"End this chaos" vs "nation-wrecking nightmare" vs "stop this madness"
January 3, 2024 11:56 AM Subscribe
Immigrants are overwhelming us: I will control the border (Ron DeSantis, Des Moines Register, archive.is)
This is how I will end Joe Biden's border disaster on day one (Donald Trump, Des Moines Register, archive.is)
Ending reckless spending will boost our economy and stop inflation (Nikki Haley, Des Moines Register, archive.is)
Republican presidential candidates released dueling newspaper editorials today. It's a move that some guy in a diner called 'a throwback to the days of widespread literacy' (not pictured: Vivek Ramaswamy, Asa Hutchinson, and Ryan Binkley).
This is how I will end Joe Biden's border disaster on day one (Donald Trump, Des Moines Register, archive.is)
Ending reckless spending will boost our economy and stop inflation (Nikki Haley, Des Moines Register, archive.is)
Republican presidential candidates released dueling newspaper editorials today. It's a move that some guy in a diner called 'a throwback to the days of widespread literacy' (not pictured: Vivek Ramaswamy, Asa Hutchinson, and Ryan Binkley).
Who ghostwrote these? None of the actual Republican candidates project an air of literacy.
posted by Faint of Butt at 12:11 PM on January 3 [6 favorites]
posted by Faint of Butt at 12:11 PM on January 3 [6 favorites]
Ooga booga scary scary
posted by chronkite at 12:16 PM on January 3 [4 favorites]
posted by chronkite at 12:16 PM on January 3 [4 favorites]
Ok I don't know who Ryan Binkley is (and I am not interested so no need to enlighten me!) but President Binkley sounds hilarious. Of course I would vote for Bloom County's 10-year old Binkley before any of these asshole clowns.
posted by Glinn at 12:25 PM on January 3 [13 favorites]
posted by Glinn at 12:25 PM on January 3 [13 favorites]
JFC he wants to fund this by charging additional fees on foreign workers' remittances sent back home?!
posted by gusandrews at 12:28 PM on January 3 [10 favorites]
posted by gusandrews at 12:28 PM on January 3 [10 favorites]
Re: the Op-Eds
"Those probably sounded better in the original German"
Using the quote above from the much missed Molly Ivins (in reference to Patrick Buchanan’s 1992 Republican Convention speech).
posted by lalochezia at 12:28 PM on January 3 [46 favorites]
"Those probably sounded better in the original German"
Using the quote above from the much missed Molly Ivins (in reference to Patrick Buchanan’s 1992 Republican Convention speech).
posted by lalochezia at 12:28 PM on January 3 [46 favorites]
None of the actual Republican candidates project an air of literacy.
Why the instinctive juvenile insults? Sure, most politicians have speechwritersm and I believe that Trump hasn't read Mein Kampf, since I doubt he's read anything, but DeSantis came from a working-class family to Yale and Harvard Law. Ramaswamy did it in reverse: Harvard then Yale Law. Haley, like Ramaswamy the child of Indian immigrants, became the first female governor of South Carolina and the second American state governor of Indian descent. Not everyone with abhorrent beliefs is dumb.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 12:46 PM on January 3 [15 favorites]
Why the instinctive juvenile insults? Sure, most politicians have speechwritersm and I believe that Trump hasn't read Mein Kampf, since I doubt he's read anything, but DeSantis came from a working-class family to Yale and Harvard Law. Ramaswamy did it in reverse: Harvard then Yale Law. Haley, like Ramaswamy the child of Indian immigrants, became the first female governor of South Carolina and the second American state governor of Indian descent. Not everyone with abhorrent beliefs is dumb.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 12:46 PM on January 3 [15 favorites]
It's weird that each of the four lines of this post feels like punching down just looking at them, yet they all...ain't.
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 12:48 PM on January 3 [3 favorites]
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 12:48 PM on January 3 [3 favorites]
JFC he wants to fund this by charging additional fees on foreign workers' remittances sent back home?!
Gonna be tough to pass that legislation, but also I give it about an 80% chance that the vast majority of people stop using Western Union etc and move to one of the foreign based bitcoin remittance specialists who charge less for remittances already.
posted by BrotherCaine at 12:53 PM on January 3 [5 favorites]
Gonna be tough to pass that legislation, but also I give it about an 80% chance that the vast majority of people stop using Western Union etc and move to one of the foreign based bitcoin remittance specialists who charge less for remittances already.
posted by BrotherCaine at 12:53 PM on January 3 [5 favorites]
Binkley. A GOP candidate concerned about income inequality. LOLz. No wonder no one has heard of him.
posted by mcstayinskool at 12:57 PM on January 3 [4 favorites]
posted by mcstayinskool at 12:57 PM on January 3 [4 favorites]
So, what's up with the interchangability of "immigrant" and "illegal immigrant", because I'm pretty sure the border problem are the excess of legal or trying-to-be-legal immigrants. DeSantis' biggest complaint is immigrants are being given legal status through normal channels.
Like, I don't know how state officers can load up a bunch of illegal immigrants on a bus or plane for political points and just release them into the US? There's already a solid process for getting rid of illegal immigrants, if you have enough control over their destination to load them onto a bus. If they're legal enough of an immigrant that Homeland Security sees fit to let them board a plane, fences and border patrols don't fix this.
posted by AzraelBrown at 1:06 PM on January 3 [11 favorites]
Like, I don't know how state officers can load up a bunch of illegal immigrants on a bus or plane for political points and just release them into the US? There's already a solid process for getting rid of illegal immigrants, if you have enough control over their destination to load them onto a bus. If they're legal enough of an immigrant that Homeland Security sees fit to let them board a plane, fences and border patrols don't fix this.
posted by AzraelBrown at 1:06 PM on January 3 [11 favorites]
> So, what's up with the interchangability of "immigrant" and "illegal immigrant",
Xenophobia?
It was never about immigration.
posted by NotAYakk at 1:13 PM on January 3 [37 favorites]
Xenophobia?
It was never about immigration.
posted by NotAYakk at 1:13 PM on January 3 [37 favorites]
Binkley. A GOP candidate concerned about income inequality. LOLz. No wonder no one has heard of him.
Nah, he's just using the phrase for attention. His actual economic "plan", which mostly complains about the congressional budgeting process—which the President does not control—rather than offering specific substantive proposals, seems to chiefly suggest:
1. Flattening the tax structure (i.e. make it even more regressive, which only increases income inequality)
2. Reducing Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid (i.e. take money away from and increase the health care costs of many low income people, furthering increasing income inequality)
3. Something something wasteful government spending
He is not a serious candidate in any sense of the phrase, and his economic "ideas" are the same long-debunked supply-side nonsense as the rest of them.
posted by jedicus at 1:14 PM on January 3 [11 favorites]
Nah, he's just using the phrase for attention. His actual economic "plan", which mostly complains about the congressional budgeting process—which the President does not control—rather than offering specific substantive proposals, seems to chiefly suggest:
1. Flattening the tax structure (i.e. make it even more regressive, which only increases income inequality)
2. Reducing Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid (i.e. take money away from and increase the health care costs of many low income people, furthering increasing income inequality)
3. Something something wasteful government spending
He is not a serious candidate in any sense of the phrase, and his economic "ideas" are the same long-debunked supply-side nonsense as the rest of them.
posted by jedicus at 1:14 PM on January 3 [11 favorites]
From the DeSantis piece:
I mean.. 8 million people would be more than the total populations of the smallest seven states and DC combined. Are there people who truly believe that during the slightly less than three years since the Biden inauguration that more would-be immigrants have arrived than the total existing populations of Wyoming, Vermont, DC, Alaska, North and South Dakota, Delaware and Rhode Island have entered via our southern border?
DeSantis' piece does include a citation to a source of which I've never previously heard, but I am uninclined to accept his claim because it does not seem remotely plausible to me. Am I the one who is deeply misinformed here?
posted by Nerd of the North at 1:51 PM on January 3 [18 favorites]
Biden would not have been able to get away with letting in 8 million illegal aliens if we had a border wall — something Donald Trump promised, but failed to deliver.I'll admit that I'm a very long way from the southern border and maybe there are a lot more asylum-seekers and refugees coming in than I think, in addition to the undocumented, but I keep seeing what seem to me to be utterly unbelievable figures claimed by Republican politicians.
I mean.. 8 million people would be more than the total populations of the smallest seven states and DC combined. Are there people who truly believe that during the slightly less than three years since the Biden inauguration that more would-be immigrants have arrived than the total existing populations of Wyoming, Vermont, DC, Alaska, North and South Dakota, Delaware and Rhode Island have entered via our southern border?
DeSantis' piece does include a citation to a source of which I've never previously heard, but I am uninclined to accept his claim because it does not seem remotely plausible to me. Am I the one who is deeply misinformed here?
posted by Nerd of the North at 1:51 PM on January 3 [18 favorites]
What a bummer Onion article.
posted by Liquidwolf at 2:07 PM on January 3 [4 favorites]
posted by Liquidwolf at 2:07 PM on January 3 [4 favorites]
So, what's up with the interchangability of "immigrant" and "illegal immigrant"
Maybe part of it is the argument that there's no such thing as an illegal immigrant so they're dancing around that term. Apparently it's something about how decisions on entry / deportation are controlled by the executive rather than legislative branch, and because it's controlled by the executive, Biden can decide to do one thing, and the next president can do another, all without needing to get any laws passed. So it's not a question of legal status at all.
Under Biden's team, the US no longer deports people because they are undocumented. The memo issued stated that there are 11 million undocumented persons in the US many of whom have "been here for generations and contributed to our country’s well-being" and the department is actively working to legalize their status in the US.
While DeSantis and Trump are explicitly saying they want to deport these 11 million undocumented persons.
It's an issue everywhere. In Malaysia where I grew up, it's estimated there are 1-3 million undocumented workers in the country (out of a population of about 30 mil), I even know a friend who went to jail because they hired one. Then, in an irony, I'm now living in Australia, and the largest number of visa over-stayers are... Malaysian, even though Malaysians are a minority of entries. I've seen a stat that says Malaysians make up less than 5% of total entries but make up over 33% of entry rejections.
And as for the illegal / legal immigration statistic, there's a total backlash against all immigrants regardless of status, citing a homelessness crisis. Basically a large number of home-builders went bankrupt due to writing fixed price contracts while prices of raw materials doubled after Covid lockdowns ended, severely restricting new supply of houses which was already restricted in the past 2 years due to lockdowns stopping work from happening. Wealthier people moved out to larger homes, using spare bedrooms for work-from-home offices, reducing the number of persons per dwelling and putting pressure on the existing housing supply. There was probably also an increased desire to live alone rather than in share houses due to Covid, so those who could afford it, did so.
And then there was a record number of immigrants (about 500,000) in the last year as the economy opened up. Rents for houses and units increased 14% to 24% nationwide in a single year, in some locales as much as 50%, leading to many people being forced out of their homes. It's easy for people to go, well there's 130,000 Australians homeless right now, and if we didn't have 500,000 immigrants come in all at once, maybe we would have houses for them instead of them being out-bidded by wealthy foreigners? Why are we prioritizing immigrants rather than locals?
That's certainly one of the major anti-immigrant talking points going around Australia right now.
posted by xdvesper at 2:26 PM on January 3 [9 favorites]
Maybe part of it is the argument that there's no such thing as an illegal immigrant so they're dancing around that term. Apparently it's something about how decisions on entry / deportation are controlled by the executive rather than legislative branch, and because it's controlled by the executive, Biden can decide to do one thing, and the next president can do another, all without needing to get any laws passed. So it's not a question of legal status at all.
Under Biden's team, the US no longer deports people because they are undocumented. The memo issued stated that there are 11 million undocumented persons in the US many of whom have "been here for generations and contributed to our country’s well-being" and the department is actively working to legalize their status in the US.
While DeSantis and Trump are explicitly saying they want to deport these 11 million undocumented persons.
It's an issue everywhere. In Malaysia where I grew up, it's estimated there are 1-3 million undocumented workers in the country (out of a population of about 30 mil), I even know a friend who went to jail because they hired one. Then, in an irony, I'm now living in Australia, and the largest number of visa over-stayers are... Malaysian, even though Malaysians are a minority of entries. I've seen a stat that says Malaysians make up less than 5% of total entries but make up over 33% of entry rejections.
And as for the illegal / legal immigration statistic, there's a total backlash against all immigrants regardless of status, citing a homelessness crisis. Basically a large number of home-builders went bankrupt due to writing fixed price contracts while prices of raw materials doubled after Covid lockdowns ended, severely restricting new supply of houses which was already restricted in the past 2 years due to lockdowns stopping work from happening. Wealthier people moved out to larger homes, using spare bedrooms for work-from-home offices, reducing the number of persons per dwelling and putting pressure on the existing housing supply. There was probably also an increased desire to live alone rather than in share houses due to Covid, so those who could afford it, did so.
And then there was a record number of immigrants (about 500,000) in the last year as the economy opened up. Rents for houses and units increased 14% to 24% nationwide in a single year, in some locales as much as 50%, leading to many people being forced out of their homes. It's easy for people to go, well there's 130,000 Australians homeless right now, and if we didn't have 500,000 immigrants come in all at once, maybe we would have houses for them instead of them being out-bidded by wealthy foreigners? Why are we prioritizing immigrants rather than locals?
That's certainly one of the major anti-immigrant talking points going around Australia right now.
posted by xdvesper at 2:26 PM on January 3 [9 favorites]
Fuck borders anyway, I mean come on.
posted by chavenet at 2:31 PM on January 3 [27 favorites]
posted by chavenet at 2:31 PM on January 3 [27 favorites]
Am I the one who is deeply misinformed here?
I don't really want to go point by point on it, but, if the DeSantis campaign thinks that either the sketchy math or the conspicuously unreliable sources in this article (archive.is) are to be taken seriously, that might partially explain why he doesn't sound good outside of an echo chamber.
posted by box at 2:34 PM on January 3 [2 favorites]
I don't really want to go point by point on it, but, if the DeSantis campaign thinks that either the sketchy math or the conspicuously unreliable sources in this article (archive.is) are to be taken seriously, that might partially explain why he doesn't sound good outside of an echo chamber.
posted by box at 2:34 PM on January 3 [2 favorites]
Eh, I dunno.... I think I'm just gonna stick with that Biden fellow.
posted by spilon at 2:39 PM on January 3 [15 favorites]
posted by spilon at 2:39 PM on January 3 [15 favorites]
Actual numbers.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 2:44 PM on January 3 [4 favorites]
In the past year, the southwest border has received historic numbers of migrants. More than 2.4 million people. It's been record-breaking numbers for the past few years. San Diego alone has received more than 230,000 people this year. That's a 30% increase from the year before.-- NPR
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 2:44 PM on January 3 [4 favorites]
He is not a serious candidate in any sense of the phrase, and his economic "ideas" are the same long-debunked supply-side nonsense as the rest of them.
Regressive taxes and cutting services are a great way to make the people who have political power -- the rich -- have more money (and hence power) in the short term. They in turn can bribe you to keep up the gravy train with both cold, hard cash, soft money campaign contributions, and fund pseudo-fascist voting groups to provide the votes needed to keep you elected.
This is far from nonsense. It is a proven formula. The return on investment on selling xenophobia is great: it has funded an entire media empire. By offering comforting xenophobia and discounting objective truth, you also groom the fans to be scammed, which makes them great advertising targets and funnels more of their money to your supporters.
So long as the country itself remains stable enough you can keep on living on this gravy train. And the party economic philosophy - that collective action is best avoided-- means that you aren't even responsible for fixing any instability you create! You are just a local optimizer, doing what local optimizers should do. Until you are personally one of the richest people on the planet, you trying to solve this problem isn't going to solve it, so you should seek to become richer. And once you are one of the richest people on the planet, well, you'll survive any collapse probably, so you might as well keep up what you where doing and get even richer.
Multiple religions in the last few decades have been founded to make this feel better as well. Everything from "rationalism", "objectivism" "red pill" or "property theology". A whole spectrum of belief systems that says "f you, I got mine" is what you should do.
30% of the US population is sold on these ideas. The largest media empire on the planet is selling these ideas. Chains of tax-sheltered propaganda cults exist selling these ideas. The federalist society has taken over the US judiciary based on these ideas.
If all you got is "those ideas are stupid", you lose. They have been stupid for decades.
posted by NotAYakk at 2:45 PM on January 3 [22 favorites]
Regressive taxes and cutting services are a great way to make the people who have political power -- the rich -- have more money (and hence power) in the short term. They in turn can bribe you to keep up the gravy train with both cold, hard cash, soft money campaign contributions, and fund pseudo-fascist voting groups to provide the votes needed to keep you elected.
This is far from nonsense. It is a proven formula. The return on investment on selling xenophobia is great: it has funded an entire media empire. By offering comforting xenophobia and discounting objective truth, you also groom the fans to be scammed, which makes them great advertising targets and funnels more of their money to your supporters.
So long as the country itself remains stable enough you can keep on living on this gravy train. And the party economic philosophy - that collective action is best avoided-- means that you aren't even responsible for fixing any instability you create! You are just a local optimizer, doing what local optimizers should do. Until you are personally one of the richest people on the planet, you trying to solve this problem isn't going to solve it, so you should seek to become richer. And once you are one of the richest people on the planet, well, you'll survive any collapse probably, so you might as well keep up what you where doing and get even richer.
Multiple religions in the last few decades have been founded to make this feel better as well. Everything from "rationalism", "objectivism" "red pill" or "property theology". A whole spectrum of belief systems that says "f you, I got mine" is what you should do.
30% of the US population is sold on these ideas. The largest media empire on the planet is selling these ideas. Chains of tax-sheltered propaganda cults exist selling these ideas. The federalist society has taken over the US judiciary based on these ideas.
If all you got is "those ideas are stupid", you lose. They have been stupid for decades.
posted by NotAYakk at 2:45 PM on January 3 [22 favorites]
if these people want to stem the tide of asylum seekers there's a very simple solution: give generous amounts of foreign aid to all the countries that were destabilized by America's Cold War interpretation of the Monroe doctrine
posted by vibratory manner of working at 2:49 PM on January 3 [9 favorites]
posted by vibratory manner of working at 2:49 PM on January 3 [9 favorites]
So, what's up with the interchangability of "immigrant" and "illegal immigrant"
Fascism. Fascism is up. This is completely by-the-book 'enemy within our walls' ideology.
posted by away for regrooving at 2:50 PM on January 3 [19 favorites]
Fascism. Fascism is up. This is completely by-the-book 'enemy within our walls' ideology.
posted by away for regrooving at 2:50 PM on January 3 [19 favorites]
I'm not reading any of these and know for a fact that none of them involves firing fucking work permits out of a fucking T-Shirt cannon at people who A) Want to work here. B) Replace the 500K+ actively working people lost in the pandemic. And C) are from countries that we fucked up in the first fucking place.
posted by Slackermagee at 2:59 PM on January 3 [24 favorites]
posted by Slackermagee at 2:59 PM on January 3 [24 favorites]
I'll admit that I'm a very long way from the southern border and maybe there are a lot more asylum-seekers and refugees coming in than I think, in addition to the undocumented, but I keep seeing what seem to me to be utterly unbelievable figures claimed by Republican politicians.
ABC is the first non-maga-y sounding search result that's recent and pins the number at 3 million. As does USA Today based on the caseload for the immigration court responsible for processing things like asylum requests. That's about a million higher than Time had it in mid 2022. I recall having this discussion around the time covid happened (maybe I'm off by a year or two) with someone who worked in CBP and at the time the backlog was 1 million.
So no, as expected his "8 million" number is fabricated from whole cloth and the rhetoric is just as appalling as you would expect. The actual number is currently approximately 3 million people with status unresolved. The Biden administration continues to hire more judges to handle the backlog. For some people it takes years before their case gets in front of a judge.
posted by howbigisthistextfield at 3:11 PM on January 3 [7 favorites]
ABC is the first non-maga-y sounding search result that's recent and pins the number at 3 million. As does USA Today based on the caseload for the immigration court responsible for processing things like asylum requests. That's about a million higher than Time had it in mid 2022. I recall having this discussion around the time covid happened (maybe I'm off by a year or two) with someone who worked in CBP and at the time the backlog was 1 million.
So no, as expected his "8 million" number is fabricated from whole cloth and the rhetoric is just as appalling as you would expect. The actual number is currently approximately 3 million people with status unresolved. The Biden administration continues to hire more judges to handle the backlog. For some people it takes years before their case gets in front of a judge.
posted by howbigisthistextfield at 3:11 PM on January 3 [7 favorites]
Why the instinctive juvenile insults?
Because racism is stupid & anti-immigrant politics are similarly mean and stupid. And somebody who went to an Ivy League school really should know better. And the fact that he doesn't know better means that he wants to get to the White House on the backs of racist ignoramuses to boot.
posted by jonp72 at 3:21 PM on January 3 [11 favorites]
Because racism is stupid & anti-immigrant politics are similarly mean and stupid. And somebody who went to an Ivy League school really should know better. And the fact that he doesn't know better means that he wants to get to the White House on the backs of racist ignoramuses to boot.
posted by jonp72 at 3:21 PM on January 3 [11 favorites]
So attack their stupid ideas; don't call them illiterate.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 3:34 PM on January 3 [1 favorite]
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 3:34 PM on January 3 [1 favorite]
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Pepperidge Farm remembers America...
posted by Windopaene at 3:52 PM on January 3 [14 favorites]
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Pepperidge Farm remembers America...
posted by Windopaene at 3:52 PM on January 3 [14 favorites]
What infuriates me about this whole topic, aside from the rage inducing use of the word illegal to apply to actual human people and not their method of entry, is that a large part of the increase in applications for asylum and immigration generally is entirely our fucking fault.
People aren't suddenly fleeing their homes just because, they're doing it because it has become so fucking easy to unlawfully export guns from the US that cartels and gangs have become much, much more violent. And that's not even getting into how the war on drugs continues to funnel money into the pockets of people who give zero shits about murdering innocent bystanders.
And of course we can't possibly do anything about the smurfs buying 20 AR-15s a month and selling them to traffickers because "mah freedoms ARGLEBARGLE!" And so we end up with stupid arguments that rarely even acknowledge the actual fucking problem, and instead waste our breath arguing about symptoms. Yeah, our shoe is caught in an industrial shredder, so let's argue about we should take ibuprofen or acetaminophen rather than turning the goddamned machine off so maybe we don't lose more than the tip of a toe. Such smart people we are, knowing about painkillers and shit.
posted by wierdo at 3:58 PM on January 3 [18 favorites]
People aren't suddenly fleeing their homes just because, they're doing it because it has become so fucking easy to unlawfully export guns from the US that cartels and gangs have become much, much more violent. And that's not even getting into how the war on drugs continues to funnel money into the pockets of people who give zero shits about murdering innocent bystanders.
And of course we can't possibly do anything about the smurfs buying 20 AR-15s a month and selling them to traffickers because "mah freedoms ARGLEBARGLE!" And so we end up with stupid arguments that rarely even acknowledge the actual fucking problem, and instead waste our breath arguing about symptoms. Yeah, our shoe is caught in an industrial shredder, so let's argue about we should take ibuprofen or acetaminophen rather than turning the goddamned machine off so maybe we don't lose more than the tip of a toe. Such smart people we are, knowing about painkillers and shit.
posted by wierdo at 3:58 PM on January 3 [18 favorites]
It's worth noting that the number of authorized immigrants entering the US has been around 1.1 million for the past decade. That the number of unauthorized entries is more than double that is surely a sign of a broken system, and I think that's what people recognize.
So it's easy to tie them to cartels and smuggling and what have you because people know something is wrong, and will grab onto a simplistic explanation rather than one with any nuance. Historically, we've not dealt well with the issue, from the Chinese Exclusion Act to demonizing Irish, Italians, and Catholics in various eras.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 4:08 PM on January 3 [3 favorites]
So it's easy to tie them to cartels and smuggling and what have you because people know something is wrong, and will grab onto a simplistic explanation rather than one with any nuance. Historically, we've not dealt well with the issue, from the Chinese Exclusion Act to demonizing Irish, Italians, and Catholics in various eras.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 4:08 PM on January 3 [3 favorites]
Two of my grandparents and one great-grandparent came through Ellis Island. My grandfather went steerage so his sickly brother could travel second class and get off at the Battery instead to avoid the xenophobic screening they put poor people through. I don't give a shit about borders and welcome immigrants with open arms. That is my statement.
Cf. “Let America Be America Again” by Langston Hughes.
posted by ob1quixote at 4:33 PM on January 3 [15 favorites]
Cf. “Let America Be America Again” by Langston Hughes.
posted by ob1quixote at 4:33 PM on January 3 [15 favorites]
I’m reading a recent Hitler bio right now and an interesting point to me is how much it emphasizes the (obvious but slightly hidden point) that antisemitism was quite widespread at the time; Hitler was an over-steeped teabag in a common brand of vitriol.
posted by Going To Maine at 4:49 PM on January 3 [5 favorites]
posted by Going To Maine at 4:49 PM on January 3 [5 favorites]
Thanks, Obama.
posted by kirkaracha at 4:55 PM on January 3 [2 favorites]
posted by kirkaracha at 4:55 PM on January 3 [2 favorites]
from the Chinese Exclusion Act
It can never be said enough that the whole legal justification for immigration control in the United States is built on the Chinese Exclusion Cases, which is built on the same racist view of immigrants as an invading army that these unimaginative slimebags are still using today. These ideas cannot be reasoned with because they never had a rational foundation to begin with. Even in the modern deracinated form, "people should be denied basic rights because they were born on the wrong side of an imaginary line" is not a position anyone could arrive at through rational thought.
The real unreasoning horde was inside us all along.
posted by Not A Thing at 5:12 PM on January 3 [16 favorites]
It can never be said enough that the whole legal justification for immigration control in the United States is built on the Chinese Exclusion Cases, which is built on the same racist view of immigrants as an invading army that these unimaginative slimebags are still using today. These ideas cannot be reasoned with because they never had a rational foundation to begin with. Even in the modern deracinated form, "people should be denied basic rights because they were born on the wrong side of an imaginary line" is not a position anyone could arrive at through rational thought.
The real unreasoning horde was inside us all along.
posted by Not A Thing at 5:12 PM on January 3 [16 favorites]
(See also Trump’s reference to the Alien Enemies Act.)
posted by box at 5:35 PM on January 3 [1 favorite]
posted by box at 5:35 PM on January 3 [1 favorite]
Let anyone who wants to come here come here, I couldn’t give less of a shit if I tried. Borders are fake.
posted by rhymedirective at 5:44 PM on January 3 [10 favorites]
posted by rhymedirective at 5:44 PM on January 3 [10 favorites]
So attack their stupid ideas; don't call them illiterate.
Remember that these are the same Fascist fucks who go after Black people for plagiarism.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 7:17 PM on January 3 [12 favorites]
Remember that these are the same Fascist fucks who go after Black people for plagiarism.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 7:17 PM on January 3 [12 favorites]
> Actual numbers.
For context, Ellis Island alone had 878,000* immigrants pass through it in 1914, prior to the outbreak of WWI. That was when the US's population was less than a third of what it is now. And contrary to the popular imagination, Ellis Island was hardly the only place people entered the country. One side of my family took a boat to Canada and later ended up in the US following lumber and mining jobs.
And historically, the US had been sitting around 14% foreign born population from the civil war until the outbreak of WWI, the great depression, and the rise of fascism and restrictive immigration laws, declined to a low of around 9% in the 1970s and since then has gone back up in an S shaped curve since then back to around 14%. (source)
So we're at what for a large period of the US's formative history is a perfectly ordinary amount of immigration.
*According to wikipedia which cites this National Park Service document as its source.
posted by Zalzidrax at 8:48 PM on January 3 [12 favorites]
For context, Ellis Island alone had 878,000* immigrants pass through it in 1914, prior to the outbreak of WWI. That was when the US's population was less than a third of what it is now. And contrary to the popular imagination, Ellis Island was hardly the only place people entered the country. One side of my family took a boat to Canada and later ended up in the US following lumber and mining jobs.
And historically, the US had been sitting around 14% foreign born population from the civil war until the outbreak of WWI, the great depression, and the rise of fascism and restrictive immigration laws, declined to a low of around 9% in the 1970s and since then has gone back up in an S shaped curve since then back to around 14%. (source)
So we're at what for a large period of the US's formative history is a perfectly ordinary amount of immigration.
*According to wikipedia which cites this National Park Service document as its source.
posted by Zalzidrax at 8:48 PM on January 3 [12 favorites]
I remember this inspirational documentary about a successful legal immigrant in Florida named Tony Montana.
posted by JJ86 at 4:12 AM on January 4
posted by JJ86 at 4:12 AM on January 4
I would just like to remind everyone that the word "immigration" does not appear in the US Constitution or Amendments because the Framers (pay attention "original constructionists") had open borders and never contemplated giving Congress any authority to regulate where Free People choose to travel and reside.
Thus, all so-called "immigration law" is unconstitutional on its face, and anyone proposing enforcing these unconstitutional "immigration laws", un-American.
Thank you for your kind attention.
posted by mikelieman at 4:30 AM on January 4 [12 favorites]
Thus, all so-called "immigration law" is unconstitutional on its face, and anyone proposing enforcing these unconstitutional "immigration laws", un-American.
Thank you for your kind attention.
posted by mikelieman at 4:30 AM on January 4 [12 favorites]
And somebody who went to an Ivy League school really should know better.You may be misunderstanding the social function of Ivy League schools.
posted by Carcosa at 6:35 AM on January 4 [12 favorites]
Not everyone with abhorrent beliefs is dumb.
Fair enough. I'm good with calling them abhorrent, actively evil, inhumane, cruel, narcissistic, vain, fascist, etc. I generally believe in applying Hanlon's Razor but perhaps there should be an inverse along the lines of "in the face of obvious malice, it's dangerous to attribute said malice to mere stupidity."
posted by treepour at 11:00 AM on January 4 [2 favorites]
Fair enough. I'm good with calling them abhorrent, actively evil, inhumane, cruel, narcissistic, vain, fascist, etc. I generally believe in applying Hanlon's Razor but perhaps there should be an inverse along the lines of "in the face of obvious malice, it's dangerous to attribute said malice to mere stupidity."
posted by treepour at 11:00 AM on January 4 [2 favorites]
I would just like to remind everyone that the word "immigration" does not appear in the US Constitution or Amendments because the Framers (pay attention "original constructionists") had open borders and never contemplated giving Congress any authority to regulate where Free People choose to travel and reside.
Kind of. The "Privileges and Immunities" Clause of Article IV guarantees the right of interstate travel and prohibits states from discriminating against out-of-state citizens. Considering that states understood themselves to be more like individual nations at the time the Constitution was drafted, we have to imagine that a good deal of thought and debate was put into this clause, which really puts the hammer down on the idea of "we are one nation, not a collection of independent nations."
It doesn't come up much in constitutional law (in law school, we mostly learned about it so that we wouldn't embarrass ourselves by confusing it with the "Privileges or Immunities" Clause to the Fourteenth Amendment, one of the most crucial clauses in the Constitution in terms of case law) but, like with the Third Amendment (which prohibits the quartering of soldiers in private homes in peacetime without consent of the homeowner, and in wartime except in such a manner as to be proscribed by law) its inclusion points to what the Founders were concerned about at the time. Which is to say that the Framers absolutely understood that borders were a thing and travel across them could be regulated, and chose to prohibit regulations on traveling between the states themselves.
And of course the "Natural-Born Citizen" Clause of Article II could point to some degree of fear of immigrants taking power on the part of the Framers, but that's more likely to have been a fear of European Foreign Powers wresting back control of a newly independent nation than any concern about the teeming masses grabbing control away from the wealthy landowners who made up the ruling class at the time. But it still shows that the Constitution from the start included a distinction between being born in the U.S. and moving here with regards to citizenship and the rights included therein.
(Note: I am NOT a Constitutional Scholar, these were just two things that popped into my head there, and there may well be more examples in the Constitution that both strengthen and weaken my points there, which I'd be happy to learn.)
But as Zalzidrax points out, this is not an historically abnormal rate of immigration that we're going through, unless you carefully bound your timeframe of "history" in order to make it be so. Even so, immigration is not a real problem, particularly after the workforce loss from the pandemic. It's only an issue for the GOP because Fascism needs out-groups to blame for things, and brown people make a good boogeyman for their base while outsourcing and automation don't (both because they are probably glaciers that it's nearly impossible to hold-back in any case, and because the money behind the GOP would very much like to continue those things.) So instead of pointing at the actual causes of job-insecurity and the loss of the American Middle Class, the GOP will point at immigration. And as long as the U.S. is a safer and more prosperous country than Mexico, there will be some number of people crossing the border for better opportunities here, and they can continue to blame those people instead of actually trying to solve anything.
posted by Navelgazer at 11:09 AM on January 4 [3 favorites]
Kind of. The "Privileges and Immunities" Clause of Article IV guarantees the right of interstate travel and prohibits states from discriminating against out-of-state citizens. Considering that states understood themselves to be more like individual nations at the time the Constitution was drafted, we have to imagine that a good deal of thought and debate was put into this clause, which really puts the hammer down on the idea of "we are one nation, not a collection of independent nations."
It doesn't come up much in constitutional law (in law school, we mostly learned about it so that we wouldn't embarrass ourselves by confusing it with the "Privileges or Immunities" Clause to the Fourteenth Amendment, one of the most crucial clauses in the Constitution in terms of case law) but, like with the Third Amendment (which prohibits the quartering of soldiers in private homes in peacetime without consent of the homeowner, and in wartime except in such a manner as to be proscribed by law) its inclusion points to what the Founders were concerned about at the time. Which is to say that the Framers absolutely understood that borders were a thing and travel across them could be regulated, and chose to prohibit regulations on traveling between the states themselves.
And of course the "Natural-Born Citizen" Clause of Article II could point to some degree of fear of immigrants taking power on the part of the Framers, but that's more likely to have been a fear of European Foreign Powers wresting back control of a newly independent nation than any concern about the teeming masses grabbing control away from the wealthy landowners who made up the ruling class at the time. But it still shows that the Constitution from the start included a distinction between being born in the U.S. and moving here with regards to citizenship and the rights included therein.
(Note: I am NOT a Constitutional Scholar, these were just two things that popped into my head there, and there may well be more examples in the Constitution that both strengthen and weaken my points there, which I'd be happy to learn.)
But as Zalzidrax points out, this is not an historically abnormal rate of immigration that we're going through, unless you carefully bound your timeframe of "history" in order to make it be so. Even so, immigration is not a real problem, particularly after the workforce loss from the pandemic. It's only an issue for the GOP because Fascism needs out-groups to blame for things, and brown people make a good boogeyman for their base while outsourcing and automation don't (both because they are probably glaciers that it's nearly impossible to hold-back in any case, and because the money behind the GOP would very much like to continue those things.) So instead of pointing at the actual causes of job-insecurity and the loss of the American Middle Class, the GOP will point at immigration. And as long as the U.S. is a safer and more prosperous country than Mexico, there will be some number of people crossing the border for better opportunities here, and they can continue to blame those people instead of actually trying to solve anything.
posted by Navelgazer at 11:09 AM on January 4 [3 favorites]
I can't speak to the legal merits of that argument, Mike, but I don't think one could reasonably describe the colonies as having "open borders" when removing and keeping natives from the white man's land was a major concern, and national borders in miniature, that is, property enclosure, was the very thing that the men who wrote the constitution believed to be the basis of human liberty.
posted by jy4m at 11:50 AM on January 4
posted by jy4m at 11:50 AM on January 4
So attack their stupid ideas; don't call them illiterate.
I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised that someone could respond to a bunch of extremist and nativist propaganda that would have made Chester A. Arthur blush by defending the reading abilities of the propagandists, but that’s . . . a pretty funny thing to focus on.
posted by aspersioncast at 8:58 PM on January 4
I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised that someone could respond to a bunch of extremist and nativist propaganda that would have made Chester A. Arthur blush by defending the reading abilities of the propagandists, but that’s . . . a pretty funny thing to focus on.
posted by aspersioncast at 8:58 PM on January 4
I hit a paywall after the first read, so I read only the DeSantis version.
Mass migration is a worldwide issue. The US is not alone. The GOP notion of sealing the borders is a naked pandering of fear to their base voters. Anyone giving even a modicum of thought to that notion can see that it's not possible. The only way to entirely stop people from coming across the border illegally is to have troops stand shoulder to shoulder with machine guns and orders to shoot everybody trying to come across.
Migrants coming from the south are an issue for the entire US, not just the border states. Why would we think that only Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California should bear this entire burden?
A step forward would be to arrange federal funds to any state willing to bear their fair share of the solution and establish a federal commission for oversight. This is not a Homeland Security issue. Instead of relying on "Sanctuary Cities," Americans ought to create a matrix of sanctuary cities all over the US and put the funds DeSantis (and ilk) wants to spend on the Wall to use in building sanctuary villages across America. For hints about how that might be accomplished, ask the Army Corps of Engineers how they rigged up housing for ten thousand troops: imagine "tiny houses" with water and electricity. Chicago has already demonstrated that this works, but they are overloaded with souls.
The people arriving at our border deserve more respect than stamping labels on them and kicking the fucking can down the road. I realize that election-year politics has to meet its own needs. Those needs don't extend beyond chest-pounding, booger-flicking, and the other similar features of reality politics.
I also realize that a full one-third of American voters will vote for Trump or one of his clones, and the GOP is on board with the election of an authoritarian government. It was useful, for a while, to believe that Trumpeteers were oblivious to his goals, but that was just a mind-numbing salve that let me sleep easier. The terrifying reality is that maybe half the Trumpeteers welcome his authoritarian plans, and the other Republicans don't have either the backbone or moral clarity to speak up against Trump and his ilk. I would come right out and say "fascist" because of all the similarities in the dynamics in play nowadays in America and those in play in Germany in the 1930s, but I don't believe Trump has any conscious connection with history because he doesn't know anything about history.
posted by mule98J at 11:29 AM on January 5 [1 favorite]
Mass migration is a worldwide issue. The US is not alone. The GOP notion of sealing the borders is a naked pandering of fear to their base voters. Anyone giving even a modicum of thought to that notion can see that it's not possible. The only way to entirely stop people from coming across the border illegally is to have troops stand shoulder to shoulder with machine guns and orders to shoot everybody trying to come across.
Migrants coming from the south are an issue for the entire US, not just the border states. Why would we think that only Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California should bear this entire burden?
A step forward would be to arrange federal funds to any state willing to bear their fair share of the solution and establish a federal commission for oversight. This is not a Homeland Security issue. Instead of relying on "Sanctuary Cities," Americans ought to create a matrix of sanctuary cities all over the US and put the funds DeSantis (and ilk) wants to spend on the Wall to use in building sanctuary villages across America. For hints about how that might be accomplished, ask the Army Corps of Engineers how they rigged up housing for ten thousand troops: imagine "tiny houses" with water and electricity. Chicago has already demonstrated that this works, but they are overloaded with souls.
The people arriving at our border deserve more respect than stamping labels on them and kicking the fucking can down the road. I realize that election-year politics has to meet its own needs. Those needs don't extend beyond chest-pounding, booger-flicking, and the other similar features of reality politics.
I also realize that a full one-third of American voters will vote for Trump or one of his clones, and the GOP is on board with the election of an authoritarian government. It was useful, for a while, to believe that Trumpeteers were oblivious to his goals, but that was just a mind-numbing salve that let me sleep easier. The terrifying reality is that maybe half the Trumpeteers welcome his authoritarian plans, and the other Republicans don't have either the backbone or moral clarity to speak up against Trump and his ilk. I would come right out and say "fascist" because of all the similarities in the dynamics in play nowadays in America and those in play in Germany in the 1930s, but I don't believe Trump has any conscious connection with history because he doesn't know anything about history.
posted by mule98J at 11:29 AM on January 5 [1 favorite]
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posted by rikschell at 12:02 PM on January 3 [26 favorites]