I can see the value in telling people to avoid the us for travel and work, but I'm not sure I see much people can do to change this situation other than being more cautious?
> but I'm not sure I see much people can do to change this situation other than being more cautious?
The rate things are going, y'all need to revive the Underground Railroad or, to use a more historically accurate comparison, what a few German citizens did during 1933-1945 - hide foreigners in your homes to prevent them being sent off to extermination camps.
It's not particularly constructive to talk about "extermination camps" when there is no particular evidence of that. Disrespecting rule of law is bad but an aggressive deportation policy after years of ignoring it, given that we don't have the infrastructure to support eleven million cases, is at least understandable in motivation. It's the only practical way to deport all of them, not a few thousand like most admins end up doing, though I disagree with these means of addressing the issue as opposed to forcing self-deports.
> It's not particularly constructive to talk about "extermination camps" when there is no particular evidence of that.
Yet. That's the thing. Remember the "Hang Mike Pence" chants, the gallows they brought Jan 6th? The administration and its fanbase are not shy of calling for terminal violence.
I'm German, we all learn in school how the 1933-1945 regime started. And it didn't start with extermination campaigns directly back then as well - it started with confiscating and burning books, with one of the first targets being the Hirschfeld Institute that was researching LGBT questions. And over time, pressure ratcheted up, and target lists increased. People were snatched from the streets, secret police rounded up houses, and eventually they ended up corralling off entire neighborhoods, swiftly disposing of the people in the extermination camps.
Are we just pretending that calls for political violence aren't more or less de rigueur in today's political climate? Years of "fiery but mostly peaceful" protests, of people celebrating the multiple assassination attempts on Trump, etc. I'm "both sidesing" this not out of a pathological compulsion to defend right-wingers but because pretending this is unique to the right wing means we'll misidentify the underlying cause and fail to fix it.
> It's not particularly constructive to talk about "extermination camps" when there is no particular evidence of that.
Just FYI: Trump's border czar Tom Homan literally said he plans to "eradicate" supposed "foreign threats" on Fox News [1].
I seriously don't know how many more masks have to fall before people finally take this administration and its actors beyond Trump serious. There is no way to downplay, deny or otherwise misinterpret Project 2025. It is happening right in front of your eyes.
If the only practical way to deport the "right" amount of people is to disobey the courts and catch innocent Americans in the dragnet and deny them of due process, then maybe we shouldn't do that.
You say that their motivations are understandable, but so are the reasons behind extermination camps. They are ruthlessly efficient. Having a reason for doing something does not make it right, just, or legal.
At the end of the day, we have sent dozens of immigrants with legal status and no criminal history to El Salvador's version of Guantanamo Bay, where people do indeed die with regularity. Here's something from last year:
So, we're sending Americans of a certain stripe (color) to camps in other countries where there is no escape, and where it is not unlikely they will perish.
This is such a straw man. The motives behind extermination camps aren't, actually. The reasonable response to someone entering your country illegally is to remove him. This is proportionate and just. I think Trump is very much skirting the rules and figure courts will smack him over it, but it's about time we changed the system so illegals can be quickly removed without fifty thousand appeals. Otherwise the system does not work and we are conceding our borders to a flood of third-worlders, which is a bad idea.
It's also essential we alter our asylum system such that anybody who skips over another country to get here is automatically denied. If someone is fleeing guatemala and has to travel up through central America to get here, he should not be granted asylum. Stop in any one of those countries you passed along the way.
Note that legal status can be revoked for anyone besides a citizen. This is actually one of the less illegal moves trump's admin has made. I have a problem with what appears to be targeting based on support for palestine but not with the core concept: they all have to go back. Every single one of them.
> conceding our borders to a flood of third-worlders
Feels a bit like a mask off moment.
there's a mountain of evidence that shows immigrants are the backbone of important parts of our economy, pay taxes, and commit crimes at a far lower rate than native born people.
The laws and processes around immigration are a significant factor in creating "illegals." Why not adjust our laws to accommodate normal, innocent people who come here simply to work, live, and survive?
If we applied more resources to processing immigrants and making it easier to come here legally it would be a boon to our population, economy, and subjectively, our culture.
The opposite is true for deporting 11 million people. The cost outweigh the benefits at every single turn, unless your ultimate benefit is removing the supposed "third worlders" i.e. brown people. (aside: why is a person from the third world an inherent negative?)
The border should be permeable to people escaping oppression or looking for a better life. It's not like we're hurting for space or money, we just actually have to DO something.
Here is some great fact-based review of our immigration policies (from a source typically opposed to my worldview, mind you)
on your final point, regarding Palestinian support: what about the perfectly legal immigrants that we have deported because of political views? That seems particularly fascist to me.
No, there's not. George Borjas' "We Wanted Workers" is a pretty good summary of why. He analyzed the annual benefits of immigration to America in 2015 and found it came to about $2.1T. However, 98% of that went straight to those same immigrants. The remaining $50B, 2% or so, wasn't really surplus. He estimated a net transfer from workers ($516B loss) to the capitalist class ($566B).
There is a reason Sanders, when asked about open borders, called it a "Koch Brothers policy". If you are an average person, mass immigration is a really shitty policy, doubly so when we no longer need the same level of new people to run factories. High-skill immigration where people eagerly assimilate is a neutral or good thing; a huge number of mostly single young men is not. I consider the latter point particularly relevant, as increasing the number of men versus women is a socially disastrous policy from everything I know of history.
How will unskilled immigrants create a boon for our economy? How will that help our population when housing prices are already so high and so many are out of work? How will it help our culture, objectively or subjectively? This isn't an attempt to ask for demanding answers to questions so I can "gotcha" later, I'm legit curious, particularly on the culture point, how you think it would help.
I used "third-worlder" as code for 1. uneducated, 2. poor, 3. usually a single man, and 4. culturally dissimilar. Being an American is not defined by a piece of paper. We all know what it is and what it looks like. Our virtue is that, unlike a european nation, that's not constrained by ethnicity. A somali can never really be a briton, but he can be an American. However, that doesn't mean we are without defining attributes; we replaced the old-style combination of ethnicity and culture with just culture. As such, we must cling all the harder to that culture and those shared values, precisely because it's what lets us admit white, black, brown, red, and yellow without diluting or destroying what makes America herself.
You say "we're not hurting for space". I say I resent the idea that we should tear up more of our beautiful country for more people, or pack in ever closer like sardines in a can.
I actually really respect you linking cato; that's a pretty solid summary you linked. I think perhaps I miscommunicated my position somehow. I am not opposed to immigration. Given that our population will end up declining otherwise, I think at the very least, it's fine to admit enough people to maintain it. I do not think that importing tons of any one group at a time is good; that breeds ethnic ghettoes which tend to produce poverty and slow assimilation. I do not think that importing tons of young, single men is good; that's a legitimate social risk. I think the "who will pick the strawberries" argument has slowed investments we should have made in automation and robotics over the past decades and we desperately need to catch up on that, as over a sufficiently long time, the rest of the world will "catch up". We already see this with cost of chinese labor rising, even cost of Mexican relative to other latin american countries. We can not simply find the next cheapest country forever.
I do not support deporting legal immigrants over support for Palestine. That act would make more sense if we were discussing an actual enemy nation, e.g. china, but obviously it's much easier for Trump to beat up on the little guy who's barely a state than actually stand up to a credible threat. There is a reason I didn't vote for Trump and don't consider myself a supporter; my hope is we can bring a bit more common sense to non-maga republicans' and democrats' visions of immigration to remove his base of support.
I've sent it, and if our numbers don't agree, then I'm inclined to believe the more recent study with more various reliable sources. Tax revenue is a net positive for Americans. You can't repatriate what you pay in taxes. Tax revenue can be used to build affordable housing (egads) among a myriad of other public works.
> If you are an average person, mass immigration is a really shitty policy, doubly so when we no longer need the same level of new people to run factories.
This is not true at all. It's simply fact that immigrants are taking jobs that Americans otherwise _do not fill themselves_. Perhaps that's because of the below-minimum wage compensation, or perhaps it's because Americans are used to a certain amount of comfort. On top of this, as you note, we're below our replacement rate, and that rate is going to fall, just as it has over the years both here and in other developed economies. You seem to have a problem with the "wrong type" of people coming here, and that itself indicates to me that your problems with immigrants go beyond pure economics.
> How will unskilled immigrants create a boon for our economy? How will that help our population when housing prices are already so high and so many are out of work? How will it help our culture, objectively or subjectively?
Housing prices are irrelevant to immigration. The level of inflation we're seeing is not because of a population spike. It's a valid concern, though. Immigrants buy stuff when they're here and they pay taxes. They create businesses and generate economic value, regardless of whether they repatriate anything.
Re:culture - Let's say culture is art, food, and attitude. Would I rather have white people taco night (which admittedly I do love), or semi-authentic mexican taco night? When I lived in FL, I had easy access to so many amazing mexican, peruvian, brazilian, cuban, haitian, etc. etc. etc. restaurants. Artists from other countries create works with different perspectives that are unique and thought provoking -- inherently different because of where they were raised, and because their experience is inherently different than mine.
Immigrants are also extremely entrepreneurial and create small businesses that benefit their local communities. Restaurants, yard work, painters, contractors, etc. Not that those are the only types of businesses they create or can create, that's just offhandedly from personal experience.
Let's talk for a second about the "young men" problem -- rather, the lack thereof. These people are no different than you or I. Even the most disparate of cultures across this green earth have commonality between them. We are humans, we bleed the same, we value family/community, we value integrity, we value productivity. Can you imagine yourself as a young man in Mexico living under the threat of death, torture, kidnapping etc. because you refuse to play ball with the cartel? Or because a family member has slighted them in some way? Stood in the way? What if you had the exact same aptitude for learning and productivity as you do now? Can you not place yourself in the shoes of these young men? Why are/were you better than them? Because you were born on the right side of a line?
Why are we afraid of young men? Young men are a bulk of the workforce. Young men historically do some of the hardest, most dangerous jobs. What makes them different than you or I other than (presumably) the color of their skin? Their nation of origin? Jack squat. Dispel with this myth that young brown men are scary and present a threat to your "society" and "culture." Some sources:
> But anecdotal impression cannot substitute for scientific evidence. In fact, data from the census and other sources show that for every ethnic group, without exception, incarceration rates among young men are lowest for immigrants, even those who are the least educated and the least acculturated.
If they're not committing crimes; if they're working for the good of themselves, their families, and their host nation, what the hell is the problem? I'll take this point seriously when we start having significant demographic issues because of too many men (like China, e.g.).
First generation immigrants will ALWAYS have the hardest time acclimating to the culture. I was lucky enough to have many friends with 1st generation immigrant parents. Some here legally, some not. They spoke our language, however broken, and their children were red white and blue Americans. What kind of culture shock exists between Mexico and the United States? Peru? El Salvador? Brazil? To pretend we're so different that they cannot assimilate is frankly xenophobic, and I cannot presently see it another way.
> You say "we're not hurting for space". I say I resent the idea that we should tear up more of our beautiful country for more people, or pack in ever closer like sardines in a can.
The last thing I support is the desecration of our federal lands and national parks (which is currently happening and is a crying shame). We do not need to build there to build housing. The American obsession with living on a large plot of land where you can hardly see the neighbors through the trees must end. We must be okay with apartments. Our cities must be planned better and our policies must change. Shelter is a human right, not a commodity to be bought and sold by the capitalist class.
On the point of automation, it's absurd to think "who will pick the strawberries" == a lack of automation. We will automate anything and everything as long as the gains outweigh the opportunity cost. Workers are the most expensive part of any operation, and we've automated swaths of farming already. See corn, wheat, etc. In the future, perhaps strawberry picking will be automated, but the reason it's not now is not because we let too many young men in to pick them.
Your arguments are not without reason, and I greatly respect any conservative (small 'c') who's willing to stand up to the stupidity and cruelty of the Trump admin. We're in total agreement about political speech deportations.
Something you haven't addressed is the exorbitant cost (human and monetary) of deporting 11 million people. The Trump admin is completely okay deporting teenagers through cases of mistaken identity to El Salvadorian Gitmo. The cost will be staggering. These people are already here and we are thriving as a nation. What would it mean to naturalize these people? What would it mean to at least give them a path to citizenship that doesn't take 10 years and thousands of dollars? Cruelty seems to be the point. Xenophobia seems to be the reason. This is a purely political issue, and innocent people are being caught in the crossfire for no reason other than to score a few points, win some power, make some millions.
I'll close by saying we have huge problems with immigration. Our border is militarized and our processes incentivize illegal immigration. Border states do not receive enough funding or federal direction for how to handle immigrants, and are left with disgusting tactics like bussing to spread the pain. The true root is our policy, and if we were actually interested in solving the problems, we'd throw more money and resources at it, rather than pretending it's possible to deport 11 million people without engendering something akin to a holocaust.
Question, since I can't seem to find the answer anywhere: is he actually discussing deportation or is he effectively talking about using Salvadoran prisons on a contract basis? That's probably not especially humane; then again, neither are existing private prisons. We do have crazy crowding and overflow problems so I can understand the motivation though I doubt El Salvador is providing much in the way of better conditions.
El Salvador is chosen because no matter what even the Supreme Court says or should this administration be yeeted out of office, as long as Bukele doesn't say otherwise, there is nothing short of a military invasion that can bring any of these prisoners back.
But when visas are getting revoked from equating "hey guys, maybe war crimes against Palestinian civilians are bad" with terrorism I do not think we can trust that any legal precedent will be leveraged only for its stated purpose.
> Edit: apologies but I must leave the desk for a few hours - I will not be able to try and help moderate the submission for a while. As always, I recommend being cold headed, rational and productive.
Do you mean voting on comments like a regular user? You're not one of the official moderators (dang and tomhow), but your phrasing seems like you're putting on airs like you are one.
I mean also taking care of monitoring posts and trying to steer towards and objective of discussion towards assessment, as opposed to visceral reactions, through replies.
When I submit something I try to take some relative responsibility towards the submission - through participation. When I submit something that has undesirable sides (as in, we wish this was not news), I take further responsibility in trying to make the discussion work.
> airs
We are not children. ;) By the way, you are obliged at least by the guidelines to assume we are not, whenever a doubt arises. And in general, it is more hygienic for you if you avoid going around with lowly traits painted on your glasses.
No, Mr. Marrek. My words are very much chosen, to the extent that my time allows. I am very certainly not using CollectiveBot to express my own thought.
I am not sure about what you could not understand. "I am sorry, as I would like to submit news about more pleasant matters, but reality is more pressing; I see that available information tell us that some events of potential particular concern emerge, as special cases in the running trends; I believe that it is best to transmit the information to this public, also as many of us have some relation with the source of those events and trends".
