Border crisis

[BashiChuni]

Perfect example of bleeding heart liberalism denying cold hard facts of reality. 

[Lord Ratner]

3 hours ago, HeloDude said:

As for your ancestors, did they come before the 1930s?  If so, what kind of social programs at the state and federal level were available to immigrants then and earlier compared to today?  You can’t have open immigration and a welfare state…even some of the most progressive western countries understand how this won’t work well

Shack. If we're ready to go back to letting people die of starvation and sickness if they have no money, consider me an open-borders supporter.

 

Until then, zero low skilled immigration. We will get all the low-skilled immigrants we need from the families of the high-skilled workers we grant citizenship to, and the 20-30 million we have already let in.

[Stoker]

5 hours ago, HeloDude said:

As for your ancestors, did they come before the 1930s?  If so, what kind of social programs at the state and federal level were available to immigrants then and earlier compared to today?  You can’t have open immigration and a welfare state…even some of the most progressive western countries understand how this won’t work well.

They got here in the 50s. Can you elaborate on what social programs you think we offer that people are calculating is worth the risk of being raped and murdered by organized crime on the way up? That said, we used to sell land to immigrant farmers at rock-bottom prices, cleared of Indians by the Federal government, with subsidized railroads to bring your crops to market - is that not a social program?

https://www.cato.org/briefing-paper/immigrant-native-consumption-means-tested-welfare-entitlement-benefits-2020

Immigrants use less welfare than the average American, for what it's worth.

I agree that the current system is bad. The solution is not to build a taller wall, because the demand still exists. If you're worried about immigrants taking your welfare checks or changing your culture, you should support making the border more porous - pre 1980s immigration crackdown we largely had men coming here to work and then go home, now that's too risky so they bring their families and stay.

[BashiChuni]

stoker you're missing the key word.

ILLEGAL immigrants

i'm all for immigration. just not illegal, unchecked immigration.

illegal immigrants are getting WAY more welfare and support than the average poor american. 10k on credit cards in NY. free healthcare in CA. our country cannot afford to keep financing literally millions of illegal immigrants per year.

[Lord Ratner]

1 hour ago, Stoker said:

Can you elaborate on what social programs you think we offer that people are calculating is worth the risk of being raped and murdered by organized crime on the way up?

Let's start with Emergency Medicaid. Also school meal programs. Pregnant women and young kids get WIC access. Free room and board in certain cities. You think a mother living in Haiti is more worried about rapists and murderers in Mexico than the rapists and murders she has to endure if she stays in Haiti?

 

States seems to be struggling: https://wpde.com/news/nation-world/denver-hospital-system-may-collapse-due-to-migrant-crisis-we-are-turning-down-patients-southern-border-trump-biden-colorado-denver-health-post-donna-lynne-immigrants-illegal-migrants-asylum-seekers-resources

 

What country do you live in that you think this is anything like the 1950s? And if the burden of illegal immigration is so low, why are the Blue Cities in the north melting down over 5-digit inflows of aliens being sent to them by Florida and Texas?

 

1 hour ago, Stoker said:

The solution is not to build a taller wall, because the demand still exists.

What demand? There was demand for dirt cheap consumer goods from China, and that 30 year experiment decimated the American middle class and industrial base. The short term price suppression of cheap foreign labor is not worth the long term disruption to the economic balance of the society.

 

And through all of this everyone ignores the effect on the originating country. What hope do these countries have of pulling out of the 3rd-world death spiral if their hardest workers and strongest men all flee to the US? Is cheaper lettuce and construction labor really worth the long term impact of having an entire continent of heavily populated, unstable countries perpetually feeding low/no skill workers to our southern border?

 

Do you believe that the United States can handle the addition of... 100,000,000 low-skill immigrants? Because there are far more who wish to be here. Exactly how does that play out?

[tac airlifter]

8 hours ago, Stoker said:

They got here in the 50s. Can you elaborate on what social programs you think we offer that people are calculating is worth the risk of being raped and murdered by organized crime on the way up? That said, we used to sell land to immigrant farmers at rock-bottom prices, cleared of Indians by the Federal government, with subsidized railroads to bring your crops to market - is that not a social program?

https://www.cato.org/briefing-paper/immigrant-native-consumption-means-tested-welfare-entitlement-benefits-2020

Immigrants use less welfare than the average American, for what it's worth.

I agree that the current system is bad. The solution is not to build a taller wall, because the demand still exists. If you're worried about immigrants taking your welfare checks or changing your culture, you should support making the border more porous - pre 1980s immigration crackdown we largely had men coming here to work and then go home, now that's too risky so they bring their families and stay.

Stoker, I don't intend this in a mean way, but you sound like somebody talking about the idea of the border problem who hasn't been there since Biden took office.  What is happening now is different than the border problem that has existed for several decades.

When you go to the border right now, you will see 10,000 angry 20 year-old dudes.  You will see them fighting, and you will see them interacting with each other, and eventually you'll realize that Venezuela and Haiti and Sierra Leone and Nicaragua have emptied their jails and sent them to us.  
 

I know there are still families and a draw for unskilled workers and all that stuff that has been going on for a long time. Congress is dysfunctional, got it. But there is a different thing happening right now on a scale we have not seen before and it is a serious threat to this nation.  Millions of poor people in a three-year period looking for work would be bad enough, but mingled within that population group of illegal immigrants are hundreds of thousands of vicious gangsters. Are we so innocent and naïve that we cannot see what is obviously happening?

[HeloDude]

9 hours ago, Stoker said:

They got here in the 50s. Can you elaborate on what social programs you think we offer that people are calculating is worth the risk of being raped and murdered by organized crime on the way up?

I think the other guys have detailed what would have been my similar response, so need to add to it.  It’s clear you don’t want to stop people from coming here illegally and it’s also clear you don’t want to make even an attempt at deporting people who are in the country illegally.  We just have a huge difference of opinion when it comes to this issue.

[Stoker]

13 hours ago, BashiChuni said:

stoker you're missing the key word.

ILLEGAL immigrants

i'm all for immigration. just not illegal, unchecked immigration.

illegal immigrants are getting WAY more welfare and support than the average poor american. 10k on credit cards in NY. free healthcare in CA. our country cannot afford to keep financing literally millions of illegal immigrants per year.

A lot of people say this, but then you ask them about their knowledge of the legal immigration system and it's quite poor. Effectively the only way a not-exceptionally-skilled immigrant can legally migrate to the US outside of the asylum system is to either be related to an American citizen, or to win the Green Card lottery. That's 50,000 a year. You can come here on an H1B if you're theoretically impossible to find domestically, but depending on the country you're from you'll face a decades-long or lifetime wait to ever convert to permanent status, and until then you're an indentured servant for whatever corporation sponsored you.

People in this thread are strawmanning me because they can't comprehend that I want immigration in an orderly manner. Do we need to reform the asylum system? Absolutely. Pass a bill. Appropriate funds such that we have immigration rocket dockets and hear cases in a week, not eight months, and everyone is interned until then. I'm totally fine with that! But I also want to have avenues for would-be Americans to come here legally. It's unjust for someone to think that open immigration was a swell idea for the first couple hundred years of our nation, ending sometime exactly when their last ancestor made it over.

If I said I'd support an antipersonnel minefield 500 yards deep at the border, with troops every hundred yards armed with rifles and shoot-on-sight orders, would you in turn agree that our legal immigration needs to be massively revamped to actually provide avenues to come here in an orderly fashion? I'd strongly support an option for would-be immigrants to declaim any attempt at welfare - that was something my family had to do when they came here, and in theory it still applies via the public charge rule (although that's more about denying admission than deporting people here already). It's a strange world we live in where we desperately need people to work crappy jobs, provide a welfare state for people with crappy jobs, and then don't let people come here to take the crappy jobs because they might utilize the welfare state.

That's not even taking into account that the only reason the US is relatively well positioned, economically and demographically speaking, compared to our competitors on the world stage, is because we have relatively high immigration. 1.6 births per woman is not going to cut it - that isn't China but it's not far off.

[Lord Ratner]

22 minutes ago, Stoker said:

But I also want to have avenues for would-be Americans to come here legally.

And here is your strawman. Who here doesn't want this? It's never been the issue. The issue is "how many." You will n.e.v.e.r. see a democrat (or for that matter, any conventional republican) come within 1,000 miles of that question, yet it is the single most important question in any discussion about immigration. How many, and who?

 

I will submit that the answer should be something like:

How many --> (2% - (Natural population growth rate)). So if Americans are having enough kids to give us 2% or more annual population growth, then no immigration. Otherwise, fill in the shortfall. Population growth needs to be high enough to keep the economy growing, but stable enough to avoid huge swings in generational size. You can't have absolute control over that, but immigration can be used as a buffering force. Adjust the 2% number to better fit desired growth patterns.

Who --> Look at what skill class and income strata is trailing, and target that. We have a huge surplus of low-skilled Americans (and illegals already here). So the 50,000 lottery and family allowance is more than enough right now, as I said:

16 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

We will get all the low-skilled immigrants we need from the families of the high-skilled workers we grant citizenship to, and the 20-30 million we have already let in.

23 minutes ago, Stoker said:

It's unjust for someone to think that open immigration was a swell idea for the first couple hundred years of our nation, ending sometime exactly when their last ancestor made it over.

Nonsense. This is another strawman. It was a swell idea when the American economy was overwhelmingly labor based, in addition to the realities of welfare and medical benefits that are free to anyone who exists within out borders.

But we are now a services economy, and the need for young, uneducated, unskilled men is much, much lower than it was in the past. The easy answer to that is to only import immigrants with high-skill backgrounds, but as I asked before, what does that do to the countries we, the global police, want to advance into the modern world? They need doctors and engineers more than we do. 

23 minutes ago, Stoker said:

would you in turn agree that our legal immigration needs to be massively revamped to actually provide avenues to come here in an orderly fashion?

Same as before, this is a throwaway question. How many, and who?

23 minutes ago, Stoker said:

It's a strange world we live in where we desperately need people to work crappy jobs, provide a welfare state for people with crappy jobs, and then don't let people come here to take the crappy jobs because they might utilize the welfare state.

We absolutely do not. "Crappy job" is a function of (Pay) / (Suck factor). Importing a metric shit ton of low skilled labor artificially depresses the wages of high-suck-factor jobs. The problem is that we have plenty of Americans who are only really capable of performing those jobs. If they are undercut by illegal immigrants, they simply don't work, and since we are a welfare-supportive country, that's another ward of the state we all get to pay for.

If you can't find enough people willing to pick strawberries or build fences, you either need to pay more for the work or develop technology that eliminates the need for human labor. Digging ditches, for example; now a single excavator can do the work of hundreds of men with shovels. Using desperate Mexicans to do the work just distorts the usual economic pressures. When we have near-zero able-bodied Americans without jobs (voluntarily or involuntarily), then we can start importing unskilled labor en masse, because there will be a real, not an artificial need.

 

All of this is economic based. This also ignores the reality that we should not allow anyone who can't speak English to immigrate in (unless they are a familial import). We can not build an integrated society if the new citizens are incapable of communicating with the "legacy Americans." It is bad socially, and it is bad functionally, when you have to waste resources on translation services at nearly every level of government.

I don't want to pile on you specifically, because I find most people on both sides are making completely hollow arguments. But you have demonstrated quite well why the issue goes nowhere. You injected a ton of righteous morality into your responses, yet you have proposed nothing actionable. Your preferred solution is not clear from your posts, but it sounds like you want to simply formalize the in-processing of the people who are currently coming in illegally. That does zero to address the actual problem.

[brabus]

41 minutes ago, Lord Ratner said:

a function of (Pay) / (Suck factor)

(  .  )(  .  )

fixed it for you…I’ll see myself out. 

[Stoker]

11 minutes ago, Lord Ratner said:

And here is your strawman. Who here doesn't want this? It's never been the issue. The issue is "how many." You will n.e.v.e.r. see a democrat (or for that matter, any conventional republican) come within 1,000 miles of that question, yet it is the single most important question in any discussion about immigration. How many, and who?

I will submit that the answer should be something like:

How many --> (2% - (Natural population growth rate)). So if Americans are having enough kids to give us 2% or more annual population growth, then no immigration. Otherwise, fill in the shortfall. Population growth needs to be high enough to keep the economy growing, but stable enough to avoid huge swings in generational size. You can't have absolute control over that, but immigration can be used as a buffering force. Adjust the 2% number to better fit desired growth patterns.

...

All of this is economic based. This also ignores the reality that we should not allow anyone who can't speak English to immigrate in (unless they are a familial import). We can not build an integrated society if the new citizens are incapable of communicating with the "legacy Americans." It is bad socially, and it is bad functionally, when you have to waste resources on translation services at nearly every level of government.

 

Democrats absolutely own their share of the blame for not articulating a plan to increase legal immigration, instead being content with consigning millions to be a permanent underclass. It's not right or productive. Democrats don't understand why undermining the rule of law is bad, Republicans believe the absurd idea that America is somehow full despite being one of the less dense developed countries with large swathes of the country experiencing depopulation and labor shortages.

The natural population growth rate was 0.13% last year, so that'd be, what, 6 million green cards issued per year? That's six times what we issued in 2023, for what it's worth. Yes, I'd take that deal and strongly support punitive measures against anyone who circumvents the system. Landmines, shoot-on-sight, indefinite internment, light them on fire, whatever makes you happy and deters others. If you provide a reasonably attainable path for the tired, the poor, the huddled masses to come to the US and work legally, we can be draconian against those who choose not to take it. Heck, make new arrivals pay an extra 20% income tax to cover the risk of them collecting food stamps.

We have never imposed a language requirement for new arrivals, and somehow managed to assimilate just fine (or are those scary Italians who came over in the 1910s still speaking the language of the old country?). It's a good job skill, though, and it would make a lot of economic and political sense to require new arrivals to take English classes for a designated period of time.

[Lord Ratner]

1 hour ago, Stoker said:

Yes, I'd take that deal and strongly support punitive measures against anyone who circumvents the system.

Just so we're clear, my proposal blocks out 90+ percent of the people illegally immigrating into the country right now. So the "landmines, shoot-on-sight, indefinite internment, light them on fire, whatever makes you happy and deters others" would be directed towards the unskilled immigrants coming from south of our border, who would realistically have no legal method of getting to the USA. Sorry, but there are more unskilled, uneducated people who wish to move here than we have room for (economically, not physically), and latin americans aren't the only poor people in the world. The millions of immigrants would have to be spread over a wide variety of countries and cultures, to ensure the disproportionate importation of one specific culture does not allow for creating critical-mass communities that are able to escape the forces of assimilation. The vast majority of those who wish to be here will simply never get to.

1 hour ago, Stoker said:

If you provide a reasonably attainable path for the tired, the poor, the huddled masses to come to the US and work legally, we can be draconian against those who choose not to take it.

That's what I thought. You are advocating for unlimited immigration with this statement. See above.

1 hour ago, Stoker said:

We have never imposed a language requirement for new arrivals, and somehow managed to assimilate just fine (or are those scary Italians who came over in the 1910s still speaking the language of the old country?). It's a good job skill, though, and it would make a lot of economic and political sense to require new arrivals to take English classes for a designated period of time.

Once again, comparing the social, political, and economic conditions of 1910 to 2024 is silly. Its a different world, and more importantly, a different USA with different needs. We weren't $34T in debt back then, and bringing in a bunch of low-income immigrants will not help that. And we don't need a bunch of raw labor. Your 20% additional income tax would bring them up to... 20%, since those making less than $40k pay no net federal taxes: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/18/who-pays-and-doesnt-pay-federal-income-taxes-in-the-us/

Even the additional 20%, which you know will never happen, would not do anything to fix our budget.

So aside from not being able to effectively join the American community if you can't speak to Americans, you will never see meaningful numbers of immigrants make enough money to make their admission to the country worthwhile if they can't speak English.

[BashiChuni]

2 hours ago, Stoker said:

 

Republicans believe the absurd idea that America is somehow full

 

i've never heard one republican talking point that says this. your understanding of the republican position is incorrect.

[O Face]

  
                     Stoker.               Ratner. 

  

 

Edited March 12 by O Face
.

[Stoker]

According to at least one right-wing think tank, a 25 year old high school dropout immigrant will produce a positive $216k in government receipts over their 30 year working life (https://www.cato.org/blog/fiscal-impact-immigration-united-states). Turns out there's a benefit to having people's least productive years happen somewhere else.

Ratner threw out a back-of-the-napkin model for increasing immigration, but when presented with the actual number of immigrants it would imply, decided that there would be additional restrictions. Sorry, there aren't six million brain surgeons looking to move here - frankly we've screwed up the US enough that people given the option would prefer Canada or Ireland. Six million construction workers might start to put a dent in the ludicrous housing shortage we've dug for ourselves, though, and that's an unskilled (rather, uncredentialed) job that we could certainly fill.

At what point did something break in the US where we became unable to assimilate immigrants? Your arguments are the same arguments people used to exclude Chinese and Japanese from California a hundred years ago - and sure enough, there are masses of legacy Asian immigrants who don't integrate with society or contribute anything... err, wait, it's the opposite.

[nsplayr]

1 hour ago, BashiChuni said:

i've never heard one republican talking point that says this. your understanding of the republican position is incorrect.

https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=america+is+full
 

The first result is the former president, current GOP presumptive presidential nominee and leader of the Republican party tweeting that exact phrase, “Our country is full.”

The second link is a longtime GOP senator saying that exact phrase.

Do I need to continue?

Edited March 11 by nsplayr

[Boomer6]

23 minutes ago, Stoker said:

At what point did something break in the US where we became unable to assimilate immigrants? 

When it became racist to expect people from other nations/cultures to at least attempt assimilation via nothing more than learning English.

[HeloDude]

If illegal immigration is so good for our economy and for American citizens then why are we having a “crisis”?  Why are cities saying they need additional funding to help with these illegal aliens?

It also wasn’t that long ago that Biden and his fellow Dems actually cared about illegal immigration…makes you wonder what changed.

[Clark Griswold]

They knew it was a bad deal for the west all along, some of them now are expressing regret…

https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2024/03/11/nobel-economist-reverses-support-migration/

[Lord Ratner]

2 hours ago, Stoker said:

Ratner threw out a back-of-the-napkin model for increasing immigration, but when presented with the actual number of immigrants it would imply, decided that there would be additional restrictions. Sorry, there aren't six million brain surgeons looking to move here - frankly we've screwed up the US enough that people given the option would prefer Canada or Ireland. Six million construction workers might start to put a dent in the ludicrous housing shortage we've dug for ourselves, though, and that's an unskilled (rather, uncredentialed) job that we could certainly fill.

No, you just failed to comprehend what you are reading. Where did I say 6 million was too many? I'll give you a hint: nowhere. I did the math before posting it, obviously. I threw 2% growth out there as a target because it represents a high-water mark for American growth in the modern era. I also said:

6 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

Adjust the 2% number to better fit desired growth patterns.

Now if the only way to get 6 million (immigrants + natural growth) is to import all low-skilled labor, then no, we wouldn't do that. Your nonsense about 6 million brain surgeons shows how you are not being a good-faith participant in the conversation. The world is not comprised of only poor Mexicans and brain surgeons.

As I said:

6 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

Look at what skill class and income strata is trailing, and target that.

The balance of our population is equally important to it's growth. If growth was the only factor that mattered, South America and Africa wouldn't be a dumpster fire. I'd rather not adopt that model, thanks.

2 hours ago, Stoker said:

At what point did something break in the US where we became unable to assimilate immigrants? Your arguments are the same arguments people used to exclude Chinese and Japanese from California a hundred years ago - and sure enough, there are masses of legacy Asian immigrants who don't integrate with society or contribute anything... err, wait, it's the opposite.

Most likely the late 90's, when communication technology allowed immigrants to focus their efforts on reaching very specific locations where there were high densities of immigrants from their homelands. You also have a huge shift away from geographic growth, where decades ago the construction of the interstate highways moved millions of people to new parts of the country, and the immigrants were often the first to move. Now they are concentrating in major population centers or states where they have high density, such as the Somalis in Minnesota. So yeah, once again, things change. Adapt or die.

And once again, when the Asians you reference came a hundred years ago there was a tremendous need for physical labor, such as building the railroads. Pretty much all construction was done with manual labor back then. Didn't need an education, and you didn't need to speak English.

2 hours ago, Stoker said:

According to at least one right-wing think tank, a 25 year old high school dropout immigrant will produce a positive $216k in government receipts over their 30 year working life

Yes, as compared to the high-school dropout native who will have a negative net impact. Could it be that employing immigrants for highschool-dropout-jobs is reducing the demand for highschool-dropout-natives? Obviously it is, by the tens of millions. That study shows how expensive the uneducated native population is becoming, because they aren't working. Interestingly, it also shows that the financial benefit expires after the first generation of immigrant. Their kids become a negative proposition. We can have a conversation about eliminating most Welfare programs for everyone, which I support, but it's a different topic.

We can't just get rid of our unskilled native-born citizens. Redirecting their potential employment to cheaper, illegal (or legal) immigrants only makes the problem worse.

 

[Lord Ratner]

46 minutes ago, Clark Griswold said:

They knew it was a bad deal for the west all along, some of them now are expressing regret…

https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2024/03/11/nobel-economist-reverses-support-migration/

This is 110% exactly what I refer to when I say the globalization experiment failed. It just took 30-40 years to realize it. Cheap TVs were not worth the non-monetary price.

[HeloDude]

14 minutes ago, Lord Ratner said:

This is 110% exactly what I refer to when I say the globalization experiment failed. It just took 30-40 years to realize it. Cheap TVs were not worth the non-monetary price.

But we made the CCP more powerful in the process, so there’s that.

[O Face]

Well done Texas!!

https://www.breitbart.com/news/supreme-court-lifts-stay-on-texas-law-that-gives-police-broad-powers-to-arrest-migrants-at-border/
 

And I suppose the SCOTUS as well, sad that common fucking sense needs to be heard ruled on by the highest court. 

[M2]

13 hours ago, O Face said:

Well done Texas!!

https://www.breitbart.com/news/supreme-court-lifts-stay-on-texas-law-that-gives-police-broad-powers-to-arrest-migrants-at-border/
 

And I suppose the SCOTUS as well, sad that common fucking sense needs to be heard ruled on by the highest court. 

Didn't last long (STS)...

Anticipation and anger on Texas border as strict immigration law again on hold

McALLEN, Texas (AP) — A federal appeals court late Tuesday again prevented Texas from arresting and deporting migrants accused of entering the U.S. illegally, hours after the law briefly took effect.

Before a divided U.S. Supreme Court earlier let the state law take effect while a legal challenge plays out, some sheriffs were ready to relish an unprecedented state expansion into border enforcement, while others were reluctant...

[O Face]

How dare Texas attempt to enforce federal law since the federal gov refuses to do it…Unfuckin believable.