Politics Discussion Thread (Heated Arguing Warning)

[darrelljs]

That refugees want help does not constitute a duty or obligation for any person or country to extend it.

I vaguely recall reading something on the Statue of Liberty that says otherwise...and yes I know that is not binding law, but honestly only an unthinking bag of particles would argue that point .

Darrell

[TheHumanHydra]

THH: you have to take into account that net immigration into Canada has historically not been very high, even sometimes negative, because of emigration from Canada to the US.

Canada built itself on immigration, from the emigrant Americans who settled Ontario following the American Revolution to the Eastern Europeans who staked out our western prairies. Canada should certainly be labelled an immigrant country, one of the immigrant countries of the last two centuries.

However, it does seem that large numbers of people emigrated to the US from Canada as well. I wasn't able to quickly find (historical) statistics, do you have any off hand?

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Voter ID laws are fine in theory... except that every time they are implemented, they are designed to disenfranchise minorities.

Also Gavagai is dumb enough to believe the bullshit about millions of illegals voting in California.

[ipecac]

THH: https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/e...migration/

And because this is a question of illegal activity, it's pretty difficult to know. Note that this cited study was the first to attempt anything like a real study — almost all the others, including those you read in the news about, were not studies of facts on the ground, they were studies of records — complaints, legal actions and convictions. As with any crime, the number of convictions is a weak correlate of the number of incidents, and frequently the low number of convictions is itself part of the problem (think of sexual assault/domestic violence).

It's downright naive to think that it doesn't happen to a significant extent, given the low chance of getting caught and convicted and the high potential payoff.

[SevenSpirits]

Really? Half of legal voting-age Americans don't bother to vote and you think it's some amazing prize that warrants breaking the law and risking your livelihood to obtain? Literally 100% of my reason for voting (and that of people I know) is a sense of civic duty. If you lose that (e.g. because you have a civic duty to NOT VOTE), it's a huge waste of time and effort for an amount of personal gain that rounds down to zero. I won't go so far as to call your attitude paranoid - it's certainly possible that there are other dynamics at play - but your description of an individual non-citizen seeing this as some sort of windfall opportunity is absurd, and naivete doesn't enter into it.

[ipecac]

Really? Half of legal voting-age Americans don't bother to vote and you think it's some amazing prize that warrants breaking the law

We're also talking about illegals, as well as the passionate, see below.

and risking your livelihood to obtain? Literally 100% of my reason for voting (and that of people I know) is a sense of civic duty.

As you very well know, there are people who believe so passionately in a cause that they're willing to even break the law for what they believe in.

I won't go so far as to call your attitude paranoid - it's certainly possible that there are other dynamics at play

There certainly are.

but your description of an individual non-citizen seeing this as some sort of windfall opportunity is absurd

High potential payoff e.g. an illegal supporting certain people who promise to help get him citizenship.

[Smart James]

I tend to agree with a writer at https://www.essaycyber.com/ that in the coming years Russia might be the superpower because of its aggressive nature in the political arena.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Bussing in people to vote illegally is such a logistically stupendous endeavor that it is only believed by idiots who also believe George Soros conspiracy theories. Every time someone gets nabbed voting illegally, it's some old white republican who thinks they are doing their duty to counter the hordes of illegals.

People who always talk up voter ID are always full of shit, because it turns out that some forms of ID (driver's licences, concealed carry permits) are more equal than others (student IDs). Voter disenfranchisement is so much easier, just change a few cells in an excel spreadsheet, and suddenly you arrive at a booth and your pre-existing registration has poofed into smoke at some point in the past. Or you didn't reply to a letter mailed to the wrong address. Or closing voting booths in poor neighborhoods, or only opening up identity registration 1 weekday a week.

[Bacchus]

Really? Half of legal voting-age Americans don't bother to vote and you think it's some amazing prize that warrants breaking the law and risking your livelihood to obtain? Literally 100% of my reason for voting (and that of people I know) is a sense of civic duty. If you lose that (e.g. because you have a civic duty to NOT VOTE), it's a huge waste of time and effort for an amount of personal gain that rounds down to zero. I won't go so far as to call your attitude paranoid - it's certainly possible that there are other dynamics at play - but your description of an individual non-citizen seeing this as some sort of windfall opportunity is absurd, and naivete doesn't enter into it.

Firstly, there is activism -- there are entire organisations of undocumented youths for whom political activities, even ones that by design lead to face-to-face confrontations with the police are itself the payoff.

Secondly, the whole turnout operations are hardly ever down to individuals strictly speaking -- there are considerable resources allocated by parties to push the vote out, and these resources especially target "base" areas. These efforts do not and cannot discriminate between citizens and non-citizens. Exactly how they interact with non-citizens would be really interesting to find out though. (I'd imagine quite a few non-citizens actually work <i>in</i> these efforts, and I don't even mean the activists)

Thirdly, breaking the law is hardly going to be such a barrier for people whose entire life can be constituted of a series of such breaches.

[Huinesoron]

People who always talk up voter ID are always full of shit, because it turns out that some forms of ID (driver's licences, concealed carry permits) are more equal than others (student IDs). Voter disenfranchisement is so much easier, just change a few cells in an excel spreadsheet, and suddenly you arrive at a booth and your pre-existing registration has poofed into smoke at some point in the past. Or you didn't reply to a letter mailed to the wrong address. Or closing voting booths in poor neighborhoods, or only opening up identity registration 1 weekday a week.

To highlight one specific example that I have personal experience with: in the UK at least, when you move house (which people living in rented accomodation, who are generally poorer, tend to do more often), you have to let everyone who mails you anything know about your change of address. Even assuming they all make the appropriate change (and I recently had a bank completely fail at doing something they promised to, basically because they were busy at the time), no human being is perfect: there's always going to be something you forget. And a lot of the time, it's going to be the ones who don't send you many letters: our car tax was 'left behind' at our old address for a year, because they only mail you to remind you to renew.

Fortunately, the mail service offers a solution to this: for a mere £34, you can have mail going to your old house redirected to your new one for three months. Which is great... provided you have that money. A lot of people don't, or would have to sacrifice something more important than a probably-useless redirect to pay for it. And that makes it so easy to fall through the cracks.

I've also had experience with 'you can only contact us on these limited weekdays and times', which is fine... so long as you have a job which will let you take the time out to go to their office. If said office isn't local, but is out in the city, that's a full day away from work. Guess what kind of employment is least likely to be happy to let you take a random day to go to an appointment, probably at short notice...?

hS