Immigration -the defining issue of our times?

As it is beyond doubt that immigrants and immigration -legal and illegal- are close to the top of the agenda in both Europe and North America, it must be time to grapple with this controversial topic. The crisis in Syria has been at the core of the wave of refugees seeking entry into Europe by legal or illegal means, but this wave also includes refugees from Iraq, Afghanistan and 'migrants' from other countries who, we are told, 'merely' want a better life in Europe than the life they have in countries such as Somalia or Eritrea; and there have also been among them people from Nigeria, Pakistan, and Albania.

If there is a difference in immigration patterns in recent years, the scale is the most obvious.

For example, with regard to the UK,
between 1900-1931 there was net Emigration from the UK of c80,000 per annum;
between 1931-1961 there was net Immigration of c19,000 per annum,
from 1961-1981 net Emigration of c20,000 per annum,
but from the 1990s onwards there have been levels of net Immigration which began in
1997 at c47,000 per annum but had reached
200,000 per annum by the 2000s, and in 2005 reached 320,000 per annum. (These figures are from the House of Commons paper linked below).

In the USA, net immigration has been constant, the figures for legal immigrants show that for the decade
1960-1969 there were 321,375; from
1970-79 there were 424, 820;
1980-89 -624, 438;
1990-99 -977,534,
2000-09 -1,029,143 and between
2010-13 -1,031, 722. (Figures from the Wikipedia page).

The high figures for the UK and the incremental increase from the 1990s onward was shaped to some extent by the expansion of the European Union and the creation of the Single Market which came into effect in 2006. This means that EU nationals comprise 41.8% of the immigrant figures, but 58.2% came from non-EU countries, and of those 8.7% came from the Old Commonwealth and 16.5% the New Commonwealth, the remaining 32.9% from other countries.

In the USA the majority of legal immigrants in recent years have come from China and India. Mexico may be the single largest source, but the numbers from there have declined while the numbers from Asia have risen; European immigration fell by 32% between 2010-13. (Info from Forbes in the link below).

To take a very general view, I think we can identify the causes of emigration/immigration, which for the most part are-
Of a Negative Kind
-war, political conflict and instability at a level that is life-threatening (eg, Syria 2015);
-persecution due to ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and related issues;
-unsustainable living caused by natural/human induced forces such as drought, soil erosion, coastal erosion, etc (eg, a million emigrated from New Orleans after Katrina and did not return);

Of a Positive Kind
-seasonal or temporary migration for work;
-the search for a better quality of life.

There is a dispute about whether or not immigration, be it permanent or temporary is a benefit to the national economy, the argument revolves around costs and benefits, for example, it may be cheaper to hire seasonal workers in food production whose labour costs are lower than the indigenous work-force; but seasonal workers repatriate most of their income to their country of origin; on the other hand migrant workers may be the crucial part of an economy that only functions for 6 months of the year, in food production or in tourism -ski resorts, summer resorts for example. It is assumed professionals among immigrants are economically beneficial, if only because they earn more, pay more taxes and spend more in the economy, but the figures on immigration and the UK economy are disputed.

The cultural and social impact on the UK may be more profound than the USA (I am not sure about this). For example, in 1993 the immigrant population of London was estimated at 4%; in 2013 it was estimated to be 37%. The largest proportion of foreign born citizens came from India; the largest group of foreign migrants from the EU were from Poland, but overall the largest EU groups in the UK are from Germany and France and may be classified as temporary migrants if they are in the UK as part of their contract of work. So you can see how fluid some of these figures are.

There are a large range of issues to discuss
-the moral case for taking refugees from conflict whose lives are in danger, who may have lost their homes and members of their family. Both the UK and the USA have a long and noble tradition of sanctuary, the obvious question is -Can we take everyone from conflict zones who begs to come?
-the economic case rests on whether or not the costs of admission in the long term are outweighed by the benefits;
-the political case revolves around the extent to which immigration is viewed as a negative issue for campaigning politicians;
-the cultural case tends to concern the way in which immigrants do or do not integrate with the new society into which they emerge.

It is hard to know when or if this trend will end. Will climate change and extreme weather events, or political collapse in one country after another drive millions 'north' (or in Africa or South-East Asia, 'South') in search of security and a better life? What can the currently stable and prosperous countries do to prevent other states from descending into the civil war in which life becomes unbearable?

Immigration, legal and illegal, may be the most difficult practical problem of our times. I do not have a solution to it, but how is the best way in which we can handle it?

Sources:
House of Commons Briefing Paper
https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rc...mk5zZN8J2-4ZTA

Stats on the UK from Migration Watch plus discussion of the issues
http://www.migrationwatchuk.org/what-is-the-problem

Forbes article on immigration patterns in the USA
http://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotk...-know-and-you/

Wikipedia stats on immigration to the USA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigr..._United_States

I am one of the few people here who can remember an Elementary School Experience that was 100% White, and I remember it as better than today, it seemed like suburban society had a thumb on druggies, homos, even blacks. JFK was in office and the future was BRIGHT in a real sense. The Cold War was in full swing and the enemy was "over there" and the threat of nuclear annihilation eclipsed human rights. Dad worked and Mom stayed home with the kids.
Immigration is a package deal with a society that is more pressured and faster, the Pakistani Mom at my 7-11 hops on a jet and flies over here half the year, her husband and kids come over here for the money and education, and then jet back to be home. They can literally work 80 hours a week. When I worked at the Library of Congress in my twenties, it was funny to walk past a couple and hear them speaking some foreign language. Now that experience happens any time I go to Walmart or Shoppers Food Warehouse.
My first townhouse had strict rules for paint and fences and yard maintenance, but it was so run down and poor nobody followed the rules. When I moved to a nicer community we had much higher monthly Community Dues, but the entire place was tended like a garden, with landscaping, bike paths, free pools and a sports center. Everybody followed the rules.
Ozzie and Harriet still exist, only now they live in a gated community. You can still buy lumber like they had in the 1950s, it just costs a lot more.
Dino Velvet had a thread long ago about who was cooler, John Wayne, or Clint Eastwood. The DUKE was from a different time, when men were men. You didn't need a fucking SCHOOL or JOB to tell you what you were worth. Times have changed now and cowboy pictures are passe'. Economics can be good and bad, but they are never wrong. The Republicans think if we bring John Wayne back, everything will be cool again. Gimme a break. Karl Marx was kind of a science fiction writer, predicting Communism. I like Philip K Dick, who predicted a "Blade Runner" future of a blended cultural society with robots gone haywire. In the end the future will be both economic and moral.
Imagine some American Indian kids on a reservation telling stories about how the Asians and moral decay will kill the White Man. What comes around goes around.

Hardly the first time we've been overrun with furrinners!

We'll improvise, adapt, overcome...And then, at the end, in the nursing home. Spend out our time, pissing and whining about the good old days while a 3rd (should we live so long) generation Syrian nurse changes our diapers and wipes the drool from our chins. :shrug

MoPower!

Or, failing that, personally, I'm looking forward to being a casino owner! :shrug

Think the answer to this problem might be the problem of another answer .(weakAI,climate warming environmental technology,massive unemployment ,massive automated safety net,hobbies)

Immigration returns again to the top of the political agenda in Europe and the USA, with the Italian government violating the international Law of the Sea to deny the right of a ship carrying refugees and migrants to dock at an Italian port, and the US government imposing a 'zero tolerance' policy on illegal immigrants that has led to children being separated from their parents and locked in cages patrolled by armed guards.

One of the key architects of this policy is the President's adviser, Stephen Miller, who in turn has been influenced by the research and advocacy of the Cuban born academic, George Borjas. I offer here two contasting arguments about immigrants in the USA. The sophisticated arguments of Borjas which looks at the claim that low-skilled immigrants damage the wage rates of low-skilled Americans and in some cases takes their jobs, but which argues for what is often called 'managed' or 'controlled' immigration, which may be seen either as a rational response to a critical problem, or a loaded term that means, in effect: stop immigration altogether.

There are weaknesses in Borjas's analysis. He takes 'high school dropouts' as a key indicator without looking more broadly at youth employment, and has two curious arguments that seem to me to undermine the ideas that are current in the US administration.

The first is this whole issue of 'skilled immigrants', a concept that is also central to the debate in the UK where apparently we want trained doctors and nurses, not bricklayers or labourers -ie, we want university educated people not thickoes, until it becomes evident -and this is apparently a major problem for Miller- that the 'skilled immigrants' are mostly from Asia, be it China, Japan, Korea, or India -skilled, but not white or Christian.

The second relates to Borjas's analysis of wage rates which argues that while blue collar wages have been depressed the 'bosses' have correspondingly benefited, as their profit margins have improved, thus:

Somebody’s lower wage is always somebody else’s higher profit. In this case, immigration redistributes wealth from those who compete with immigrants to those who use immigrants—from the employee to the employer.

I estimate the current “immigration surplus”—the net increase in the total wealth of the native population—to be about$50 billion annually. But behind that calculation is a much larger shift from one group of Americans to another:The total wealth redistribution from the native losers to the native winners is enormous, roughly a half-trillion dollars a year. Immigrants, too, gain substantially; their total earnings far exceed what their income would have been had they not migrated.
When we look at the overall value of immigration, there’s one more complicating factor: Immigrants receive government assistance at higher rates than natives. The higher cost of all the services provided to immigrants and the lower taxes they pay (because they have lower earnings) inevitably implies that on a year-to-year basis immigration creates a fiscal hole of at least $50 billion—a burden that falls on the native population.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/st...nt-jobs-214216

What is bizarre about this argument, is that it appears to suggest the 'bosses' are ripping off the workers. As if to then say, No way, Jose, we need to change that. But isn't that socialism? Is not the whole purpose of capitalism to enable people with capital to invest it in order to increase their return? Perhaps the President so committed to 'returning' jobs to America from China should add that wages will rise too, something the owner of a business ought to give him pause for thought, as the employer of low-wage, low-skilled workers who speak Spanish very well. Or he could just be a hypocrite.

The alternative argument on immigration is here-
https://www.npr.org/2017/08/04/54132...-american-jobs

It feels like something's ready to blow. I'm going to put a clear plastic tarp over myself, like at a Gallagher Show!

Borjas's view is definitely a minority view among economists. Here's a couple of good articles. https://www.bloomberg.com/view/artic...-for-americans
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/artic...n-not-a-burden

Immigration levels as a share of the population were much higher in the 19th and early 20th centuries than they are now. If immigration had such adverse impacts then how did the USA become such a successful economy?

Attachment 1081138

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Originally Posted by filghy2

Borjas's view is definitely a minority view among economists. Here's a couple of good articles. https://www.bloomberg.com/view/artic...-for-americans
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-09-22/immigrants-are-a-fiscal-boon-not-a-burde

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Many thanks for these links, I particularly liked this in the second link:

Recently, the Department of Health and Human Services put out a report supposedly showing that refugees -- one very small subset of immigrants -- pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits. President Trump’s adviser Stephen Miller, an ardent supporter of immigration restrictions, then reportedly attempted to censor the report, removing all mention of refugees’ tax contributions. This suggests that many restrictionists are relying on their anti-immigrant convictions instead of hard evidence.

Immigration is not the answer. Helping people requires helping them where they live.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCcFNL7EmwY

The world creates 80,000,000 new people every year beyond those who die.
Bringing 1,000,000 here only messes up the United States and does nothing for the world.
Stealing the smart people from other countries only makes it worse.

Roy Beck, gumballs, says it all really. But there is more...
Beck’s anti-immigrant organization, NumbersUSA, has been successful at appearing to be a mainstream voice in the immigration debate. But NumbersUSA is anything but mainstream.

It was started as part of U.S. Inc., a project of Beck’s longtime friend and colleague John Tanton, who has connections to “Holocaust deniers, former Klan lawyers and leading white nationalist thinkers. Tanton introduced leaders of FAIR, on whose board he still sits today, to the president of the Pioneer Fund, a racist outfit set up to encourage “race betterment.,” at a private club. He promoted the work of an infamous anti-Semitic professor, Kevin MacDonald, to both FAIR officials and a major donor.
https://www.politico.com/story/2011/...deology-049119

and even more
https://www.henrykkowalczyk.com/immi...-of-deception/

Throughout this nation's history immigration has always been an issue and there has always seems to be a recurring theme:

If the Irish continue to come to this country, they will take well paying jobs from working class Americans.

If the Chinese continue to come to this country, they will take well paying jobs from working class Americans. Which led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

If Mexicans continue to come to this country, they will take well paying jobs from working class Americans.

Coincidentally the same reason was given for why the slaves shouldn't have been freed.

So apparently the only people who were entitled to well paying jobs are white Anglo Saxon Protestants males.

But all kidding aside...

Because of the change in the nation's demographics over the past 40 years, its become an issue that neither party can find common ground on. Even within the Republican party itself, there is a divide on how to the solve problem. It basically boils down to one of two options:

1. The United States has open borders

or

2. We fundamentally change who we are as a country and stop immigration altogether.

What makes matter worse is that we are now living through one of the most divisive times in our nation's history. There are times I think its actually worse now than it was during the Vietnam War. Immigration is just one of those hot button issues that can be used to divide us even more.

Immigration is also something that we have all had positive and/or negative experiences with. If you or a loved one was a victim of a violent crime that was perpetrated by an illegal immigrant, you really are not going to have any sympathy over families being separated at the border.

Just speaking for myself, there are times I have felt like a stranger in my own neighborhood because of the change in the racial make up. I'm sure that I'm not the only one who has felt that way.

But at the same time, I have worked with many immigrants as well and I know how hard they work.

Immigration can also be tied into other issues and once again be exploited to divide us even more. For example, the war on drugs.

The sad thing is, after the events of this past week, I don't see things getting any better. As long as you continue to have some people on the right who will demonize illegal immigrants and those on the left who only celebrate them, the problem is never going to be solved. Especially during a midterm election year.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MykiX

Immigration is not the answer. Helping people requires helping them where they live.

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So why is the Trump administration cutting foreign aid? Why is it seeking to damage the Mexican economy by dumping NAFTA? How is that helping people where they live?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by blackchubby38

It basically boils down to one of two options:

1. The United States has open borders

or

2. We fundamentally change who we are as a country and stop immigration altogether.

The sad thing is, after the events of this past week, I don't see things getting any better. As long as you continue to have some people on the right who will demonize illegal immigrants and those on the left who only celebrate them, the problem is never going to be solved. Especially during a midterm election year.

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Why does it boil down to a choice between two extreme options, rather than something in between? I don't think many critics of Trump's hard-line immigration policies are arguing for open borders. The US hasn't had open borders for a long time.

This isn't just about illegal immigration either. Trump and his congressional allies have been seeking to cut legal immigration levels by half.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by filghy2

Why does it boil down to a choice between two extreme options, rather than something in between? I don't think many critics of Trump's hard-line immigration policies are arguing for open borders. The US hasn't had open borders for a long time.

This isn't just about illegal immigration either. Trump and his congressional allies have been seeking to cut legal immigration levels by half.

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It should boil down to something in between. But the impression I get is that neither side is willing to compromise on this issue.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by blackchubby38

Throughout this nation's history immigration has always been an issue and there has always seems to be a recurring theme
So apparently the only people who were entitled to well paying jobs are white Anglo Saxon Protestants males.
Even within the Republican party itself, there is a divide on how to the solve problem. It basically boils down to one of two options:
1. The United States has open borders
or
2. We fundamentally change who we are as a country and stop immigration altogether.
What makes matter worse is that we are now living through one of the most divisive times in our nation's history. There are times I think its actually worse now than it was during the Vietnam War. Immigration is just one of those hot button issues that can be used to divide us even more.
Just speaking for myself, there are times I have felt like a stranger in my own neighborhood because of the change in the racial make up. I'm sure that I'm not the only one who has felt that way.
The sad thing is, after the events of this past week, I don't see things getting any better. As long as you continue to have some people on the right who will demonize illegal immigrants and those on the left who only celebrate them, the problem is never going to be solved. Especially during a midterm election year.

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In your thoughtful post you touch on some important factors in immigration. To take the last one first, there is a simple and practical reason for the mess that immigration policy appears to be: the lack of an adequately funded legal process for anyone crossing the border illegally to work, and those at the border claiming political asylum. If the US paid for more judges and courts to process the claims, the border itself would not be so toxic an environment and there would be no need to send people as far away from, say California, to New York City to have their claims dealt with, and certainly not separate families in the way that has been happening this past week.

But there is also something callous in the management of this -Ann Coulter has dismissed the screaming children as actors, a familiar cry from the alt-right void of all values, and others say the children were 'only' kept in cages for 72 hours, a lifetime for a 4 year old. The immigration officials who told the parents they were taking their children away for a shower and two hours later said 'you will never see your child again' were not just imposing the power of their office on claimants, but practising torture, an acceptable tool in the armoury of the Republican POT. None of this is necessary but is, we are told, he way to deter immigrants from risking so much to flee the life-threatening situation in Honduras and Guatemala (and not all of those fleeing make it to the USA, many do remain in Mexico).

But that helps deal with another striking fact: immigration by volume tends to peak in waves, so that the provisions for immigration in California in the 1960s may have been adequate but are not in 2018. If one asks what causes those waves, then threats to life in the home country may be an obvious cause, but so too may 'quality of life' factors. Not all of the early settlers to North America were persecuted religious dissenters. Something like 11 million Brits left the UK between 1815 and 1914, they went in search of a better life because they had been told life was better in Australia and America, and in most cases, it was.

And it is true that immigration can change a neighbourhood -anyone today complaining they can walk through their town and not hear English spoken could be saying the same thing of the east End of London in 1900 when you could walk from Aldgate East underground station to Bethnal Green and the only languages you heard were Russian, Polish and Yiddish. The same part of town was the place where Bengalis fleeing the war between Pakistan and India in 1971 ended up, the Jews having moved on somewhere else. But what also transforms a neighbourhood is economics, and just as the Jews lived in the 'immigrant area' where the 18th century Huguenots fleeing France lived, where the poor Irish once lived, and where the Bengalis came to live, so today if you walk down Brick Lane, most of the curry houses have gone and it has moved into the bijoux boutique, street food scene with a smattering of 'cutting edge' art galleries, much as those crumbling brownstones in Harlem have been bought by professional white people who have literally changed the complexion of what used to be a focal point of Black America. For all I know, the Black Americans who dreamed of going to Harlem (and not just to get laid), now dream of going to Atlanta.

The economics is thus critical, because underneath all these anxieties is not just the demographic change taking place in the US, but the extent to which capitalism continues to innovate by changing the way we work, and the way that social relations are affected by work, of which the three critical components are: automation, that requires less labour; communications, which means people can work anywhere, from the office, the home or the car, without interacting physically with their colleagues, and thirdly, public sector jobs, those jobs that now look 'traditional' such as Federal and State bureaucrats, law enforcement and the military -who now account for most jobs in the USA and without which the country would be in an economic crisis. There is no colour to contemporary work (though Black Americans rely on public service work), and no fixed place. What matters is access, and whether or not someone has the education to get the kind of job that pays, which is why education is the key to succeeding in modern times, unless you can make it in sport and entertainment.

Lastly, one could easily argue that as the USA is a county of immigrants, it is in effect, UnAmerican to deny to immigrants access to the process that created the country, except that immigrants were often denied, and in one key area, slavery, not all Americans chose to live there. The Black American experience has always had to suffer with the burden of choice, because they are the only social group of any significance who live in the US because their ancestors were forced to (the First Nations are in a different situation having lost ownership of their own land).

So I guess this is a wave problem, but I don't know when it will quieten down, and immigration decline as an issue. If Climate Change does have a negative impact across the southern USA, the country may face the irony that its 'immigration' crisis is in fact a migrant one, of millions of Americans heading north in search of reliable sources of water, food and shelter. I recall reading about the background to John Steinbecks' The Grapes of Wrath, and a Californian complaining that 'Oakies' were arriving in California and so desperate for work they would take half the pay of locals, throwing them out of a job. But that is capitalism, and where are they now?

Here's what's NOT being said in the immigration discussion.
Mexican immigrants vs immigrants from all other countries. There are many legal documented immigrants from South America, Asia, India, and Europe.

When you peel away the layers, this is solely about Mexican immigrants.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MrFanti

Here's what's NOT being said in the immigration discussion.
Mexican immigrants vs immigrants from all other countries. There are many legal documented immigrants from South America, Asia, India, and Europe.

When you peel away the layers, this is solely about Mexican immigrants.

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Forgot to add. Where I live at, there are many documented/legal Peruvians, Columbians, Panamanians, Puerto Ricans, Haitians, Dominicans, Pilipinos, Middle Easterners, and a few others. The conversation escalates when Mexicans are brought into the debate.

In The Grapes of Wrath Rose O'Sharon breast feeds a hungry hobo at the end, I hope I never get that Democratic.
If you're White in America and you look at A Norman Rockwell painting, there are no illegal aliens. It's become completely out of control. Even if Trump really wanted to get rid of all the illegals, the secret is we couldn't afford it financially, there are millions of them. But with both sides of the aisle at his bay and call, can Trump really make THE WALL a hollow campaign promise?

https://preview.ibb.co/kntijo/00.jpg

MrFanti
Puerto Ricans are US citizens

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MrFanti

Here's what's NOT being said in the immigration discussion.
Mexican immigrants vs immigrants from all other countries. There are many legal documented immigrants from South America, Asia, India, and Europe.

When you peel away the layers, this is solely about Mexican immigrants.

---

No it's not - illegals coming from Mexico are just the most prominent target. Have you forgotten the attempted Muslim ban? The Trumpistas' agenda is to severely cut overall immigration levels (legal as well as illegal) particularly from non-white non-christian sources.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigr...f_Donald_Trump
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...ion/692447002/

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dns4809

MrFanti
Puerto Ricans are US citizens

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Correct - my mistake as I was trying to illustrate the competitiveness of other Hispanics vs Mexicans - having grown up myself looking at Mexicans fighting Puerto Ricans fighting Cubans in distinctly singular (read "segregated") communities.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by filghy2

No it's not - illegals coming from Mexico are just the most prominent target. Have you forgotten the attempted Muslim ban? The Trumpistas' agenda is to severely cut overall immigration levels (legal as well as illegal) particularly from non-white non-christian sources.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigr...f_Donald_Trump
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...ion/692447002/

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Fair point - but when it comes to the border, it's predominantly about Mexicans (taking Haitians and Cubans into context too).
As far as non-White is concerned, Europe is beginning to "tire" of non-White refugees....

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MrFanti

Fair point - but when it comes to the border, it's predominantly about Mexicans (taking Haitians and Cubans into context too).
As far as non-White is concerned, Europe is beginning to "tire" of non-White refugees....

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With violence so endemic in Central American states like Guatemala and Honduras (often fighting over their share of the US market in illegal narcotics), those voting with their feet have fled north, and, as with the Jews who fled Pogroms in the Russian Empire in the 19th century travelling west, many stayed in the first country they arrived in, be it Germany in 1900 or Mexico in 2018, and some ventured further -to the UK in 1900, the USA in 2018, so your point 'its predominantly about Mexicans' does not fit the facts.

The issue here is immigration in general as well as its specific experience, be it the USA, Italy or Germany, but when it comes to Europe, you need to be more specific to defend the claim

As far as non-white is concerned, Europe is beginning to "tire" of non-white refugees...

Let an American put it in words, few in number, great in meaning:

I am the American heartbreak-
The rock upon which Freedom
Stumped its toe-
The great mistake
That Jamestown made
Long ago

Thanks for CHEATING with Obama's Supreme Court JUSTICE pick, Mitch McConnell, if you can't get your Muslim ban legally, try illegally.
I said Trump was the best thing that ever happened to the Democratic Party, maybe he still is, If he goes down in History as the worst President in American History, maybe he can take what's left of the Republican Party with him.
I am not in favor of too many immigrants, just like I'm not in favor of Mom working, when you're as far in debt as we are you have to pretend you're in control.

https://preview.ibb.co/dxzzeo/0b2.jpg

Although Justice Sotomayor delivered a scathing rebuke to her colleagues, the Supreme Court decided the financial interests of the President take precedence over the rule of law. The selective nature of the 'travel ban' means that where the President has financial interests, as in Saudi Arabia, its subjects can enter the US as often as they like, as did the majority of the men who entered the US in 2001 to slaughter thousands of its citizens. The UAE is exempt for the same reason, just as the President entered into a business deal with a Malaysian businessman in Canada even though Malaysia is a key conduit for the wealth of the Kim family in North Korea and is exempt from the ban. Whatever, the primary duty of the USA's institutions being to protect and promote the business interests of the President.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/26/u...T.nav=top-news

One can try to dilute the immigration/invasion issue with lots of emotional appeals, but in the final analysis the numbers speak for themselves regardless of "racism." Racism is a tough call since all humans came from the same root. This appears to be accepted by religion and scientists alike. One can't have a static world of dictators and victims fleeing dictators forever. The world's victims have to stop being victims and solve problems at home. The United States can help, but it can't work magic. Nation building, world's policeman and provider of safe harbor are all equally impossible.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MykiX

One can try to dilute the immigration/invasion issue with lots of emotional appeals, but in the final analysis the numbers speak for themselves regardless of "racism." Racism is a tough call since all humans came from the same root.

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Because human beings are all descended from "the same root" means that there's no such thing as racism? Just because race is a social construct doesn't mean racism isn't real. Consider the following: A person hates Muslims and sees a Lebanese Christian and attacks that person based on the stereotype that brown skin=Muslim. Does the fact that they're not Muslim mean they haven't been victimized? Does it mean that the perpetrator does not harbor serious malice towards Muslims? Racism is based on the perception of intrinsic difference between groups and does not depend on that difference actually being real.

Racism is real and stereotyping Mexicans as rapists is racism. Nobody is saying we should be nation builders or even take in illegal immigrants, only that we shouldn't have religious litmus tests for travel to the U.S. and we should not separate mothers from children for what is a misdemeanor in our penal code.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MykiX

One can't have a static world of dictators and victims fleeing dictators forever. The world's victims have to stop being victims and solve problems at home. The United States can help, but it can't work magic. Nation building, world's policeman and provider of safe harbor are all equally impossible.

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I think that merging three complex issues into one underestimates the scope of the problems. Nation building is a difficult term to define or even justify, as many modern states are the result of imperialism destroying rather than creating nations, the USA being one example, the multiple states of West Africa created by the British and French another, with a separatist movement in Cameroon now threatening to re-open divisions between French and English speaking citizens. Nation building often appears to be reduced to the policing of fractious societies within the state, as is the case in Afghanistan and Kosovo, but where internal corruption barely masks the extent to which the creation of a nation state can become a 'get-rich-quick' scheme for the elites chosen by the external power who prefer to pocket the money rather than invest it in the development of the country. Is it any wonder that the losers vote with their feet when life that was hard becomes intolerable?

Syria on the other hand is a case of a 'nation' destroying itself -once the 'beating heart of Arab nationalism', 60 years of dictatorship has been sustained by violence, and while the standard reaction of the government to the opposition is to kill them -Hafiz al-Asad in 1983 destroyed most of old Hama when the people there rebelled against his rule- even by his father's standards, the basic message in Syria: if you don't support the government, live in another country, or die, has been taken to an extreme that has left the country in ruins and without any legitimate government at all, unless you want to grace with legitimacy a regime that has murdered more people than can be counted, displaced millions, and turned Syria into a dustbin state.

Moreover, the fact that the USA was not always able or willing to export its democratic system and values to states in Central and Southern America may be responsible for the arrival of its citizens on the southern border. For a long time the US supported military dictators, US firms profiting from the benefits of a fixed relationship where markets were never free, while in other cases, like Nicaragua the US spent millions of dollars funding terrorists trying to overthrow the government elected by the people merely because the US didn't like it. Yet I believe there are fewer Nicaraguan 'victims' on the border trying to get in than there are Guatemalans and Hondurans who can no longer live in a threatening environment where gangs and cartels fight to the death over a shrinking market for their narcotics in the USA, which is where most of their customers live, but where desired narcotics like Marijuana can now be purchased legally in some states. One is tempted to say the Americans helped to create the junk economies of Central America, and is complaining when 'the victims' turn up on its doorstep seeking help.

The deeper problem with, say Mexico appears when NAFTA is viewed as an attempt to deplete immigration through the devolution of industrial production across the border. International supply chains are now standard, but are being threatened with tariffs and non-tariff barriers, but if Mexico is an example of an oil-rich state that has failed to invest in its own future, if even NAFTA could not solve the immigration 'problem' maybe it is because capitalism in its most recent form is less interested in labour than it is in capital, with the consequence than jobs are not only hard come by in Honduras, but in Wisconsin too, with the prospect of Harley-Davidson going to the wall because of an ignorant President who is more interested in punishing the firm for producing bikes outside the US for an external market -which it has been doing for years- than he is in creating the business environment in which it can survive.

So while the US cannot be the world's policeman, or provide a safe harbour for the poor, it cannot simply say 'not my problem' when in reality it helped to create the problem. In 1970 Albert Hirschmann wrote a book called Exit, Voice and Loyalty which looked intensely at this problem of the state failing to satisfy the needs of its citizens, it remains pertinent today but does not lay to the rest the more broader issue: do all human beings have the right to freedom of movement? If not, what rights do we have, who is to tell me where I can and cannot live? To deny a human being access to food, water, clothing and shelter is to deny us a basic human right.

But maybe we are now entering a sustained period of conflict led by the USA in which human rights no longer mean anything, and it is kill or be killed, migrate or die. What happens when climate change forces 50 million from their homes and they head North?

You ain't seen nothin' yet.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Stavros

Although Justice Sotomayor delivered a scathing rebuke to her colleagues, the Supreme Court decided the financial interests of the President take precedence over the rule of law. [/url]

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This should not come as a surprise. The US Supreme Court has a long history of politically-driven decisions that failed to protect individual rights or the democratic process against abuses of power. This Court is about as likely to rein in creeping authoritarianism under the current regime as the German courts did under Hitler.
https://blogs.findlaw.com/supreme_co...-all-time.html