If anything, I want the Government to leave me the hell alone.
I find the people clamoring for the poor illegal immigrants / criminals usually don’t contribute much or actually act on what they preach.
You want to provide for them? Cool, start a charity or give your money, sponsor them, or house them - literally nobody is stopping you.
I work for fun and to keep my mind going - not out of necessity.
You’re an old forum friend so forgive me if I’m misreading you, but I don’t feel like anything in this thread should bum you out, unless you’re bummed out about the shortages of important goods and services. We can all agree that shortages are bad. Unless, that is, you’re heavily invested in real estate or other assets suddenly in short supply.
But that’s a side-topic.
My first impulse is to always offer help, but my capacity for helping people is limited and I therefore need to be selective about who I help and who I do not.
Governments are no different in that they have a limited capacity to help, but the obvious difference is that governments can only offer help with other people’s wealth that they’ve taken.
In a perfect world of unlimited resources, there is no issue at all with anyone, anywhere giving out baby food to babies for any reason whatsoever. Generally-speaking, feeding babies is something we can all agree is very important, even if not everyone agrees on what a baby actually is.
In this situation of shortages, the government procuring and then distributing these goods denies them to its own citizens. Being concerned about that doesn’t mean you wish anything bad upon anyone else.
Maintaining the assumption of good faith is vitally important if we’re ever to understand one another. Assuming ignorance or stupidity is one thing, but you have to hold on to the idea that the person you’re talking to has good intentions in mind.
I wonder how many immigrants such people have dealt with closely. Like, worked, socialized, and broke bread with, for years.
What always strikes me as extremely hypocritical is some of these people attempt to emotionally abuse others who don’t care for immigration while at the same time referring to some of the countries from where immigrant are from as “shit holes.” How’s that for some TLC?
I worked in healthcare and lived in one of the most diverse places on earth (literally), Queens, NY, for 37 years. I estimate at some of my jobs with hundreds of employees and residents, over half were immigrants. In healthcare, one gets the inside deal of people’s life history, financial status, and personality.
I have dealt with immigrants from all over: Europe, Asia, the Middle East, South America, Africa, and the Carribean. I’ve often joked, “I don’t have to go on vacation; they came to me.”
Family members and I have worked in Marine Park, Jamaica, Bushwick, the Bronx, Elmhurst, and Sunnyside. I also used to spend a lot of time in Astoria. Demographics for all these places are available online.
I have five friends who are immigrants or have one or two immigrant parents. My mom and her whole family were immigrants, in some cases twice over, having resided in three countries.
This is not a badge of honor, but I believe many pro-immigration people have not had such close, everyday experience, and that many of them wouldn’t only dislike it, but never put themselves in such positions.
If someone is not “living it”, should I take them seriously?
Most all of us are descendants of immigrants.
Might there be a difference between immigrants and illegal immigrants?
Was a hell of a lot easier to immigrate back in the 18th, 19th and (at least early) 20th centuries than it is now. Is there a difference? Sure. But if you wanted to move to Nebraska in 1850, no one stopped you. (Kinda.)
@BrickHead - totally agree with you. I think I am of a different opinion regarding the thread topic and immigration in general than most in the thread, but I do try to walk the walk. I used to volunteer at a “school” helping immigrants (and poor people) learn English and get their GEDs. I was in high school at the time, and was hearing a lot of people complain about the arrival of immigrants in our town and their inability to speak English. (A valid complaint.) I figured 99.9% of Americans I knew were unable to speak a second language competently, so if someone else needed to learn one the least I could do was help. I’d appreciate it if others helped me should I ever need to move to a foreign country that doesn’t have a large English-speaking population.
My maternal grandparents were both born a century ago in Poland and raised in America. They made it a point to raise 5 American children who didn’t speak Polish.
I have no idea what it is like to be raised by an illegal immigrant, let alone by one in 2022.
Yes, many of us.
I don’t know what percentage, but if I recall correctly there was a time in American history in which most Americans were not immigrants. Things changed drastically after the 1965 Immigration Act.
What has been pushed is a fallacy of tradition, in this case, the notion that because America has many immigrants, we should keep on importing immigrants, in most cases with the thoughts that they “want a better life”, “work hard”, and “do the jobs no one wants to do.” As if it’s all that simple, and that every prospect is like that, and that this doesn’t change the social fabric of a country.
Yes, but a common belief of many people, including “conservatives,” is that illegal immigration is bad while totally ignoring the negative effects of never-ending legal immigration, as if it’s all good.
I am not 100 percent against all immigration generally but in the current condition America is in, I don’t think we need even one more immigrant.
There’s a good argument for shutting it all down at this particular moment, but we should always Operation Paperclip the brain trust into the country if we can, so long as we make sure to ask them several times if they are spies before we let them in.
I will agree that this country could use a hold on immigration for awhile. Get a little stability.
But you know. I do not know a single person who isn’t a descendant of an immigrant or an immigrant themselves
I do not know a single American Indian.
Yes. Hence I said that I believe many upper-middle-class or rich liberals who are pro-immigration are full of it, and would never put themselves in such positions. Perhaps they have a few (or one) brainy immigrant doctor or STEM friend but they would not put themselves in aforesaid towns in which the entire flavor is alien to them. And they certainly would not do that in NYC in the 80’s and 90’s!
I think we have already had some spies here in recent times, even this year.
And as said, re: brain drain, what good does it do for a country to have its most intelligent citizens fleeing?
Maybe in a very select few cases we can do this.
That’s because their open immigration policy bit them in the ass.
It has not been my experience that the illegal immigrants I’ve known simply wanted handouts. Not to mention the billions of dollars that undocumented workers pay in taxes each year — much of which going to fund programs that they’ll never be able to directly benefit from.
I’m not an advocate of open boarders. Immigration policy is complicated and I’d never pretend to know enough about it to make that kind of recommendation. Maybe the way the US handles immigration is as good of a system that can possibly exist in reality — my intuition is that this isn’t true, but I genuinely don’t know.
I agree that it is better for everyone when immigrants follow the established, legal process of immigrating to a country. However, as you allude to yourself, this process is massively inefficient, hard to navigate, and (by necessity) exclusionary. That may be fine or even necessary from a policy perspective, but I don’t personally begrudge anyone in a desperate situation for circumventing that procedure. I imagine that if any one of us were in a situation where the thing standing between us and the opportunity to provide a great life for our children was a hard journey through the desert, we’d make a similar decision.
I consider you an old forum friend too. Haha
That’s definitely a part of it. In my lifetime, I did not expected to see food shortages lead to conversations about whether or not our government should be providing formula to infants that it is holding in detention centers. The whole thing is just sad.
The rest of your post is well-taken, though. I think I disagree with a few posters here about where “babies that the US government is holding in detention centers” should fall on the list of people that should receive resources, but I don’t think that disagreement makes them evil.
Appreciate the solid and thoughtful reply.
Oftentimes when people make decisions that I don’t like, it helps me to imagine myself in their position and try to understand their motivations. In the case of illegal immigrants, this is easy enough for me to do, and it leads me to not have any personal anger or animosity towards them for breaking the law. Maybe I’m misinterpreting several of the posts above, but it seems like at least a few people in this thread carry that animosity with them. I don’t think that is good or productive, personally.
Empathy.
I grew up in a rural midwestern farming community which had a notable immigrant Mexican population, and then moved to a primarily immigrant neighborhood in Chicago. I am also currently an immigrant in a country outside of the US myself. So, I’ve had some experience with this topic, for what its worth.
I have had both positive and negative experiences with immigrants in the US, and as being an immigrant outside the US. If I’m interpreting your post correctly, you seem to have a largely negative view of immigration and immigrants in general. Is this true, and if so, can I ask why?
You’ve made a few comments like this in this thread. Why do you feel this way? What is it about people born outside of the US that makes them less worthy of your concern than people born inside?
I have noticed that many of the immigrants, and not just those who emigrate to the United States, are quite cheeky. There are indeed those who are fleeing wars and misery, but many of them simply want a better life without effort and accepting what is offered to them. Currently, thousands of refugees from Ukraine are accommodated in our hotels by the sea in my country, for which my country pays. Yesterday a Ukrainian woman released a video in which she says how we were nasty and lazy people. And the opposite is true - we feed them and sleep without money in 4 and 5 star hotels, many of them do not work, do not want to get involved to help with something. I sympathize with them because most of them look good people, but there are also big brats and ungrateful people. Some of them came with cars for over 100-150,000 dollars, but did not work and did not pay anything. And now they are starting to talk nonsense, as they are offered to leave the hotels and be accommodated elsewhere. The money that the state pays to hoteliers is many times lower than the real price and in practice hoteliers work at a loss. But they are bad people 
But the summer season is approaching and the refugees have to move. But they do not want to, because they are used to luxury swimming pools, good food, beaches. And our country is one of the poorest in the European Union, but we still accepted them with open hearts. And yet, some refugees are dissatisfied and talk all sorts of crap and fabrications against our country.
I apologize for deviating a little from the topic, but because you have affected refugees and their behavior, it seems that the situation is the same everywhere in the world.
The descendents of the American Indian were also immigrants to America
Archaeologists and anthropologists have been reconsidering the Bering Strait theory.
Um, interesting. One theory is that Native Americans developed on their own, and the other is that they were inhabited by Asians who crossed the Bering Strait. And isn’t it possible that part of America’s self-developed population over the millennia has crossed the Bering Strait into Asia? Or another way.
According to Bering’s theory, the transition from Asia to America took place about 12,000 years ago. But scientists have found human remains in America about 50,000 years ago.
Many things remain a mystery. For example, Viking tools have been found in America, dating back to long before America was officially discovered.