There’s loads of gangs in the US, but how many American citizens flee gangs in the US and seek asylum in Mexico or Canada?
Do any?
And how many are granted asylum?
I suspect 0, or next to it.
I suspect it’s many, many times more difficult for an American fleeing US gangs to seek asylum in Mexico or Canada, if it’s even possible on those grounds, than it is for a Mexican fleeing Mexican gangs to seek asylum in the US or Canada.
I suspect if you were fleeing gangs in America, and you went to the Mexican border and asked for asylum, they’d laugh and spit in your face, unless you were of Mexican heritage.
I tend to associate reason, philosophy and science with libertarianism rather than with both progressivism, and conservatism.
While these days conservatives tend to be more libertarian, historically this hasn’t always been the case.
There’s nothing reasonable about political correctness, microaggressions, safe spaces, trigger warnings, etcetera, or generally authoritarianism.
And while science is reasonable, scientism, MSMism and academicism, are not.
In libertarianism you have to at least be persuasive, altho you can be persuasive with reason or rhetoric, whereas in left and rightwing authoritarianism you just have to knock people over the head you disagree with.
Altho there might be specific circumstances where measuredly knocking people over the head may be necessary, it’s nothing to base your civilization on.
But if we didn’t have illegals doing those filthy, physically demanding jobs, Americans wouldn’t do them, right?
Wrong, many wealthy, white European countries do these jobs themselves, they don’t have millions of illegals doing them, it’s just these companies would have to pay Americans minimum wage or more + benefits to entice them.
This would increase costs to consumers, sure, but it would also reduce unemployment and taxes to pay for the unemployed, for there’d be more jobs available, while increasing the wages and benefits of all blue collar jobs, especially the filthiest and most physically demanding among them, for there wouldn’t be illegals lined up to steal American jobs when Americans begin demanding better working conditions.
Proportionally Canada doesn’t have anywhere near as many illegals as the US does, yet these jobs get done.
then wouldn’t the most effective way to reduce illegals be to go after the employers? Reduce the market. You can’t really blame or expect people in poor countries to not move to where they can do better financially, and if they have kids it would be nearly a moral obligation in some situations (whether opposed by other kinds of moral obligation in their morality or not). But if you cut off the opportunity, there is no motivation. Also the people crossing the border have less to lose than the employers. The former are often moving from unpleasance, whereas many of the employers are trying to move up the economic scale from at least survival level and more. IOW the legal consequences are more effective in relation to employers. This would also be better PR. Instead of police loading scruffy, dirt covered people who have crossed the border recently or chasing fairly poor people out of car washes, they would be arresting clean clothed people with businesses and professions. People who are benefitting from the situation and the people creating the demand.
Otherwise what we have is an enormous mixed message to, say, Mexicans. We don’t want you, we will pay you to X here.
Clean up our own house first.
Yea but they have anchor babies, drain social services, and some of them commit other crimes.
We should go after both, the corporations that hire them, and the illegals themselves.
What is the real crime of being an illegal immigrant? Being in the wrong place without telling the right people?
It’s all red tape and admin/bureaucracy for the sake of it - just to create a barrier when there isn’t one.
It’s a fiction how lifestyles and cultures just “end” and “start” either side of a border - it’s continuous, people near one another influence each other culturally regardless of political boundary. The discrete lines don’t just “not exist” they mislead. It just means government doesn’t have to help people beyond a line in the sand.
It’s funny how a discussion about Trump turned into a discussion about immigration - kinda sums him all up, there’s nothing else to Populism. And still the support against “the other” is as timeless as it always has been… even statistics won’t persuade people - apparently nothing will.
There are physical boundaries between countries, it’s not a line in the sand as idealism says. The USA is in decline due in part to illegal immigrants and I doubt there is a country in the West that hasn’t been inundated with alien immigrants that is not in decline.
One could change the law around that.
Well it was Reagan, Bush and Clinton who drained social services.
That’s covered by already existing laws.
I think it would be much more effective to put all effort on the employers. And much more justified.
hrexecutive.com/how-many-employe … -illegals/
Going after the employers is a forensic bureaucratic and economic set of investigations mainly. I think the main reasons it does not happen is because the system tacitly approves. Going after illegals with border police and armed raids is part of the ever increasing militarization of law enforcement. And here going after the weaker parties.
You get rid of the jobs, it is still the third world for them.
It’s not a coincidence that the system focuses on armed law enforcement aimed at people with not much power.
The drug was has been like that for many decades, and both are part of increased arming of law enforcement and having them out and about and slowly but surely getting us used to that on all levels.
Who is morally more wrong? The employers. They are protected by the law enforcement and have already received the benefits of US citizenship: public education, road services, police and fire protection and so on. Instead of following the law while protected by that law, they reap benefits of illegal activies. The illegal aliens are selfish in relation to the states, but they are not betraying their own country. They have more choices and better options than the illegals.
You start putting them in prison en masse and then we will actually find out what we think of illegal aliens. Because I don’t think it is clear at all what we as a nation actually think and want.
One might also want to put the writers and promoters of Nafta in prison also.
who would say no. It’s not like they missed making a call that would have worked or something. So it’s not like a late filing for the renewal of a driver’s licence. Are you will to broaden this rule out to cover all the doing all the (let’s call it) non-violent illegal or not entitled activities without going through the beauracracy with the right people? What is the scope of the abstraction?
I mean, I think the problems are coming from other sources. I don’t think the immigrants are the threat to people, even simply economically, that some make out.
But we all go through all sorts of bureaucratic hoops as citizens and get punished if we dont’ and get punished if we try but were not honest or we do not get what we want since we do not qualify.
I suppose if we are going to set bureaucracy aside, I would want to be included. Equal under the law and all that.
Now the first group that comes to mind who get unequal treatment in courts and otherwise are rich and powerful people. They are not treated like us.
But I also don’t think your summation of the situation is really quite right either.
Silhouette
This is our club.
We get to decide who we admit and why, not nonmembers.
While there is no definite or exact beginning/ending between cultures, lifestyles and so on, there is an approximate, relative or rough beginning/ending.
Average Americans, the vast majority of Americans share more in common with each other, culturally, linguistically, politically, socioeconomically, racially, religiously and so forth, than they do with average Mexicans, the vast majority of Mexicans.
Birds of a feather, statistically even liberals prefer friends, partners and neighborhoods they share the same cultural background with, regardless of whether they’re white, brown or black, Christian, Muslim or Buddhist.
So why not model policy after these perfectly natural, normal and healthy preferences?
Because the oligarchs told us not to, full stop.
The people’s input was never asked for, or was asked for, but then flippantly dismissed.
We were told to shut up and accept everything they’ve been rolling out for us for the last several decades without question or complaint.
Well most Canadians and Americans want to limit legal immigration, and they most certainly don’t want any illegal immigration, but the university professors pontificating from their ivory towers and the plutocrats hiding in their gated communities, couldn’t care less.
We need to take our democracies back, we need to start voting for independents and third parties who’ll listen to us, and if that doesn’t work, heads will have to roll.
I mean you could say what you’re saying about lots of things.
There is no precise beginning/ending between say a geological feature such as a mountain and other geological features like the ground underneath or surrounding mountains, but that shouldn’t preclude us from thinking of and treating it as fundamentally, mostly or in some important way, its own entity.
For me, populism goes far beyond being anti-(illegal) immigration.
It’s about society, government and the economy serving, the people, as opposed to the special interests, whether these special interests are bankers, big businessmen and bureaucrats on the right hand, or racial, religious and sexual minorities on the left.
either we should have a libertarian government, or, if we are to have some intervention, and I strongly recommend that we do, particularly economic, it should be intervention that serves the interests of the people, which in Canada and America means, the white, Christian (I’m an agnostic, but whatever) working classes.
For me, populism could be called majoritarianism.
It’s not about capitalism or socialism so much as it is about nationalism, democracy and serving the interests of the people, especially the dominant demographic.
For me, populism goes far beyond Trump.
He’s at best a means to an end, and at worst, a huckster.
He’s a half-populist on his best days, and an anti-populist on his worst.
If he won’t secure the border, Americans need to vote for someone who will.
He most definitely won’t go after the plutocrats, or Jewish crime syndicate, because he’s one of them, and theirs.
Populism is the proper ideology of any true democracy.
Gloominary wrote
But what about equality for all under the law? Equal opportunity for all? 
Karpel
That’s true, and we should.
I don’t like Reagan, Bush and Clinton.
It was both, politicians and illegals.
There is a place for social services.
Not well enough.
Catch and release needs to be replaced with detain and deport.
They can apply for asylum on the other side of the wall.
Good points, but we still need strong, secure borders and to detain and deport, for some illegals are here to commit other crimes, and we just don’t want a bunch of undocumented aliens running around, even if there’s fewer of them for we’re cracking down on the corps that hire them, and while going after the corps that hire them will help, there’s always going to be some that slip through the cracks.
I agree that corporations, their owners and managers are far more morally culpable than illegals, the latter are socioeconomically vulnerable, the former couldn’t be further from.
So long as they haven’t committed any crimes, illegals should be well fed and taken care of, on their journey back to Mexico or wherever they came from, while those who hire them need to sit in a jailcell and eat TVP for a long, long time.
The more money they have, the longer.
I am concerned police are being militarized in the process, that this could be turned around on citizens (in)advertently, so we do have to be careful how we go about it.
Better a patriotic fool to lead a country then an unpatriotic genius.
K: I say unto you, the reason America is in decline is people like you, people
who blame the jews, and blame the liberals and blame the immigrants
and blame and blame and blame… look in the mirror…
J’accuse: the reason American is in decline is because of
those like Wendy who refuse to look in the mirror and
ask themselves, what have I done to make it better?
Wendy might ask herself:
“I have blamed, oh how I have blamed… I have blamed
but have I taken responsibility? have I taken the guilt of
this so called “American failure”? Have I attempted to
improve our lives, or have I simply blamed?”
it is easy to blame… I did it as a kid… in a large family,
a vase got broken and the blame game began… and the last
word might even get away with breaking the vase…
if you want to play the blame game, let us take the blame right
to where it belongs, GOD… oh, god, are thou vengeful for letting
millions suffer in poverty, thou are vengeful for letting millions
be born into shitholes, thou are vengeful for allowing
children, mere children to suffer in concentration camps built
by men you admired and voted for…
what have you done? what have you done to mitigate
those who have suffer?
J’accuse: I accuse you of being a bad Christian and a worse human being…
have you no sympathy for the children who suffer in concentration camps?
have you no sympathy for those who suffer in third world “shitholes”?
but of course not, you must blame… it is their fault for living in a shithole,
why don’t they do something about it? and they did… they tried to enter
this country and the children, the children are in concentration camps…
do you feel like justice is being served? how very Christian of you…
for if someone suffers, it must be because of their own actions…
and yet, god punishes children, makes them suffer with cancer
and tumors… what were their actions that caused them to suffer?
and a Christian is reduced to announcing, “gods ways are inscrutable”
and we can’t possibly know them……
BULLSHIT… BULLSHIT…… BULLSHIT………
if we are a Christian nation as if often proclaimed, then
we must, must adhere to the notion, the notion best proclaimed
in the declaration of independence…
“That all men are created equal” and that equality means we must
treat all men with dignity and honor and love and with justice…
so, how does putting children in concentration camps
tell us how “all men are created equal”?
J’accuse: you are a bad human being for your indifference to
the suffering of our fellow human beings…
and if I “hurt” your feelings, good… maybe that will wake you up
to the indifferent life you are leading…and maybe, just maybe,
you can end the blame game and take responsibility for actions
taken in your name that put children in concentration camps…
Kropotkin
Lol, that’s not my principle, mine is white working men and women first, or at least citizens in general first.
No evidence then to prove your earlier post? Just accusations about accusations. Trump is gonna win in 2020. Thank you for helping my cause Peter.
I’d say that depends on things like how interventionist the fool is, for example.
OK, I thought you meant crimes other than being here illegally. Like robbery say or murder.