounts also seem extortionate. Want to get out of the US? Hand over a million. In some countries, you get it back after 5 years. One realizes that America has been enormously generous and open-the same America that's constantly accused of being racist. At the same time, it's obvious that that generosity has been abused, that immigrants, not the United States, are determining our policy by flouting laws. There's a difference between being generous and overrun. Compared to other Western countries, the U.S. hasn't much cared about its own citizens for quite a long time. It's time to care, and time to cut back. In terms of cohesion, things are pretty much a mess, thanks to CRT and precursors. The activists stoke division. That's a shame; many Hispanics are enterpreneurs-- they like capitalism.
We should admit those who can be self-sufficient, educated, are needed by industry, who apply legally, who will not be a burden on U.S. citizens, who either pay for their own health insurance or who have jobs lined up. We should spread out the countries applicants come from. With leftists pitting groups against one another, California protests with raised fists and shouting the primacy of "ethnic studies," we need to worry about cohesion and stability-- a bona fide refugee program, legal immigration based on U S need, and enforce the law.
It is in the news this morning that DHS has issued new directives that preclude deportation of certain groups, elderly, etc. and which includes "activists." Just what this country needs more of.
Hear, hear.
1) U.S. should have a points system for potential immigrants like Canada and Australia. The Green Card lottery is a joke.
2) Mass immigration has been a key component in the war on the middle class. What happens when you increase the supply of anything? The price drops. Letting China into the WTO and immigration, both legal and illegal, have devastated the wages of the American middle class. And "the elite" who have benefited are laughing all the way to the bank.
Immigration is very much our business because mass infusions change the outcome of our elections, inexorably, state by state. New Jersey used to swing between Democrat and moderate Republican governors, some of the moderate Republicans, not the awful Christie, were really good on wildlife and the environment, better than the Dems. Given demographics, say experts, New Jersey is now impermeably blue -- there is no more choice, like California. No more choice us a strange feeling, and not a good one. Immigration demographics made the dismantling we are seeing today possible. The black/brown/gender axis replaced the hoped for but never obtained revolutionary working class to achieve the farrago of Marxism and nihilism we see today They provide the necessary numbers to smote the dominant society. The Democrats seem to be led by the nose by its radicals. The Republicans are feckless and anti - environment. Only a third party can save the U. S. The first presidential candidate must be known and loved.
Just to clarify, some of our setups- like industry regulating itself/ so cozy with major state and federal regulatory departments, need changing. People including me are chisling that down through existing channels of a liberal democracy. You had most people at hello in race. We didn't need Marxist collectivism to fix these things. We simply needed to really, really follow our own founding principles and constitution.
We must be the only country which is easier to immigrate into illegally than legally. But it is too much of a political windfall for both parties for them to fix it. We could accommodate many more legally and avoid some of the border issues if we wanted to.
I am an immigrant who has lived here for 30 years. I am also very conservative so I believe US laws need to be respected and enforced. That being said there seems to be a great need for labor force and there are jobs that Americans don't want to do or don't do well. It includes me.
I believe there is one thing we can do to resolve this issue. Something Eisenhower did in the 50s. Most of the immigrants coming here from Central and South America don't care about the citizenship or being able to live here. They are here for purely economical reason-they want to work, earn and support their families. Why cant we offer them multiple entry work visas. They wont have to deal with coyotes, will earn fair wages and pay taxes. What's most important they can leave their kids at home knowing that they can come and go any time they want to. It is expensive to support their extended families here. Dollar has a lot more value at their home countries. This way they don't have to live of the government tit, we know exactly who is here and where. Doesn't this seem like a sensible solution? Both Repubs and Dims will lose their election talking points. It will help the economy even if they send their earnings home.
I could agree to this, esp if there are some criteria for who is needed for what work. One problem is that the Dems are feeding big business and affluent homeowners with plenty of cheap and scared labor (they're here illegally and afraid of getting noticed). Flooding the low income low skill work force with cheap labor kills incomes for Americans who are trying to get into the workforce and live off low incomes while learning how to get better jobs. Employers don't like paying higher wages or actually having to change how they do things (like providing ongoing skills training to their work force). The Democrats of today are indeed not the liberals of yore. They're despicable. And I keep thinking of the upheavals in Europe since the Syria killing started and Europe went to open borders (because Germany thought it was a good idea - not a really democratically arrived at choice). I also like the idea below - incentivize growth and manufacturing in Central America rather than China - you won't have data theft or trade secrets theft to contend with either.
we used to have that in California, and as a former farmer there you are right, most don't actually want to live here they just want to work
The reality is that both sides of the aisle are complicit in this mess. The reason that the GOP objected to Trumps logical wall strategy was because they are in the bag with big manufacturing to meet the need for low wage worker supply. These manufacturers want to keep the flow of illegals for their own economic reasons but on the face of it scream to the rafters when the duplicitous dems want them here to fill voter pools. What’s clear to everyone is that speeding up the legal immigration process and placing restrictions on the standards and qualifications we use for assessing new citizens needs to be reevaluated and enforced. Right now no one really wants this fixed because it serves too many useful purposes both financial and political for a solution to be implemented.
Where the chamber of commerce plays a big part on both sides of the aisle. And betrays the American People...
Better forget about that 'aisle'. As George Carlin said, 'They got a club and you ain't in it.' There's no aisle in the club -- just one between the club and everybody else.
Go get em Matt! Not sure my wiring allows for watching a full episode of BM but at least he, like yourself, has begun to recognize the dangers and inconsistencies of the progressive movement. On immigration it is not that hard. Dont tell me you are not all in on open borders when every policy prescription you advocate directly results in just that. It is also glaringly obvious that Trump was far better at managing this situation than any of his predecessors and certainly better than the current clown car. It is amazing, given their supposed concerns gor the Black community specifically and lower class Americans generally, that allowing millions of unskilled laborers into the country is a hill they are willing to die on. Every hardworking Mexican I know is steadfastly against this policy and the polls of the last month indicate that my random sample is consistent with the broader trend. What are the D’s possibly thinking? As I disagree with their approach to governance in general, i take solace when their fecklessness plays out so openly for all to see. So please dont be too hard on them. What is that old maxin for dealing with adversaries? Never interrupt them when they are digging their way out of a hole? Safe travels.
Simple - do what we can to stop all illegal immigration, and deport thoe who are here illegally.
I am a blue-collar worker and these hordes of 3rd world people depress wages for people like me. You journalist types can sit in your ivory towers and type on your keyboards and you are unaffected.
Meanwhile, the big corporations feed off of this source of cheap labor and make oodles of profit, allowing them to squeeze out small businesses.
Just admit it already - Trump was right. We need to build a wall. And we should have done it decades ago.
Since Bill had become so completely out of touch - a limousine liberal - I’m hoping you bring some subversion to the table. Please shoot for something between a full-on Greenwald and a Krystal Ball smirk.
Glen's got a pretty good smirk too. His recent appearance on Dore is great.
That smirk tho.
Enforce the laws! The government should not be subsidizing cheap labor.
Right! We should subsidize overpriced labor!
America cannot remain America if it does not have secure borders. It will, and already is becoming, something else. It’s the same with the Constitution, it’s only value is in people willing to follow its statutes. If you desecrate the very tenets that make America and it’s Constitution worthy, as many are, then you destroy those protections that gave you the right to destroy it. In other words we are experiencing self destruction, we are the enemy within.
The Constitution does not have "statutes." Statutes are laws passed by legislatures. The Courts strike down statutes if they violate a provision of the Constitution.
I have a sneaking suspicion that this elevated rhetoric about "the Constitution" is coming from someone who has not read the actual written document and is instead using "the Constitution" as a metaphor for "the cultural norms that I am used to, even though those are not written in the actual Constitution."
In 1789 laws, or statutes, were written at large by the legislature. Statutes derive their power from the Constitution, the two are not mutually exclusive.
Your suspicions are unfounded, I have read and studied the Constitution since I’m an immigrant waiting to become a citizen here. It behooves me to study it, unlike most natural born citizens.
By the way, your “cultural norms” are enjoyed because you have a written Constitution unique to America. You do not enjoy them by fiat, they are there because someone fought for you to enjoy them and bothered to enshrine them in writing.
No, they are two separate things. The Constitution doesn't have statutes. Those words in fact mean separate things. The Constitution has "clauses" and "provisions." Statutes are laws passed by legislatures. They mean different things.
I do not believe that you have actually read the Constitution. If you have read it, you forgot what it said. You are instead substituting what the actual document says for what politicians and the media tell you it says, and since that's what you think it *should* say, you probably don't question it. If you really are familiar with the Constitution, you would know Article III cold or the holding of Wickard v. Filburn cold. You might even know that the Bill of Rights didn't apply to state or local governments prior to the Civil War. Didn't know this off the top of your head? Then you don't know what you're talking about, which explains why you couldn't even use the word "statute" correctly a moment ago.
The "cultural norms" you are probably talking about are things that simply have no relationship to the written Constitution. Are you afraid of FOREIGNERS moving into the United States? Guess what? The Constitution doesn't say anything about immigration or cultural change. It's the law of American government, not the law of American "culture," which bears virtually zero relationship to what it was in 1789 as evidenced by my ability to marry a black woman and the fact that I cross state lines every day for work.
That's so rude. The person was simply making an overarching point.
Thank you. But I suggest you don’t engage with this poster, they’re behavior is crass and arrogant. Adds nothing to civil discourse. Shame they claim to be a constitutional expert, yet can’t practice basic rules of civility.
The fuck does "civility" have to do with the Constitution? I'd say things like "knowing what Article III is about" is a tad more significant to the subject matter.
His overarching point was stupid and he got what he deserved.
Rude.
You're embarrassing.
I'd be much more embarrassed about lying about having read the Constitution.
Hahahaha, you clearly use these spaces to strut your self proclaimed superior knowledge over others. Statutes are made pursuant to the Constitution, I can’t help you if you don’t, or won’t, understand that. By the way, getting things down “cold” doesn’t necessarily indicate an understanding of any subject. But I’m very heartened by your interest and knowledge of the Constitution, well done you.
As to your absurd accusation about my fear of “FOREIGNERS”, if you knew me you’d know that’s laughable too. But you don’t know me. So here’s a suggestion, try not to make so many assumptions about others you have no idea about, it’ll help you in the future. You have a good day now.
My assumption that you don't know dick about the Constitution or how to use legal terminology correctly have been confirmed by your repeated failures to do so in this exchange. Ain't nothing "self-proclaimed" about my superior knowledge of the Constitution, you have demonstrated that you don't know diddly squat about the document, can't use terms correctly, and don't know basic facts about the document or American Constitutional law more generally that indicate any level of credibility whatsoever. You're engaging in political rhetoric about "the way things oughtta be" which ain't Constitutional law, jack.
The lawmaking authority of the legislature is codified in Article I; this doesn't mean that the Constitution "has statutes," dummy. The Constitution has sections, Articles, clauses and provisions. It doesn't "have statutes." This is the kind of thing someone who is making things up based on what he heard from politicians and cable news would say.
This conversation is over as far as I’m concerned. I don’t engage with people who stoop to hurling insults and name calling. No one needs it, it edifies no one, and it’s puerile and peevish behaviour. Bye.
I have a sneaking suspicion this comment is written by an anti white racist looking to guilt wash his privilege by calling white working class americans "racists" while overly praising his Costa Rican lawn boy.
Ah yes, no one is more put upon than The White Man. You're just bitter that white men don't have the same respect and status in society that you've grown used to, and you sure as hell haven't read the Constitution. By the way, I live in a cheap apartment. I don't have a lawn, and if I did I sure as hell wouldn't call someone a "lawn boy."
To others: this is the literal insanity that coddled minds have been driven to by the woke madrassas operating out of what used to be our schools. Every word of this robotic script is part of the catechism of the so-called “critical”cult, and its adherents must mindlessly repeat their nostrums to tamp down their poorly controlled and ever rising anxiety. This is what you get when you vastly overpraise mediocre children, leave them struggling to find value in their lives and tolerate their tantrums in the vain hope they’ll grow out of them. Unfortunately, they won’t. They just get worse and worse, and respond ever more poorly to treatment.
No one needed to teach me how to recognize the psychology of bitter white people. I learned it through being exposed to them and you're one of them. You feel that you are losing your status in the society that you feel entitled to so you blame minorities and claim it's everyone else who is sick in the head. It's pathetic. Face it, you're falling behind and it's no one's fault but your own.
Thomas Jefferson would be appalled that Mexico and Canada were not part of the union...the only way the US can survive is by spreading, not retracting.
The US tried -- at least one invasion of Canada, and various operations on Mexico that removed about half of its territory. It turned out that the inhabitants of these countries did not want to be ruled by the US and put up sufficient resistance to avoid that fate. Nor, apparently, did all those White American Protestants want to put up with a lot of Roman Catholic people speaking Spanish and French.
Please push Maher on BDS censorship.
That'd be a good one.
I'm a legal immigrant to Britain (25 years now). What needs to happen is that the government gives a sh*t about its own people. As soon as wages in one sector go down on account of mass immigration, this sector needs to be protected. You see it in reverse right now. There is a painful absence of lorry drivers which means we experience fuel and some food shortages (food shortage = you have to select from fifteen rather than sixteen different types of cheddar).
The Remainer psychodrama unfolds like this: we warned you this would happen with Brexit! Those wonderful Eastern Europeans have all left ... they don't want to live in your racist, homophobic hellhole. Three cheers for the country going to the dogs!
The truth is that of course companies were hooked on cheap labour and dreadful working conditions, and now wages and conditions need to correct (upwards), which might mean that your latte costs five p more.
I think a state should operate along the assumption that they owe their citizens if not a living, then at least the conditions to earn one.
Sincerely appreciate the invitation, but when are we average Americans allowed to have thoughts on immigration? I would love to hear the rationale for why American nurses, 12-year olds, NBA players, and pregnant women are required to be vaxxed and masked, but thousands of illegal border crossers with unknown medical histories are put on mass transit and shipped throughout the country. I would love someone to tell me why Afghans are willing to hand off their infants over walls to American soldiers, why millions of people of color are coming to this country, if it is so racist. I am entitled to know why I am supposed to follow every BS directive from my government, which by its immigration non-enforcement is an accomplice to the misery that is human trafficking. The only thing we average people get from the current regime and the pundits is, "shut up and sit down." And, you must wear a mask.
I could write something, but this sums up my thoughts perfectly. Most legal immigrants, imo, have more common sense, a better work ethic, and a greater appreciation of this country than a significant chunk of the populace. That said, having a hypocritical sewer grate on the Mexican border does no one-citizens or illegals a damn bit of good in the long run. I have seen estimates that say 20% of illegals have covid-yet the Biden admin does a work version of the 3 monkeys and willfully ignores common sense and it’s own mandates on the American people.
“I am entitled to know why I am supposed to follow every BS directive from my government, which by its immigration non-enforcement is an accomplice to the misery that is human trafficking.”
Stealing this, thanks.
Also, we must wear a mask, but our social betters and government officials (such as Cal. Gov. Gavin Newsom, and San Francisco Mayor London Breed) — they don’t have to, if the “spirit moves them” not to.
I have many thoughts about immigration but not a lot of time for more than a drive-by right now.
Biggest issue though is that the same people pushing for mass immigration - whether low-skilled illegal or higher skilled H1-B - is that the people that get the benefits aren't the ones paying the price. In the case of low-skilled illegal immigration, it's the poorest neighborhoods that pay the price via lowered wages, raised rents, costs on pressure on schools and hospitals. For higher skilled H1-Bs, it's the US population who have spent the money for a STEM education only to be laid off and replaced. The ones who get the benefits as a result of cheap labor award themselves virtue-signalling priviliges, while the ones who can least afford it pay the price.
One solution -which i generally offer to the sound of crickets - is for those who benefit to absorb some of the costs for a change. Open up their neighborhoods to the newcomers by building low-cost housing for them, welcome them into their schools, pay for their medical care.
I agree mainly. But this sentence of yours raises questions in my mind: "For higher skilled H1-Bs, it's the US population who have spent the money for a STEM education only to be laid off and replaced."
Are kids truly educated in STEM fields getting laid off? I doubt this. The issue this raises for me is the relentless drive by almost the entire educational power structure to dismantle standards and dumb down our curriculum in the name of a totally bogus "anti-racist" racial equity drive. No cops in schools and no racially disparate disciplining, so no real classroom control; eliminate high-stakes testing of all sorts; fill up even the math and science curriculum with CRT hectoring no matter how counter-productive of anything worthy it is. It is no wonder we NEED more H1-Bs. I am less worried about someone properly educated in a STEM field and doubt they have real employment problems. I am more worried about our refusal to give our own kids the basics they need to get properly educated in such fields.
It's not "kids" who get laid off. They never get jobs in the first place. If I am Microsoft, I can hire a Phd from India for $30k why hire an American with a BS for more money? The ones getting laid off are Americans with years of experience, who appear expensive. They appear expensive until you realize that the Indian education system teaches rote memorization and no problem solving. Large corporations run by MBAs ...
Yep, exactly
Have a look around the web at the companies who have done mass layoffs. This will get you started (sorry for the long link) -
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=companies+who+have+laid+off+workforce+for+H1B+visas&spell=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiLtfSbo6nzAhWumuAKHf2fDiAQBSgAegQIARAx&biw=1973&bih=1141&dpr=2
Here's just one - and have a look at the comments too.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/us/last-task-after-layoff-at-disney-train-foreign-replacements.html
Increasing wage competition has always been a feature of American immigration from day one and a feature of complaints about it -- see the labor union role in exclusion of Asians in the late 1800s. I am willing to grant that pressure may exist higher up the wage scale levels among trained workers of all sorts. H1B problems no doubt add to this. But my concern is with the bottom of the society and that does not include people with meaningful STEM training and skills. Urban schools and dysfunctional underclass communities that result in 10 percent of kids reading at grade level (grade level being no big feat itself) result in workers already totally dependent on unskilled low-pay work which millions of unskilled illegals ensures will remain low pay. When I talk about STEM, I am not referring only to IT workers at Disney. I am referring also to skilled trades of all sorts, health care and medicine, engineering, etc. Our schools, K-12 and higher ed are not generating enough students competent in these fields. Meanwhile they are busy adding whole new layers of ethnic studies courses, racial re-education training, etc., with layers of parasitical DEI bureaucracies and dumbing down standards for everything. This is the social and economic crisis we face.
Yeah, you're totally right there. Although diversity can be a pretty lucrative field these days. Maybe that's the job market of the future it's a good time to be old.
Here's another -
https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/10/17/h-1b-uber-snatches-up-more-foreign-worker-visas-as-it-lays-off-hundreds-of-employees/
Just because one may loathe Trump doesn’t mean he was wrong about everything. He seemed to have good control of illegal immigration before his admin left. New admin was hell bent on undoing everything he did because it was all demonized in the campaign. Biden admin needs to suck it up and go back to prior admins policies on this issue —“remain in Mexico” for one. Maybe even (dare I say ) finish the wall. Del Rio seems to be in obvious need of a barrier.
Incentivize companies to manufacture and create jobs in Central America rather than China.
excellent point.
I've directly worked in the immigration system within the USG. One of my main pet peaves undiscussed amongst the punditry is the single-minded focus on undocumented/illegal aliens patently excludes all the stakeholders seeking to immigrate LEGALLY to the United States. I did a quick review of this backlog in 2020, which has only gotten worse post-pandemic:
In the F1-F4 immigrant visa category alone, there are 3.76 million future immigrants (not including their derivative families), which means there are close to an additional 3.76 million Amcit/LPR petitioners. (Note: This does not include the priority IR1-5 priority categories of immigrants - spouses, minor children, and parents of Amcits). If you total all of the potential accompanying family members derivatives together (plus the 215K employment-based immigrant visa beneficiaries waiting in line), there are likely well over 10 million stakeholders in the immigration debate who have been completely ignored -- stakeholders who have paid high fees, navigated the cumbersome bureaucracy, and most importantly waited patiently in line.
Nothing I've seen in the current media coverage or congressional immigration reform proposals (from either side) address these people, focusing the debate solely on illegal/undocumented immigrants and asylum claims. As a legal immigrant myself, and also someone who has filed immigrant visa petitions for family, the complete lack of respect for those who waited in line seems offensive and smells like virtue-signalling. Tell that to the 1.22 million Mexican nationals who are currently patiently waiting for their legal immigration documents (which doesn't even include their derivative family members). Tell the Filipino sibling who has waited and unbelievable 25 years (!) for his immigrant petition to be interviewed. Without PRIORITIZING debate about these 10 million+ foreign and Amcit stakeholders already following the rules in our system, we are not really serious about immigration reforms.
https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/Immigrant-Statistics/WaitingList/WaitingListItem_2020_vF.pdf
Legal immigration does not feed the war, imperialism, and cop industries; therefore, the US government and ruling class have little interest in it. Hence the phenomena you observe.
Also the pundits and the broder American public seem to misunderstand the difference between refugees and aslyees. We have always and SHOULD have a generous refugee intake, as they are processed in third countries and often wait years to be vetted and find a slot to enter legally into the United States (at the peak during Obama, it was about 100K/year - we should increase that number). However, the aslyum system is for people who make their claims of persecution AFTER they arrive, are unlimited, and are FULL of misrepresentations and abuse (with 80-90 percent invalid claims), both by human traffickers and cartels. Because of the long adjudication wait times, aslyees get to remain in the U.S. and work legally for years, even though the vast majority are not qualified (unlike refugees, where ALL are prequalified before entering the United States.)
A common argument by my Liberal colleagues is “how can you be against immigrants, weren’t your parents immigrants?” To that I always answer “my grandparents came through Ellis Island and were documented. No one is against immigration, what we are against is the conscious violation of our border to “skirt” the system. Biden’s policy supports Human Trafficking, the very thing that Obama set out to defeat. Human trafficking isn’t just young women in the sex slave trade, its paying $8,000 to a Coyote who might leave you in a sweltering trailer to die if he sniffs the authorities.
Matt you were such a gentleman on the show last night. You gave Bill the rope and he hung himself.
I agree! Going on Maher seems to imply no dialogue but getting hammered with CNN and MSNBC nonsense. Ugh. Matt is too clever for Maher.
While all human beings should be, and legally must be, treated in as dignified a manner as possible and granted the ability to apply for - and receive when appropriate - asylum in the US, large scale movement of peoples is a symptom of a wider issue.
US foreign policy, both overt and covert, in particular through hard power such as military action, sanctions, coup plots and even 'aid', as well as via exploitative economic treaties such as NAFTA have played a major, if not the major, role in destabilising country after country in Latin America for generations.
The US behaves like an empire. A neo-colonial empire. And if people want to the reduce the flow of men, women and children from South to North then they should demand that the US (and other states) cease and desist all policies of exploitation and destabilisation towards those countries from which those human beings are fleeing.
Global warming and climate change is also fueling conflict and undermining the sustainability of life in many places already.
So, end imperialism and deal with global warming and we'll see a major reduction in people desperately fleeing their own societies and communities.
Piece of cake, I know.
How about you stop worrying about the global warming fallacies and work on actual problems... Global warming is NOT fueling conflict. China is fueling conflict because of Xi's egocentric mania and a population bubble. Islam is fueling conflict globally in the psychotic pipe dream of establishing a caliphate, where women and infidels can be murdered at will.. How about dealing with actual problems? and letting go of fantasies.
Most obvious thing is we need to stop contributing to the problems that create the necessity for large groups of people to flee their home countries. We are largely responsible for the problems in several Central American countries and Haiti.
even though saying anything good about former president Trump is taboo, he actually early on in his administration suggested that the 1..5 million DACAS be given a path to citizenship,
of course he wanted the wall in exchange. Unfortunately no one wanted to discuss this proposal, democrat or republican. So there was NO discussion. I've always thought that was a good place to start.
Of course that encourages the next round of people carrying their children across the desert... Many to their deaths or sex trafficking.
If this is a reply to my comment I have to respectfully disagree. I think this would
have encouraged a real discussion on immigration policy which is badly needed,
and not easy. At the same time it would have allowed those DACAs who were interested in becoming citizens a pathway. My sense was that Trump thought of these people (DACAs) as being productive potential citizens.
Bullshit.
Well yes and no. Saying we are responsible for Haiti is a joke. Some of the other countries sure. Also it’s generally not us, but a few elites and large corporations 80-100 years ago in a lot of cases. Don’t exculpate these countries from their own mismanagement. We have been a help and a hindrance at various times.
You should read up on the two centuries long history of US involvement in Haiti
I Yeah I am well aware of it. The US did not mettle that much, and 90% of the wounds of Haiti were inflicted by themselves or France. The fundamental issue with Haiti is you had a large population whose sole economic value for supporting themselves was doing horrible backbreaking labor on sugar plantations. they rebelled, got their freedom, and collectively decided they didn't want to do that anymore.
Which is fine, but they had, and have no other main economic produce or way of supporting their high numbers, and that the other country's weren't particularly friendly with or eager to bend over backwards to help a poverty stricken country of rebelled slaves is not some giant surprise, nor should it have been the expectation.
Haiti is mostly full of poor people because it is too full of people and there is no real economic value to the country or its land/institutions. It was that way in 1830, 1850, 1900 and today, with or without US meddling.
The BEST thing that could have happened to Haiti and Haitians would have been MORE US meddling and colonization honestly.
Long ago in a galaxy far far away. Haitians have an extremely corrupt society. It is Nigeria on this side of the Atlantic. Involvement 2 centuries ago is interesting, but not a good enough excuse.
Any discussion of immigration policy is absolutely pointless until we can get enough people to agree that we're even a nation with borders.
That said, I'll DVR it.
Well, thanks for shitting on my weekend. :D
Mayor Pete's creation of a 'no fly zone' so no media drones could film the mess was particularly egregious.
Bill Mare interrupted Matt over and over when he was owned by Matt’s arguments…what a joke.
And when Maher wasn't talking over Taibbi, he would simply say ... . 'moving on'.
On more than a few occasions, it was clear Maher had no idea what Taibbi was even talking about.
*thought some of Matt's facial expressions priceless .. . and you don't get that in his writings.
Ending the war on drugs. Profits from the black market drug trade are the primary funding source of the violent cartels and gangs in many central and South American countries. The violence they are committing are in service of securing their territory and future drug trade profits. This is in turn the violence that pushes so many migrants to flee these countries.
End the war on drugs and you end a major driver of refugees fleeing violence from Latin America.
I get a sense that the Democrats and Republicans are particularly dishonest on 2 issues; immigration and abortion. They both appear to find it convenient not to resolve these issues so that they can use them as distractions during their campaigns.
How about just enforcing the laws that we have already. Then, if we want to adjust, then Congress should do their job and modify the law.
Big Agriculture and other large companies who rely on undocumented labor and the legislators they donate to turn a blind eye to the “ laws “. No citizen wants to work at the poultry factory . Would you chose to work there or at a Mc Donald’s if you had no skills or education ? Who will do all the jobs citizens don’t want to do ? So many undocumented people worked in the clean up at the WTC after 9/11. None of them got healthcare or compensation. After every disaster who is always present at the clean up ? The laws need to change. We can no longer turn a blind eye to the labor shortages and give legal status to the folks who have been doing all the thankless but necessary jobs.
Then elect people that will change the laws the way you want them. We are a nation of laws (unless you live in California, Oregon or Washington) and unless you want the U.S. to turn into California, we need to enforce the laws on the books. Your sarcastic comment about "laws" shows you how far we as a society have slid. Without laws, we will not exist for long. That's why progressives are trying to tear down our laws - they want to destroy America as it has existed and create their own social utopia.
Horrendous and low-paid jobs should cease to exist, along with economic wars that make life in neighboring countries intolerable. Given those conditions, a hefty fine could be leveled against employers who hired people without work permits.
In what universe is an "America first" foreign policy/immigration policy a bad thing? Would love to hear how a lefty kook answers that, aside from the comically predictable word salad with hamina-hamina-hamina dressing.
Well, one might start with the thought that most of the world is connected, physically, economically, and to some extent politically. And so, bombing the Middle East leads to trouble in Europe, for example. Just as on an individual level, it does not help me to impoverish and ruin my neighbors, so it does not help us as a nation to destroy other nations. Does that seem like word salad to you? It seems plain and obvious to me.
Those aren't foreign/immigration policies that those who favor an America First foreign/immigration policy would endorse, so I am not sure what you're getting at. Were we destroying other nations from 2017-2020 when a declared America First foreign/immigration policy was in effect? If so, please list them for scrutiny.
The policies and practices of the US ruling class and government have been pretty consistent at least since 1941 (see the Atlantic Charter) when the US took over the role of the British Empire. Mr. Trump may have soft-pedaled some of the triumphalist imperialism of his predecessors, but he didn't eliminate it -- indeed, he could not without being omnipotent. Several countries were attacked in one way or another on his watch, however. So we have a government and a ruling or leadership class who (1) consistently favor aggressive imperialism toward other countries and (2) consistently favor a seemingly contradictory immigration policy. That should tell us something.
that's all fine I agree to some degree, but what I was responding to was your (at minimum) implication that under a declared America First foreign and immigration policy we were "destroying other nations" and that's clearly not the case.
Okay. To flesh it out a little, 'America First' looks to me like a style note rather than a basic policy. The American ruling class is fine with America as long as it serves as their instrument; when it doesn't, they'll become globalists. The tension between the two strategies goes back to the beginning of the 20th century, where Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson neatly mixed together a brew of nationalist globalism, that is, the U.S. was supposed to lead the world, by example and suasion if possible, by force if necessary. The scheme required overcoming General Washington's counsel against foreign entanglements, with which many Americans then agreed. An empire is surely a foreign entanglement par excellence. But the primary purpose of the r.c., whichever foot they're standing on, is to make the world safe for capitalism and those who lead its institutions. As far as I can tell from far away, Mr. Trump did not deviate much from this program in material fact. Empire, of course, requires that one destroy a recalcitrant country now and then.
well that's the problem, then. you, for whatever reason, refuse to take a declared and defined (by actions, if nothing else) America First foreign/immigration policy seriously. so given that, of course you're going to add all kinds of context that lead to some kind of gripe against capitalism or whatever your larger issue is with the USA or its economic system.
the original point, however, that the US was "destroying" countries during the Trump years, remains invalid.
"As far as I can tell from far away, Mr. Trump did not deviate much from this program in material fact."
I respectfully, but forcefully, disagree. I can't imagine how anyone can come to this conclusion. His posture towards the trade and currency abuses of China alone are a major swerve from his predecessors. Not sure how you missed that, regardless of how far away you're looking from.
How else will Bezos and WalMart find their nonunion workers?
On immigration, My grandparents came here in the early 1900’s, went through Ellis Island and made their way to lower Manhattan to start their new lives. My wife is a first generation American so I am not anti immigration. Back in those days we had a much smaller population and a wide open country. Today we have 330 million or so citizens and over 11 million illegals. We can’t continue to just let everyone who walks in the door the ability to stay. Also, it is a little known fact but, back then you had to have a medical exam upon arrival and we either quarantined or sent back to the country you came from. We sent back over 1 mm people for various reasons. So first we need to enforce our border and adhere to the laws we have on the books. Then and this is not going to be popular in some circles but, most coming here illegally are not asylum seekers. They are simply trying for a better live. We need to stop giving illegals drivers licenses , free medical treatment, free education and in some instances other welfare that are for US citizens. That will discourage people from coming here illegally.
Now the real hard part, come up with new laws that make the process to immigrate to the US easier and faster. Our system has been has been broken for a long time. Politicians use immigration as a political football.
This is a great country, that’s why people continue to risk their lives to get here. This will take courage that unfortunately our current politicians lack.
Maher is such an egotistical shit-lib, painful to watch as usual... Even with Matt on there...
We immigrated here back in mid-80s and I remember lots of requirements and paperwork needed to be met which took years. I took notice of a particular document titled “Affidavit of Support” and asked my father what it was. He simply answered that as the principal petitioner, he would be responsible for us (his family) and not the government. And if he lost his job or if he was in any kind of financial trouble, there should be another source of support, like his relatives. Even though it was a different time and climate, the US Immigration was pretty much strict and by the book. Which it should be.
Free speech is one of the topics? All my life, I’ve considered myself apolitical. I stayed away on any discussion about it just like religion. And then, they started to cancel stand-up comics… etc, and this new culture has gone off the rails. Thanks to a handful of journalists like yourself, still exist. who I can depend on to get my unbiased source of information.
I think the solution is for the US to quit overthrowing governments and let the people who are flocking here have their country back and that means their government and their resources and their land. We overthrow their governments, put puppets in who let us take their resources and leave nothing for the people to live on, land and resources including food. And then there was NAFTA. We sold corn to Mexico so cheap that 3 million farmers lost their land. Which our corporations then proceeded to buy up. What were those people suppose to do. Sit down and die. They came here to be able to live. This is how the US operates and then wants to throw immigrants under the bus. We suck
Yes, we do especially how the US-Mexico NAFTA agreement explicitly does not allow either 1) labor organization/striking nor 2) environmental justice. It’s way worse than any bad joke Bill Maher could make.
Thanks Matt! I'm so glad you are going to get another chance to stand up for free speech -- I really hope you share some of your most recent piece with a larger audience (how the media is the new religion)!
Also - would you please help draw attention to the awful treatment given to Lt. Col Schiller -- the military has thrown him in jail for daring to ask for accountability in the upper ranks.....it's outrageous - and the mainstream media is of course ignoring it.....Please help if you can to push back on this!
YES! THIS!!! Matt, please talk about this disgrace.
Open borders has resulted in importing the poorest of the poor to compete with the poor already here for jobs and lower wages due to supply/demand. Follow the money. Who has benefited the most from abundant, cheap labor and who's been most hurt?