Having a sub class of folks who are not citizens is definitely a problem. We need immigration reform. Having illegal immigrants who are willing to work for less than minimum wage is definitely a problem.
Even Bernie has said as much.
With immigration reform we can set the path for these folks to get citizenship which will raise wages for everyone.
I have zero faith in congress’ ability to do this though.
ICE definitely needs to be abolished. Open borders is probably a bad starting point though… but I like that idea more than having ICE.
I have zero faith in congress’ ability to do this though.
This is the crux of the problem. Nobody has faith in Congress’ ability to do anything.
They are getting so old they can barely wipe their own asses.
The fact that immigration is even a thing here makes me chuckle. We literally killed the people who lived here, planned a flag and said that’s ours now. It’s such a laughably ridiculous concept. Every one of us here is a descendants of immigrants who came here looking for a better life.
I mean, native Americans/native indians still exist. So not everyone
I mean yes, but they were systemicatically murdered in a genocide, and forcibly removed from their land.
Anybody who survived that period was forced to integrate with American society or face systemic persecution and often death.
Hell, we went to war with a number of tribes bcz we wanted their land and resources. The point isn’t that Native Americans don’t exist today.
Its that their culture was systematically destroyed and their homelands burned to the ground or taken over.
Yes, I acknowledge all of that. Which is why I was correcting you when you said every one of us is descended from immigrants looking for a better life. It’s wrong to act like they are completely gone, not because it makes our ancestors look bad, but because it erases the people and cultures who are still here with us and persevere.
i think, alas, the spirit remains true since indigenous people have been systematically barred from the levers of power. however, i still appreciate your comment because building something new that works for everyone will have to include, and frequently be led by, indigenous voices
I understand and agree with your sentiment, but supermajorities of voters in dem repub and independent parties want criminal immigrants deported. That’s why so many independents went with Trump this go round. They don’t like just rounding up everyone for the purpose of achieving some record of deportations just for shits and giggles though.
Establishment dems were downplaying crime and immigration issues while establishment repubs and Trump were exaggerating them. Immigrant criminals and gangs and cartels are a real problem and people on the streets see it, especially immigrants in those same communities.
With immigration reform and doing things like giving daca and similar immigrants who have been here since they were babies a path to citizenship makes sense. And so does having refugee and asylum options, especially in places where US foreign policy has directly caused the hardships that have and are causing folks to flee their own country. That’s basically all of central and Latin American and the carribean and also countries in South America, Palestine, Ukraine. US foreign policy is beyond fucked up.
Our monkey brains are still fixed on tribalism and racism which makes us infight though, allowing the establishment politicians to pit us against each other while the uniparty continues to serve the corporate and donor class… and Israel.
Please point me to all of these supposed immigrant gangs. I’d love to read about it. All of the research data that I’ve seen points to immigrants committing violent crimes at a far lower rate than actual citizens of the U.S.
If you don’t have actual data to back up your claims, you’re just spouting misinformation at best, or intentional disinformation at worst.
Cartels are a different problem entirely. Those are drug gangs from other countries. So, in don’t even know why you’re bringing that up in the context of immigration.
Absolutely, immigrants in general do commit far less crime than citizens based on what I’ve read and seen.
Republicans would have us believe gangs are in control of the cities and all kinds of craziness… this is not what I’m suggesting.
But there are examples of gangs and criminals doing things in relatively recent news cycles…
I was saying Dems tend to look the other way, Repubs exaggerate the problem… we all know we need immigration reform, and Trump was speaking to the issue when he campaigned. Dems downplayed it or suggested it didn’t exist at all.
I work every day with immigrants. I’m conversationally fluent in Spanish because of it. I support immigration and reasonable paths to citizenship. But under our current system we have an underclass of people being exploited by the owner class. That’s not acceptable to me.
The US immigration “policy” is just as stupid as it is inhumane. At this point it’s easier to imagine it being orchestrated by rivals that think long term, rather than being just from the ever-present conservative hate and ignorance.
Our economy is built with an infinite growth mindset, moreso than most. ALL developed nations are seeing population growth slow down and even reverse – that’s just what happens when populations get educated and wealthy.
So what are we doing? Violently kicking out tons of lower paid workers while also scaring away some of the most highly educated and specialized Ph.Ds.
But hey, at least we’re consistent and also make conditions horrible for natural born citizens to raise USian children!
Yes, Open borders is the desirable outcome. The fact that people were saying they don’t want open borders shows they’re a lib and therefore not a real leftist.
It is not immigrants who are the cause of any problems in America, it is the right-fascists and oligarchs who shit this garbage out their mouths.
The counter to right-wing extremism isn’t right-wing liberalism, it is real leftism, the thing they are trying to dismiss.
I don’t want open borders, I want abolished borders, big difference.
Atleast the machines won’t be able to tell the difference between me and a pile of plastic. All the other shit is like a beacon in the night.
The leeches are not the immigrants, unless they happen to be an oligarch immigrant like Elon.
The convenient thing is that “Abolish ICE” is valid whether you want closed borders, open borders, or no borders.
The main predecessor to ICE was Immigration and Naturalization Service. Notice the difference in tone between Service and Enforcement? But even if you don’t don’t support immigration, ICE has morphed into a paramilitary secret police to do Trump’s bidding and has been attacking and deporting natural born citizens. If you only oppose “illegal” immigration, ICE has been targeting and deporting deporting people with all their paperwork in order.
Literally the only two reasons to support keeping ICE is that you support fascism and/or White Supremacy
Morphed? It was established to be a redundant paramilitary organization with less oversight and more jingoist blind loyalty than its predecessor or law enforcement in general. That it could be turned directly against Americans was an original design specification.
There’s a difference between serving the oligarchy at large and personal loyalty in a cult of the personality.
It’s valid to the majority but to those in power it’s a non starter.
I vote for no borders.
Trump agrees. That’s why he “arrested” Maduro for breaking a US law
Monkey’s Paw.
Don’t let perfection be the enemy of progress. We can move toward inevitable or destructive. I choose logically-forward, personally. Doesn’t matter my personal opinions
The moderate position is stop giving money to the gestapo. The people who want to give them money do not represent progress.
#Incrementalism #DoNotSplit
it’s baffling to me how the idea that “being born here does not make me entitled to services more than someone who wasn’t born here” is controversial among “leftists”
we all need food, we all need housing… why should it matter that my birth coordinates happen to be within an arbitrary drawing on the map ffs
“Services”
Haha! (In the bully laugh from Bart Simpson’s bully’s laugh.)
is controversial among “leftists”
I haven’t noticed any leftists who consider that idea controversial. Mostly just Liberals/Democrats
Many state communists oppose open borders. The USSR, China, and Cuba all had/have citizenship privileges and controlled migration, and generally people that support those governments are also called “leftist”.
The same goes for many social democrats and socialist reformists. Even unionists often oppose migration because migrants are imported by the capitalist order to use as scabs (see “guest workers” in 1970s West Germany).
All basically want a walled garden in which leftist ways of living can flourish, usually with the idea to export them later.
But especially in activist and discourse spaces, people tend to be in a pretty narrow band from pop liberalism to anarchocommunism. Socialists, socdems, and unionists tend to be busy with their job, because that is what their praxis calls for. And state communists tend to walk away exasperated when people condemn genocide.
But anarchocommunist praxis is for a large part prefigurative sharing of information, ideas, and tentative structures. So we’re relatively loud and as unemployed as we can get away with.
Many state communists oppose open borders. The USSR, China, and Cuba all had/have citizenship privileges and controlled migration,
Fair enough, the USSR restricted movement within their territory more than many other countries restricted their borders.
Basically no one believes in open borders, only some weird fringe anarchists who posts memes like the one above that are largely irrelevant in the real world. It’s always just been a straw man from the right or just weird online fringe anarchists who hold the position.
The reason communists are critical of the US/European hostility towards immigrants is not because we want open borders but because western countries bomb, sanction, coup these countries and cause a refugee crisis then turn around and cry about those immigrants coming to their country.
I think what you’re seeing is that there are two groups of people interpreting it in two different ways:
- Change this one thing and everyone will be better off for it.
- An ideal world would have this feature.
Because we have limited resources and a country definitionally priorities its citizens over foreigners. If it doesn’t; then you basically no longer have citizens, you just have inhabitants.
That’s some weaselly circular argument you’re engaging in there.
Your use of the word “just” implies that having people called “citizens” is inherently and self-evidently better than having people called “inhabitants”; which you’re then plugging into a proof-by-definition to paper over the fact that you haven’t actually made any kind of case for why it’s better.
I thought it was self evident how it was better; an inhabitant is a person living in a place. A citizen is a person living in a place, recognized by said place, who lives under a social contract with said place, giving up certain rights in exchange for receiving other rights.
It’s kind of like a restaurant. Is it an advantage to the restaurant that people can enter and sit down with no intention of doing business with the restaurant? Or is it better that those who enter do so with the understanding that they will abide by the restaurants rules, and order food?
In reality, a foreign patron walks in, makes an order, and then you shoot them in the face.
You guys don’t care if they came here legally. You don’t care if they are refugees who only want to be back home. You don’t care if they are true asylum seekers. You don’t care if they follow every letter of the law.
You yell “don’t take my share!” Buddy, they didn’t take your share. The classes above you are laughing at your gullibility.
Your words are hollow.
You guys don’t care
How many guys named Abundance are you talking to right now? Are they in the room with us right now?
It’s really and conversational etiquette to make assumptions about what I believe in when you could just ask.
It’s an advantage for the people who get a place to sit and eat.
And an advantage for the people who work in that restaurant if they’re ever tired or out when it starts to rain that that they can rest or shelter in any other restaurants near by.
It’s an advantage for the people who get a place to sit and eat.
No… In the analogy they don’t eat. That’s the entire point. They take up space without contributing, that’s the difference between an inhabitant, and a citizen.
So you believe that when a foreigner comes into the country, they simply just exist and take up space? You don’t think they, you know, buy things and work?
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If your analogy is based on consumption it makes no sense.
Meanwhile, I could drop eat from mine response and the point stands with a dry place to sit.
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And what is the issue there? Let’s prioritize our inhabitants then. It’s not like there’s not enough to go around.
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There’s absolutely limited resources, specifically concernin what the government has the capability of handing out.
Unfortunately we have to think about “what’s in it for us?” If the answer is another mouth to put on welfare and medicaid then… Why?..
The government has no problem handing out hundreds of billions to ICE and the Pentagon - there absolutely is enough.
"what’s in it for us?
Ah, ok, you’re one of those. Might want to change your username
We don’t live in a world of abundance, abundance is a goal of humanity, were not there yet; and we don’t get there by printing money out of thin air and handing it out.
The government has no problem handing out hundreds of billions to ICE and the Pentagon - there absolutely is enough.
Billions of dollars is pennies compares what would be required to put the world on welfare, and those billions remove criminals and those preying on.l the generosity of our country.
we don’t live in a world of abundance
literally all studies about this make you wrong
iterally all studies about this make you wrong
You misunderstand, we live in a world that’s capable of abundance. Go tell people in Nigeria that they have a world of abundance and see how they react; because they do not have an abundance of anything.
Who’s saying to “put the world on welfare”? This conversation isn’t about getting things for free from the government, it’s about who is able to enter the country. It is proven thus far that immigration into the US is a net benefit, they commit fewer crimes than citizens and earn their way.
Edit: “preying on the generosity of our country” is hilarious
The initial premis of the argument that I replied to was questioning why people who were born in the U.S. are entitled to something that those who are not born in the U.S. are not.
I’m all for net tax payers entering the U.S. through legal routes. Methods that protect the immigrant from exploitation from employers.
At a minimum I demand we all be as free to move around the world as the products, money and material that are a product of our collective can.
I lived in Germany for a couple years, about 30 minutes from the French border. Every once in a while, my wife and I would cross the border to buy some French wines.
The border didn’t even stop us. There were buildings off to one side, but the highway was wide open, no barriers or checkpoints or anything. Didn’t even need to slow down. It was like crossing state lines in the US.
America is so used to being isolated from the rest of the world, with oceans on either side, that we make a big deal about the two countries that actually touch our border. I feel it just exacerbates our fear of foreign threats, because we’re not 100% secure on all sides.
And of course, a lot of Canadians mostly look and sound like white Americans, so we don’t think twice about them, but Mexicans look and sound different, so it’s easy to rile people up about the “invading foreign culture” that will “destroy America.” It’s dumb racist gaslighting, but it’s sadly effective against Americans who have never left the country or lived anywhere near either of our borders. Which is most of the population.
And of course, a lot of Canadians mostly look and sound like white Americans, so we don’t think twice about them, but Mexicans look and sound different, so it’s easy to rile people up about the “invading foreign culture” that will “destroy America.”
The echo of America’s original sin still dwells in the heart of every American. Deep down, there’s some primal fear that what we did to others will be done to us.
Identity is difficult. Clinging to an identity that describes half a continent will be the end of the United States of America.
two countries
If we count all the bases, USA has more countries bordering its land, than any other.
As a former US military member, I’d like to point out that we consider our foreign bases to be American soil, so anyone born on base is considered a legal US citizen. However, the bases themselves are loaned to us by the host country through legal agreements. Depending on the country, we could have unrestricted use of the space, or we could just be visitors on the host country’s local military base with limited space allocated to us.
I remember in Germany, they have such strict laws against tearing down natural forests that most of our bases had to remain mostly forested. We had very little space to construct buildings on base.
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The EU trade/travel model was a good one, even if the ECB is a moral abomination.
Easiest way to get rid of undocumented immigrants is to grant them all citizenship. Problem solved.
Bada bing bada boom
Rather than the “Easiest way”, how about a good way…
How about we make a nice world to bring folks to. Y’know… end manufactured scarcity, stop using people as pawns on the grand chessboard, stop conjuring precarity to cull and terrorise people by, and so on. Y’know? How about have a neat world for kids to come to? … no more economic migrants under duress… Everybody happy.
“Let’s figure out this food/air deal, OK? 'K. I’m just weird, you know? How about have a neat world for kids to come to?” ~Bill Hicks
Exactly. Being a migrant isn’t exactly a picnic. I think it’s reasonable to assume most people would like to live near their families and homes if that’s a viable option. I still think people should be able to go anywhere in the world if they want to, but they shouldn’t have to. A lot of the “problems” of immigration are just the point at which other people’s problems become inconvenient for me. If we can make the whole world a nice place to live, we’ll be well on our way to making borders not matter so much.
Conservatives need an enemy to rally against. That is all they have.
They have many other enemies. But having an enemy is required for the ideology.
Any ideology that is enemy based, eventually leads to genocide.
and once they’ve eliminated that enemy they need a new enemy to eliminate
I don’t give a rats ass who comes over the border. But we do need customs enforcement if for no other reason then to staunch the flow of illegal firearms into Mexico and Canada. Having said that I trust no one in ICE right now to do that (also they aren’t).
Firearms are a human right. The problem is not firearms heading into Mexico, it’s Gate Keeping firearms out of the hands of the common man.
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Fearmongerers be like…
Trafficked women and children be like… HELP
Drug couriers be like… THANKS
Terrorists be like…EASY
Person A - I don’t think cars should have breaks or seat belts.
Person B - I think that’s a bad idea for these reasons.
You…
Fearmongerers be like…
but you didn’t provide reasons, you provided common hateful rhetoric tuned to convince people to favor terrorists (ICE) over their neighbors
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@wpb@lemmy.world already explained that the root of these issues is not drugs and terrorists flowing into this country. you dismissed them as bait. i see no reason to engage with you as a good faith actor
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Ok, let’s indulge in your racist rhetoric a little bit. What you’re essentially claiming is that violent crime will go up if there are more immigrants. However, if you look at actual data, you’ll see that the number of violent crimes per capita for undocumented immigrants is much, much lower than for citizens. Reality just doesn’t line up with your BS. Facts don’t care about your feelings.
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