So far 2 million illegal immigrants have left the US. Mass surveillance and enforcement technology is dismal to think about, though NSA and google have been doing it for years. I'm watching from my perspective in the UK where there is growing fury over the gross incompetence, negligence and mishandling of a mass immigration crisis which is so stupid it beggars belief. The various law enforcement agencies in the us don't cooperate that closely, so there's less scope for this to be abused against american citizens unlike in the UK.
Are the lives of immigrants better? Are we importing citizens or slaves? Why are we not interested in improving conditions in their home country? Shouldn't we focus on that first?
Your rhetorical questions don't constitute an argument so forgive me if I misrepresent you but what I think you're saying is:
1. Conditions in the UK might not be good enough, so we should prevent people from immigrating, for their own good, and
2. Fixing problems that create refugees is more important and therefore another reason we should prevent people from immigrating.
To which I say
1. That's a reason we should clean our own house, so we create a safe environment for people looking to come to the UK, and
2. That's a non sequitur at best, and honestly callous; you should try fleeing from war and persecution, and then see how you would feel about returning home to wait for a few more years while 'things get sorted out back home'.
Again, correct me if I have misrepresented your implied argument.
I reject that. There is a steadily worsening crisis, even the current labour government have acknowledged that pledging to take lots of action against it, both now and during the election campaign. Specifically small boat crossings, of which more then 43,000 have already arrived this year. There is not a single politician in this country who doesn't admit that there is a serious problem.
Anyone concerned about that outcome probably shouldn't have allowed their ruler to declare herself Empress of India, creating a nation with a 10-to-1 ratio of "people living on a subcontinent" vs. "people living on an island." Along with many, many other decisions made by the UK in the past 400-odd-years.
Point is, it's a bit late to complain about the "average Brit" not looking like a Viking took a Celtic bride anymore, yeah? Not after putting so much effort into being an empire that spot-welded as many different people under its flag as it possibly could for awhile?
Personally, I do not care. I'm not in the business of telling other countries how to run their affairs, generally.
I am, however, in the business of calling out hypocrisy when a new age of isolationists ignore their own history, because that historically ends poorly.
Probably the case-study of how it caused America to collapse into a civil war in the next year or so, since the only way the Executive can continue its policy is by overtly ignoring rule of law and Americans appear to be growing weary of that from their Executive.
That'll likely ice the ambitions of the ultra-nationalists in other countries historically close to America for a generation, much like Germany trying its eugenics experiment iced the previously-quite-vocal eugenicists in the US for about a generation.
During The last American civil war, the North was the economic poeerhouse, and the slave states were relatively poor. This no doubt impacted the outcome.
Today the blue states are the economic powerhouse, and the red states are relatively poor. Should it come to it, I would expect the wealthy states to win.
These are the same rural areas rapidly turning against the administration due to its trade policy destroying global demand for their products, its foreign policy funding their international competitors, and its environmental policies lowering their land value by discouraging wind power development.
Certain rural areas like northern Idaho may be dominated by people moving there for ideological reasons, but this is not the norm.
What made you think people rapidly turned against the Trump administration? His approval ratings declined slowly since January. They are higher than they were most of 2017.[1]
Approval ratings don’t mean much for a lame duck president.
Look at the 2026 Senate polls in places like Iowa. Given Trump’s margin of victory in 2024 the Republicans should be crushing it, but they are struggling.
> Approval ratings don’t mean much for a lame duck president.
A term limited president can care less about approval ratings. This does not mean their approval ratings cannot be compared to their approval ratings.
> Look at the 2026 Senate polls in places like Iowa. Given Trump’s margin of victory in 2024 the Republicans should be crushing it, but they are struggling.
I do not accept Senate polls measure Trump support better than Trump approval polls. And 2026 Senate projections show Republicans losing 1 or 2 seats. Iowa is not 1 of them. Iowa polls did show the unpopular incumbent senator and a hypothetical Democratic opponent had similar support. But the unpopular incumbent senator announced she would retire. And hypothetical opponents poll better than real opponents many times.
I'm actually not. I am assuming other countries would watch that war break out and consider how excited they are about doing that on their own soil. That kind of civil war wrecks the economy of a developed nation, and power brokers in most developed nations are a lot more interested in protecting their wealth than exclusive nationalist ideals.
Practically, I strongly suspect a US that fell to civil war in this current climate would result in the country fragmenting, not entirely unlike the premise of the old "Cyberpunk 2020" fictional setting. DC would, for example, find it remarkably challenging to hold a California that blatantly broke off from it, especially if the federal military resources of that California defected. Especially if it caught allies in neighboring states upon that occurrence.
The end result would be no real "winners;" it'd be the implosion of the United States of America as a national unit into something more approximating some agglomeration of the pieces outlined in https://www.twincities.com/2013/11/16/which-of-this-writers-....
But even if the end result were (not unlike the last American civil war) a reunification with new laws... The US lost about 2 solid years of its GDP to war. That's not good for business and would encourage those with resources to lose to expend them stifling their own domestic "purity" nationalists.
Different populists have different ideal numbers for how many people they want to purge. Some want 10 million, some want 20-50 million going decades back and reversing whatever laws allowed the "wrong kind" of even legal immigrants to come here in the first place.
I think more governments around the world are catching on to the idea that your majority population can excuse a large amount of economic mismanagement and bad geopolitical strategy if you blame foreigners who arrived after your decline started.
If a satisfactory amount of foreigners are removed, the technology will still be there and the defense contractors will still need contracts. If there are no viable foreign adversaries at that point, then another domestic target will be needed.
Is mass immigration really a crisis? Like people are upset here in the US too but I don't even know why. There's a lot of immigrants in my state but they're not upsetting me.
Not even a little bit. No one is taking jobs away from citizens or legal immigrants (locals don't want those jobs, either at all, or at the wages offered), rampant "migrant crime" is a myth created and perpetuated by the right (immigrants commit crime at lower rates than citizens), and to top it off, the American economy depends on many of these migrant workers in order to function (often in exploitative ways; explicitly allowing and supporting this type of migration would make things safer for everyone).
It's othering and racism, plain and simple.
I'm not saying we should just open the floodgates and let anyone and everyone in, and I'm not saying we shouldn't deport non-citizens who commit violent crime, but the "crisis" is entirely manufactured.
It sure is, the US government has been underfunding the judicial body responsible for adjudicating asylum claims for years and years. As a result there are indeed people here in status limbo.
Wether or not they should be granted some kind of residency is kind of irrelevant, politicians are happy for this to be a problem they can use.
Even now, they aren’t increasing the rate of process, they’re just blowing the cash on mass surveillance.
I think the job analysis is overly simplistic. The reality is that worker migration from poorer countries to richer ones is a huge low wage problem. Instead of allowing low-skilled labor to pay better in order to attract workers who expect better conditions, you keep the wages fixed and import workers for whom even the bad life you're offering is better than their current life.
Of course, this doesn't mean that allowing 0 immigration in is the right solution, or preventing immigrants from working. And I should also point out that, generally, US leaders have the least amount of problem with this aspect of immigration - even now, Trump has instructed ICE not to go for deporting agricultural and tourism workers in any mass numbers.
Employed privilege. Lots of folks would like to work in construction but haven’t been able to for a while. I know several that retired early in poverty.
I would appreciate a job in construction or at a restaurant for example. Teenagers would benefit from such jobs as well. Not available.
And yet multiple studies have shown that when jobs are offered to Americans that involve labor (farm, construction, food industry), at those wages, then there are generally few to near zero applicants.
There are other reasonings (prevailing wage, location, etc.), but likewise, your "absolute assertion" that undocumented workers have been taking job opportunities from you is also not entirely ... absolute.
The key point is "at those wages". The overall assumption in the economy is that it's good and proper for low-skilled jobs to be very low paying, despite otherwise being very unattractive. As long as people are unwilling to pay the proper cost for hard labor, they'll keep hitting this problem of local people not willing to do the work for a pittance. Then, when they circumvent the local workers, they'll be surprised that local workers are discontent.
I do agree with that. The same as with the trope about McDonalds, etc. being "starter jobs" for teenagers, etc., and that's why it's okay for them to not pay a liveable wage, etc., which has no origin in fact (re the minimum wage law) and only in Republican ideology.
> No one is taking jobs away from citizens or legal immigrants (locals don't want those jobs, either at all, or at the wages offered)
Sorry but i absolutely despise this argument as someone who did the job that "locals don't want" and knew others that did. It's cheap and very right wing classism by the privileged.
Essentially only the last bit is true and the last bit is true because there is a cheap alternative that doesn't involve much unionization either.
Mind you I'm in western europe and the other arguments don't hold up either here but that first one is universally shit.
The older you are, the more likely you’ll see more people and say “get off my lawn” when really, you were busy hanging plates when the rest of the world was having babies…
That’s really what happened. The population doubled in 15 years and people moved (people always move). It’s just more people now. So naturally you’ll see more immigrants.
Absolutely not. They are an essential part of modern American life, and anyone against it either doesn't understand that, or does it for racist reasons.
What has changed is the “messaging” around the topic. This is very common with the Trump administration. When all is said and done, when exceptions are made/bought, and the courts and others get involved, it ends up not being much of a needle move. BUT, what is different every time is the messaging. And I have come to believe, that is what the actual goal is to some degree. The real goal is to send a message to people who are immigrants OR (and this is important) look like immigrants. It’s a message of “remember your place” and “be grateful you get to be here”. It’s the same type of tactics that gets sent to Asian communities, black communities, women, etc.
I am white. I am a male. I am 55. I oscillate between despondently sad and disgusted.
Roughly half the population responds to unfamiliar people and ideas with curiosity, and the other half with fear. The latter half are easily manipulated into nurturing the fear. Everything rolls up to this.
What's your definition of "unfamiliar"? I just want people vetted before they're allowed into my house to live along-side my family? Is that unreasonable?
Pension plans depend on populations being stable and not living longer and longer. Most of Europe have a rate below 2.0 (replacement rate) and people are living longer and longer.
So either you increase the retirement age significantly or you have to expand the base.
In which case you have to do that indefinitely and it's a pyramid scheme.
Also most non eu migration doesn't end up being a net positive for those govs within the first generation (or even second depending). Far from actually and these migrants are not immune to aging then they end up requiring pensions too.
And all of this to serve dying generations when those younger than me starting out get ever increasingly shafted.
Here in Belgium pension plans existed that did not work like that.
Then the socialist raided these funds and the future generations were going to pay for those pensions. My family's criticism was that they could only do that once and they were right.
I don't tie this issue to socialists tho. 2 decades ago the liberals(european, right wing) did the same to the railways who had a separate pension fund and more recently yet another party suggested doing the same for a 3rd pillar of selfemployed people.
Uncontrolled influx of millions - mostly with poor finances and very different cultural backgrounds and values - strain a nation's resources, infrastructure, and social cohesion. It exacerbates housing shortages, burdens public services like healthcare, and contributes to economic friction amid existing downturns. It also poses risks to national identity and security, as we are now experiences in many countries who allowed this to happen, as opposed to countries that enforced legal immigration. It complicates integration and social stability. It's unfair to legal immigrants. This is why sovereign states implement rigorous and dynamic immigration controls and capacity limits based on the nation's ability at the time. There has to be sustainable absorption. Countries are not homeless shelters or free handouts; they are the result of blood and tears of the patriots who fought and died to create, defend, and build that nation. Every nation has its values, and it's not the right choice for everyone. China is definitely not a country for me, nor are the CCP's values acceptable to American culture. In short, vet whoever comes into your house, and don't let people sneak in through the backdoor.
> different cultural backgrounds and values; social cohesion; national identity; integration and social stability; nation has its values; not the right choice for everyone; American culture
I like my cultured friends. USA is a melting pot, not a white-man-country. This is all xenophobia.
> poor finances
sounds right for asylum seekers
> nation's resources, infrastructure, housing shortages, burdens public services like healthcare, and contributes to economic friction[??] amid existing downturns,
sounds like policy problems; and these are the priorities of the people i vote for too, none of this has to do with immigrants.
> Countries are not homeless shelters or free handouts
no, this is exactly what i expect my country (government) to handle
> Uncontrolled influx of millions
this is pretty tightly controlled, you can find the data from the census and see that the population is not at all fluctuating and very linear. Should be trivial to plan ahead about how many people are in the country.
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/uni...
> This is why sovereign states implement rigorous and dynamic immigration controls and capacity limits based on the nation's ability at the time. There has to be sustainable absorption. vet whoever comes into your house
this is true, and I dont believe its not happening. i was asking what is happening that's a crisis. Trump's policies are _mass deportation_. They are extreme. Legal immigrants, are having visas revoked without reason, and even green card holders are being arrested without cause. Violations of the 4th amendment. Immigrants are arrested at court houses, where the vetting takes place, you know, by _judges_.
> they are the result of blood and tears of the patriots who fought and died to create, defend, and build that nation.
like my immigrant grandpop, achieved the american dream
No, I'm a legal, darker-skinned immigrant with lots of culture. Btw, I respect and admire the white race more than any other, even my own.
> mass migration is tightly controlled
Because of Trump. I remember months when Biden wouldn't bat an eye at 7-8 million who entered illegally in a single month.
> poor asylum seekers...
I'm an actual asylum seeker because the Venezuelan government contracted kidnappers to try to take out my family (I'm not getting into details). My family has integrity, works hard, was a good match for the country, and we were accepted. The US was NOT responsible for taking us in. I am thankful, not entitled.
> immigrant grandpa.
Good, and I'm sure he wouldn't have agreed to let strangers into the country without vetting.
> oh thanks for clarifying which type of scum you are
The type that is cultured, educated, honors parents, and builds a traditional family unit, rooted in truth, logic, nature, God, and common sense. The type that admires the renaissance and western civilization. The type that has no problems being thankful for great civilizations, like Israel, Rome, Greece, and the amazing USA.
>There's a lot of immigrants in my state but they're not upsetting me.
You might not think that, but have you ever complained about housing prices? That food at the grocery store costs more than it did a few years ago? The price of consumer goods in general?
Well, you're not buying those things. You're bidding on them. And the more people there are, here, the higher those prices will be bid upwards.
High housing prices is a complex mix of underbuilding due to zoning laws, companies buying up housing stock to rent, and (a few years ago) very low interest rates. One thing that is _not_ a factor is immigrants, because they are at the bottom of the social pile and usually can't get mortgages to buy houses.
It very much is how all goods work, unfortunately. Food (except grain) doesn't travel or store well. If 100 million people left North America tomorrow, North America wouldn't start shipping the food for 100 million people to them whereever they went. Pretending otherwise might help you maintain faith in whatever religion you have that demands it be true, I suppose, but it's economically illiterate to claim otherwise.
>High housing prices is a complex mix of underbuilding
Or it's a simple answer of over-immigrating.
>because they are at the bottom of the social pile and usually can't get mortgages to buy houses.
Are they sleeping in ditches? No. They live somewhere. Because they live in those places, those places aren't available for non-immigrants to live in. It's really simple. They rent apartments, do they not? When demand outstrips supply, prices rise. When demand for apartments rise, even the price of houses goes up, because these things can substitute for one another to some degree.
> That food at the grocery store costs more than it did a few years ago?
> the more people there are, here, the higher those prices will be bid upwards
Who do you think is picking most of that food? And if the wages for those jobs went up to an American living wage, what do you think would happen to the price of food even with a bit lower demand?
I know it's all too easy and comforting to throw out knee-jerk comments cheerleading for government power, but at least try applying some basic analysis to what you write.
Your mistake is in believing that even if I answered this question with the answer you consider correct, that this would change my position.
>And if the wages for those jobs went up to an American living wage, what do you think would happen to the price of food even with a bit lower demand?
"I like to exploit immigrants and underpay them, because my out-of-season fruit will be too high for my smoothy frappucinos!" Silly things leftists say, haha.
>I know it's all too easy and comforting to throw out knee-jerk comments cheerleading for government power,
I'm not especially a big fan of government power. But I live in a country being held hostage by lunatic ideologues who think non-citizens should have the absolute right to live here, but only because they hope to stack the vote against their political opponents. So there's not really that many options left. Things will have to get far worse before they can get any better.
I'm not asking you to change your position, but rather to be honest about the effects of it.
> "I like to exploit immigrants and underpay them, because my out-of-season fruit will be too high for my smoothy frappucinos!"
I did not say anything of the sort, rather I acknowledged the current reality. One can also say "I want farm workers to be system legible, primarily Americans, and paid a living wage, even though it will make grocery prices go up". That's a consistent position. We can have honest discussions about those things. I don't think anybody actually likes the status quo.
> Silly things leftists say, haha
I know fascists have defined everything short of gushing praise for Dear Leader as the rAdIcAl lEfT, but I'm actually a libertarian.
> I live in a country being held hostage by lunatic ideologues who think non-citizens should have the absolute right to live here
Please explain how it's being "held hostage" when the party in power is enacting the exact opposite.
> So there's not really that many options left. Things will have to get far worse before they can get any better.
Sorry no, there are plenty of other options to institute the immigration policy you want here - which wouldn't require adding to the surveillance pantopticon, further empowering a domestic military, or trampling the Constitution and our natural rights.
So what we've actually got is a second issue of how those things are being carried out, supposedly in the name of doing something about immigration. But given how wholly anti-liberty and anti-American those actions are, and how there are already policy floaters on relaxing the hardline stance for "critical" industries reliant on cheap illegal labor, it begs the question of whether the immigration topic is even the main thrust here - or whether it's simply a pretext for autocratic authoritarian power for power's sake.
> I'm not especially a big fan of government power
Sorry, but yes you are. You're shunning the entire idea of limited constitutional government and inalienable constitutional/natural rights, seemingly because you like these particular results of crass authoritarianism. That's statism 101.
The people I work with believe the government, the current administration is funding immigrants. Providing them with handlers who are paid to assist them, open up credit cards in their own names on behalf of non-citizens who otherwise couldn't.
Multiple of them believe this. One mentioned it, after she left I turned to my other coworker to say "that was some crazy stuff she was saying" only to be met with, "Hey, it's happening. A lot of federal money goes missing and this is exactly where it's going."
It's a complete disconnect from reality that's malleable to any form desired.
When ICE raided Tyson Chicken (a few years ago), multiple workers provided documentation from Tyson telling them how to stay under the radar and how to fill out paperwork if they were undocumented. There's definitely a very large effort in undocumented labor... and little interest in rocking the boat of those employers.
Yes. The USA runs on undocumented work in many ways. This is a far, far, far (etc) cry from government-funded citizens escorting around and signing up for lines of credit and otherwise paying the way for undocumented workers.
> So far 2 million illegal immigrants have left the US.
The Trump administration loves gaudy numbers like this. Common sense tells you that's a lot of movement in too short of time. Until they release evidence of these numbers, please do not spread this misinformation.
Indeed, it's a complete lie and fabrication, and those who repeat it are bearing false witness. Take the report it came from, click on any "supporting" link, such as:
> A recent study from the United Nations reported that President Trump’s immigration policies led to a 97% reduction in illegal aliens heading northbound to the U.S. from Central America.
And you find that the document they link does not support their assertion, and in face the "97%" refers to:
> The migrants who returned during the period were primarily Venezuelan nationals, accounting for 97% of the documented southward flow, with most heading to neighboring Colombia.
It's comically bad deception, only people who continuously traffic in lies all day long would even publish something like this.
Like, say we assume it's true: There are 340 million people in the US. That's less than 1% of the current population leaving. I really doubt anybody would notice much of a difference.
Don’t be so hard on yourself, truly. What if every US state lost the equivalent of one Burlington, VT? How much would you expect traffic, housing, lines at the grocery store, to change? It’s not easy, even though 2M people is over the total number of men drafted into Vietnam.
It's more affluent than most other states. Most red states take more federal money than they give back. Maybe you should actually look at numbers rather than relying on memes and narratives.
