The final deal will codify the legal protections for so-called DREAMers that Trump rescinded when he ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that began under his predecessor. The deal also seeks to undo another Trump decision: the termination of the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation for certain groups of immigrants, including Salvadorans, 200,000 of whom could face an end to their legal status in 2019.
In an interview Thursday afternoon, Flake confirmed those details to The Daily Beast. He said the DACA fix agreed to as part of the deal includes a pathway to citizenship for DREAMers. Additionally, they will have to wait 12 years from the time they are awarded protected status before they can gain citizenship, according to a congressional source familiar with the negotiations, and they can earn up to two years of credit for any time spent as a DACA beneficiary. Groups of immigrants such as Salvadorans would be able to access the diversity visa lottery program if they have Temporary Protected Status, according to Flake.
In exchange for backpedaling two of his initiatives, Trump would score some real policy victories. The deal will revamp but not end the visa lottery program, numerous sources said. The formula for so-called chain migration—the policy whereby lawful permanent residents can sponsor immigrants to the U.S.—was re-drawn in a way that alters the ability of those DREAMers to sponsor their relatives for legal status.
Once again, the Democrats display zero desire or ability to negotiate. We should not WANT to codify DACA. You don't hand over concessions in order to reinstate the status quo.
It is easy to suspect that it is guaranteed that even if Democrats were to regain control of both chambers and the White House in a few years, they would not use the opportunity to repeal the recent tax bill, let alone substantially raise taxes matched to new spending. (Given the timing of the bill's passage, we will have entered a cyclical downturn by that point anyway.)
Forget about single payer healthcare with this bunch. They will shore up Obamacare with a public option and call it a victory, reproducing the 2009 baseline a decade late.
Quote:
The final deal will also include money for some sort of physical structure along the southern border. Just what that structure will be called and what it will resemble is still unclear. Trump has demanded funding for a wall, though he has backed off of his insistence that it be a coast-to-coast concrete barrier funded by the Mexican government. Democrats, and some Republicans, are adamantly opposed to a wall being built.
Tell him: submit your plans for review according to whatever funds you can appropriate from Mexico. No crowdfunding.
01-12-2018, 06:28
Strike For The South
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
If the administration was serious about slowing undocumented peoples they would fine buisnesses that employ them and slash AG subsidies for those growers who have them work the fields. Instead of raiding 7-11s, they would be fining the corporate HQ.
The fact of the matter us this, these stunts they are pulling, wether they be deporting Mexicans from corner stores or Haitians from their homes are merely red meat for a "working class" that they have no real answers for. They are trinkets and lead designed to hold the base together long enough so that the very rich can continue to pillage the community and the coffers.
It is absolutely unconscionable.
01-12-2018, 16:40
Seamus Fermanagh
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
I find myself in total agreement with Strike on this. While I am happy with the chilling effect the Trump administration has had on illegal entry, there is no wall high enough to stop illegal immigration if there exists a market for illegals here in the USA. Unless that market is curtailed, someone will find a way to satisfy that market.
Americans like to get stoned on cocaine and want to keep their pain receptors numbed permanently after knee surgery, or hangnails, or whatever. If perc is not available, then heroin will suffice. Thus there is a market. You have all long since noted the efficacy of America's "war on drugs" to block the smuggling of drugs into the country to fill this market need. ~:rolleyes:
Good gravy, we are actually having more success in our "War on Terror" than we are having with drugs and illegals.
01-12-2018, 19:05
Montmorency
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
Prior to any economic or authoritarian argument in policies dealing with unauthorized immigration broadly, decent people ought to be able to affirm that any putative harms do not permit us to act like brutes toward the bodies and persons of unauthorized immigrants, and any collateral.
Let's not fashion a police state out of our executive and a s-thole out of our country in order to deter migration, even if the "unreachable 1/3" might like the sound of stewing in that welter.
01-13-2018, 01:09
Montmorency
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
And the "shithole" moment is just exemplary of what Trump supporters love about him, so don't focus on the language, don't even focus on the discriminatory sentiment - the media needs to focus on who these people are and what they want to see in our country.
These Trump supporters are the kind of people who will absolutely agree that we need more whites and fewer "mudbloods", the kind of people who will sit there gathered with children in their presence and rant about how non-white breeding rates are threatening the racial order and that the US government should enact policies to suppress breeding by the blacks and browns and subsidize white birth rates, that America will be Great Again once it is White Again.
They genuinely believe, and have always believed, that all men are equal, but whites are the 'most' equal and to deny this is tantamount to special privilege for the uncivilized and genetically inferior darkies.
And the Republican Party has chosen to ride or die with these people, over and over for decades. They have cultivated these attitudes in fungal squalor.
And the Democrats chose to assimilate to this party in the hope of winning a few votes?
Remember the minor scandal of Melania Trump plagiarizing Michelle Obama's convention speech in 2016? Was the problem the plagiarism, or the fact that Michelle Obama gave a Republican-safe speech at the DNC in 2008? And this is the person some liberals want to run in 2020, merely because of her proximity to Barack and her not being a dunce.
Wheres the 'middle finger' emoticon? We need a few of those.
01-13-2018, 02:44
spmetla
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
Quote:
And the "shithole" moment is just exemplary of what Trump supporters love about him, so don't focus on the language, don't even focus on the discriminatory sentiment - the media needs to focus on who these people are and what they want to see in our country.
They probably whole heatedly agree and will side with him over the political correctness every sane politician practices. They are against any America that is "Globalist" which seems to be anti caring about any other country or even how those countries persevere us because we are the greatest.
Quote:
These Trump supporters are the kind of people who will absolutely agree that we need more whites and fewer "mudbloods", the kind of people who will sit there gathered with children in their presence and rant about how non-white breeding rates are threatening the racial order and that the US government should enact policies to suppress breeding by the blacks and browns and subsidize white birth rates, that America will be Great Again once it is White Again.
Sadly that's the line of the other end of the spectrum. One side is for totally open borders, the other for promotion of whites and white immigration.
Makes it very difficult for people such as myself that want merit or skills based immigration. Having Somali slums appear in Minnesota and Michigan from accepting too many refugees isn't acceptable but neither is not accepting any Somalis just because they are black or Muslim. If we accept people from all over that fill job vacancies that American workers aren't filling (we have many tradesman vacancies but a glut of college educated workers) we would be benefiting a lot as a nation. This would also speed up integration for said immigrants because opportunity and prosperity have always been the best tools for upward mobility and social acceptance for "new" Americans.
Quote:
The fact of the matter us this, these stunts they are pulling, wether they be deporting Mexicans from corner stores or Haitians from their homes are merely red meat for a "working class" that they have no real answers for. They are trinkets and lead designed to hold the base together long enough so that the very rich can continue to pillage the community and the coffers.
The stunts and rhetoric have already negatively affected the kona coffee business here in Hawaii. The mass exodus of mexicans has created a labor shortage for coffee picking which is already paying many times what the rate was just a decade ago. The only takers for this unskilled seasonal employment here are micronesian immigrants (here in the US because we nuked their islands in the 50s) and low scale WWOOF workers. Legal immigrants do fly here and work the coffee season and then fly back to California but not enough to make up for the shortfall of pickers.
01-13-2018, 03:22
Montmorency
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
Quote:
Originally Posted by spmetla
They probably whole heatedly agree and will side with him over the political correctness every sane politician practices.
It has nothing to do with political correctness. It's a matter of (dis)respecting people on the basis of race. And that's not a matter of wordplay or ass-covering, it's life or death.
Quote:
One side is for totally open borders
I think you would be hard-pressed to find many in the Democratic party who wants that. What you might have noticed is that the Left (as opposed to Democratic politicians in power) is increasingly unwilling to harshly punish people who actually do make it in for the mere fact of lacking authorization to be here.
Also, ICE is a flat-out scary organization.
Quote:
Makes it very difficult for people such as myself that want merit or skills based immigration.
The same conservative wellspring could then suggest the argument: 'We're importing educated people to the detriment of their homelands, educated people who will edge out our own high-skilled labor, whose education likely cost much more compared to the immigrants'. These skilled and educated immigrants will furthermore have at best a mercenary attitude toward this country, being here to maximize their own profit, and finding it difficult to shift over their extended family networks from their home country toward permanent resettlement and integration.'
The point of immigration shouldn't be to make money for millionaires and international elites. Whether you believe in the brotherhood of mankind, an American exceptionalist legacy, or our overall social and economic health from a narrow national perspective, we need a wide spectrum of permanent immigration in the long term.
Wide in terms of nationality of origin, age, gender, education and skillset, etc.
01-13-2018, 05:01
spmetla
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
Quote:
It has nothing to do with political correctness. It's a matter of (dis)respecting people on the basis of race. And that's not a matter of wordplay or ass-covering, it's life or death.
I agree with you completely there. His base however will assume that his comments are the norm and that he's just brave for voicing it instead of seeing the awfulness of what he said.
Quote:
I think you would be hard-pressed to find many in the Democratic party who wants that. What you might have noticed is that the Left (as opposed to Democratic politicians in power) is increasingly unwilling to harshly punish people who actually do make it in for the mere fact of lacking authorization to be here.
Also, ICE is a flat-out scary organization.
Perhaps not democrats but there is a strong open-border group within this country that see free immigration as a right for anyhow who wants to. The same people think that refugees have right to flee to which ever country they choose. The US can handle a lot of immigration and integrate those people effectively but to do so beyond what the economy can support or need means slums and poverty here.
Quote:
The same conservative wellspring could then suggest the argument: 'We're importing educated people to the detriment of their homelands, educated people who will edge out our own high-skilled labor, whose education likely cost much more compared to the immigrants'. These skilled and educated immigrants will furthermore have at best a mercenary attitude toward this country, being here to maximize their own profit, and finding it difficult to shift over their extended family networks from their home country toward permanent resettlement and integration.
People at that income level though can at the very least afford to relocate or retrain if necessary. The bottom end of society is stuck with whatever work is within reach of where they can travel and what they can afford. For a lot of employers in rural areas like mine not having a car equals unreliable prospective employee and therefore a non-hire.
There's are reason that once people slip into the pit of poverty or homelessness that climbing out becomes harder and harder.
Quote:
The point of immigration shouldn't be to make money for millionaires and international elites. Whether you believe in the brotherhood of mankind, an American exceptionalist legacy, or our overall social and economic health from a narrow national perspective, we need a wide spectrum of permanent immigration in the long term.
I agree whole-heartedly but the quantity is what needs to be restricted. Too much immigration during economic down turns keeps wages, too depressed. Too little during boom times raises wages too quickly and makes those companies less competitive.
The amount of immigration should be adjusted according to the state of the economy.
Of the dozens of Afghan interpreters I worked with about ten wanted me to sponsor their immigration to the US of those I only helped three apply for a special immigration visa. Only one of them was accepted. For those that I didn't help at all I explained to them that life in the US isn't as easy as they think. You can't just own a car and then be a taxi. Having something to sell doesn't mean you can just sell it. A former teacher in Afghanistan doesn't have the certificates to teach in the US. Someone who operated heavy equipment in Afghanistan is not allowed to do the same in the US without the right equipment licenses. Western society has a lot of regulations, bureaucracy and red tape to work through not to mention the cost of living in insane. Merit and skill set based immigration would allow people that can integrate to come in and be directed toward employment.
The gap in how people live, work, and learn in the "West" and the rest of the world has broadened a lot in the last 100 years. There's far more needed to successfully integrate nowadays than merely a willingness to learn the language and hard work. The path from unskilled laborer to relative success and the "American Dream" is no longer as straight as it was for my great great grandfather in 1907.
01-13-2018, 05:10
Seamus Fermanagh
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
Quote:
Originally Posted by Montmorency
...Wide in terms of nationality of origin, age, gender, education and skillset, etc.
No objections, as long as they emigrate to the USA legally.
01-13-2018, 10:16
Fragony
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
There is nothing wrong about protecting your borders, a wall isn't watertight but makes it much more difficult
01-13-2018, 22:21
Montmorency
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
Quote:
Originally Posted by spmetla
The same people think that refugees have right to flee to which ever country they choose.
Technically, I don't think asylum seekers have any international-legal obligation to optimize by geographic distance the country in which they make their claim. If that doesn't suit you, you would need something like a $100-billion endowment for a US/UN program to administer refugees throughout the world near their zone of origin. I think that would be a good idea regardless, but its absence isn't a basis for discrimination.
Quote:
People at that income level though can at the very least afford to relocate or retrain if necessary. The bottom end of society is stuck with whatever work is within reach of where they can travel and what they can afford. For a lot of employers in rural areas like mine not having a car equals unreliable prospective employee and therefore a non-hire.
There's are reason that once people slip into the pit of poverty or homelessness that climbing out becomes harder and harder.
I agree whole-heartedly but the quantity is what needs to be restricted. Too much immigration during economic down turns keeps wages, too depressed. Too little during boom times raises wages too quickly and makes those companies less competitive.
The amount of immigration should be adjusted according to the state of the economy.
Of the dozens of Afghan interpreters I worked with about ten wanted me to sponsor their immigration to the US of those I only helped three apply for a special immigration visa. Only one of them was accepted. For those that I didn't help at all I explained to them that life in the US isn't as easy as they think. You can't just own a car and then be a taxi. Having something to sell doesn't mean you can just sell it. A former teacher in Afghanistan doesn't have the certificates to teach in the US. Someone who operated heavy equipment in Afghanistan is not allowed to do the same in the US without the right equipment licenses. Western society has a lot of regulations, bureaucracy and red tape to work through not to mention the cost of living in insane. Merit and skill set based immigration would allow people that can integrate to come in and be directed toward employment.
The gap in how people live, work, and learn in the "West" and the rest of the world has broadened a lot in the last 100 years. There's far more needed to successfully integrate nowadays than merely a willingness to learn the language and hard work. The path from unskilled laborer to relative success and the "American Dream" is no longer as straight as it was for my great great grandfather in 1907.
That's much more of a domestic policy and social problem though, and while there is an argument that we could prioritize building a better society before before addressing immigration, the reality is that "progress" doesn't work on that sort of videogamey linear and serial scale. In other words, you have to juggle multiple issues at once. On this forum, I don't think it's controversial to suggest that that poor and marginal groups in America, including recent immigrants, need to be getting more support across the board.
On the issue of Afghan (and Iraqi) interpreters: I don't know the details of what exactly the US government promised these people, but I do recall that we have been violating our promises*, and anyway these people, as collaborators, may be in special danger from our enemies. Isn't the most ethical course of action to admit as many of them as possible barring serious disqualifying issues or security risks? Even if many of them may not do well in the US, they will arguably do better than in Afghanistan or Iraq. There is also the reputational damage to consider in "abandoning" them after their service.
*As I pointed out above, given that progress is neither serial nor linear, the fact that the government and armed forces regularly break their promises to our citizen recruits does not justify doing it to foreign auxiliaries and collaborators.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh
No objections, as long as they emigrate to the USA legally.
How far are you willing to go in handling people who are not authorized to be here? Or have authorization, but lose it?
01-13-2018, 22:54
Seamus Fermanagh
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
I'd like to see them all politely rounded up and sent home. The numbers involved and the cost of doing so probably make this a non starter.
So, take the kind of steps Strike was suggesting to curtail the "import-a-mignon" behavior is more necessary than a physical wall. Then we need a better set up system for issued work visas etc. If our industries need workers, then they should be legally allowed to come in to work etc.
We need to REALLY work on keeping down the number of incoming illegals and slowly process the others through. Maybe permissive with permanent residency status but not amnesty'd citizenship etc.
01-13-2018, 23:31
Montmorency
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
Quote:
Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh
I'd like to see them all politely rounded up and sent home. The numbers involved and the cost of doing so probably make this a non starter.
So, take the kind of steps Strike was suggesting to curtail the "import-a-mignon" behavior is more necessary than a physical wall. Then we need a better set up system for issued work visas etc. If our industries need workers, then they should be legally allowed to come in to work etc.
We need to REALLY work on keeping down the number of incoming illegals and slowly process the others through. Maybe permissive with permanent residency status but not amnesty'd citizenship etc.
Revamped work visas, Mexican stability, and ameliorated crisis in Central America would take care of it, but even then you have to recall that illegal immigration by land is at an historic low, so it's mostly an issue of Central American refugees and work visa abuse (often an employer-side abuse rather than a choice by visa-holders; shocking how a work visa scenario can turn into a human trafficking scenario). And the Central American refugees - they are indeed refugees - are entirely our problem. We made this.
So how could a desire to create an environment of fear and impunity for mostly-Mexican aliens who have been residing in the country for decades - how could it be fueled anything other than hatred and spite? Someone who declaims illegal immigration should designate long-term resident aliens as the least priority. But a lot of Republicans really just want to see these people suffer; it's not even about policy to them.
Punish abusive employers, restrain the big corporations, and repatriate individuals, all prior to any comprehensive reform. As for the rest of the aliens, if you can't accept outright amnesty at least take a moratorium on harassing them.
Edit: Also important to keep in mind, the 1996 Clinton immigration reform, partly by making crossings more difficult and dangerous, is what established the massive modern population of long-term unauthorized residents. And that's while stripping the target population of various rights and procedural remedies, and making the process more abusive overall.
Just in one case they call it two communities, in the other two countries. The reasons for the divide, the nature of the divide, the ones who want the divide, all similar. It's always top-down class warfare while decrying every call for more equality as "class warfare"...
The robber barons of old now call themselves capitalists and run the government.
As for culture, that's what they tell the poor and stupid masses, "the immigrants, they have a different culture! be aware!". But their gated communities and country clubs have restricted access because they believe themselves to have a different, and better, culture than the poor people from their own country, too. And yet the poor consider them cultural peers, seemingly ignorant of the one-sidedness of that claim, yet always eager to please their masters for a job.
I don't take the illegal immigration debate seriously even at its most basic level. Nations are an obsolete byproduct of the age of imperialism. Nations are for fascists.
Just in one case they call it two communities, in the other two countries. The reasons for the divide, the nature of the divide, the ones who want the divide, all similar. It's always top-down class warfare while decrying every call for more equality as "class warfare"...
The robber barons of old now call themselves capitalists and run the government.
As for culture, that's what they tell the poor and stupid masses, "the immigrants, they have a different culture! be aware!". But their gated communities and country clubs have restricted access because they believe themselves to have a different, and better, culture than the poor people from their own country, too. And yet the poor consider them cultural peers, seemingly ignorant of the one-sidedness of that claim, yet always eager to please their masters for a job.
I don't take the illegal immigration debate seriously even at its most basic level. Nations are an obsolete byproduct of the age of imperialism. Nations are for fascists.
Leave aside nations and citizenship. In the moment that there is not a single authority governing the world, how should governments regulate individuals within their jurisdiction?
One could identify as anarchist, but still recognize that government regulation is a fact of the world, so what should that look like in our time?
01-14-2018, 01:17
spmetla
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
Quote:
Originally Posted by Graphic
I don't take the illegal immigration debate seriously even at its most basic level. Nations are an obsolete byproduct of the age of imperialism. Nations are for fascists.
So you're advocating for classic anarcho-liberalism or for a global government with free movement of peoples?
Merely saying that you think the current situation is stupid,wrong, or obselete is a cop out of having to actually try and find solutions. What can be done now on this issue that would be in line with your future global government or lack of government? The least you could do is expound on how the current situation would be resolved in your hypothetical world. Would people just move where ever they wanted?
I've meant too many 'anarchists' in college that really just want to be in opposition to everything and denounce government, private property, and the use of money. Please make yourself a little different from my former roommates that would complain if someone ate 'their' frozen pizza or drank 'their beer' and didn't do their share to clean and maintain the community areas such as the living room and bathroom.
@ Hussar You're a socialist right? Why aren't you on board with the older socialist/communist idea that immigration is just a tool of the capitalists to undermine the strength of trade unions and prevent reforms from ever happening? Doesn't this "reserve army of labour/Industrielle Reservearmee" prevent the achievement of socialist goals by allowing the capitalists to keep wages depressed and workers vulnerable?
01-14-2018, 02:16
Montmorency
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
Quote:
Originally Posted by spmetla
@ Hussar You're a socialist right? Why aren't you on board with the older socialist/communist idea that immigration is just a tool of the capitalists to undermine the strength of trade unions and prevent reforms from ever happening? Doesn't this "reserve army of labour/Industrielle Reservearmee" prevent the achievement of socialist goals by allowing the capitalists to keep wages depressed and workers vulnerable?
I can't speak to how prevalent this position was a century ago,
(I think one of our Orgah socialists, the late Horetore, subscribed to the IWW general model)
but an international labor movement recognizes solidarity between workers, i.e. capitalists will exploit them no matter where they are, and keeping them in one place or out of another won't help the situation.
So a socialist argument would call for the removal of preconditions that permit any employer to wield immigration against labor conditions, or foment scaremongering about the social ills of immigration as right-wing agitprop. This would especially make sense in an age when capital and capitalists are fully international, governments are captured by a neoliberal consensus, and unionism and other configurations of labor power are on the retreat in most if not all contexts (all but defeated in the US).
Practically speaking then for the US, shutting out immigrant labor in manual and unskilled work or trades would not raise wages for US workers, but rather would lower consumer standards on the supply-side and either force most such employers to fully off-shoring their business, or solidifying an ultra-poor domestic workforce to maintain it here. Low standards for immigrant labor in fact shields domestic labor from the same treatment. It would be foolish to think that the absence of immigrant labor would spur the government to raise standards and protections for the whole workforce, rather than lowering them.
01-14-2018, 02:36
Husar
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
Quote:
Originally Posted by spmetla
@ Hussar You're a socialist right? Why aren't you on board with the older socialist/communist idea that immigration is just a tool of the capitalists to undermine the strength of trade unions and prevent reforms from ever happening? Doesn't this "reserve army of labour/Industrielle Reservearmee" prevent the achievement of socialist goals by allowing the capitalists to keep wages depressed and workers vulnerable?
That is quite literally a national socialist perspective of someone who is okay with only having socialism in her or his own country while the rest of the world is not important. I'm not against the market, I'm saying if you are, too, and you don't like the way the market works at the moment (poor people come to rich countries), stop fighting the symptoms (migration) and do something about the causes (poverty, conflict, often, but not always, caused by the richer countries). It's actually quite interesting to see how the proponents of free market capitalism are usually the first ones to cry for artificial market restrictions such as closed borders, high tariffs or laws that help the creation of monopolies and oligopolies...
If capitalism really were such a win-win situation with oh so much trickle down, then the poorer countries, which mostly are capitalist now, should grow and grow and grow. Instead they send more and more poor people to the richer countreis, why is that if we're helping them grow so well? Shouldn't they be happily optimistic?
And the caveat with the perfect free market (multiple competing participants on the supply and demand side) is that it is not stable. The government has to stabilize it and if you remove all the supports in the name of freedom, it will come crashing down on you sooner or later.
That is quite literally a national socialist perspective of someone who is okay with only having socialism in her or his own country while the rest of the world is not important.
A pragmatist would recognise that it is easier to unite people the less that divides them. A division a long cultural lines is going to provide unnecessary noise by introducing topics, potentially quite heated, into the public debate that didn't need to be there at all (there were few or no hijab or burka debates in Western Europe a certain amount of decades ago, for natural reasons).
A lot of wealthy people are also for high immigration rates, which is not very surprising. Immigrants can provide cheap labour, and any social unrest or areas with high crime rates is unlikely to affect the places where they live, and the security of those areas they can easily boost anyway, thanks to their wealth.
Quote:
do something about the causes (poverty, conflict, often, but not always, caused by the richer countries)
Yet, the migrants are highest on the agenda. Integrating them into Western welfare states is going to cost fortunes, and one of the places the extra money required to pay for this integration is likely to come from, is the budget for aid to poorer countries.
01-14-2018, 20:24
spmetla
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
Quote:
That is quite literally a national socialist perspective of someone who is okay with only having socialism in her or his own country while the rest of the world is not important. I'm not against the market, I'm saying if you are, too, and you don't like the way the market works at the moment (poor people come to rich countries), stop fighting the symptoms (migration) and do something about the causes (poverty, conflict, often, but not always, caused by the richer countries). It's actually quite interesting to see how the proponents of free market capitalism are usually the first ones to cry for artificial market restrictions such as closed borders, high tariffs or laws that help the creation of monopolies and oligopolies...
If capitalism really were such a win-win situation with oh so much trickle down, then the poorer countries, which mostly are capitalist now, should grow and grow and grow. Instead they send more and more poor people to the richer countreis, why is that if we're helping them grow so well? Shouldn't they be happily optimistic?
And the caveat with the perfect free market (multiple competing participants on the supply and demand side) is that it is not stable. The government has to stabilize it and if you remove all the supports in the name of freedom, it will come crashing down on you sooner or later.
Fair enough so long as you mean lower cases national socialism and not the fascist one that was created. The term was used a lot by Karl Marx and it doesn't necessarily mean you don't care about the rest of the world, they were to be taken care of by exporting said socialism through revolution.
I agree on the difficulties of capitalism. The poorer countries are actually growing at a great pace but their institutions are weak and frankly their birth rates are far too high leading to vast unemployment. A large part of it would really be the increase of mechanization and use of robots. The biggest enemy of unskilled labor workers in the US has been these factors not foreign competition. The American south no longer needs cotton pickers. Ford Motor Company doesn't need hundreds of thousands employed in a single factory. Heavy machinery has replaced armies of manual laborers in construction and public works.
The same is true in most poor countries. Inhabitants of poor countries also have the same general hopes and dreams of success as anyone else does, toiling at thankless tasks or farming ancestral lands understandably have little appeal. There's no shortage of people in every country that see the millions made by athletes and aspire to be one as well to the detriment of studies for practical useful skills.
That's why I tried to point out that immigrant as it was a century ago doesn't make sense, the world and working world no longer work the same. Upward mobility is more and more difficult, especially so for someone hindered by language, education, and licenses/documentation.
As for the poorer countries, the instability and short tenure of their governments isn't exactly helping. Some such as Zimbabwe have tried to right past wrongs too quickly and without foresight and destroyed their status as a food exporter to the detriment of themselves most of all. Others such as in the Sahel face increasing desertification making the the usable land smaller and smaller while the population keeps growing.
All 1st world countries have problems with birth rates. It's just a fact that as people get more affluent they have less children. The easy and less offensive answer is immigration to fill those lower paying jobs that citizens are unwilling to do. Why though should this be an option, if there is unemployment there should be people that must do those jobs. As a socialist I'd expect you to want those jobs to actually pay a salary that someone would then be enticed to do said job instead of keeping that a job for the impoverished in slums to do.
If the trend of the last hundred years continues there will be fewer and fewer jobs for unskilled laborers so why would mass immigration of unskilled laborers be a good thing?
I know you and Montmorency are against any interventions at all to stabilize other countries, isn't allowing mass migration in a form intervention as well. It let's other countries delay necessary reforms in corruption, security, and education. I'd argue that the more effective way to address concerns in those countries would be to help develop industry there as well. I'm no puritan free-market capitalist so I'd think it'd be in the interest of those nations to impose tariffs on goods competing with their native agriculture and industries. All 1st world countries do the same, sometimes in the form of safety standards or quality standards but no one appreciates cheap raw materials or finished goods destroying the manufacturing and agricultural industries they have.
I think we all for the most part agree that controlled economies don't work and neither do completely free market economies. A mix of both regulation and encouragement is necessary. Sadly profit is a great incentive for innovation and improvement but the disparity between the top and bottom doesn't need to be as stark as it is in the US or gulf states for it to create innovation and improvement.
Labor is also a good in a market, allowing the dumping of too much cheap labor upsets the market balance just as too much cheap food makes growing staple crops unsustainable. It too needs to be restricted and regulated in terms of it's the ability of the state to educate and retrain the labor pool as necessary. The current mass migration of unskilled labor has created a glut the market which is stagnating wages and encourages the rapid creation of banned goods. In 1st world countries that'd be drug and sex trafficking while in 3rd world countries it's those to plus slave trafficking, and financing of terrorism.
Allowing this glut to grow even more in competition for jobs that are being more and more replaced by machines only exasperates the situation. Especially when unskilled jobs are essentially pawned off of immigrants or exported to foreign sweet shops and is in effect outsourcing being poor to other ethnicities. That in effect creates problems not just of class inequality but gets blurred into the rising racism that grows in response to this. A hundred year ago every European country had slums but they weren't racial slums, now that exporting being poor to other people is the norm you've got racial slums. Instead of addressing the concerns that create these slum conditions and endemic poverty these countries have allowed the host nation citizens easier upward mobility while tolerating a new untouchable class.
If the current trend of mechanization and robots continues there will be less and less employment availble for those in poverty so why do we encourage the growth this unskilled labor pool?
Intersting article on Japan's possible future:
PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND – Japan’s low birth rate is often framed as the definitive crisis facing the country. A shrinking population constricts the labor force, drives economic stagnation, exacerbates elderly care costs, and eventually leads to cultural collapse. But is this actually true? I argue that Japan’s shrinking population is not all bad, and may actually present a hidden advantage to navigating this century’s artificial intelligence revolution.
To begin, I’d like to address the argument typically presented against Japan’s current demographic trends. Broadly, Japan is believed to be experiencing a collective action problem. While it may make sense for individual families to have few or no children due to monetary and temporal constraints, collectively the country as a whole should want more kids. Therefore, government policies are needed to incent childbirth — which we see implemented today with middling efficacy.
But why should Japan want more children? The obvious, direct consequence of a lower birth rate is a constricting labor supply. But fewer workers is not necessarily a bad thing. Thinning labor puts upward pressure on wages, increasing living standards and reducing unemployment. In fact, reducing the labor supply is the rationale commonly given (though arguably justified) for reducing immigration in my home country of the United States. The counterbalancing risk, of course, is that expensive labor makes Japanese products less competitive, reducing exports and shrinking GDP.
But this downside is only true if labor cannot be effectively substituted with technology. And there is very good reason to believe that not just the Japanese — but the global labor force — is due for a massive labor substitution. Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and automation will eliminate between 30 percent to 60 percent of today’s jobs, depending on which major study you prefer. Positions like trucking, cashiering and clerking will be first to go; but even relatively skilled jobs like paralegals and analysts are predicted to be lost within two decades.
Given this massive technological shift, a reduced birth rate makes anticipatory sense. In the U.S., futurists like the firm Y-Combinator are advocating for a universal basic human income to address social instability due to spiking unemployment. But in Japan, the labor supply is preemptively thinning. The reasons behind Japan’s low birthrate may not necessarily be healthy — overly demanding jobs, lack of institutional support for families, and more — but that does not mean the outcome of these factors is wholly undesirable.
And there may be other, unanticipated benefits to a shrinking Japan. The country’s population is three times the size of California’s — packed in a significantly smaller land mass. Compounding crowding is Japan’s mountainous terrain, which covers over 70 percent of the country. Population thinning may reduce congestion in cities, render urban housing more affordable, and even ease crowding on Japan’s packed commuter trains.
Finally, a reduction in Japan’s population may ultimately catalyze necessary societal reform. Already Japan’s low birthrate is prompting limited immigration reform, making it easier for certain categories of foreigners to live and work in the country. Japan is not self-destructive; it stands to reason that if population shrinkage continues, Japan will increasingly modernize its immigration policies. Ultimately, labor market forces may incite Japan to open up in a way inconceivable to the country now, but vital to its continued success as an economic power.
So what are the downsides to Japan’s low birthrate? The two most typically cited are burdensome elderly care, and weakening national security. Let’s look at each in turn.
As global life expectancy increases, the costs of caring for the elderly will naturally rise in most major economies. It is not the rising cost of elderly care by itself that’s the problem, but the per-capita burden of these costs. An aging population isn’t bad if the productive workforce remains large proportionally. And in Japan, this just might be the case. The retirement age is projected to rise to 65 in the next few years; as major companies recognize older employees can still contribute to the workforce. And human-centered jobs like elderly care are cited as some of the best insulated against AI displacement. Almost circuitously, an older population may prove a source of employment.
What about national security, and Japan’s reduced ability to protect itself? Here again the coming technology revolution might suggest this is not as much of a problem as it seems. I believe the interdependent nature of today’s largest economies makes direct conflict unlikely, and even then Japan is bulwarked by its military relationship with the U.S. And if you believe, like I do, that digital warfare, IP-theft and cybercrimes are likely the battlefields of tomorrow, then a shrinking population simply reduces the surface area of the target.
The arguments presented here are intentionally overstated for the sake of brevity. I do not believe that a shrinking population is an unequivocal good. For example, I am particularly concerned about the cultural risks to Japan, and Japan’s diminishing influence abroad. And taken reductio ad absurdum, a declining population threatens the end of Japan itself. My point is chiefly that the coming technology shift means our old assumptions about human capital and domestic productivity do not necessarily hold.
Ultimately, I would prefer Japan to have a higher birthrate — like most rational thinkers. But I also try to look on the bright side of the population chasm. As AI eliminates traditional employment, Japan may actually be well-positioned to safely navigate its transition.
01-15-2018, 01:19
Montmorency
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
Quote:
I know you and Montmorency are against any interventions at all to stabilize other countries, isn't allowing mass migration in a form intervention as well.
Maybe I'm even supportive of intervention in principle, but the argument isn't easily dismissed that any intervention in the current system is hopelessly imperialist and corrupt.
You make important points with respect to the elimination of work through automation, and the unforeseeable pressures that could result from technological disruption. These are an enormous challenge for any philosophy of governing.
But again, isn't immigration beside the point here? This is a collective human problem, and if we have any hope of addressing it then where or whether people migrate doesn't really make a difference, does it? If we organize the economy around the value of capital, then things will get worse for almost everyone because individuals will have increasingly less value. Maybe you could envision a scenario in which consumption grows increasingly wasteful and inefficient as corporations keep trying to increase value, but the consumer base becomes so precarious that governments have to juggle . In such a system, it would be tempting, and maybe even economical, to set low-skilled immigrants in slums, and give the select "citizen" class the benefits of guaranteed income and the welfare state, through which they can continue consuming. This way you also keep the commoners fighting each other for scraps in an atmosphere of permanent anxiety. Alternatively, people return to subsistence on a local level while governments fill in the gaps and facilitate some level of global movement of goods and people. The main object would be to somehow find "meaningful" and satisfying work toward their immediate communities, while not being strictly productive from the capitalist perspective of mass output and shareholder value (which would probably need to be abolished). I sketch that out not to claim these are the only possibilities or that the latter is an automatic utopia, but to point out that difficulties from economic migration today are symptomatic where they exist, and curtailing immigration would not help the fundamental problem relating to the question of how we use our resources and who decides.
Quote:
Labor is also a good in a market, allowing the dumping of too much cheap labor upsets the market balance just as too much cheap food makes growing staple crops unsustainable. It too needs to be restricted and regulated in terms of it's the ability of the state to educate and retrain the labor pool as necessary. The current mass migration of unskilled labor has created a glut the market which is stagnating wages and encourages the rapid creation of banned goods. In 1st world countries that'd be drug and sex trafficking while in 3rd world countries it's those to plus slave trafficking, and financing of terrorism.
For instance here, in the current framework the economy is driven basically by only two things: population-linked consumption, and government stimulus. Increasing the population increases the consumer base, and in theory creates more jobs. But within capitalism the key innovation is in optimizing accumulation of resources and power from the environment and population into a small elite, far more efficiently than any aristocratic military adventure of yore; employment statistics are a red herring. Where we fret over whether "enough" jobs are created, we miss the bigger picture and take for granted the set of tools that we are given by default. In the end, whether or not immigration is compensated for by job growth, or some other economic indicator, we haven't identified the right question to ask. We are all told to make money, because making money is necessary for survival and because we have a shot at a glamorous and comfortable lifestyle - we are incentivized to move about. Then, where the international economy replaces the local rules of economic production, as in all the blighted rural landscapes across the world, we are forced to move or suffer the consequences. If most people could simply subsist on the spot, they would not choose to abandon their homes to seek a new life; most of the (any) problems specific to mass immigration disappear. I'm not taking into account natural or human disasters that may shift populations, or the dream of space colonization, but for example a Russian or Guatemalan would have little impetus to move to (what is now) the United States specifically, whereas now they do so for economic gain and to avoid economic or physical loss at home.
If we reject the capitalist logic, we no longer have to perceive any given problem as unique and isolated. Indeed, you can recognize capitalism as the fundamental problem here without endorsing any given alternative (though some follow more logically than others).
Slight digression toward the larger point:
[/SPOIL]I think I've always been strongly pro-GMO, and while the linked article is not necessarily anti-GMO per se, it raises some strong arguments against centralized industrial agribusiness driven by technoscientific oligopoly and financial markets. I don't know enough to check the details, but in concept it's worth hearing out.
It asserts that not only would localized, generational agriculture match or better the yield of intensive agriculture reliant on constantly-changing proprietary technology and external valuations, but it would also address current issues of intensifying ecological devastation to maintain or increase yields, declining food quality (perhaps more to do with global warming, but it is a feedback loop), and socially-ruinous migration from the country to megacities and slums in the developing world (destruction of local societies and ways of life).
The hard part is that we would have to change our consumption patterns (e.g. growing more food in gardens), and ~10% of our population would have to work in agriculture compared to ~2% in Western countries today.
Quote:
Optimal results come from long, even multi-generational, experience applied in intimate relationship to each farm. Comparisons of organic and conventional agriculture often use organic farms recently converted from conventional practices; rarely do they consider the most highly evolved farms where soil, knowledge, and practices have been rebuilt over decades.
Quote:
For organic agriculture to work, the factory model of standardized parts and procedures must give way to a relational model that recognizes the uniqueness of every piece of earth. So-called “organic” practices that use the factory model are simply an inferior version of conventional agriculture.
Quote:
Gardening on this scale does not fit easily into existing consumerist lifestyles and mindsets. If we take for granted the framing of food security as “stocking the supermarket shelves” then again, there is little alternative to the current system.
If we take for granted disengagement from land, soil, and place, then there is little alternative to the current system.
If we take for granted continued rural depopulation in the less-developed world, then there is little alternative to the current system.
I say it isn't anti-GMO per se because genetic modification is a versatile and powerful technology that could certainly be used to replicate and augment traditional methods (in the colloquial sense of accelerated selection). The real argument here is against its commercialization, and the restrictive model commercialization entails, and even years ago I could have stood by a statement like "Hate Monsanto, don't hate the science." Abandoning the whole technology because of potential or prior misuse would be nuts.[/SPOIL]
01-15-2018, 07:38
Fragony
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
Quote:
Originally Posted by Graphic
I don't take the illegal immigration debate seriously even at its most basic level. Nations are an obsolete byproduct of the age of imperialism. Nations are for fascists.
Takes one to know one. (international)national socialism right. People who can't see reason have this 'FASCiST' reflex, but they don't recognise it when looking in the mirror
01-15-2018, 18:22
Seamus Fermanagh
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
I shouldn't think so, Frags. I rather expect Graphic is one of those "citizen of the world" types.
In the end, I do not think that the actual manifestation of post-nationalism will have any of the semi-utopian qualities the "citizens of the world" believe it will engender. I tend to agree with those who assert it will end up generating some form of amoral familialism, though I could well be incorrect.
But the hope of most of those who long for a post-nationalism world is human freedom, which they view as being restricted in terms of real freedom by nationalism, and the freedom from want, which they view as being exacerbated by the institutionalized power-structures enacted by the nation-state both manifestly and latently for the purposes of keeping the powers that be on their lofty perches.
To be fair, there are inequities that are built into the system (whether overtly so or by happenstance is a side debate), so the C-o-t-W argument is not baseless.
01-15-2018, 21:47
spmetla
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
Quote:
But again, isn't immigration beside the point here? This is a collective human problem, and if we have any hope of addressing it then where or whether people migrate doesn't really make a difference, does it?
It is a collective human problem but migration certainly does make a difference. Countries can only accommodate a certain amount of immigrants without collapse. Larger countries like the US can do so more easily, especially since the US was NOT founded as an ethno-nationalist state as the trend of the 18th and 19th centuries were. Small countries like Lebanon have been utterly ruined from too many refugees. Remember it used to be the "Paris of the Middle East" and the financial center of the region, it should have been able to prosper like the UAE and Qatar do today given internal peace and peace with it's neighbors.
Same for European countries, they are richer and have more territory and population so they can absorb immigrants a bit more easily but only to a certain extent. Too much and it overstresses the social safety net too much and can cause collapse. The cost of language training, housing, and job training will certainly be extensive, especially if it's on the scale of 200,000 migrants a year as Germany is capping it now.
With technology replacing more and more jobs it will become more and more difficult to find jobs for migrants that face language and skills barriers not to mention cultural ones in regards to work, punctuality and personal responsibility.
There are attempts to work around this but it is difficult: http://www.dw.com/en/german-organiza...rly/a-39699605
Quote:
lthough Rami had years of experience in Afghanistan working in physical therapy, that did not qualify him to work in the health care field in Germany. Many refugees are facing this problem: their qualifications are not recognized by German institutions. Finding a proper job can take years and requires additional certifications and training courses. Rami decided to enter the BeQuFa program to give him a chance in the job market.
Fendi noted that many of the refugees have a difficult time understanding why their qualifications and experience are not recognized in Germany. Many of them want to jump into the field they worked in back home, but may not realize that Germany demands special qualifications to enter fields such as nursing or geriatric care. By attending the BeQuFa program the refugees will be able to get their diplomas recognized during their courses - but only if they can present a paper copy of the diploma. Others may have to start from scratch and do more training beyond the BeQuFa program to be able to work.
Think of it also from the point of view of the country that just educated and trained said person. If poor countries apply their scarce resources to educate people in these special skills and they skip the country to go to another just to find they will drive a truck instead it's a net loss for both countries. One has a loss on the investment they sunk in the individual and the other has to spend money to retrain said individual to work in a career that may or may not be what that person wanted to work in.
Abstract
Objective To estimate the lost investment of domestically educated doctors migrating from sub-Saharan African countries to Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Design Human capital cost analysis using publicly accessible data.
Settings Sub-Saharan African countries.
Participants Nine sub-Saharan African countries with an HIV prevalence of 5% or greater or with more than one million people with HIV/AIDS and with at least one medical school (Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe), and data available on the number of doctors practising in destination countries.
Main outcome measures The financial cost of educating a doctor (through primary, secondary, and medical school), assuming that migration occurred after graduation, using current country specific interest rates for savings converted to US dollars; cost according to the number of source country doctors currently working in the destination countries; and savings to destination countries of receiving trained doctors.
Results In the nine source countries the estimated government subsidised cost of a doctor’s education ranged from $21 000 (£13 000; €15 000) in Uganda to $58 700 in South Africa. The overall estimated loss of returns from investment for all doctors currently working in the destination countries was $2.17bn (95% confidence interval 2.13bn to 2.21bn), with costs for each country ranging from $2.16m (1.55m to 2.78m) for Malawi to $1.41bn (1.38bn to 1.44bn) for South Africa. The ratio of the estimated compounded lost investment over gross domestic product showed that Zimbabwe and South Africa had the largest losses. The benefit to destination countries of recruiting trained doctors was largest for the United Kingdom ($2.7bn) and United States ($846m).
Conclusions Among sub-Saharan African countries most affected by HIV/AIDS, lost investment from the emigration of doctors is considerable. Destination countries should consider investing in measurable training for source countries and strengthening of their health systems.
The shortage of doctors in most African countries is attributed to institutes lacking the capacity to train sufficient numbers of doctors, coupled with an inability to retain doctors, who choose to emigrate for what they consider better career opportunities. Many wealthy destination countries, which also train fewer doctors than are required, depend on immigrant doctors to make up the shortfall. In this way developing countries are effectively paying to train staff who then support the health services of developed countries. Although developed countries often provide development assistance to resource limited countries, the amount that goes into the training of health workers is variable and limited.
Quote:
This is a collective human problem, and if we have any hope of addressing it then where or whether people migrate doesn't really make a difference, does it?
To reiterate the above should point out that it DOES make a difference and as a collective human problem the current migration problems is making things worse for both losing and gaining nations.
In countries such as Libya, Yemen, Syria, and Afghanistan with an active war going it is of course a much more complex problem. Expecting people to stay in place with starvation, disease, violence, and all the corruption and other problems of a 3rd world nation make it more difficult for individuals there.
That's why in other threads I've been a staunch advocate of intervening to help as able. No nation is an island to the problems of the world and to ignore them only lets problems escalate. The solutions shouldn't always be military, or the imposition of a new system of government.
For refugees from these reasons they aren't always leaving with a clean slate either. The ethnic, religious, and cultural tensions will be brought back to the new host nation. Sri Lanka was in civil war for decades and the diaspora had to endure the terrorism of the Tamil abroad as well: https://www.hrw.org/report/2006/03/1...iaspora#935788
My earlier example of Lebanon aided Palestinians after the creation of Israel and were later dragged into civil war and then wars with Israel as a result of that refugee community.
Heck you can go back to ancient Rome and the Gothic and other germanic 'refugees' if you want a truly extreme example as well.
The problems leading to refugees need to be addressed in some manner. Even if it means dealing with a dictator like Assad as opposed to an overthrow and the anarchy we've got in Libya and Yemen.
01-16-2018, 01:25
Montmorency
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
I will own to one tension in my pro-immigrant position, which is that I see it as socially constructive, while the basic socialist or anarchist/libertarian argument is that people have an inherent right to free movement. I'm too authoritarian to accept that.
Quote:
To reiterate the above should point out that it DOES make a difference and as a collective human problem the current migration problems is making things worse for both losing and gaining nations.
I acknowledged this, but my point was - what solution actually gets to the root of the problem? You are recognizing various difficulties, but instability and inequality in poor countries will drive migration to richer ones. It is a related, but ultimately parallel problem that economic and technological forces are set to create similar conditions in the currently-rich countries, whose citizens will have nowhere to go to.
Let's say Western countries coordinate an optimum mix of skilled/unskilled immigration, and advertise it loudly and with clarity (in its details) to the world. But refugee and economic crises abroad will inevitably be exacerbated this century, which includes internal displacement and chaos in rich countries. Eventually we have a dichotomy: let more people in than our optimal ceilings dictate, or violate human rights in an effort to offload the problem on the nearest country we don't care about, thereby destabilizing them (to say nothing of that unspeakable recourse, genocide). The scenarios has room to get even worse.
A coordinated multilateral immigration policy would be a good idea in itself and can mitigate inflows, but it will be overwhelmed at some point.
If you want a permanent (better to say, durable, robust) solution, you need to look at changing the logics driving migration, and causing the conditions driving migration.
Quote:
That's why in other threads I've been a staunch advocate of intervening to help as able. No nation is an island to the problems of the world and to ignore them only lets problems escalate. The solutions shouldn't always be military, or the imposition of a new system of government.
I think we can agree here that, both as an ethical matter and as a practical one of "handling the problem abroad rather than at home", rich countries need to intervene in migration crises, whether caused by war, economic upheaval, or by natural disaster and climate. If these interventions are to have a military/security component, it should be essentially defensive to avert the imperialist impulse (which also needs further checks on a case-by-case basis).
The object is to provide physical security, food and shelter, but also entertainment, community, education, employment: a return to normal life, even if subsidized by foreign states. To that end refugee camps will have to become new cities, and vice versa. How to integrate local leadership and government, and how to manage corruption, are serious questions, ones that we can hope will be constantly renewed under the auspices of enormously expensive operations. Hopefully a non- or low-military profile encourages rigorous oversight.
01-16-2018, 18:19
Agent Miles
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
I find it incredible that all of you totally miss the point. No one cares if millions of illegal aliens work in the U.S. and then go back to their homeland with their offspring and a paycheck they earned. Leftists teach the illegal aliens how to stay here, falsify a social security number, get welfare and subsidized housing wrongly, have the legal citizens pay for their children's education and get other government benefits that were supposed to be reserved for legal citizens. Further, the Left knows that these aliens will eventually become voters, who surely will repay the Left's efforts. Leftists have already made the case that in the 19th century foreigners could vote in some states. So it's not about poor little aliens being kicked out of work by evil Republicans. The problem is the Left importing voters. Fifty million voting age U.S. citizens would never be allowed to move to Canada and take over. Stop playing bells and whistles and focus on the real core issue.
01-16-2018, 18:27
Fragony
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
Leftist isn't something you are, it's something one has
01-16-2018, 18:32
Agent Miles
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
If you prefer Marxist anarchist thugs, I have no problem with that.
;)
01-16-2018, 18:48
Husar
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
Quote:
Originally Posted by Agent Miles
I find it incredible that all of you totally miss the point. No one cares if millions of illegal aliens work in the U.S. and then go back to their homeland with their offspring and a paycheck they earned. Leftists teach the illegal aliens how to stay here, falsify a social security number, get welfare and subsidized housing wrongly, have the legal citizens pay for their children's education and get other government benefits that were supposed to be reserved for legal citizens. Further, the Left knows that these aliens will eventually become voters, who surely will repay the Left's efforts. Leftists have already made the case that in the 19th century foreigners could vote in some states. So it's not about poor little aliens being kicked out of work by evil Republicans. The problem is the Left importing voters. Fifty million voting age U.S. citizens would never be allowed to move to Canada and take over. Stop playing bells and whistles and focus on the real core issue.
Then make them legal so they can pay taxes for their childrens' education.
Voters get imported either way, who asked the original inhabitants to vote about who runs the country?
And again, if the republican base of Florida bankers stopped sniffing so much cocaine, maybe fewer illegal leftists would cross the border to flee from the friendly drug lords that the Republicans keep financing. The Republicans are entirely financed by billionaire business owners who are importing all these people to save on their trickle down expenses and because they hate paying taxes and healthcare plans for their workers. Stop the victim blaming here and focus on the real issue, which is the party you love so much!
01-16-2018, 18:50
Fragony
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
All my friends are very leftist, I don't really care
@miles
01-16-2018, 19:23
spmetla
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
Quote:
Leftists teach the illegal aliens how to stay here, falsify a social security number, get welfare and subsidized housing wrongly, have the legal citizens pay for their children's education and get other government benefits that were supposed to be reserved for legal citizens. Further, the Left knows that these aliens will eventually become voters, who surely will repay the Left's efforts.
What you say here is as crazy as the the 9/11 is an inside job conspiracies. The massive number of illegal immigrants we have are a result of over 30 years of ignoring our own laws. A good number of them should be given amnesty and become legal citizens because most of them aside from the initial immigration have not committed any transgressions against us.
In the future we need to enforce our border properly and enforce our laws.
There's no secret 'leftist' training camps that teach people to do this, that's actually an illicit business conducted by very enterprising criminals and people smugglers.
As for the potential voters, by and large most hispanics are very conservative on almost all social issues from abortion, to the role of god in our lives and so on. They would by and large vote mostly Republican if the rhetoric on that side wasn't dominated by the extreme opinion of round up all the illegals and kick them out and then enforce shoot to kill on the border.
In regards to the school systems, those are not for 'citizens' but for legal residents. Even if those kids are illegal though it is to our benefit to educate those kids lest we create a further shadow society of people that in addition to other problems have no education.
Quote:
Fifty million voting age U.S. citizens would never be allowed to move to Canada and take over. Stop playing bells and whistles and focus on the real core issue.
If over the next several decades millions of US citizens moved to Canada illegally and the Canadian government continued it's current lackadaisical policies then they'd have a similar problem.
We however are the nation that shares a border with Mexico and as such must enforce that border.
01-16-2018, 19:59
Agent Miles
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
What do you suppose "community organizers" do? I'm sane enough to be the only one here to know what the real issue is. I also don't use insane statements to try to shoot the messenger because you can't argue the message. The Dems are importing voters. We don't need to fix the legal immigration of documented migrants and refugees, because that works. The flood of illegal aliens is the problem, because they are organized on how to stay here till they can vote.
01-16-2018, 20:26
Husar
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
Quote:
Originally Posted by Agent Miles
I'm sane enough to be the only one here to know what the real issue is. I also don't use insane statements to try to shoot the messenger because you can't argue the message.
:laugh4::laugh4::laugh4::laugh4::laugh4::laugh4:
01-16-2018, 20:51
Fragony
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
Quote:
Originally Posted by Husar
:laugh4::laugh4::laugh4::laugh4::laugh4::laugh4:
When you are finnished laughing find out who 'Erica' is. I'll spoil it for you it's Merkel.
She is a former stasi, so why trust her now. Poland and Hungary don't
01-16-2018, 21:35
spmetla
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
Quote:
Originally Posted by Agent Miles
The flood of illegal aliens is the problem, because they are organized on how to stay here till they can vote.
It doesn't take special training on how to stay here illegally, it just requires not getting arrested. The organization pretty much consists other immigrants letting their friends and family know where it's safe to work.
Quote:
What do you suppose "community organizers" do?
Generally it's to politically organize people. If a neighborhood or several neighborhoods are suffering from crime or too little police involvement a community organizer will generally take lead in organizing petitions, hearings, etc.. When it comes to election time it's getting people to register to vote and trying to get them to vote for 'their' political side by giving their view on what issues are important to said community.
It's what the pastor or preacher generally used to do back when everybody went to church.
The right does the same thing as well. Rallies, marches, and so on don't happen spontaneously.
Quote:
We don't need to fix the legal immigration of documented migrants and refugees, because that works.
We absolutely do need to fix that because most people just overstay their visas. Also, if people are illegally immigrating it's for the most part because they want to make money here because even our crappiest jobs pay more than most jobs in central america.
The nexus of illegal immigration into the U.S. has shifted away from the southwest border and into the country’s air and sea ports, where more than 54 million visitors checked in last year — and nearly 630,000 of them didn’t go home, according to new numbers released Monday.
Known as visa overstays, the visitors present a different challenge than the border crossers, and one that Homeland Security officials are still trying to figure out how to handle.
“This report shows that we have a problem with visa overstays in the United States,” a senior administration official said in briefing reporters on the new numbers, vowing to step up enforcement to try to cut down on the violations.
The Trump administration’s report stands in contrast to the Obama administration, which played down the numbers last year when officials released a similar report, focusing on the vast majority of travelers who did comply and leave when they were supposed to.
Indeed, more than 98.5 percent of those admitted through airports and seaports departed before their admissions expired in 2016. But the sheer amount of travel — some 54 million visitors who came through those air and sea ports — means even that small overstay rate works out to nearly 740,000 illegal immigrants......
Release Date: May 22, 2017
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
Contact: 202-282-8010
WASHINGTON—U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released today the Fiscal Year (FY) 2016 Entry/Exit Overstay Report. The report provides data on departures and overstays, by country, for foreign visitors to the United States who entered as nonimmigrant visitors through an air or sea Port of Entry (POE) and were expected to depart in FY16.
The in-scope population for this report includes temporary workers and families (temporary workers and trainees, intracompany transferees, treaty traders and investors, representatives of foreign information media), students, exchange visitors, temporary visitors for pleasure, temporary visitors for business, and other nonimmigrant classes of admission. This population accounts for 96.02 percent of all nonimmigrant admissions at U.S. air and sea POEs in FY16.
Importantly, the report does not cover all foreign visitors to the United States—such as those who enter the United States through a vehicular or land POE. Nor does the report provide the total estimated in-country overstay population currently in the United States. Rather, it provides data on overstays in a snapshot of time—those foreign visitors who were expected to depart in FY16, and those who did not do so.
The report specifies that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) processed 50,437,278 in-scope nonimmigrant admissions at U.S. air and sea POEs who were expected to depart in FY16—of which 739,478 overstayed their admission, resulting in a total overstay rate of 1.47 percent. Of the more than 739,000 overstays, DHS determined 628,799 were suspected “in-country” overstays, resulting in a suspected in-country overstay rate of 1.25 percent. An individual who is a suspected in-country overstay has no recorded departure, while an out-of-country overstay has a recorded departure that occurred after their lawful admission period expired.
To protect the American people from those who seek to do us harm, and to ensure the integrity of the immigration system, ICE has recently increased overstay enforcement operations. Each year, ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations special agents systematically review approximately one million records of individuals who violate the terms of their visas or the visa waiver program, prioritizing leads that pose national security or public safety threats.
Out of the total population, of the more than 21.6 million Visa Waiver Program (VWP) visitors expected to depart the United States in FY16, 147,282 overstayed the terms of their admission, with 128,806 suspected in-country overstays (a .60 percent suspected in-country overstay rate for VWP travelers). Of the more than 13.8 million non-VWP visitors—excluding Canada and Mexico—expected to depart the United States in FY16, 287,107 overstayed the terms of their admission, with 263,470 suspected in-country overstays. This resulted in a 1.90 percent suspected in-country overstay rate.
For Mexico, the FY16 suspected in-country overstay rate is 1.52 percent of 3,079,524 expected departures. Consistent with the methodology for other countries, this represents only travel through air and sea POEs and does not include data on land border crossings. For Canada, the FY16 suspected in-country overstay rate is 1.33 percent of 9,008,496 expected departures.
This year’s report also includes visitors who entered on a student or exchange visitor visa (F, M, or J visa). Of the 1,457,556 students and exchange visitors scheduled to complete their program in the United States in FY16, 79,818 stayed beyond their authorized window for departure, resulting in a 5.48 percent overstay rate. Of the 79,818, 40,949 are suspected in-country overstays (2.81 percent).
DHS conducts the overstay identification process by examining arrival, departure and immigration status information, which is consolidated to generate a complete picture of an individual’s travel to the United States. Due to continuing departures and adjustments in status, by January 10, 2017, the number of suspected in-country overstays for FY16 decreased to 544,676, resulting in a suspected in-country overstay rate of 1.07 percent.
DHS anticipates that these numbers will shift over time as additional information is reported. Specifically, the overall suspected in-country overstay rate will continue to decline as the number of individuals who have departed or transitioned to another immigration status after their initial period of authorized admission ended grows.
DHS continues to improve its data collection, both biographic and biometric, on travelers departing the United States. CBP has identified a feasible biometric exit solution based upon the successful pilot deployed in June 2016, at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta. As part of the pilot, CBP partnered with an airline to biometrically confirm the identity of departing travelers using facial recognition. To continue biometric exit implementation, CBP will expand the deployment of this technology to seven additional airports in the coming months. DHS is committed to the development and deployment of a comprehensive biometric exit system—as directed by President Trump in Executive Order 13780, Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry in the United States, and as required by law.
Quote:
The Dems are importing voters.
They are only voters if they are able to vote. Illegal immigrants can't vote. Giving amnesty and legal residence to the millions of undocumented immigrants won't make them voters either unless they stay longer and apply for citizenship.
Most illegal immigrants live in areas that already vote Democrat in almost any election. Unless they shift their migration and try to settle the midwest it's not changing any voting paradigms. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank...ed-immigrants/ 20 metro areas are home to six-in-ten unauthorized immigrants in U.S.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Most of the United States’ 11.1 million unauthorized immigrants live in just 20 major metropolitan areas, with the largest populations in New York, Los Angeles and Houston, according to new Pew Research Center estimates based on government data.
The analysis shows that the nation’s unauthorized immigrant population is highly concentrated, more so than the U.S. population overall. In 2014, the 20 metro areas with most unauthorized immigrants were home to 6.8 million of them, or 61% of the estimated nationwide total. By contrast, only 36% of the total U.S. population lived in those metro areas.
But the analysis also shows that unauthorized immigrants tend to live where other immigrants live. Among lawful immigrants – including naturalized citizens and noncitizens – 65% lived in those top metros.
By far the biggest unauthorized immigrant populations were in the New York and Los Angeles metro areas (1.2 million and 1 million, respectively). No other metro area approached a million. Among the top 20 areas, the smallest unauthorized immigrant populations included Orlando (110,000) and Austin (100,000).........
01-16-2018, 22:20
Montmorency
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
Agent Miles is wrong on several counts:
1. That all government services are "reserved for citizens", and that unauthorized residents can't pay into these.
2. That residents, authorized or otherwise, should not be informed of their rights, recourses, and resources.
3. That unauthorized residents will make up a voter base in their own right.
3.a. Latino support for the GOP would be higher if they weren't so evidently a 'white grievance' party. See: Prop 187 turning California blue in the 90s.
4. Legislation making it harder for migrants to move back and forth seasonally, as opposed to staying permanently, was a bipartisan affair. Go ahead and bash the Democrats, they deserve it, but don't fail to recognize the Republican origins of the reform.
01-17-2018, 02:22
Seamus Fermanagh
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
Quote:
Originally Posted by Montmorency
Agent Miles is wrong on several counts:
1. That all government services are "reserved for citizens", and that unauthorized residents can't pay into these.
2. That residents, authorized or otherwise, should not be informed of their rights, recourses, and resources.
3. That unauthorized residents will make up a voter base in their own right.
3.a. Latino support for the GOP would be higher if they weren't so evidently a 'white grievance' party. See: Prop 187 turning California blue in the 90s.
4. Legislation making it harder for migrants to move back and forth seasonally, as opposed to staying permanently, was a bipartisan affair. Go ahead and bash the Democrats, they deserve it, but don't fail to recognize the Republican origins of the reform.
Plenty of blame to spread all around, that's for sure.
01-17-2018, 02:34
Husar
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fragony
When you are finnished laughing find out who 'Erica' is. I'll spoil it for you it's Merkel.
She is a former stasi, so why trust her now. Poland and Hungary don't
Yes, she must be the one smuggling all those Mexicans into the US!
01-17-2018, 08:42
Fragony
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
Quote:
Originally Posted by Husar
Yes, she must be the one smuggling all those Mexicans into the US!
No she's doing something else, she didn't win the Kallergi-Kouwenhuizen price for no reason
01-18-2018, 14:42
Strike For The South
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
121 Haitians have entered the country on low skilled work visas in the past two years. The Trump administration just put a stop to this cavalcade of humanity.
The end game of this administration escapes me. I would hope there is something beyond making old white people feel smug again.
01-18-2018, 14:57
Fragony
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
Haiti, isn't that the country where 90.000.000 million just disapeared
01-18-2018, 16:20
Strike For The South
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fragony
Haiti, isn't that the country where 90.000.000 million just disapeared
The US military?
01-18-2018, 17:33
Husar
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fragony
Haiti, isn't that the country where 90.000.000 million just disapeared
90 million million people?
01-18-2018, 18:15
Seamus Fermanagh
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
I suspect Frags is talking about the millions of dollars in relief and charity money that has evaporated in Haiti, not military action of persons. Source 1source 2source 3
The Haitian earthquake relief effort may be outdoing most foreign aid projects to Africa in inefficiency and graft.
Though why he cites 90M I do not know....it is likely an order of magnitude more in "lost" funding.
01-18-2018, 19:43
spmetla
Re: US Immigration and Border Security Thread
Haiti is definitely the case of a country that always seems to shoot itself in the foot and will always fail itself. Just a good example that merely add dollars with a lot of zeros to something isn't necessarily good for helping out. In many cases a massive dump of money without oversight just increases graft.
January 10 2018, 6:38 a.m.
ON SATURDAY, A day after becoming aware of a massive store of rebuilding materials being held by the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, the U.S. federal government — the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, along with their security detail — entered a Palo Seco warehouse owned by the public utility to claim and distribute the equipment, according to a spokesperson for the Corps.
Rumors of a tense standoff had been circulating on the island, but the encounter was confirmed to The Intercept in a statement from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Asked if the federal officers were armed when they entered the warehouse, USACE spokesperson Luciano Vera said they were indeed accompanied by security detail and quickly began distributing the material after seizing it. Vera declined to say whether there was a confrontation at the entrance, saying only that PREPA officials ultimately toured the warehouse along with the feds:
Leadership responsible for restoring the Puerto Rico power grid and their security detail toured the warehouse in cooperation with PREPA. USACE conducted a full inventory and immediately sent out critical materials to contractors at work sites. USACE will continue to distribute critical materials from the site to contractors. The hope is to strengthen the partnership between PREPA and its restoration partners, while increasing visibility of the inventory of all materials on the island. PREPA has invited FEMA and the Corps to visit its warehouses anytime and to distribute material as needed.
The federal government “began distributing [supplies] to contractors,” Vera said, including hard-to-find full-tension steel sleeves, critical to rebuilding. “We obtained several hundred of these sleeves on Saturday,” Vera added.
The armed encounter comes as around half of Puerto Ricans still remain without electricity well over 100 days after Hurricane Maria. As PREPA hoards crucial resources that could help remedy the island’s dire situation, the Puerto Rican government is attempting to annihilate the power provider’s only regulator.
“Warehouse 5” — the one which USACE and FEMA entered Saturday — “falls under the control of the [PREPA] transmission division and has lacked transparency in inventory and accountability,” the email from Vera continued. Carlos Torres, appointed by Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló to oversee power restoration, was on site as well.
“Due to the size of the warehouse,” Vera said, accounting for everything contained therein is still underway days later. Among the materials recovered so far are “2,875 pieces of critical material to contractors” along with the sleeves of full-tension steel, a component of Puerto Rican electrical infrastructure required to erect new power lines. PREPA did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment, though in a statement to the Associated Press, it rejected allegations that it had failed to distribute the warehouse’s contents. The AP only reported that “officials over the weekend also discovered some needed materials in a previously overlooked warehouse owned by Puerto Rico’s Electric Power Authority.” How they discovered them and how they were obtained is a story that has not been fully told.
