American Politics Discussion Thread

[Dreylin]

Immigration, both legal and illegal, heavily decreased during Trump's term, which would explain the voter base of the GOP committing to his reelection, despite whatever this poll claims.

So the real solution to the border crisis is COVID-19, who knew.

[Mjmd]

If you are being honest to yourself Greenline would you be good with legal immigration? You know if we actually tried to fix our processes and related infrastructure? (which Republicans really don't like doing shockingly). The sense I get from a descent chunk of Republicans is that it doesn't matter if its good for the nation (I've gone over in depth before), it doesn't matter if people are in desperate situations, it matters that they are brown and speak a different language.

[greenline]

I already said before in this thread that I see immigrants and migrants as competing with people like me and requiring resources from people like me to support. I have no desire to see any more come in. I think Governor Abott putting up razor wire on the border is doing something to fix the situation, and the feds tearing down the wire is doing something to make it worse. I see only bad things happening to this country and the people who live in it if they are forced to accept a non stop flow of immigrants and migrants and I would rather see them avoid such a fate.

[Mjmd]

Its been proven multiple times immigrants usually provide more taxes than they take. Every economic theory I know of acknowledges more workforce better (IE better for the country). I argued extensively pages back that pretty much no matter economic bracket you are in it is not a detriment to you. Edit: https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/show...4&page=349 was where I discussed. 

IE your argument doesn't hold water. You believe these things because you want to believe them.

[greenline]

I'm still waiting to see NYC and the other havens of these liberal technocrats take all these migrants if the benefits are truly so good they can't be ignored. Surely, shuttling them to the rest of the country would be a waste of all that tax money.

[Mjmd]

Yes, we 100% should invest in systems and infrastructure to share the load. A lot of the reason the places the immigrants are getting shuttled to are having trouble is because they weren't set up for nor are receiving funds to handle.

[greenline]

A fair way of distributing this load would be for places that actually want to receive immigrants to receive 100% of the immigrants, and places that do not want to receive them receiving 0%. You people talk a lot about the Statue of Liberty - during the days of Ellis Island this was how the immigration system functioned in practice. The State of New York is a rich place - why can't it afford to reopen Ellis Island and ship all these migrants there, so Texas does not have to deal with them?

[Dreylin]

I'm still waiting to see NYC and the other havens of these liberal technocrats take all these migrants if the benefits are truly so good they can't be ignored. Surely, shuttling them to the rest of the country would be a waste of all that tax money.

Why go all the way to NYC, there are plenty of liberal technocrats right here in Texas.

[Mjmd]

So assuming Republicans didn't torpedo any bill to actually address immigration how should immigrants be distributed?

-Where are their relatives if any? Preventing immigrants from living with their relatives (IE an instant support network) is stupid, so those can go there.
-Where are established communities? (historically this is what generally happened; again as easier support networks).
-Where are the jobs? If WI got a GOP governor who wanted to prevent does it make sense giving that many farmers 100% want immigrants. Our vaunted dairy industry is basically entirely staffed by immigrants.
-Cost of living? One of the reasons NYC isn't great for immigrants anymore is because the cost of living is so much higher than it was back in the days of Ellis Island. Again, as far as jobs they do have more manufacturing than that high cost of land would normally warrant, but not enough to take all. Some certainly.
- Where is the infrastructure / build more. Wisconsin actually has one of 3 military bases for relocation, which is why we got a lot of the Afghan refugees and have a large Hmong population. But if military bases should be used on a constant basis for normal immigration is something that would have to be decided.

I'm sure there are more, but I think its safe to assume a reasonable balanced approach requires some actual negotiation and planning.

[Mjmd]

I mentioned this back on page 349 but one of my jobs was at a company who had a lot of immigrant employees. Both of my wifes jobs were places that probably wouldn't exist without immigrants. I go to the local library weekly with my kids and see and talk to immigrants while our kids play. I go to local parks and my kids play with them. I'll never forget the kindness of a Hmong teenage girl more than two years ago now who was playing with her little siblings and my children wanted to play with her and she proceeded to do so for the next 30 minutes.

I've never had to leave my home because of poverty or violence. I've lived a good life because my ancestors left their homes to seek a better life. I don't know how many of those ancestors would have risen to the asylum vs just wanting something better.

People who ignorantly think immigrants are a detriment despite facts and logic and just you know talking to them to me is just sad. Its not unexpected; there is plenty of history to learn from. The "other" group is always scary. However, we should know better by now.