Perceived enemy? Even the most liberal of cities touting themselves as “sanctuary cities” had to pivot and declare they simply cannot handle the influx.
12million immigrants came into the country during the Biden administration. This type of load on the system does not go unnoticed. NYC for example was drastically transformed.
They cannot handle it with the resources being given. This is true for the red states like Texas and what not, the social services we do have struggle to handle the load. But we're choosing to let these systems struggle. We could solve it if we chose to do so.
In 2020 our population was ~330 million people. Even if 12 million people immigrated to the United States, that's an influx of 3.6%. In reality its probably closer to 4 or so million, so really more like 1.2%. We're supposedly the wealthiest country on the planet with so much opportunity and freedom and yet we can't handle adding far less than 5% of the population as migrants in five years? If that's the case, we're probably the poorest country on the planet, not the wealthiest.
And that's a population of millions admittedly including many minors and major barriers to thriving, but overall far fewer elderly or disabled people than the general population. Boosting immigration is only an economic drag if you structure the asylum/immigration process to prevent people from working, which we do now seemingly to punish communities that accept immigrants.
Yes, basically this. Americans have to hustle all day in the war against "line go down". Our agency is not allowed to be put to caring for other people but the illusion the 1% alone prop up society.
So sick of Americans empty-analysis and ignorance of externalities their society puts on others; overseas colleagues see it as white Taliban. They don't see people in streets over tariffs screwing up their lives, so they've started to tell their politicians Americans (as in the public) are not reliable actors. They don't realize it, but the American publics own credibility is shot, not just their politicians.
I have taken to cutting off friends and family and shit talking anyone in public that wants to socialize; do the politic work to put me on the hook for their healthcare, otherwise I refuse to bother with their existence. Withdrawing from people's lives is a forcing function for self reflection.
You all keep me off the hook caring you exist. I just have to help make line go up. Anything to do with you all as individuals is not my responsibility. That's the choice of the American people. I'm here to profit, not give a fuck you exist.
That's what my fellow Americans taught me through their feckless political effort. Illusory idea some invisible hand gives a shit based upon the gibberish from history they read by people who were wanking their literacy rather than inventing indoor plumbing.
This does nothing to change the facts of my statement.
And even then, we could choose to do something about that. We could do more to help people settle all across the US and be well supported to succeed. But we don't. So instead, we have people crowd the areas where we turn a blind eye to hiring illegal labor and have the social impacts concentrated there and then refuse to actually do anything to help those social costs.
But these are all things we choose to do. We could choose to do something else.
There's many towns & small cities that have been revitalized by immigrants communities. Lewiston Maine, Charleroi Pennsylvania.
America is really struggling to support & enable a people, to create a social safety net. Opportunity is low. But often when immigrants come in from other places, they will put in enormous energy, that can bring some very sad towns back to life.
Once again, we're choosing to not have these social supports or social services. It's a choice. We could do it if we wanted, after all we're allegedly the wealthiest country on the planet but somehow can't seem to afford anything.
> How do you decide who goes where?
I'm not suggesting we force it to be a top-down forced decision. I'm often a pretty free-market and empowering people to make their own decisions kind of guy, when it makes sense. And sure, people will tend to cluster more in large cities, that happens even for non-migrants. But in the end, we're doing practically nothing to encourage people to spread out that social cost (or worse, encouraging for forcing the clustering), and that doing nothing is a choice. And then we're doing very little to support these places experiencing such large social costs, which is once again a decision.
All of this is stuff we could do differently, we just choose the status quo (or now choosing violence!) that doesn't work well for a lot of us. Sure seems to be making some people exceptionally wealthy though.
We could’ve done something but we ran out of money, the previous generation built up too much debt and sold off the future so now we ran out of the resources.
Yes, I probably would have made the same argument about the Irish, Italians, Germans, etc. Did they not demographically replace the English, Natives, Blacks? Would the percentage of the US that is English, Native, Black not be higher if there had not been mass immigration of Irish, Italians, Germans, etc. last century and before?
> Did they not demographically replace the English, Natives, Blacks?
In the 1800s? No. You realize how much happened with the great expansion and all that? The population squeeze that happened from the civil war? I find it laughable you'd be arguing for the Native American tribes in the early 1800s. Once again, showing your racist ideology. Thanks for further confirming such a thing. America is for white Protestants only. Got it.
Thanks for confirming to you, me, a white Christian American is not welcome here and shouldn't have been here in the first place. Because I'm not really the right kind of white Christian.
This is why I laugh whenever anyone lauds Singapore for stuff like public housing.
They literally have an immigration schema, if you want permanent resident to citizen track, that requires immigrants to match the ethnic makeup of the country's citizens.
So you have all these white public housing advocates, talking about how great public housing is in Singapore, but they leave out that you have to have PR or citizenship to get it, and they've accomplished making all that possible by having like half their population non-citizens who pay taxes for housing they're ineligible to get and then the people living in the public houses are ethnically guaranteed non-replacement.
> So you have all these white public housing advocates, talking about how great public housing is in Singapore, but they leave out that you have to have PR or citizenship to get it
I find such things to be incredibly backwards and abhorrent. To think if you lucked out in some genomic lottery to be allowed to have extreme privilege in society, this sounds like a fucking nightmare
There are a lot of cool and neat things about Singapore but damn do a lot of things feel like the kind of things that keep me up at night.
But honestly, the modern GOP is closer to enforcing such requirements than any opposing party.
You should start campaigning against the ethnic discrimination happening by statute within US borders against fellow US nationals or citizens. American Samoa won't let ethnic outsiders own the vast majority of the land, and much of Hawaii non-reservation state lands are reserved to 'the blood' of the people of the right race, no matter that its to the exclusion of filipinos and other races subjugated under the Hawaiian Kingdom which was the pretext to begin with.
I definitely don't know enough about the history of such issues to make a deep and reasoned take and thus will mostly shut up until I read more about it. I only vaguely know what big news sources have said about such things in passing.
But as a quick take I think the land pressures of native Hawaiians is radically different than the land issues of white Christians in Texas. And it's not like there's any deeply historic religious connections to Arlington Texas to white Christians for a quick example is there? The worry if cultural elimination is probably radically different at a quick glance wouldn't you agree?
Cultural elimination though real is largely a fraudulent right IMO, it is imposing 'positive' rights like the right to not have your culture eliminated. That's not how rights work, you have the right to practice your culture but not force other people to be practicing yours.
I'm generally for open or at least non-discriminatory immigration. A few sticking points
1) Discriminatory settling patterns are well established as imposed law in the US, i.e. 'hawaiian home lands', American Samoa, Saipan, etc. The first step here is to make ALL US nationals and citizens equal, before we can really even hope to start making immigrants equal. Given limited political capital this would be my #1 priority to burn that capital on.
2) Welfare is essentially incompatible with open immigration and pushes the populace heavily towards favoring middle age wealth foreigners -- that is basically europeans and white English speaking countries. We could probably make it a little less 'racist' if immigrants were forced to permanently disclaim any access to public funds.
3) Immigration is justified under human and properties rights, freedom to go wherever one is invited or has ownership, and basic human liberties. Immigration in practice in the US heavily relies on use of public facilities, which are paid for by the tax payers -- as property owners you would be violating their rights if US persons cannot control foreign access to the public properties they are forced to pay taxes for. i.e. there should be zero immigration controls whatsoever crossing from one ranch to the other on adjacent parts of the Mexican border, but when you use public resources you are now becoming a trespasser if the property owners don't consent.
> Cultural elimination though real is largely a fraudulent right
You start off by declaring it's a fraudulent right but then spend hundreds of words arguing for a framework for your own fraudulent right
> Welfare is essentially incompatible with open immigration
One might then question the rest of their ideals about their morals and what Christ has charged us to do and wonder if racial stability is the standard or helping people is the standard. But I guess you've already decided on such a thing.
> Discriminatory settling patterns are well established as imposed law in the US, i.e. 'hawaiian home lands', American Samoa, Saipan, etc.
I'd say laws in island territories have vastly different concerns than laws on the mainland especially when considering land and cultural concerns. They have vastly different pressures, don't you agree? Like what were going to argue only white Protestants can own land in Montana? Pretty different circumstances here than a tiny island with religious circumstances.
I'll address the third point since it is the only one I don't see as a fundamentally irreconcilable difference in subjective opinion that cannot be proven factually.
The ethnic discrimination laws in America Samoa, and to a lesser extent Saipan (I think for them more about control, they have no problem with Chinese running roughshod operating all kinds of shady and illegal business, it is probably the most corrupt place in the US) are aimed towards stopping cultural elimination. The case is compelling for Samoa, the others are just naked racial discrimination as the local populace seems to have settled on the fact their culture has pretty much been eliminated as anything beyond a footnote and they're going to cash grab all they can out of the remains which I guess is just the usual American dream.
(Hawaii used to go even further, and racially discriminate in voting, but racial discrimination in voting was struck circa 2000 with dissent written by the now deceased racist Ruth Ginsburg in Rice v Cayetano. Not long after that 'non-'Hawaiians also finally got the right to equally run for office).
American Samoa is particularly aggressive about it, their government and IIRC even the feds strongly imply or command you can enter for 30 days as a tourist without further authorization, despite the fact that established case law and the American Samoa Bar training to internal lawyers teach that US citizens have the right to permanently settle and work in American Samoa. I did some research and could not find any case of a US citizen being 'deported' from the territory unless they were wanted for crimes elsewhere but they do their damnedest to make it sound like you can be.
I'm sorry but pointing to some rocks in the Pacific as the overall idea of ethnic diversity measuring stick of the United States seems pretty pants on head kind of mentality. I don't understand how I could take anything else you argue for seriously. Thanks for continuing to show me who you really are, I'll be sure to take notes.
Amazing how fast you backtracked. Point to actual cases of parts of the USA going hard on racist policy preventing demographic replacement which based on your rhetoric is something you pretend to be against, and your response is more or less lol actually it doesn't matter, it's just some rocks.
No matter that previously you were pointing to places as small as Arlington Texas.
You don't actually care about eliminating these discriminatory policies. You just have your racist motives to apply it inequally.
I've been highly consistent in my statements. I'm in no position to pass judgement on whatever is happening in American Samoa or Hawaii as I'm definitely ignorant to the issues. I'm only speaking from a high level comparison of the issues, which is they're vastly more land constrained than the mainland US. So to me, an ignorant person not read into the debate, it seems we can't really make hard rules and comparisons. It's comparing to extremely different situations, easy to see even without me having a lot of deep knowledge on the topic.
And it really shows your ignorance too, acting like Arlington is some small place. There's tons of land around here in North Texas, ample for whoever to make a new story and new life. The people making up most of the population have only been here for like a hundred years, tops. Any kind of long historic claim to the land outside of Native American populations are a farce. This isn't true for small islands in the Pacific which probably have a vastly more complicated history.
But it sure shows your character that you bother to deeply look up such a legal basis for racist ideology. Good work broadcasting your hard work.
And yeah, I'm the racist for arguing anyone should have the ability to partake in American prosperity. Meanwhile you're the non-racist advocating for enforcing racial land rights across all the US. Got it.
When I want to take part in the prosperity of American Samoa, you just don't have all the facts and hey it's just a "rock." When an American Samoan wants to come to Arlington, which is far more land constrained in population density, then suddenly you lose your decision paralysis. It's exceedingly and crystal clear your ulterior motives. This is just naked racism.
I posted this comment [1] in reply to the other participant in this subthread but it applies equally to you. Please make an effort to observe the guidelines when participating on HN.
True or not you had to wade through at least two flagged comments to get to mine. You really have yourself to blame if you didn't want to continue reading. You were warned twice but sought this, you wanted it.
So how about this: go fuck yourself, and your nauseating appeal to your ivory tower techie faux-academic attempt at guidelines. Nothing about me is 'equal' to this self righteous racist piece of human garbage, although I admit his behavior is the very best argument as to why his culture should rapidly be overshadowed in Texas.
The guidelines apply to everyone equally. We don't care what topic you're arguing about or what side you're supporting, but still we get accused of being biased in favour of something or another every day.
This is only a place where people want to come to discuss things because we and others put effort into keeping it that way. If you're going to participate here, and if you're going to expect others to be held to a high standard, we need you to hold yourself to a high standard too.
Acting like Texas is space constrained as much or more than American Samoa just really shows how much you've twisted reality to try and match your racist ideas. Texas is many things, it is not space constrained.
Once again, I don't really know what's happening there. This is all conjecture based on what's obvious for comparing an island nation to a giant and mostly uninhabited Continental plain. If there's more people in North Texas, we just build more homes. We just drag the highway out a bit more. We just rezone to allow a bit more density. There is plenty of land here that's entirely empty and devoid of development. An island nation doesn't have that. If they get pushed out of what's there, where do they go? The bottom of the ocean? Seriously, think for two seconds if your racist brain will allow it. And I acknowledge, I don't know the policies, I don't know what's really happening there. But I can at least acknowledge the societal pressures going on are massively different.
> This is just naked racism.
I agree, your points are naked racism. Looking for some legal reason to put race restrictions on land generally across the entire United States is absolutely a racist position to take which seems to be the main position you're arguing for. Whether or not the policies on American Samoa are racist (they might be, I've agreed I'm ignorant to them!) isn't a valid reason for bringing such racist policies to the mainland US.
Both commenters have broken the guidelines in this flamey back-and-forth, which is exactly the kind of thing we're trying to avoid on HN. In particular you've both made swipes at each other, and engaged in ideological battle. Please take a moment to read the guidelines and make an effort to observe them in future.
but context was set to just 'immigrants' . Why would i go up the chain if the context was reset ?
Are you saying 'immigrants' anywhere in this thread automatically implies 'illegal immigrant' . Thats really confusing to me.
> Are we instead saying that anyone not born in the US but comes in is an enemy?
this is ridiculous twisting of my comment. I was just correcting record about population increase from immigration. population increase doesn't happen just from immigrant visas, ppl on non-immigrant visas stay in the country often for decades.
Then let me clarify, I was intending to talk mostly about illegal immigration and asylum seekers, the kinds of immigrants person I was replying to was probably mostly talking about. These are the immigrants people seem most concerned about, as they typically have a higher rate of relying on social services and welfare at least in the short term. It is these kinds of immigrants which impose the largest initial cost on society to allow in.
But sure, somewhere around 4-5 million illegal/undocumented immigrants, add another 10 million or so non-immigrant visas (which I agree, tend to have people end up staying for lots of other reasons), we're still somewhere around 15 million or so migrants with most of those having some kind of stable job lined up before they arrive. It's still less than 5% of the overall population increase with these migrants, but now a lot of these in this addition are largely economically self-sufficient from the get-go (those with work visas). You're not really changing my point at all.
In the end we're just too poor to deal with a generally pretty minor increase in population over several years while simultaneously seemingly being the wealthiest nation on the planet? How does that make sense?
Also, your claim of:
> usa issued 10 million non-immigrant visas in 2024. not counting 5 million tourist visas
is factually incorrect. The US issued around 11.5 million non-immigrant visas, of which 8.5 million were visitor visas. So not a total of 15 million visas and excluding the tourism its really about 3 million non-immigrant not-tourist visas.
> in 2024, in Fiscal Year 2024, we issued 11.5 million visas, and that’s a world record for us, breaking all previous records. Of these 8.5 million were visitor visas.
There were 10,438,327 non immigrant visas. Out of which there were 5,902,426 b1/b2 and 29,286 B1.
looks like i din't count ppl with BCC in visitor visas.
> In the end we're just too poor to deal with a generally pretty minor increase in population over several years while simultaneously seemingly being the wealthiest nation on the planet? How does that make sense?
again, i didn't say this. i was just trying to correct the record.
I honestly have no say in "how many is too many" . i have no idea how to even think about that to come up with a framewrok to answer that question
> Annual net migration — the number of people coming to the country minus the number leaving — averaged 2.4 million people from 2021 to 2023, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Total net migration during the Biden administration is likely to exceed eight million people.
Why try to minimize it or be defensive about the figure? The Biden administration is proud the number is high. Do you want the number high or low?
From ChatGPT:
> So, while 10–11 million CBP encounters is the most solid official figure, when you add gotaways, overstays, and parole entries, the total number of people likely entering without full authorization could reasonably be around 15–17 million during the Biden presidency.
That page is a joke. Ignoring reality does not manufacture a new reality. Four million might be the legal migration count, hard to say.
We had caravans of tens of thousands of people constantly streaming into the US for four years. The video evidence is out there for everyone to see. News outlets that did not engage in hiding reality and promoting falsehoods had crews at the border every day for four years collecting video evidence of what was going on.
If you care about understanding the truth, go to the US Customs and Border Protection website and look around. You can also cross check with Homeland Security and other official sources. And, yes, you will find data that predates the Trump administration...so you can't blame bias. For example, if I remember correctly, there were over THREE MILLION unauthorized entries in 2024.
Imagine how long a caravan with an extra 8 million people would be. I mean, I’ve been to a Huskers football game and seen what the exit looked like, and this would be 100x more.
If such a thing were being reported by multiple reputable sources, I’d be less inclined to roll my eyes at the preposterous idea.
We had an average of 250K people per month coming into the country for 48 months by land an air. The relevant government agencies have published the statistics, even going back to Biden era reports. You can believe anything you want, but thinking that it was only four million is a delusion.
OK, even if I play your game and we say it was "only" four million (ridiculous). Here's the problem:
That means 88K people per month for 48 months breaking our laws. Four million people entering the country without permission has a very simple name: Invasion.
Even worse, unless we create 88K new jobs per month for 48 months, these people are, by definition, unemployed. Our published unemployment statistics somehow conveniently ignore this fact. And, the other fact that we ignore is that the US has not created an additional 88K jobs per month over the 48 months of the Biden administration. The best we did was to recover the 10 million jobs lost during the pandemic.
At 12 million, that is 250K new jobs required to support them. The US is NOT AT ALL anywhere close to that growth rate, not even enough for 88K new workers per month.
That aside, as a resident of Los Angeles, I have seen the increase in crime (a neighbor's home, for example, was broken into by a couple of illegal immigrants). In addition to that, these destructive demonstrations full of Mexican, Guatemalan and Salvadorian flags are as tone deaf as can be. Throwing cinder blocks at police officers on the road and highway (surprised nobody died) isn't going to do anything positive for anyone's cause, justified or not.
This is madness and it has to stop. What's worse, is that these people are protesting (and wanting to protect) criminals. The government of the state and city are also on the side of criminals. Here's a partial list of who was detained in Los Angeles and who these demonstrators want released into our city:
A DHS post from 2025 is not reliable information, just reading the headline should be enough to notice that. The number of unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. has been more or less stable for the last 20 years: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/22/what-we-k...
What percentage of the 10 million recovered jobs were taken by incoming immigrants?
People died and permanently retired during the pandemic. It's possible the 10 million number represents a restored workforce; it's also possible it represents a changed workforce.
If the latter, that illegal immigration allowed the US to recover faster than it would have otherwise and the lesson from history is we're a stronger nation for easing immigration restrictions.
> illegal immigration allowed the US to recover faster than it would have otherwise and the lesson from history is we're a stronger nation for easing immigration restrictions.
There is no question whatsoever that immigration, legal and done correctly, is a force for good. As a legal immigrant, it understand this very well.
In fact, I understand the entire process very well, including the illegal immigration part. You see, when I was six years old, my parents overstayed their tourist visa in the US. They were then told to leave and my entire family left. Two years later, after going through proper channels, we obtained permission to come to the US legally.
I truly do not understand how people twist themselves into a pretzel to justify illegal entry into a country. Actually, it is worse than that, the only country where they seem to think this is OK is the US. Every single person who is for illegal immigration in the US understands why you cannot just move to New Zealand, for example, to stay and work there without permission. They also understand New Zealand's points system for the selection of who is granted permanent residency. Not in the US. Of course not.
Proponents also say that not enough people are let in legally or that it is too slow. Two points to be made here. The entire planet wants to come to the US, so, yeah, it will take a couple of years (as it did for my family). Second, when millions of people enter illegally, the annual quota for legal immigration cannot be increased. Doing so would exacerbate the problem. So, illegal immigration actually hinders changes and growth of the legal immigration system.
Finally, proponents of illegal immigrants are of the same ilk as those who propose raising tax rates for everyone except themselves. And, when they do include themselves, they don't lead by example and simply send more money than they owe to the government. Same with immigration. How?
I break into your home with my entire family while you are on vacation. I start paying the bills; power, water, insurance, heck, I even pay the mortgage.
Can we all stay in your home forever? You are welcome to come back from your vacation and share the home with us?
Of course not. Nobody of sound mind would accept such a situation.
How is breaking and entering into a country --any country-- justified and elevated to almost be a virtue?
While not a perfect analogy, of course, this does illustrate a fundamental idea: You don't get to grab things (your iPhone, car, home, residency, benefits, etc.) by force and keep them just because you did. If the world worked that way we would all be walking around with a firearm strapped to our leg and blood would run down every street in the nation. Violating these fundamental rights is nothing less than destructive to society.
> Every single person who is for illegal immigration in the US understands why you cannot just move to New Zealand, for example, to stay and work there without permission
Yes, of course, and this is not contradictory. "American Exceptionalism" means different things to different people, but broadly speaking: as a nation built of immigrants, there's no particular "right" time to pull up the ladder and say "That's enough immigrants now." Most people who support this position (not all, but enough to be concerning), when you peel back the veneer, support it because they want America to be "A nation of X" and America facing the reality of more people with different world experiences threatens that goal. There's a reason the protests in Charlottesville turned from being about the history of the South to chants of "Blood and Soil."
Regardless of what the law says: the reality on the ground is the American economy is relying on the labor provided by the undocumented, and they are our friends and neighbors for years running. Sometimes, when a law bends too hard against what the people actually want, you ditch the law. A government fails to grasp that to its peril; hopefully, it only results in tea wasted in the harbor.
> when millions of people enter illegally, the annual quota for legal immigration cannot be increased
Untrue; these are rules we make up for ourselves. Congress could set the number to zero tomorrow. Or infinity. It's entirely up to us.
> Finally, proponents of illegal immigrants are of the same ilk as those who propose raising tax rates for everyone except themselves
I think we'd have to agree to disagree. I, for instance, am in favor of raising taxes on myself and people in my tax bracket, as well as basically everyone above my tax bracket. No strong opinion on lower brackets. And I do send more than I owe to the government. And buy bonds.
Your meta-argument is "These people don't see the problems;" I think you are mistaken. People see the problems, they just think they're better handled with community service than with truncheons and planes to some other country.
> I break into your home with my entire family while you are on vacation. I start paying the bills; power, water, insurance, heck, I even pay the mortgage.
> Can we all stay in your home forever?
I mean, that's an argument about "squatter's rights," not immigration, but for what it's worth... yes? The law in many states does recognize your right to keep using the land if you develop it and it's de-facto abandoned. If I own so much land I can't use all of it and you find a better use for it, that's on me.
The nature of immigration is so divorced from this analogy as to make it worthless. Try this one instead: You come here, build a house, raise a family. Five years later, I come along and try to kick you out because you didn't cross an 'i' on some paperwork in 2019. Is this just, or should I leave you the heck alone because you're not hurting anyone?
> You don't get to grab things (your iPhone, car, home, residency, benefits, etc.) by force and keep them just because you did
I'm sure you're not arguing "America should be returned to the Native Americans..." But that is the argument you are making here. Are you sure you mean it?
... FWIW, I'm sorry your parents were forced out. In an ideal world, that shouldn't have happened. That would have been, what, roundabouts the Reagan presidency? Reagan's administration set us on the path to where we are today by deciding a lot of laws on the books suddenly needed enforcement where little had happened. To all our detriment.
Well, time to exit this thread. The problem with HN having become a monoculture forum is that it is impossible to have conversations. I never downvote or flag anyone, particularly those who disagree with me. The same is not true on the other side, if you don't tow the line you get attacked, downvoted and flagged mercilessly until you shut your mouth. So, yeah, you win. Have a good day.
Oh, my mistake. They got got by Nixon. Nixon set up the playbook that Reagan ran with on immigration. He needed to make your parents the enemy to sew up Southern votes. To be honest, it probably would have worked for another four years had he not been so paranoid that he spied on his political opposition and got caught out for it (back when that sort of thing mattered in American Presidential politics).
I appreciate seeing your vantage point on this topic. While we do not agree, It is helpful to see other people's takes.
Just in case you misinterpreted my story, I think it was 100% correct and proper for the US to ask my family to leave, apply for permission to come back legally and finally do so. My parents did not do the right thing by overstaying their visa and working. In other words, I do not agree that they should have been allowed to stay.
When they did obtain authorization they had to agree to not be a burden to US taxpayers for five years. I also agree with this.
Legal and orderly immigration is essential for societies to function. This is true everywhere on this planet.
The people chucking cinder blocks and protestors are unaffiliated. That is guilt by association, a logical fallacy.
Seeing immigrants and perceiving an increased in crime, and citing that they are related is post facto rationalization fallacy.
Let's see... what other logical fallacies are in here. Oh.. people emigrate and die, so the accumulation of numbers is not valid nor does that handle double counting.
AFAIK a strong US economy generates around 250k jobs per month. Further, there were more jobs created under Biden than were lost during the pandemic.
I'd also suggest if this all were a big deal, illegal entry ought to be elevated from a civil infraction. It is more severe in the eyes of the law to drive 25 hour than it is to overstay a visa.
> The people chucking cinder blocks and protestors are unaffiliated.
I didn't say they were and you have no clue if they are or are not. Even if you were personally there to demonstrate peacefully, no have no clue what forces are operating behind they scenes. And we know that part is true. One way to put it is that aspects of this is organized crime. They will eventually be discovered and held to pay for what they have done in a court of law.
> Let's see... what other logical fallacies are in here
Not a logical fallacy, but the most incomprehensible development over the years is that somehow large numbers of people think it is OK for people to just pour into the US as they wish, no controls, no admission criteria, nothing. And yet, the same people understand that this is not acceptable anywhere else in the world.
Clearly there's nothing I can say to help people who are firmly chained inside the cave looking at shadows. The indoctrination is way too powerful. Some of us try, but, sadly, the only way this insanity will pass is for people to gain clarity on their own. Not sure what it will take. Time will tell.
Perhaps this is your idea of what this country needs to become?
> Not a logical fallacy, but the most incomprehensible development over the years is that somehow large numbers of people think it is OK for people to just pour into the US as they wish, no controls, no admission criteria, nothing
Actually, it's the other way around.
The US southern border was very porous for most of its history. Around 1986, a combination of moral panic about Latino influence on the culture and concerns about drug trade enabled the Reagan administration and Congress to tighten immigration law into something approximating the structure we have today in terms of enforcement (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5049707/).
This backfired spectacularly. Let people bop back and forth to Tijuana, and they bop back and forth to Tijuana. Force them to struggle to cross the border, to declare nationality, start evicting them if they over-stay... And now they have reason to choose and to fight for the choice. The result of closing the border is undocumented immigration went up (secondary statistics strongly suggesting that this was actual immigration, not enforcement resulting from more tracking of undocumented immigrants).
Regardless of the law on paper, under-enforcement was the behavior of the land for nearly a century, and this new regime is an experiment that has strongly suggested the law was sourly anti-human to begin with.
(As a meta-comment on law: you're talking to a generation that watched the War on Drugs happen. Don't be surprised Americans have soured on the notion, in general, that law and morality are closely interlocked).
Why then bring up the cinder block issue if it's unaffiliated?
> Some of us try, but, sadly, the only way this insanity will pass is for people to gain clarity on their own. Not sure what it will take. Time will tell.
I'd say it would take sound arguments. Meanwhile, your arguments are not sound. You did not address what I wrote. To rebut a 'guilt-by-association' criticism, you said "I didn't say they were [affiliated]". That confirms the criticism.
You did not address the post-facto rationalization criticism at all.
I also saw a person in a pokemon costume too. Until we can have some sound arguments and facts, it's very much a choose-your-own-adventure situation. Are we here to just yell at each other? I personally do think the country needs to maintain rule-of-law (with notable mention of the 1st amendment), and the full rule-of-law goes for everyone, police, protestors, and opportunists.
I understand your position. There is nothing I can say that will change it. Only time and life experience will, maybe.
Not here to yell at you or anyone. Having lived in multiple cultures and countries across the world, I bring to the table a perspective that most Americans simply do not have. I have no clue if you are American, BTW. I have had the experience of being in fear for my life while detained by military thugs as a teenager. I have seen and lived the pain and misery leftist ideologies bring to populations first hand.
Any immigrant who has actually lived these realities cannot comprehend how it is that the US does not simply laugh these people off the stage. And, to be sure, the extreme right is just as destructive, yet that is not a reality in the US at all (despite the media pushing that narrative into people's brains day after day).
So, like I said, nothing I can say to you or anyone else, that much is obvious. There are things you learn about society and ideology that can only be learned from experience. Maybe the US needs to live through a leftist utopia for a period of time for everyone to come out smarter. That would be tragic, of course, but it might also be necessary. If California does not scare the shit out of the rest of the nation I don't know what will.
California is scaring the shit out of people, but not for the reasons you seem to suggest.
Rolling in the National Guard and Marines on a peaceful protest is, quite frankly, un-American. It's massive federal overreach that has led to violence in the past. Would be nice if the current administration knew its own history.
They were throwing molotov cocktails, rocks, scooters, mortar-like fireworks, bottles with urine and chemicals and who knows what else. They were destroying and looting stores and vandalizing everything in sight. I don't know how many Waymo cars they destroyed (it looked like five). Far from peaceful.
The moderate or peaceful majority is never the reason for enforcement actions. These are triggered by a militant and violent minority, some of whom are actually paid to cause disruption. So, you have a couple of choices. The first is to do nothing and just let it burn. We have seen that happen before. The second is to bring forward an overwhelming show of force to dissipate that violent element (and bring them to justice). That's what happened.
This is no different from control system theory. The ideal critically-damped feedback loop does not exist when dealing with mobs. Either you crank up the dampening early or you pay the consequences of doing it too late. We can't have entire business districts destroyed by thugs. You have to stop them as soon as possible. As it stands, these animals caused a massive amount of damage in just a couple of days.
Yesterday showed the contrast very well, there was a peaceful (truly, not the fake "peaceful" pushed by the media while shit is burning) protest that seemed to number in the thousands of people. Perfect. No problems. That only happened because thugs (the minority) learned within a day or two that they would suffer severe consequences for their actions.
The third option is proportionate response, which the administration danced right over. Why? Why roll in the federal forces when the governor says it's not needed? They didn't show up to protect those shops or Waymo cars anyway, so that's irrelevant; as per the Secretary of Defense's own testimony today (https://youtu.be/10itk-W8DV4?feature=shared&t=128), they were dispatched to protect law enforcement attempting to enforce immigration law against a city that does not want their citizens kidnapped off the street by an unaccountable government.
Violence happened, but not to any scale that makes a military deployment on American soil in peacetime make sense.
> This is no different from control system theory.
Rolling out the Marines is turning the `I` knob, not the `D` knob. It's teaching protestors "if you're gonna show up, come armed to deal with soldiers." Incredibly dangerous in a country where that firepower is in so many private hands.
I don't know when we became a nation so cowardly that we have to point military firepower at our own citizens. When strangers are turning out into the streets to thwart federal enforcement, maybe the problem is the law not the criminals?
The sources you consider "reputable" lie all the time...by cherry-picking, obsfucating, mis-direction, distorting, half-truths etc. They of course, flat-out lie too quite regularly too.
This is a bad argument because it could very easily go either way. Post any source of yours for the 12 million number and I'll just as easily say it's fake too.
> Ignoring reality does not manufacture a new reality.
I wish we could tell that to Trump.
>We had caravans of tens of thousands of people constantly streaming into the US for four years. T
Okay, and Biden deported more people than Trump's first term. Is that fact a joke too?
>go to the US Customs and Border Protection website and look around.
Okay, what am I looking for? The most recent news update was June 5th about building a wall in Arizona. I thought that 2016 narrative was over?
>if I remember correctly, there were over THREE MILLION unauthorized entries in 2024.
And
>In Fiscal Year (FY) 2024, there were 271,484 individuals removed from the US by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). This number represents an increase of nearly 90% compared to the previous fiscal year. This data includes removals by ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO).
And your talking points thrown out like some kind of analysis-ending gotcha have shielded you from seeing the truth. It matters much less that Biden was mentally unfit because responsibilities were delegated to advisors and a professional bureaucracy. That was the group project dynamic of our system of government that we took for granted.
Now that bureaucracy has been smashed in favor of autocracy, and we're suffering the other demented guy - not merely as a figurehead, but getting straight raw dogged by his rotting brain as he destroys what's left of our distributed economy with a national sales tax, orders the American military to attack American cities, and preps for a uuuuge North Korean style parade.
As Americans, we have a right to protest. That right does not go away when other people damage property, government property especially. Remember January 6, where there weren't even real ideals at stake but just a crowd riled up on fake news campaign propaganda that turned out to be utterly false?
When things do get out of hand, which is far beyond a few destroyed government vehicles, it is up to the local police forces to set the balance between restoring order and that still existing first amendment right to protest. Despite LAPD having been doing this just fine, Trump is illegally escalating the situation to look strong for the useful idiots still following him, to distract from his hissy fit with Musk, and most importantly to take the focus off his Big Ugly Deficit Spending Inflation Bill poised to bankrupt our country.
It seems like you need to have the realization that just because you've caught one tribe's media lying does not mean that you've found pure truth.
> your talking points thrown out like some kind of analysis-ending gotcha have shielded you from seeing the truth.
Typical. Diminish the other person by claiming that everything they say are talking points. In other words, they are mindless drones simply repeating what they are told. The minute you take that perspective the only thing you can believe is your own bullshit, because everything else is dismissed as talking points. Brilliant.
> It seems like you need to have the realization that just because you've caught one tribe's media lying does not mean that you've found pure truth.
I'll repeat what I said in another comment:
Having lived in multiple cultures and countries across the world, I bring to the table a perspective that most Americans simply do not have. I have had the experience of being in fear for my life while detained by military thugs as a teenager. I have seen and lived the economic and cultural destruction the left loves to use to control societies. They love the poor so much they multiply them. I have seen and lived the pain and misery leftist ideologies bring to populations first hand. No leftist society in history, anywhere, has elevated their population. Before you say China, that was done by the CCP grabbing onto external capitalist forces, without which they would still be an agrarian society.
To be sure, the extreme right is just as destructive, yet that is not a reality in the US at all (despite the media pushing that narrative into people's brains day after day).
Any immigrant who has actually lived these realities cannot comprehend how it is that the US does not simply laugh these people off the stage. Or, how it is that Americans are so easily duped by these professional manipulators.
There's nothing I can say to you or anyone else to have you see the reality that has been playing out, that much is obvious. There are things you learn about society and ideology that can only be learned from experience.
Maybe the US needs to live through a leftist utopia for a period of time for everyone to come out smarter. That would be tragic, of course, but it might also be necessary. If California does not scare the shit out of the rest of the nation I don't know what will.
> Typical. Diminish the other person by claiming that everything they say are talking points.
Your comment was better before you edited it to have this. The criticism isn't of you personally, it's of using a cookie-cutter argument that sidesteps talking about the actual topic. Do you not see how it's a non-sequitur to talk about now-out-of-office Biden's mental incapacity as a response to Biden being mentioned as the nominal figurehead for a set of policies?
> I have had the experience of being in fear for my life while detained by military thugs as a teenager
Is the problem here not the military thugs and the lack of individual rights and freedoms, not whatever political narratives are being professed by the people ruling with the thugs?
> I have seen and lived the economic and cultural destruction the left loves to use to control societies
Why is it just "the left" ? Why not all authoritarians ? It seems to me that authoritarians will use any ideology as a backbone for driving hypocritical "do as I say" power.
> To be sure, the extreme right is just as destructive, yet that is not a reality in the US at all
This is the crux of your bait and switch, where you've heavily focused on how bad the power-descendant "leftists" could be, but now give a pass to the different flavor authoritarians that are currently attacking our society. By my own analysis of seemingly undisputed facts, we have or have had:
- Tariffs further destroying our economy, implemented and dialed back with seemingly no actual rationale or goals besides shaking down other countries for personal enrichment.
- Significant destruction of the US bureaucracy which had been somewhat constraining authoritarian power. The problem with bureaucratic authoritarianism wasn't the bureaucracy but rather the authoritarianism.
- Destruction of US scientific research capacity because the communities doing the research had the wrong politics. And for what remains, the implementation of a right-flavored Lysenkoism.
- American soldiers in an American city pointing guns at American citizens exercising their first amendment constitutional rights, against the express authority of that state's government.
- International isolation through alienation of our long-term allies by telling them we might side with their adversaries instead, or even outright attack them ourselves.
- A weaker Dollar based on political instability
- A massive deficit spending bill on the table, continuing the long trend of Republicans complaining about monetary inflation while actually being the worst offenders.
If and when "leftists" get back into power, all of these liberty-destroying trends will be gleefully embraced and expanded under the banner of leftism "fixing" what rightism did, just as they're currently being justified as rightism "fixing" what leftism did. In reality it's all just individual-liberty-destroying authoritarianism. What has changed is that you are now gleefully supporting it.
> If California does not scare the shit out of the rest of the nation
How is this not just another cliche talking point? I've spent some time in LA a while ago. It wasn't for me - self absorbed, entitled, group-performative politics as a coping mechanism for societal problems. Affluenza where all the white people don't even know which end of a screwdriver to hold because they pay an immigrant underclass to do anything beyond changing a GU24. Oh, and you actually find yourself getting sick of sunny days because there is no damn weather. I could go on!
But "scare the shit" ? If you don't want to live in that culture and environment, don't go there? Despite my distaste, individual choice seems fine to me.
Apart from statements of Mayor Adams, could you list maybe 3 examples?
Trying to research this, I see examples like Denver and Chicago that have had struggles, anx did things like limit shelter stats to 72 hours. I found no examples though that were point blank: "we cannot handle this." Again, excluding mayor Adam's, perhaps you can help fill in the gaps with concrete examples and hopefully some verbatim quotes of "we cannot handle this?"
Chicago had taken measures to restrict migrant buses from dropping off migrants within the city limits so they were dropping them off in the burbs.
under the guise of some nonsensical rules "we want orderly drop-offs with 24 hr advance notice and only 2 migrant busses total in 24 hrs"
When you wrote "so they", I want to be sure that the 'they' refers to bus operators that were payed to drop off migrants in Chicago:
"The city says buses can arrive only during daytime hours so volunteers can be available to help, but bus drivers are responding by dropping migrants off in Chicago suburbs at night." [1]
The '2 buses per day' needs context. That could very well be a simple ask to not send them all at once. Further, the buses we are talking about were meant to overload the target the cities. They were sent with no notice, no coordination, just dumping a couple hundred or more people off into a random place in a random city. The ask therefore of "don't send all buses just on the same day", instead spread it out so that the volunteer resources are not overwhelmed and have a chance to work with and place everyone. I don't want to belabor this too much further, but I strongly suspect the desire for 2 buses max was a lot more about load balancing than it was rate limiting.
My impression, Chicago was more like "do this orderly, we can handle it, just don't drop off a couple hundred people all at once in some random place without telling us."
> I strongly suspect the desire for 2 buses max was a lot more about load balancing than it was rate limiting.
load balance with what exactly ? there is only one server thats rate limiting. oh you mean other servers being border states that aren't allowed to do similar rate limiting?
you asked "examples and hopefully some verbatim quotes of "we cannot handle this?""
I gave you an example of exactly that but you say you "suspect" its not that. Chicago doesn't need "volunteers" to handle intake. City spent 700M dollars to migrant housing, employing thousands of people in all sorts of roles. You think they are dependent on volunteers to man a bus intake point? That was all clearly a ruse. Migrant shelters were very unpopular with mayor's core constituency[1].
> do this orderly, we can handle it
It was not like that it was "we can only take 2 buses total per day any" It was clearly stated in city ordinance. Why are you twisting it into something else. Demand doesn't just drop off just because city decided to rate limit.
I think you are being higly disingenuous here.
Edit: ok i see why from your other comments. You were making a statement not asking a question about cities not wanting migrants.
Anyways, I don't have dog in this fight. I am telling you what the mood was here in south chicago at that time.
> I gave you an example of exactly that but you say you "suspect" its not that
Sorry, I should have been more direct. I do not see your example is a verbatim, "we cannot handle this." Your example strikes me as a: "please don't dump everyone on us all at once without telling us first. Spread it out some, give us notice, and don't do it in the middle of the night so that the people who would help are available."
> Chicago doesn't need "volunteers" to handle intake.
I'm just quoting the source, from the previously referenced [1]: "The city says buses can arrive only during daytime hours so volunteers can be available to help."
> Demand doesn't just drop off just because city decided to rate limit.
We agree there was a limit put in place. We have not yet established the intent was to rate limit vs any other plausible explanation. Even if load balancing were not the intent, that does not prove the intent was rate limiting.
OTOH, if we did know the total number of buses, then we could infer rate limiting. Notably if there are more than 14 buses/wk, then the 2 buses per day limit would be a rate limit. If it's 10 busses/wk, then a 2 bus/day max is not a rate limit beyond the 24 hour threshold, which is exactly load balancing.
> Anyways, I don't have dog in this fight. I am telling you what the mood was here in south chicago at that time.
I appreciate that. I can understand that there would have been a tense mood. The way people were 'shipped' to Chicago seemed intended to put high stress on the community receiving them.
Fair enough. I asked for 3 examples and we have differing impressions over just the one example you were able to provide. No other examples were provided. If you care to list other examples, I'll be willing to allow it as an exercise for future readers for whether they consider those other examples as valid as well and would leave the last word with you.
We had no problem in NY handling the influx. In fact we handled it so well that it angered the Republicans even more because they still gave immigration money to Texas AND had to give more money to the sanctuary cities. A problem they created and reaped the effects.
There were not 12 million immigrants entering during the Biden administration. Please provide balanced proof.
The only people in NY that claimed we couldn’t handle it were the Mayor who was trying to get out of his blatant corruption by appealing to Trump.
Texas didn’t struggle. They just created the appearance that it was an influx by immediately putting people on buses and shipped across the country then covering it in the media as if a bunch of buses driving somewhere means the border is under surge.
Funny how that seems to have ended magically as soon as Trump was elected.
As a resident of Texas, yes we are struggling with migration. I'm not trying to paint migration in a negative light, but we do need to do more in terms of ESL programs and better funding schooling and similar programs in migrant-heavy areas. It's hard to have well performing schools in areas where it's hard to hire a teacher that speaks the language of the children, our Medicaid programs are struggling to provide healthcare, etc.
We all point to Texas's education department as a laughing stock of results. But we expect Texas to bear a massive part of the burden of low income non-English migrants while using the same measuring stick to compare. And we act like this is fair. And don't get me wrong, Texas' legislature is complicit for the failure! We should all do more to support these communities.
I do agree, it's largely a self inflicted problem. But things need to change to properly deal with the increase in those relying on public programs. They're underfunded, understaffed, and under supplied. We're not setting people up for success, and it shows.
As someone who knows many people who were high-quality Spanish speaking elementary teachers in Texas, it's hard to find skilled and qualified people willing to work at that level working for the wages being offered when the cost of living is what it is and other jobs are offering considerably more.
When you can have 80% of the take home apay but have fewer parents issuing death threats while filling tacos at Taco Bell (and they pay for your community college to go elsewhere) it's no surprise teachers choose to go elsewhere.
Practically every school district in Texas is facing a qualified teacher shortage.
There is an issue around a general teacher shortage, mostly due to poor pay and treatment. It's hard to find teachers in general. It's been exacerbated recently in states like Texas, with proposed book bans and bans on teaching history. No one wants to get punished for assigning Brave New World or teaching about slavery (and teachers don't want to lie to kids about history, either).
Of course, the Trump admin has responded to this by deciding not to fund the TQP grant program, which in part trains and places teachers in high-need areas like STEM, special ed, and bilingual ed. This struggle is mostly a self-inflicted policy choice.
I can’t tell what kind of change you’re asking for. Your state refuses to raise wages and fund education. So instead inciting a fictional immigration crises is the acceptable change? Rounding people up and locking them up won’t solve the other self inflicted problems. It will just make money for the prisons.
> Your state refuses to raise wages and fund education
I'm saying we need to change our funding for education and protect workers rights. We need to crack down on those hiring illegal labor. I agree things need to change. I think the federal government should acknowledge we're being more impacted by immigration than many other states and help more with education and other social programs. I think it was a bad choice for us to not expand Medicaid back in the day and I think its bad we're talking about restricting it more. I'm probably not the person you're picturing in your mind, I'm going to go ride a bicycle to pick up my kids from school today and I've talked a few friends of mine out of buying a pickup truck.
> And don't get me wrong, Texas' legislature is complicit for the failure!
I'm fully agreeing at least half the problem is within.
> Rounding people up and locking them up won’t solve the other self inflicted problems
I agree! I don't think a lot of what Texas is doing is good!
I try not to make judgements based on where people are from. I was just seeking clarity in your statement. You don’t sound like a drooling troll interested in spreading national politicking. You sound like a concerned citizen of Texas and promoting education and expanding healthcare is how we get out of this mess for sure.
12 million is equivalent to the average population of 2 states.
The Democrats, who love to lecture everybody about "protecting democracy", are attempting to sway voter demographics in their favor through illegal immigration. California used to be a Republican state till it was turned deep blue through immigration.
And one-party states produce the worst, most incompetent politicians, who rise to the top not through the battle of ideas, ability and accountability but through political favors and backroom deals.
They have Silicon Valley and the largest population of any US state.
Gavin Newsom gets zero credit for either of these things.
You only have to look at how incredibly badly prepared for and managed the palisade fires were to see the level of incompetence under Gavin Newsom.
The topic is "Marines being mobilized in response to LA protests." The protests are about ICE rounding up people on suspicion of being undocumented immigrants. Whether a place being full of undocumented immigrants is actually a bad thing is extremely salient to the topic, especially when the President has decided it's worth pointing the military's guns at our own citzenry over.
12million immigrants came into the country during the Biden administration. This type of load on the system does not go unnoticed. NYC for example was drastically transformed.
Why do you think it’s just a “perceived” problem?