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  1. #11
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    Default Re: Immigration -the defining issue of our times?

    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/



  2. #12
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    Default Re: Immigration -the defining issue of our times?

    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.


    Last edited by blackchubby38; 06-23-2018 at 01:21 AM.

  3. #13
    filghy2 Silver Poster
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    Default Re: Immigration -the defining issue of our times?

    Quote Originally Posted by MykiX View Post
    Immigration is not the answer. Helping people requires helping them where they live.
    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?



  4. #14
    filghy2 Silver Poster
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    Default Re: Immigration -the defining issue of our times?

    Quote Originally Posted by blackchubby38 View Post
    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.
    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.


    Last edited by filghy2; 06-23-2018 at 04:20 AM.

  5. #15
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    Default Re: Immigration -the defining issue of our times?

    Quote Originally Posted by filghy2 View Post
    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.
    It should boil down to something in between. But the impression I get is that neither side is willing to compromise on this issue.



  6. #16
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    Default Re: Immigration -the defining issue of our times?

    Quote Originally Posted by blackchubby38 View Post
    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.
    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?


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  7. #17
    Senior Member Silver Poster MrFanti's Avatar
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    Default Re: Immigration -the defining issue of our times?

    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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  8. #18
    Senior Member Silver Poster MrFanti's Avatar
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    Default Re: Immigration -the defining issue of our times?

    Quote Originally Posted by MrFanti View Post
    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.
    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.


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  9. #19
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    Default Re: Immigration -the defining issue of our times?

    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?



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  10. #20
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    Default Re: Immigration -the defining issue of our times?

    MrFanti
    Puerto Ricans are US citizens


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