On Immigration · 3:59pm Oct 25th, 2020
I have no problem with immigrants as long as they come here legally. There are far too many people, though, who take advantage of what the United States offers.
Every other nation on earth has the right to deport you if you come illegally and don't abide by the laws of the land. It is just the policy of the country. But the United States offers money to illegal immigrants who then disappear into the country and never return.
No, the United States was not created by immigrants. It was created by settlers. If they were immigrants, that would imply there was already a country that they moved to, but there wasn't. Settlers broke the ground and survived and built up a nation. They worked and strengthened the land and each other, and whoever didn't work didn't eat.
The way immigration worked for a long time on Ellis Island was you had to come in and apply legally to become a citizen by proving you were coming to improve not just yourself, but America in the process. That way, you benefit the country that benefits you. If you were going to be a burden on the country, you were deported. If America accepted everyone who wanted to come in just because, America wouldn't be able to sustain everyone financially and the quality of life would drastically fall as a result. Judgement must be employed as to who to accept.
An immigrant is someone who comes to permanently live in a foreign country. And that wasn't even the case back in the day. One-third of pre-1965 immigrants went home. They came here to work and earn money to send to their families. They weren't trying to exploit the country. They couldn't. We didn't have a welfare system for them to exploit. They had to be independent and productive by necessity because otherwise, they would starve. That's not the case now, where 63% of non-citizen households are on welfare programs.
These immigrants don't respect the country; if they did, they would have applied legally. Ellis Island was a legal entry point. If you bypassed that and demanded handouts, you were kicked out. We are a nation of hardworking settlers who were required--not just expected, but requred--to be independent, functioning members of society. The creation of the better life you want is your responsibility.
And this isn't racism against Latinos; I'd hate it if central Europeans were taking advantage of us as well. This is a matter of improving the quality of those who enter the country.
"Trump called Mexicans rapists!" No, he called the members of a specific drug cartel rapists. But I don't blame you for thinking that way; the media likes to take Trump's statements out of context.
Consider the following: after every major shooting in the United States, the victims of the families and late night talk show hosts are put on television to push for greater gun control. This is a tactic used by the Left to emotionally manipulate people after a tragedy to further their agenda and boost their self-righteous ego. Imagine if we put the women who have been raped by the criminals at the border on TV to push for greater border security. People would lose their minds.
"Americans live on stolen land so we don't get to say who can live here legally!" First, stop pretending the USA is the only country with immigration laws or is the only country that acquired land by 'stealing' it. Every successful nation on earth has expanded territory and taken land, so don't hold only the US responsible for it. There are even people who say "Make America Mexico Again" who still haven't gotten over the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. How about you make Mexico the Aztec Empire again, you absolute savages?
Second, stealing implies there was a solidified entity from which we stole it, which isn't the case with land. We did successfully conquer some of the land from Native Americans, and other parts we purchased, and the Native Americans were also at war with each other over land, so what makes our acquisition so bad? Would things have been better if we let the Natives keep the land and have them fight over it, and it's good since it's not the evil Americans doing the fighting?
"Immigration is a human right! Borders don't exist!" This is purported by people who regard anything they want as a human right, be it healthcare, housing, tampons, whatever. That's a delusion. And you don't have a right to be here unless you were born here or came through the process legally. Try crossing the Canadian border while saying it's your human right. It won't go your way.
"There are concentration camps at the border!" The reason they refer to them as concentration camps is because they want a comparison of Trump to Hitler. And the camps we have are nothing like the death camps Hitler had in Germany. In order for it to be an actual concentration camp, the people being concentrated have to be political prisoners or members of a persecuted minority. They have to be held there against their will. Meanwhile, the people at the facilities on the border have the freedom to leave anytime they want to. They can go back to where they came from, which was not the case for actual concentration camps, and only the historically illiterate can't tell the difference. They aren't political prisoners because they are not political, and they are not prisoners. And they aren't persecuted minorities, because persecuted minorities don't get to opt out of persecution.
The reasons the facilities are in poor condition is because there are too many people there. It's overcrowded, it's hard to account for everyone. They don't have the resources to make conditions better. And then there's a party that proposes, instead of better funding to these facilities and the border security, to abolish ICE entirely and open the floodgates. That's an alarming amount of stupidity.
Instead of actually collaborating with Republicans to solve the issue, Democrat activists refuse to work with them to solve an issue they supposedly care so much about. They're just trying to emotionally manipulate people into capitulating to their agenda.
Native Americans would disagree with you on that.
There's a lot to unpack, so I won't speak on everything, but I feel it's good to voice the other side. Firstly, it is to my understanding that, aside from the most extreme, most democrats acknowledge the need for controlled immigration, but simply want to make the process more efficient so people can enter the country in a timely manner. I hope most democrats are not so naive as to think "borders don't exist" is an achievable ideal, despite how nice it might seem.
Regarding your criticism of how America is built on stolen land, I do agree that argument is overused sometimes. In cases where things have been built directly on First Nation land, it's important to acknowledge the history. But this argument has its place. There are still groups of ultra-national white supremacists who believe America is a Christian nation for Europeans. They are not very numerous, but probably more numerous than what we would expect. Letting people know how America came to be, and how every group present here immigrated from somewhere else (except Native Americans), is important.
Edit: I hit post by accident because I'm on my phone.
To the issue of Trump calling Mexicans rapists, what you point out is technically correct. He does assign that, and other negative traits, to criminals coming across the border. The problem is that he portrays these people to be the majority who are coming over. Based on data from the US Sentencing Commission (https://www.ussc.gov/research/datafiles/commission-datafiles and https://www.cato.org/blog/77-drug-traffickers-are-us-citizens-not-illegal-immigrants) drug trafficking occurs mostly from US citizens. If the problem with Democrats is as you say, that they want all immigrants to come in, then the problem with how Trump has changed the Republican stance is that it now portrays all, or at least most, immigrants from Mexico as undesirables, which just isn't true, statistically speaking.
5385637
Precisely. The United States has always been a melting pot, and most of its population travelled from elsewhere. This is the fundamental irony with nativism; with the exception of Native Americans, every American is descended from a migrant.
I'm not American so forgive my lack of knowledge but if you have to gun down entire villages to secure the "unsettled land" then I don't think it works that way
"Americans live on stolen land"
i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/886/634/4b8.jpg
So...you're telling me that America, before it was founded by the settlers, didn't count as a country? That's like saying India didn't become a country until it became part of the British Empire.
And what about the Aztecs? Are you saying Ancient Mexico didn't count as a country until a bunch of greedy Spaniards showed up?
5388221
America was inhabited before the Europeans came. I'm not denying any of that. America was comprised of a conglomeration of warring tribes that did not have definitive borders, were categorized by their specific cultures, and were nomadic by nature. Rarely did they ever settle down in one specific place and create a permanent living there. The Native Americans were industrious, certainly, and did have their initial rights to the land, but the settlers from Europe were intending to create permanent spots. That naturally means taking land that happened to belong to the Natives. And I do feel sorry that the Natives had to suffer. I feel sorry when I read history and see their destruction. It sucks that they have to live on reservations to preserve their culture, and I wish I could help them. But why should I pay the price for my ancestor's sins? Why should I answer for the atrocities committed against them when I've done nothing to harm them?
As for the Aztec Empire, it was a thriving civilization. I never said it wasn't. To the contrary, I said so in the blog that before criticizing America for its conquest of land from Mexico and the Native Americans, the Mexicans descended from the Spanish should criticize its own conquest of the Aztecs, which was much more of a nation than the separate tribes in America. Why should only the United States have to feel guilty for conquering land that belonged to other people? Every successful nation in history has done so. Rome, Persia, the Ottomans, Arabia, England, the Durch, Japan, Russia, China, even France, even the Aztecs. Europe was the one that collectively raped Africa. Japan was the one that raped Nanking, arguably worse than anything the United States committed against the Natives.
5388254
Good point. Honestly, I wish the entertainment business nowadays (and a few critics on Rotten Tomatoes) thought the same so they wouldn't shove their agendas down our throats.