To me there is nothing more anti-American or unpatriotic than denying hard working immigrants the opportunity to come to this country and become Americans. It is how all of us without indigenous or enslaved ancestors got here in the first place and is exactly the kind of country envisioned by our nation’s Founders. One where loyalty to the Constitution outweighs loyalty to any crown, creed, or country of origin. There is still time to recover this vision of true patriotism from the falsehoods of nationalism, nativism, and the modern know nothings.
Please share widely!
Patriotic, heck. Immigration will save Social Security.
Trying to stop it is just the most boneheaded thing ever.
I fear this discussion misses the forest for the trees.
The scapegoating of immigrants in Donald Trump’s America serves the same purpose as Adolf Hitler’s scapegoating of Jews in 1930s Germany. The intent is to cause the violent overthrow of the rule of law, so that Mr. Trump, his cronies, and his Collaborators can take absolute control of power.
It is immoral, immensely dangerous, and threatens the existence of the American republic as we know it.
There is absolutely nothing “boneheaded” about it.
Scapegoating. Good word.
It means, in essence, to use a tangible thing (in this case immigration) to carry the burden of an ephemeral thing (in this case, racism and xenophobia and, as S’Tom points out, a lust for control).
We spend all day arguing with the rights and wrongs of this tangible thing, as though the sincerity of the Trumpistas debating is evident for all to see, all the while the ephemeral is expanded and enlarged and before you know it it’s too late — and in fact, the ephemeral gains so much ground exactly and precisely because we are so entirely focused on the tangible.
You don’t think it would actually come to that I hope. There will be no Reichstag fire here. Our system is much stronger than Weimar’s was.
“It can’t happen here” ?
Yes, with at least 95% confidence.
So much for eternal vigilance.
Your naivete is touching.
I REALLY encourage you to spend some time with Germans who lived through that period. Germans who couldn’t believe that the Reichstag fire would happen there. Germans who believed that they lived in a democracy.
Jews who voluntarily boarded trains that took them to their death because they couldn’t believe the government would do the things that they were hearing about.
I DO think it can happen here. I think it’s happening right now, before our eyes. We are watching GOP legislators ignore the rule of the law.
Our system WAS much strong than Weimar’s was. Our “strong” system has been demolished.
Let me be much more specific. Based on the behavior we all see in today’s GOP majority in both houses, do you assert “with at least 95% confidence” that today’s GOP would not pass the equivalent of The Enabling Act of 1933?
I am not. In fact, the eagerness of today’s GOP to stampede the rule of law in support of their agenda leads me to expect them to do some such thing, perhaps even in a lame-duck session if they lose their majorities in the 2018 mid-terms.
These corrupt GOP thugs will do ANYTHING, as will the deplorables who still support Mr. Trump.
German constitution allowed the Enabling Act – ours doesn’t. Are you seriously suggesting we won’t have regularly scheduled free and fair elections in the next few cycles? That’s a strength of our system that many parliamentary systems do not have. If we could continue constitutional governance right through things like the Civil War, Great Depression, and both world wars then surely we can do it now. I also fully disagree with putting our strong system in the past tense. To my mind we have in fact already proven that we cannot collapse was quickly as some other nations would have by now in similar circumstances.
I do wonder how much longer a majority of Americans will be comfortable having their votes nullified by the Electoral College and congressional gerrymandering.
The candidate who got 3 million more votes still could not win the presidential election and the party out of power has to get at least 57% of the national popular congressional vote just to take back the House with a bare majority. If this is not a broken democracy, I do not know what is.
Shame on the Republicans for breaking it in order to rig it and shame on the Democrats for lazily assuming demographics is destiny rather than fixing it when they had the votes to do so.
Whether or not it will successfully happen here is quite apart from the efforts of some to bring it about and the whole lotta hurt that will result. Resting on some inchoate assumption of the things impossibility is neither hope nor strength but utter foolishness.
There have been immigration problems going back to agrarian vs hunter-gatherers. I don’t see people on this site coming up with plans to implement anything, mostly just complain about right-wing extreme solutions. Some extreme left wingers believe in trusting anyone who travels in with no supervision, open borders, I assume they don’t lock their own house doors at night. Even Obama, Clinton and Shumer voted for a secure fence to discourage casual immigration. So what is it on here, because the few left wing people I know can never tell me their plan, other than Trump is a racist and a wall is horrible.
If it’s only those who can walk in, it seems to skew Hispanic as Africans and Asians have to fly or boat in. Is that fair? The illegals I know are Polish and mostly just overstay their visas. They work under the table and don’t pay taxes. A marriage here and there, they’re all set.
So what should we have?
I know a boat-person from Vietnam who went on to become a nurse, I kind of agree we “owed” them some extra slots for screwing up their country. So only from war torn countries? Quotas for poorer countries? If someone is willing to put up a million and open a business should they jump the line? Criminals? Felonies or misdemeanors.
I’m sure everyone here was OK excluding South Africans when they were practicing apartheid, I’m fine with excluding Saudis based on their treatment of women and gays, how about you?
A well defined alternative is your best argument against Trump’s ideas.
If by “immigration” you mean “one people’s encroaching on anothers perceived territory” then, yah, sure. But if immigration means something else…. such as the recognition of a state and who does, or does not belong to that state, and the regulations thereunto, then… what the hell are you smoking?
Trump’s ideas are a bellicose response to the well-defined world we had before 2016. That’s why Trumps people will drive their car into a crowd street of liberals rather than change their minds.
Don’t even try to make Trump the norm. You sound like an idiot when you do.
My own policy is “y’all come” except for those who expressly are shown to be risks to public health or safety. The house analogy does not work. While I’d like to think I would be hospitable to someone who knocks on my door seeking help it is still my privately owned dwelling, whereas the country belongs to all of us and can continue to expand. I’m actually fine with welcoming people from countries whose policies we don’t like, especially since many who come from those countries are probably attempting to flee said policies.
A green card should be approximately as hard to get as a drivers license.
Each serves an important purpose and has important qualifications.
Your use of “illegals” as a noun tips your hand. These are PEOPLE. Men, women, and children.
Arguing against Donald Trump’s “ideas” is a complete waste of time. He doesn’t have any, and he’s not talking about “ideas”.
We are talking about prejudice and scapegoating here. We face a LONG list of problems here. Illegal immigration is very near the bottom of that last — right next to voter fraud.
Obama doubled deportations and tripled border security funding and even got 67 bipartisan Senators to support it in exchange for a normalization of folks already here with a pathway to citizenship at the end of a long naturalization line. It was voted down decisively by the GOP House. The common sense centrist solution has been on the table for at least a decade. The right revolted over McCain-Kennedy under Bush (which would have mandated e-verify cracking down on employers who are the real culprits), and later over Obama’s proposal. Rubio had to disavow his own bill to have any hope of being viable.
Stephen Miller, Laura Ingraham, and Steven King’s assault on legal immigration shows their true colors. This was never about common sense or enforcing the law, it is about preserving an electorally endangered white majority in this country.
You will find very few Democrats running for office or being polled on the question who support zero border controls, you will find far more Republican pundits, electeds, and base voters supporting reductions on legal immigration and immigration from non-European countries. The only extremists on this issue are the ones presently controlling the federal government.
We have open borders between the fifty states. And we still lock our doors. We must be extreme left wingers, by your logic.