Illegal Immigration- what to do?
POSTED BY: SignyM
UPDATED: Friday, May 12, 2023 14:24
VIEWED: 9966
PAGE 4 of 9
My sister works as an "independent" (editor) but not by choice. In her view, it sucks, especially the "no benefits" part. If you live in a nation with universal health care or you're young and healthy that might not bother you too much, but if you're 50+ or you have children that's a different story.
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Don't piss in my face and tell me it's raining.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
My sister works as an "independent" (editor) but not by choice. In her view, it sucks, especially the "no benefits" part.
Different strokes, etc.. It definitely has its drawbacks.
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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Quote:
Originally posted by SoupCatcher:
* edited one more time to add: I want to specifically say that when I say immigrant in the preceding paragraph what I mean is the subset of immigrants who are not white. This is for the simple reason that I have not seen any argument from the "build a wall" folks that we have a European immigrant problem. For the most part, the complaint is about Mexicans. Since the only group that people seem to have a problem with are non-white, I will only address non-white immigration.
Hey Soupcatcher,
I like your post, especially the part about opinions, you beat me to the punch.
There is no European immigrant problem because of the Atlantic Ocean.
De-lurking to stir stuff up.
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Soupcatcher,
I suspect the reason why 'immigration' has become such a hot topic is b/c Bush wants it prominently on the agenda. After all, who trumpeted the issue in the first place? It makes for better speeches than Afghanistan (that is soooooooo over) and the embarrassment that is Iraq.
My observation is that angst happens whenever the neighborhood changes. I don't think it's dictated by ethnicity, citizenship, or skin color. The new group just has to be, well, new - and different in some way. When blacks (who were not immigrants) moved into certain neighborhoods in Buffalo, the (immigrant) Polish people moved out. When Polish, Italian and Irish immigrants moved in in the early 1900's, the previous 'other' white people moved out. And so on. (BTW it's humiliating to me that a group with which I could be identified (Polish) could be so closed-minded.)
Angst aside, I think there's the practical upside and the downside to the US from immigration. An added consideration is there may be an assumed duty from past, present and future US meddling which have helped create unlivable conditions elsewhere. And hence have created the drive for immigration.
But the US is not the only 'immigrant' country on the planet. There is Canada, New Zealand and Australia. And the US is not the only country to have created horrific conditions around the globe and then received the results. Western and wealthy Commonwealth countries tend to have a large number of immigrants from other Commonwealth countries - former British colonies.
I think the US has the right to control its borders, just like any other country. I think the US SHOULD control its borders. The only benefit to the US from sloppy border control is to businesses who hire illegals.
If the US has a moral debt to the people of other countries (and I believe it does), it should make it up by action directed at the other countries - reversing the original harmful action directed at the other countries. (Not there is a prayer of that happening. It's just that I don't see the equity of 'allowing' illegal immigrants to be slightly less victimized in the US - oh, and victimizing US workers in the process - as a way of atoning for the victimization in their own country.)
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BigDamnNobody,
Thanks. I would feel a lot more sanguine about our ability to implement an effective immigration policy, with respect to overseas immigrants, if we were actually investing in upgrading our port security.
Rue,
I agree that the main reason why the immigration debate is taking place now is a Republican desire to use this for GOTV. But there's resonance there. In their cynical manipulating they have tapped into something. It's the something they tapped into that I'm interested in.
And I also agree that we need to have an equitable and enforceable immigration policy that does a lot more than just allow an unvoting working class into the country who can be exploited by big business. The one we have now clearly doesn't work. However, I don't think open borders will work either. A serious debate on our immigration policy is necessary, IMHO. But, and this is a big but, I don't think many of the people complaining about illegal immigration are interested in a serious debate.
If they were serious they would educate themselves (or maybe I'm being naive). Far too often I read arguments from people that show a lack of understanding of our historical immigration policy. Or a lack of understanding of the statistics on illegal immigration. Or a lack of understanding on the statistics of language acquisition of illegal immigrants.
All of these things are areas that I am still learning a lot about. But it doesn't take much learning to see that many of the people arguing for closed borders are repeating unfounded stereotypes. In other words, they are ranting. And the substance of the rants leads me to believe that their real problem is with the immigrants themselves.
I'm still trying to decide how much of a factor the color of an immigrant's skin is in the angst. One of the reasons I focussed in on that is because I'm reading, Sundown Towns by James Loewen. Well, I'm reading a few pages, getting really pissed and putting the book down, and then reading a few pages the next day. And it is eye-opening to me how many communities went all-white starting in the 1890s. And stayed all-white until only recently. Whole swaths of the midwest (and many areas in the rest of the country - with the exception of the south) expelled their black American populations and kept them out, pushing them from the rural areas into the major cities. And then bands of all-white suburbs sprang up that, in effect, penned them in those cities.
One of the things I've learned in my life is that it is easy to fear and hate a group with which you have no contact. And we have had communities across the country where generations have grown up who had little or no contact with people who did not look like them. Or, it was in the context of, at sundown they better get the hell out of town. And these were communities that were born, in this particular incarnation, through explicit racist actions (whether it was through burning out, or lynching, or just the threat of violence, or because no one would rent or sell to you, or because the sheriff escorted you to the border of the town, or any of a number of ways). That's decades and decades of festering racism learned on your parent's knee.
Now the huge agribusiness that owns all the neighboring farmland is using illegal immigrant labor and there is an influx of people who aren't white and speak English with an accent (or don't even trust their English enough to speak at all in that language). And the lid comes off.
I'm just speculating. But it seems reasonable that a lot of the angst is coming from forced contact in areas of the country where contact had been previously avoided.
I'm not sure how good an example this is, but let me try it on. I grew up in a neighborhood of Los Angeles called Glassell Park that is on the northeast side of the 2/5 interchange (which might not mean much). Close enough to downtown to get there in less than ten minutes on surface streets but buffered from downtown by geography (hills and the river) and f
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Soupcatcher,
I appreciate your rambling. Please ramble on.
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Quote:
Originally posted by ONETOOMANY:
ALSO if you don't live in the US you don't get to have a DAMN opinion about how we should respond to our immigration problem. Deal with your own by letting in as many people as you want & see what the results are.
Quote:
Originally posted by SoupCatcher:
It's one thing to state that you give no credence to the opinion of someone who doesn't live in the US on this particular topic. I could see the logic of that. It's another to state that people can't have an opinion on a topic. That's just silly.
sure I see your point, but if you don't live here or are not directly affected by a situation then your opinion carries no wieght. Stop waisting time
Quote:
Originally posted by ONETOOMANY:
By the way I challenge anyone to find an industrialized country with a stable economy that has a working open border policy like the one suggested for the US.
Quote:
Originally posted by SoupCatcher:
That's exactly the policy that the US had for more than half of our existence. We seemed to do alright.
I suppose, but what is the difference in population between now and 100 years ago. You still didn't answer my question. I'm talking about
more recent times.
Quote:
Originally posted by SoupCatcher:
To satisfy my own curiousity, would you mind answering some questions?
What is the size of the community that you live in? (rural, town, etc - or just ballpark it by order of magnitude: hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, etc.).
What region of the US do you live in?
Do you live in a suburb that was established after 1900?
What are the demographics of your community?
Did the demographics of your community substantially change after 1890 and then remain consistently homogenized (wrt skin color) until only recently?
The reason why I'm asking these questions is because I'm curious about the whole, "why now," with respect to the immigration debate on a national level.
Ok, I'll answer a few of your questions. Right now I live in the NW US, but grew up in AZ, CA, & TX. I lived in mostly mid to lower class areas of large cities. The immigration debate is nothing new to me.
Quote:
Originally posted by SoupCatcher:
* edited to add: Just to expand on the last sentence. I grew up in Los Angeles - where the illegal immigration debate has been ongoing from well before I was born. So it's a surprise to me that, all of a sudden, the entire country is having it. Where were you all decades ago? One possible explanation I've read is that communities that previously had not had an immigrant population now do. That a number of predominantly white communities, and communities that became all-white by design in the 1890s (sundown cities) or suburbs that were created all-white by design after 1900 (sundown suburbs), were becoming less all-white. So I'm curious if you come from a sundown city or sundown suburb.
* edited one more time to add: I want to specifically say that when I say immigrant in the preceding paragraph what I mean is the subset of immigrants who are not white. This is for the simple reason that I have not seen any argument from the "build a wall" folks that we have a European immigrant problem. For the most part, the complaint is about Mexicans. Since the only group that people seem to have a problem with are non-white, I will only address non-white immigration. And also you will note that I have not asked what your skin color is because I feel the environment a person grows up in is more relevant to this discussion, especially if that environment is one which has historically embraced racism.
This is kind of interesting because not once did I mention anything about race or what countries I was talking about.(I listed Canada & Mexcio as Exapmles of what our bordering countries require) You have managed to turn the whole thing into a matter of racism.
If yo're even going to broach the subject of race in immigration you have to include everyone that means "white" immigrants (w
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Quote:
Originally posted by ONETOOMANY:
Ok, I'll answer a few of your questions. Right now I live in the NW US, but grew up in AZ, CA, & TX. I lived in mostly mid to lower class areas of large cities. The immigration debate is nothing new to me.
...
This is kind of interesting because not once did I mention anything about race or what countries I was talking about.(I listed Canada & Mexcio as Exapmles of what our bordering countries require) You have managed to turn the whole thing into a matter of racism.
If yo're even going to broach the subject of race in immigration you have to include everyone that means "white" immigrants (which in the NW a good deal of the immigrants are "white"), but when I say immigrant I'm talking about anybody. I don't care who you are, where your from, what your doing, what your race, gender, sexual orientation, height, weight, or name is.
All I care about is that if you come here you do it legally or if you do immigrate illegally that you take steps te get legal citizenship as soon as possible, not several years later. Which is only the same thing most every other country requires. I'm not saying close the borders, but everybody has to jump through hoops to immigrate anywhere in the world. Why should it be any different to immigrate here?
I'm just tired of people stating open border policy opinions when they don't live here or don't have any experience with the situation. That's it.. That's all.. Nothing about race or ethnicity what so ever.
So I'm sorry If I offended anyone, but soupcatcher it's pretty fk'd for you to make me out as a racist.
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Fair enough. My assumptions were wrong.
* edited to add: I should say, my assumptions probably do not apply to you.
And, guess what, race relations in the US are pretty fk'd up.
* edited one more time: As to me calling you a racist. I don't think I did that.
What I did was to ask about the environment you grew up in. Then I went on to speculate that attitudes about illegal immigration are shaped by the environment that people grow up in and described specific racist enviroments (sundown towns or suburbs) and that I would expect racist attitudes about immigrants to come from people who grew up in those racist environments.
By your responses, it appears that you probably did not grow up in a sundown town or suburb. So why would you think that I was directing the remainder of what I wrote as labelling you as racist? It wouldn't apply. You may or may not be a racist. I have no clue.
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Hey Soup I appreciate the rambling too.
I come from a family of immigrants. My parent's generation lived in a little community with it's own foreign-language newspaper, radio, church and store that sold traditional food. All of our holidays had a cultural twist. Some of my relatives never learned English well. I had a relationship with an Indian (from Mumbai) and a crush on a Costa Rican. I married an immigrant. I've known, worked with, studied with, and hired people who travel across the Mexican border and who have families and property on both sides. I've enjoyed the company of people from all over the world: India, China, Japan, Ethiopia, Myanmar, the Phillipines, Guatemala, the aforementioned Mexico, and elsewhere.
And yet I come down against illegal immigration in a very visceral way. I've tried puzzling this out. I don't think it's racist because I've just been too close to too many people of all skin colors. It's certainly not for lack of knowledge about "hispanics".
I think it's mainly a matter of the immigrants' class, which predicts other factors like education and economic role. We have a lot of immigrants here from all over the world- Taiwan and mainland China, Vietnam, Korea, and Mexico, and the Phillipines as well as a significant black population. The reaction to one group or another can be predicted by the wealth of that group: Taiwanese who immigrated voluntarily came from middle or upper-class families, while Vietnamese who came here catastrophically and with nothing are looked on less favorably. So maybe I'm not a racist so much as I am a... snob?
To solve the problem of racism, simply rubbing elbows with "the help" or with "kids at school" is not going to break stereotypes or promote understanding. The only thing that REALLY rattles people's brains is being confronted with "the other" when that person is in a position of POWER- your black male teacher, your Spanish-speaking surgeon, the female cop who's writing your ticket- because you are forced to acknowledge their authority and deal with it.
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Don't piss in my face and tell me it's raining.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SoupCatcher:
Fair enough. My assumptions were wrong.
* edited to add: I should say, my assumptions probably do not apply to you.
And, guess what, race relations in the US are pretty fk'd up.
Your BlSht assumptions about me deffinitly don't apply.
And, guess what, I never said they weren't.
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Notice anythig particular 'bout our luck these past few days, any kind'a pattern'. You depend on luck you end up on the drift no fuel, no prospects, beggin for alliance make work getiin' towed off to the scrap out THAT AIN'T US NOT EVER
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