✮✮✮ !Trump Dump! ✮✮✮

Nicker on 27/1/2025 at 21:01

Quote:

Whatever happened in the 1800s and early 1900s has no bearing on today.

And I thought we were only facing a repeat of 1938. Silly me.

But since irrelevance is the order of the day...

[video=youtube;nOlrVufmEDY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOlrVufmEDY[/video]

Starker on 27/1/2025 at 21:04

Quote Posted by heywood

Arable land will not sit unused while the world's population grows. That is one thing I can guarantee.

If I somehow gave the impression that I was suggesting the US will no longer have an agricultural industry, that was not my intention. By the collapse of agricultural industry I meant that it will face a crisis, not that it will cease to exist.

CradleCity on 27/1/2025 at 21:31

Quote Posted by RippedPhreak

Whatever happened in the 1800s and early 1900s has no bearing on today. There is no rule that because we once had immigration we must continue it forever.

Secondly, Irish and Italians were coming when there was a lot of empty land available. That's a lot different than showing up to crowded cities where people are struggling to make ends meet and then demanding welfare benefits (paid for by the citizens who are already struggling).

As to where the line is, yes it is blurry but I guess we'll start with removing anyone who arrived in the last ten years and see if we're good to stop there.

It has bearing, for you cannot escape the past, no matter how selective or artistic you are. But you can try, I guess.

Most 1st/2nd wave Irish and Italians got concentrated in the cities, not so much into the empty rural areas. Boston and New York, to name two well-known examples. And I could probably find news articles and opinions from those days, blaming Irish and Italians for the exact same reasons you're blaming the (non-wealthy) immigrants of today.

The line will never stop there, and deep down, you know it. The appetite for hatred and exclusion will increase. And you will gleefully accept the line being pushed, until it affects you personally.

Vae on 28/1/2025 at 03:18

There just isn't any good logical argument for letting people stay illegally...that is why Obama deported them too.

People are rationalizing their emotions with weak economic justifications, and that's understandable.

But emotional decisions ruin countries...and we can't have that.

Starker on 28/1/2025 at 10:23

I don't think anyone is advocating for the continued illegal status of these immigrants. But there is an obvious solution to this problem that doesn't involve damaging the US economically and also avoids tearing families apart or in some cases deporting people who have only known the US for their whole lives to what is essentially a foreign country where they don't know anyone and can't speak the language.

I'll leave figuring out that solution as an exercise to the reader.

RippedPhreak on 28/1/2025 at 14:18

If these folks are such a great benefit to the economy, then Mexico's economy should become supercharged once they get there. Also who is separating families? The whole family can just leave together.

Starker on 28/1/2025 at 14:50

A family can't just pick up their lives and move to a country. Children need to go to a school for example, people have lives and careers that are tied to the country. If the parents of a US citizen are deported, it's not like they can abandon all the friends and connections they have built up and migrate to some other country where their parents were from. And their own children might not even speak any languages other than English, so it would be extra hard for them.

Also, why people move to US to seek work is often because they can't find gainful work in their home countries, so being jobless in Brazil does not benefit the economy of the country the same way as these people working in the US would.

RippedPhreak on 28/1/2025 at 15:09

We'll never agree, no point discussing further. You believe anyone on Earth has the right to come live next to me, regardless of my wishes. I don't believe this, so where do we go from here? One side or the other has to win and I choose mine. Maybe Trump fails and we get swamped by foreigners forever and America just ends. I guess we'll see.

heywood on 28/1/2025 at 17:18

The solution has been right in front of us for decades:

1. End illegal employment. If there is no opportunity to make money here, it will eliminate the primary incentive to come here. It will also force us to reckon with our labor needs in a managed way that prioritizes immigrants who can bring the most economic value.

2. A Constitutional amendment to end birthright citizenship. It allows a foreign family to put a foot in the door and hold it open for others to follow simply by crossing the border and giving birth, without giving us the chance to consider their merits.

Starker on 28/1/2025 at 17:24

Quote Posted by RippedPhreak

There is no immigration system that just takes anyone in. There is usually a process that allows people to live in a country, work there, grants a path to citizenship, etc. You treat immigration as some kind of universal evil that ruins countries, whereas I consider it to be something that has both positive and negative effects and a good immigration system would be one that capitalises as much on the positive aspects and avoids the negative aspects as much as possible. It is neither possible nor desirable to just ban everyone from coming to your country, especially if this causes economic harm and ruins people's lives. And mass deportations without any regard to people's lives or economic effect are short-sighted policy and have a cost to them that is far greater than any possible benefit.

You are right though, that we will never agree, because your viewpoint is based on fear and prejudice. For you, immigrants are face-tatted murderers and rapists, whereas I think most immigrants are just ordinary people who want to work, raise their families, etc.