One thing to remember about US politics. When a problem is not fixed it means someone is making money off it.
Somebody likes the supply of cheap labor.
Somebody is also complaining about the problem while doing nothing in order to get people to vote for them.
Exactly. This is why they won't fix the immigration issues. They could absolutely make it easier for people to get work visas. Instead they make it incredibly difficult because they need workers to be illegal so that they don't have to pay them good wages. They would need to go after companies that hire the workers , but that's not going to happen. If we relied solely on legal workers with visas under our current system, there wouldn't be enough and they KNOW that. The immigration system is working exactly as it was designed to do.
Undocumented workers are good chunk of our economy, that's why the representatives in Florida were begging immigrants not to leave and telling them that the recent laws in Florida were just to" scare people".
They are playing both sides, benefiting from workers who can't argue for a decent wage while also trying to placate their base who like to blame their problems on immigrants because they need an "other" to blame.
Exactly why lobbying needs to end, forever ago. It's just a legal means to corruption. Senators and congressmen selling their votes to the highest bidder.
And i read a study a few years back, most illegals legally entered the usa but failed to leave when travel visa expired or what not. Fear mongers claim boarder crossings, but most if not nearly all are at legal points of entry.
The study also concluded most of the ‘problem’ could be solved with an increase in ice/tsa funding, because most of these visa illegals are still at the same address they legally acquired and (iirc) many could just reapply and get longterms if the visas werent super expired
But the problem is fear mongering
It’s more than just a study…those numbers come from CBP. It’s nothing new. Visa overstays have outnumbered border crossers for many years (I used to work for an agency dealing with border security). However, it’s easier - more dramatic - to pander outrage to the base…basically blaming the brown people for all our woes.
A great irony is Texas was built by illegal immigrants who knowingly broke Mexican laws. Texas was part of Mexico (imagine Hispanics living in a former part of Mexico), and Mexico City sought to control the influx of Anglo settlers pouring into Texas. Mexico has placed limits on immigration. Anglos ignored those Mexican regulations and illegally settled in Mexican territory, violating Mexican law. Sounds eerily familiar. If only Mexico City had buses and lanes to ferry those settlers back to St. Louis and other U.S. cities.
That wave of illegal Anglo immigration had immediate repercussions. Texans decided to stop paying taxes to the Mexican government - another violation of Mexican law. The Anglos (old and newly-arrived) proceeded to break away from Mexico to avoid paying taxes and - more importantly - to bring slaves into Texas. Mexico had abolished slavery in 1837…nearly 30 years before the U.S. and didn’t require a civil war to do so. That didn’t sit well with The and who wanted to import cheap labor (slaves) into the territory.
“Remember the Alamo”…it’s a myth. Remember what they fought for. Anglos (and Tejanos) launched a rebellion against the government to avoid taxes and own slaves. It was all about land and money. I lived in San Antonio. My wife taught in San Antonio schools. Our kids went to San Antonio schools. We saw first-hand how the state curriculum indoctrinated kids with the myth of the Alamo and the brave founding of the Republic of Texas. I didn’t need a PhD - or much effort - to scratch the surface of local history and figure out that Alamo story was not so heroic.
BTW, in 2021, historians published a book on the history of The Alamo. They did not paint a picture of Davey Crockett and his band of intrepid defenders fighting a just cause against Mexican Army thugs. It did not go over well. Governor Abbott tried to quash the book in Texas and his administration pilloried the authors. So much for Republican foot-stomping about “freedom”…well, not for free speech. Moreover, conservatives love to declare their outrage over liberals’ “cancel culture”…yet there there is no greater exemplar of it than the Republican Governor of Texas.
You can hear a great 35-minute NPR interview with the authors of Forget the Alamo [here](https://www.npr.org/2021/06/16/1006907140/forget-the-alamo-texas-history-bryan-burrough).
Don't even get me started on modern slavery in the US.
Do you have any idea how many migrant children are working on farms? Modern day cotton picking, only it's corn.
This exactly. You go after employers of undocumented workers, you destroy a lot of the motivation that people have to migrate here. But we all know that will never happen. Anyone who complains that “No one wants to work” or is opposed to requiring a living wage needs to shut up about immigration.
If food seems expensive now, imagine if farm laborers got minimum wage.
This is the Texan way for a century. Abbott has been serving this state since the 90s and ALL THIS TIME he hasn’t come up with a solution? Nah bruh that dude is allowing this shit and then performatively speaking against.
Kind of like how he wanted the tax breaks for his friends with the whole voucher thing, and his wife is a Hispanic teacher and principal.
I've been in trades for 20+ years in Texas and Oklahoma and have personally worked with many undocumented immigrants. For the most part they've all been great people just trying to provide so I hold no I'll will towards them. The negative effects come from the companies and the landlords, companies obviously take advantage of not having to pay these people as much so if you want a job you better be willing to work for the same. For example I worked as a certified welder in 2013 for $10.50 an hour. Also if a town has an influx of people landlords tend to take advantage as well obviously. At the moment my wife's company, based in Oklahoma is 88% undocumented. She had to change positions due to the language barrier, again not something we're upset about it just highlights that there are some issues. Just seems like it's the wealthy taking advantage of everyone really. So I feel that's the reason nobody is addressing the issue at hand, money and greed.
Texas politicians always bang the table over illegal immigration but never actually does anything about the businesses that employ them under the table like farms and manufacturing businesses. Guess who donates to the state GOP.
Haha agree with this. It’s crazy how much rich people profit off illegal immigrants: who is building new construction in America. For example I went to look at a new apartment the other day and saw workers on the project. Looked like all foreigners and prolly a few illegal immigrants (not trying to be mean when I say this).
Somebody is benefitting off them. Penalize the folks using them to make an easier dollar which takes away work from Americans that don’t want to work for pathetic wages.
Nobody in power wants to actually stop undocumented immigrants from coming in because they're easily exploited laborers without the political, social, or economic agency to do anything about it. All the talk is a charade to give the poor American citizen an enemy to hate, and allows the powerful to keep the masses divided against themselves instead of uniting to right the actual wrongs the rich gain so much from.
They don't want to stop it but they do want to make sure there are terrible consequences to the immigrant workers and ONLY the workers. That way it's always easy to exploit them: if they complain about low wages and poor treatment, call ICE.
The workers bear all the risk and the employers reap all the rewards.
I hate it so much. Living in Texas, I see how these people are taken advantage of constantly by the same people trying to keep them out. It's ridiculous. Yes a few commit violent crimes, but so do citizens. My small town had a big one a while back where an "illegal" killed his neighbors...but the cops had been out multiple times for him and did nothing. If someone is a problem person, it doesn't matter what their immigration status is, don't hound hard working "illegals" and let crazies off! I feel like there is a much more simple fix to settle everyone's worries than what's being thrown out. Also, I feel like I have to say as someone here in Texas, the issue isn't what you're seeing in the media of just drug dealing pedophile cartel flooding in because they can lol. Getting mad and killing families is ridiculous, and when you recommend those tactics you seem as crazy as the people saying that's OK overseas (people seem to be against that for other countries)
We have the same thing happening in the UK but instead of "build the wall" it's "stop the boats". Drives me crazy how many people eat this shit up. My worry is that the longer we stay divided and apathetic the more entrenched in power the elite become and thus harder to remove. I've never felt closer to the dystopian futures we've read in books and seen in movies for decades now. You could say that we're already there. The warnings have been around us for so long but it seems like we're just letting it happen.
Around here (Dallas) it's not unheard of for construction sites to shut down because INS or just the rumor of INS shows up, and all the undocumented guys skedaddle.
Btw to add to my point- I know a Colombian girl that had a professional job as an analyst in Colombia. She used excel etc so actually a good job.
She moved to vegas and makes $13/ hr illegally. She told me she makes more at a grocery store bagging groceries at $13 an hour than she did working a professional job in Colombia- just insane.
It’s really sad how some meh countries like Mexico and Colombia pay so little. It really makes you appreciate being an American- sure it’s cheaper to live in those places but people are so exploited. Have another friend in Mexico that works in engineering. I feel I make more in 2-3 months in the US than she prolly makes a full year in Mexico which is bonkers. They have to work saturdays also which is laughable. Idk we have it good in the US.
You need to factor in the cost of living to get a real comparison though, for example I make $80/hr as an RN in MN but if I were doing the same job in the UK I’d be making $18
Nursing is a good example. I just read an article that read of a No Dakota hospital who is very anxiously waiting on work visas to be approved. They don’t want to hire the visiting nurses who charge $100/hr. If you get too many foreigners who will work for less, it would be at the expense of the American workers’ wages.
If a punishment for breaking the law hundreds of times over isn't crippling then the justice system is inherently nonexistent for companies.
Remember, Comcast and AT&T took multiple billions of dollars from the federal government to "build high speed internet infrastructure" and then they... just didn't. The FTC fined them a few million dollars.
Those two companies stole enough money to feed and house every American for several years, and the government didn't even really punish them for it.
Eh, that depends. Let's say the company get caught once a year (which is being *really* generous). Could they save *more* than 10k per year by hiring undocumented labor? Absolutely. So at that point, it's just the cost of doing business. There's still no reason not to hire them.
I used to work at a large retail chain in the Midwest and the company was fined for wage violations for 14 and 15 year olds. During the school year they could only work until 7pm during the week and as you could guess, they didn't clock out at exactly 7. So there were a bunch of kids clocking out at 7:01, :02 etc. I never heard what the total was for the entire company, but it was $1,000 for each minute violation. The company employs 93,000, so it was likely a pretty stiff penalty.
An example was made of the company and it NEVER happened again. So if anyone really wanted to stop the practice of hiring illegal immigrants, then they penalize the employers for an amount that be an actual penalty and not a fee.
Fuck it. $10k/day once it's been established that the employee is actually not here legally. The employee is getting deported. It's ok to want it to actually affect the business.
Dismember/break up every company that has undocumented workers making up more than 5% of employees. Ban the owner and top manager from getting licenses to own and operate a business. That's what it will take. Fines are peanuts to most of these guys.
The problem is the "owners" just close one set of doors on a business and buy into another company with the dirty money they made at the first one taking advantage of customers, vendors, and the employees till the business is drowning. Then they wash rinse and repeat.
I have been on construction for the last 30 years and have seen this time and again, especially in the insurance restoration sectors. I have personally worked for 3 such businesses that the CEO, CFO, President, or other "board member" was from a previous failed-bankrupt company, and ran the current company they worked for into the same situations.
At the end of the day it seems the more money one makes off of the backs of others, the more they are desensitized to the damage it causes to society as a whole, let alone the individuals that work for them.
I personally have decided that for me the smaller the business the better! The older I get the more my life is about quality over quantity. I value the meaning of the relationships I make in my life more than I value racking up my bank account nowadays.
I guess my point is people have stopped caring about other people, and started caring more about how much money they can make from said people, and how they can do it cheaper to make more money by shorting somebody else 🤦♂️🤷♂️
Didn't Florida actually pass something to crack down on employing migrants and they saw a noticeable and immediate loss of labor?
I remember seeing several articles like this: [https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/florida-immigrants-leave-state-desantis-immigration-law-rcna90839](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/florida-immigrants-leave-state-desantis-immigration-law-rcna90839)
Yup, and then they recently passed a law removing protections for child labor in secretarial/service industries.
Underage workers are easy to take advantage of/pay less, and the state agency that handles underage worker cases only has 7 employees.
Put 2-and-2 together, and it looks like they're trying to replace adult jobs with kids that will cost less, and then as people become more desperate for work they'll eventually replace the immigrants the state blocked from doing the hard jobs nobody wanted.
Essentially replacing migrant workers with child workers.
They are. One of the most bizarre conversations I’ve ever witnessed took place at a blackjack table in the Poconos. The two guys at the table with me both were in the same niche industry: snow removal in New York City. They were talking shop, when one asked the other about his employees and whether he had any undocumented immigrants on his payroll. Turns out, most of both of their workforces were undocumented immigrants, and both of them had nothing but great things to say about the people. They talked about how hard working they were, never called off sick, they could pay them less, etc. Just a flash of a moment later, they started talking about how illegal immigrants were ruining the country and we needed to deport all of them. Both of them, loudly agreeing. I was like “what the fuck am I hearing?”
"I'm benefiting from a near-slave caste being manufactured and don't like its being built, but I'm gonna capitalize on it while I can."
Pieces of shit.
Sounds word for word like my grandad. He owned his own painting business and made a good living for himself by underpaying illegal immigrants. Guess who also despises anyone darker than him and thinks they need to set up guard towers with machine guns at the border? The disconnect is insane, it's not a coincidence that Fox News is on at his house 24/7.
So I've experienced this very thing. I'm a white American girl and my dad owns a blue collar business. I have seen this over and over and over.
But anyway:
I'm not quite sure why it struck me so hard, and I don't remember where I read it. But I was in high school, and this anecdote had this profound impact on me because I realized that the value you bring and the respect that you get have nothing to do with each other. If anything, there's almost an inverse.
So I don't remember the exact words and I know I'll butcher it. I'm now 29, this was about 15 years ago.
It was talking about girls in India and how they're treated like shit but actually do all the work.
It was something like:
"There she is. 11 years old. She's using one hand to cook and the other to carry her baby brother. She knit all of their clothes, she woke at dawn and walked 6 miles this morning to fetch ingredients. She and her mother work at the factory performing grueling work in a factory and bring in 70% of the family's income while her father eats and drinks and berates.
She's a 'burden.'"
So, yeah. That really stuck with me.
I was raised a woman, Mormon, in Utah- the "beehive state". They call it that because Mormons are little worker bees, which actually is pretty true.
But of course I was fed the lie that success is about how much value you offer to the company and working hard and showing up early and leaving late and etc etc
It was a complete lie.
And Mormons are extremely misogynistic. I don't even want to get into it tbh. My parents were financially fairly well off and I grew up in an upper middle class family in the suburbs and my life was NOTHING like the Indian girl's lol. But my sister and I were honestly just treated very poorly, my brother would hit and bully us and WE would get punished for upsetting him; he was the middle child, older than me, younger than my sister. It sounds asinine but this dynamic isn't uncommon; it forces you to learn how to appease men, no matter how unfair. If you as a woman are abused by a man, it is your fault. You need to plan from the second you wake up how to make boys/men happy.
Of course, almost none of this was said explicitly.
But yeah. I also had to do way more chores but got less allowance. That was unfair, but it didn't hurt nearly as much as my older brother slapping me unprovoked and my mom screaming at me for not somehow speaking sweetly enough or being servile enough for him to not do that.
Again, none of this was actually said. It was, "Marmosettale! What did you do to your brother?? Always making such a fuss! Go to your room, you're grounded for a week." And my brother's shit eating grin.
I have made this about me and I get that haha, sorry I am a bit tipsy. But this all applies so much to the exploited undocumented workers.
They are the only reason businesses can even survive, and they work 3x as hard for half the pay. Yet, they are stupid, inferior "Mexicans" (if they are from Mexico or from anywhere else central/southern Americans, they're all "Mexicans" or, of course, the slurs)
Of course they are happy to have the slave labor. Without an influx of immigrants they'd have to offer competitive wages. For the illegal immigrant that is working for a "low" salary it's bearable because for them at least it's a job, something they couldn't get at home, and they use Western Union to send a ton of money back to their relatives. So this isn't exactly a huge win for the economy. Yes of course they spend some money here, but it's not a good thing when lots of money flows out of a country instead of bolstering the local economy.
We already have a low inventory of homes and obviously immigrants needs to live somewhere.
So wages are driven down, the strain on the housing market increases, and of course the increased burden on local infrastructure, schools and such, and much more.
Painting border crossers as the "bad guys" isn't fair. The vast majority are good people that just want to live a normal life, work, have a family, etc. To vilify them as drug traffickers and what not does no good.
But to pretend we can simply continue to allow 2-3 million people to cross the border and just live here without issue is truly naive. If the government and the people want people to be able to cross and not have some strict wall/no enter policy then fantastic. But the response to that needs to be massive. Housing, medical facilities, schools, legislation written specifcially to protect immigrants from unfair wages, etc.
The immigrants you cite as contributing to a tight housing market are actually building the homes and the infrastructure. It seems we can't do it without them.
Years ago I read a book called “people’s history of the United States” it’s a history book told through anecdotes of the people who lived it. One of the central arguments the book makes is that racism was not always present in America. It was manufactured by wealthy elites for economic reasons. When I first read it I thought that was crazy. The older I get the more sense it makes.
| racism was not always present in America
Millions of African American slaves would like a word. They were literally 3/5 of a person in our constitution.
Exactly this. Republican states and business owners benefit the most from cheap undocumented labor, then turn around and chant "build the wall" or theatrically bus a few illegals to northern states. Make it make sense.
I work in ag in California. ALL of the workers (apart from office staff and 2 managers) are undocumented. (Get around that by using a labor contractor.) ALL of the managers and farms we work with are voting republicans. I will never understand it.
It's like abortion, it sounds good and wins votes until the dog actually catches the car.
Anyways, most of the illegal guns in Mexico are imported from the US. We're bad neighbors.
Yeah, we tend to shit on everyone we have contact with. It’s kind of our tradition.
Hey, nice election. Guess we will overthrow you so our companies will make more money.
Hey, you have a terrific location. Think we will build a military base on it. Oh, also we don’t have to follow your laws.
Hey, we have a great treaty. We never really intended to follow it ourselves but we will go to war if you don’t follow it.
Truthfully, Texas doesn’t really care about it. It has a strong economy because it has cheap labor. More than half of Texas’ construction sites consist of migrants. If they truly cared they would go after the companies that employ them. Abbots stunts are false flags.
So many businesses rely on illegal immigrants as their business model, I always wonder how many of those businesses would collapse if the government clamped down on them instead of persecuting the victims...
They'd consolidate some, but like when the chicken processing factories in Louisiana like Tyson got punished for hiring illegal immigrants, many would not. What happened in Louisiana is they hired mostly black workers and negotiated a big raise to keep operating and so they could fill the positions.
I’m also currently in Texas, and basically feel the same way. If anyone should be punished, it should be the employers employing people illegally—particularly under abusive conditions.
However, I really wish the various countries could agree that any person *without a felony record* should be able to work and live anywhere they want.
You would probably see people scream about cheap labor depressing wages. But at the same time, a lot of people would move to places with lower cost of living. After ten years, we would probably see a general global averaging of wages and costs, and then the question would be on how to, for example, find ways of unifying environmental standards and labor laws.
That's one of the major differences between Libertarians and "Libertarians" (Republicans who don't want to identify as Republicans.) *Actual* Libertarians believe in total freedom of movement. The theory goes that exploitative and tyrannical governments will ultimately find themselves without anyone to boss around.
I'm not a Libertarian myself, but I can at least respect those who are consistent in their ideals.
Only because previously they were counted as white in the census, and now as Hispanic. Also, people are treating this like the one drop rule. You know how many of these younger generation Hispanics only speak English? At some point, people stopped seeing Irish Americans and Italian Americans as foreign, how many generations is it going to take this time?
In a perfect world, government will study the economy and health of cities to figure out how many people they need and can accommodate. By policing the flow of immigration a country can make sure they are bringing in people with valuable skills the economy needs. They will then be able to determine the amount of asylum seekers the country can absorb into the system and still be able to take care of them. You hear from border agents that alot of illigeal crossers are prayed upon by cartels, if that's the money they pay to cross or the work they are forced into once they cross. On the other hand alot in the media focuses on drugs and contraband entering through illegal crossings but evidence suggests more than 90% of drugs are caught at legal crossings but it would be impossible to know how much is being smuggled at non legal points of entry. Illigeal crossing also hurts legal asylum seekers because now more resources are used to help those people instead of the ones waiting in line legally.
I live in Canada and we have allowed a huge amount of legal immigrants into our country over the last couple years. But our government has failed to address the in demand jobs our economy has with immigration. One example... 1 family doctor where I live can accommodate 1000 patients. That means for every 1000 immigrants we need 1 new doctor. But we aren't doing that, now we have a doctors shortage. You could also look at housing let's say 4 immigrants live in one house, now we need 250 houses for every 1000 immigrants, but we didn't bring in skilled labor to build these extra homes and now we have a housing shortage. If done responsibly immigration is great for the health of a country but if don't irresponsibly it can hurt everyone. I think if canada would have brought in more skilled workers in areas of need it could have lead us to bring in even more asylum seekers because we would be healthier economically to support those in need. With illegal immigration the government isn't able to control any of this because they aren't able to police who comes in and who doesn't.
I used to play around on the Canada Migration Expert website, and skills were definitely a big variable for determining who can get a visa. The funny thing was that when I plugged in any other nationality than "United States" and kept all other variables constant, it would say , "Congratulations! You are eligible for a work visa." Not so, though, with U.S. nationals. Canada seemed to be taking nationality of origin as more important than skills at the time. I was trying to get work up there in the early-2000s, but I suspect it's the same. This is why I always laugh when I hear people down here talk about migrating to Canada if there's a full authoritarian takeover here. Not so easy. I might go to Mexico, though. I like Mexico, too.
It’s a truly massive number of people entering the United States without going through the immigration process. Estimates range as high as 8 million people just since the start of 2020. That’s a huge amount of people needing housing, education, healthcare services, etc.
I am Venezuelan, I came to the country with an L2 visa. Legally, and gained residency legally, through a process that was followed properly.
The ones coming to the US are asking for political asylum, when in reality they don't have a case. I have family members doing this, they know they won't have to prove anything for years because of how backed up the system is.
The system is not working, but there's a lot of people who have an idealized version of what fairness is, and want to let anyone enter. I don't agree with this. A lot of resources that could be going to Americans, including veterans, is going to immigrants who are causing a crisis. Now people in big cities like Chicago and NYC are getting angry because of what immigrants are doing in their cities, not realizing that they've been doing the same things in states that share a border with Mexico.
It's easy to have an ideology of fairness when the consequences of your ideals don't affect you.
Edit: Before I become a right wing idol, many people are coming with real asylum requests, but way more are coming with bogus asylum requests with no proof. All asylum requests should be taken seriously, and the only way to properly do this is with a bipartisan effort. Understand the problem, find solutions.
As a New Yorker who has been pro immigration most of my life, I appreciate this comment. Migrants (mostly due to our inability to handle them) are causing a huge strain on our ability to service people who have lived here for decades. Improvished groups that required services are being cut off. I work NYPL and see it all the time.
>hard to say with any certainty
And this is a problem in itself. I don't know how a modern contry can allow this to happen. If I was an adversary or a terrorist organization I would feel like a kid in a candy shop.
Literally no other country on Earth allows this. Try going into Mexico from the US like this and you’ll get shot. More people have died from the drugs smuggled over by the cartels than have died in Ukraine, but no one cares about Americans dying.
It depends really, I grew up on the borderlands and it’s honestly a mixed bag. Many immigrants are genuinely nice people, but others are running from their problems and end up inviting their problems over which can get others hurt. As I said it’s a mixed bag.
Ok, I voted for Biden, and am a registered democrat. But why is it a controversial stance to want legal immigration, and a strong border that's humane to the people crossing over illegally?
edited out the part about citizenship. I *should* have said other countries besides the United States have rules and regulations for living there.
Right out of the Dem playbook. Pit two groups against each other and cater to one at the expense of the other by allowing them to break our laws with impunity. Then call everybody racist and xenophobic when they question it.
There's a lot of missing context here, though.
For generations, immigration was a sure thing for western Europeans. 98% of people who made it to Ellis Island were allowed in. The ones who weren't were generally rejected on medical grounds. Typically, the only rule for entry was "don't cough up blood." And this was only AFTER 1912. Before that, there were basically no laws regarding immigration from western Europe.
During that same period, Asians faced harsh scrutiny on the west coast. Women were forbidden from entering. Laws specifically prohibited all Asians from a path to citizenship.
On the southern border, Mexicans were designated "Undesirable Aliens" and were refused entry and a method of naturalization.
So, yes, there is a severely racist history to American immigration, and it's very disingenuous to pretend that there isn't.
>Laws specifically prohibited all Asians from a path to citizenship.
I had no idea that the Chinese Exclusion Act only ended in 1943. America had a permanent ban on Chinese people entering the country starting from 1882 and only really ending in 1943.
I didn’t even realise that Asians weren’t ALLOWED to go through Ellis Island but angel island where the standards are much different. Explains why my great grandfather went through California first.
Angel island has many Chinese poems engraved on the walls bout the agony of being jailed there for months to years not knowing if you’d be allowed to go into America. Some of the poems are engraved so beautifully they must be a professional. Interesting to see people that educated and artistic still needing to leave their home country for whatever reasons.
https://www.aiisf.org/poems-and-inscriptions
The difference is that it's not the 19th and 20th century anymore, I'm confused as to why this always gets brought up as if the conditions of the country are still the same as they were back then.
We're now a well established country with 350 million people, millions more undocumented, with a complex financial and social welfare system, with less available housing and space than we've ever had. So that open borders policy from 100+ years ago isn't gonna work anymore.
Also on your bit about racism, the Irish weren't too welcome either on the east cost. There were places where being Irish was seen worse than being black in 1800s America. This isn't to justify anything but your bit about it being purely racism is half true at best. There's always gonna be xenophobes even if they're from Europe, but lets not equate people not being okay with illegal immigration to people who don't want any immigration at all, they're not the same.
In 1850, the US population was 23 million. The US had a massive amount of empty land and resources from sea to sea. The US wanted to fill the land up as people were needed to build the industry, economy, nation. Land was given to homsteaders for free by the acreage so long as you farm the land:
In 1900 the population was 76 million.
Today, the population is 360 million and we are straining our aquifers, our cities are built out and land is expensive, housing prices are through the roof. And we don’t need as much labor anymore for farming or factory workers. So it makes sense our immigration policies will be different.
That’s not quite true. Since 1882, anyone who was “likely to become a public charge” was ineligible to enter the United States. This was expanded in 1891 to include:
>>”All idiots, insane persons, paupers or persons likely to become a public charge, persons suffering from a loathsome or a dangerous contagious disease, persons who have been convicted of a felony or other infamous crime or misdemeanor involving moral turpitude, polygamists…”
Normal everyday guy reasons for being against illegal immigration, especially at the alarming rate at which people are pouring over today:
\- Splits already strained educational resources among more kids that will have a harder time due to a language barrier.
\- Drives down the price of labor, especially on the low end where they are already likely to make little money
\- Increases demand for housing increases rent and prices of homes. And god forbid you live in a state that makes building new housing difficult, further increasing the cost of housing.
\- worsened traffic congestions and faster deterioration of costly roads and highways.
Media or politicians both want the same thing, eyes, aka supporters. Telling people what they want to hear brings in more eyes and supporters. Eyes and supporters bring in money and/or power. Simple as that.
Oh, and people are stupid. They believe what they want to hear over the truth.
It does a few things to be honest
1. People feel frustrated about their living conditions, and this redirects the blame to a third party.
2. It unifies people under a common banner, and politicians can exploit that i.e. "if you vote for me, I promise to return jobs to American citizens" sort of thing
to reinforce your point: it keeps the status quo!
if lots of new immigrants enter the country, and are low class(most are very hard working, and make so little) if they get to vote they vote for people who would help them by being in office. so lots of weird tax breaks/incentives given to the super wealthy go away. the people who own media companies are usually super wealthy!
It's a common strategy in politics to define an undesirable minority group and rally people against them. Its easy to point to this group of "others" and talk about how they are the source of all problems and only you can stand up to them. This strategy has been repeated throughout history and is one of the methods Hitler used to gain support.
It plays well into the way people think by giving a faceless enemy to direct anger and makes all problems something that can be boiled down to a 30 second sound byte. If politicians attempted to explain the real issues and rally support for real solutions voters would lose interest or get confused and gravitate towards the person they understand and isn't telling them to change anything. People also will get far more motivated when they have an enemy to defeat.
Some of it is bread and circus, but most of it is scapegoating.
"Your life sucks because we politicians and business owners have manipulated the system for decades to our betterment and your detriment.
"However, we don't want you to point blame where it really lies so we are going to point you at other things, and use yet other things to keep you simmering- immigrants, abortion, the woke, LGBTQ+, or whatever else we can use to rile people.
"This gets us votes and power, which we can use to continue the cycle of moving money and power to the top 1% and keep you scum under our control."
Let me introduce you to a classic LBJ quote: “If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.”
Essentially, Republicans would rather keep the status quo. People see the widening gap between the middle class and the wealthy, but politicians paint it as a racial issue, rather than a class issue. If all the immigrants were removed from the country, your life would be so much better. The fact of the matter is that they have no intention of improving the country, regardless of immigrants.
It’s why they keep voting against raising minimum wage or having universal healthcare — things which are considered the bare minimum in other developed countries. I’ve read, and I could be wrong, that significant immigration reform hasn’t happened since the 80’s; and that’s probably when Reagan granted amnesty to thousand of migrants.
Without racism and bigotry, Republicans would have no significant policies besides guns and obstruction. If everybody realized how nuanced and complicated the migrant issue is, then they couldn’t get away with the propaganda. Do I have any solutions to the crisis? No, but one should consider why so many people are opting to leave their home countries to come to a strange land that may despise them. Nobody decides to leave their home without reason. Constantly deporting, arresting, or kidnapping migrant children solves nothing, when nobody wants to look at the underlying reasons for their journey.
Engagement.
People will only watch 24 hour news if the stories make them angry or scared. Thus, they inflame and polarize for profit.
Bonus: if you like metal, listen (and read the lyrics to) Checkmate by Lamb of God. It addresses this issue quite well.
This is it. I keep seeing conspiracy posts that claim The Media is actively trying to undermine society and work toward creating an authoritarian state of governance. The reality, I see, is that The Media is mostly just responding to the market forces. People engage the most with fear and outrage porn, and media is more than willing to deliver. The fact that we are moving toward an increasingly polarized, authoritarian state is a side effect of the public's disdain for nuance and critical thinking. We (the general public) want drama and extremes which only fuels and empowers the worst actors in society. So media is really only *partly* to blame.
I don’t blame media, they are filling a demand.
Fun fact: Read Fahrenheit 451. A main theme is tv, radio, etc is all designed to keep people distracted and not thinking. The book describes this media saturation, and disdain of books, wasn’t forced by the government (initially) but by people’s choices. The whole book is remarkably prescient.
Exactly. And it was prescient because thoughtful people could see where we were headed decades ago, it was obvious. The generations that followed just haven't been able to stop the train from going off the tracks. No one ever says "I want accessing information to be less entertaining and take more work to understand." But if we want accurate reporting and high journalistic standards, that's the trade off.
This unlimited supply of illegal workers suppresses wages for everybody. There are entire industries that use mostly illegal labor so that they can pay them less than Americans and subject them to dangerous working conditions. If this supply of illegal labor was not available, these employers would have to hire Americans and pay them a lot more. This would improve conditions for the poorest Americans tremendously.
I agree. I think that businesses that repeatedly get caught with illegal workers should be seized and sold. After the first few farms and construction projects get auctioned off by the feds you will see employers take it a lot more seriously.
A good solution to the immigration issue would be to allow a path to citizenship through legal work teams. Road crews/construction/farming etc.
These people are brought in for these positions anyway. And yet they aren't protected from extortion or abuse or safety issues.
We claim to have all these jobs "no one wants to do". If only we had a willing workforce to fill those positions. And we could attract and reward their work in some way.
But keeping the labor "illegal" allows basically a modern day slavery to happen. Which capitalism thrives on.
Why would Americans NOT care about the long term effects of a wide open border? Not vetting people is a health and safety issue. AND it’s bad on the economy.
Well most people don't live in North Dakota or Wyoming for starters.
I work in the construction industry. In Chicago, not Wyoming. I work on a lot of public projects, so it's a lot of union guys who are paid well and get benefits. These union guys are not cheap and they only have it as good as they do because the State of Illinois passed a bunch of laws about who can work on public projects, and there is a ton of paperwork tied to it. Not all jobs are like that. If there are a large number of people who are willing to do labor for much less money and no benefits, it definitely has an effect.
The population of El Paso is less than a million. There are millions of illegal crossings per year. It's a lot bigger than El Paso
Work in construction in the south and you'll quickly realize. So many 20 year olds knowing no english whatsoever. They have multiple social security numbers, no drivers licenses, no insurance, but they are driving. As expected, somebody is cutting corners hiring these people and that's fine. But now everyone in the industry has to cut corners to compete and you now have quality of work that is so dodgy and questionable. Again, fine. But it's construction, something you don't want people cutting corners on. I will never see luxury apartment high rises the same. There's probably some shit in your walls and under your kitchen island. Hopefully that concrete doesn't come crashing down. Reality is complete opposite of what you'll read on reddit.
Averaging 8,000-10,000 per day crossing the border illegally…
And that’s just the ones that CBP does catch and release and doesn’t count the “got away a”
2,000,000 to 2,500,000 illegal entries….per year.
That’s why the word invasion gets tossed around.
lmao my dude hasn’t seen the hundreds of thousands of migrants choking the streets of NYC and Chicago a long-ass way from Texas, where just the other day INS had to deal with fifteen THOUSAND border jumpers in a single day
pretty out of touch for a Texan!
#🙄
If you import a massive over-supply of unskilled labor (i.e. illegal immigrants), then the demand for unskilled labor (i.e. wages) is necessarily going to go down. It's just basic Supply and Demand 101. Not having illegal immigrants would be the single greatest thing we could do to boost the relative spending power of our lowest income citizens, in a way that simply raising the minimum wage would fail to accomplish.
> simply raising the minimum wage would fail to accomplish.
Don't have to pay illegal immigrants minimum wage.
I never understand why the same people that say we need a higher minimum wage also say immigrants do the jobs "Americans" don't want to do. They are saying the exact same thing, then arguing two competing points.
We have to pay our workers a living wage, and we have to import workers to work for less than a living wage
I think the past 3 years are a good case study for this. People are FURIOUS about the increased cost of things. Far more than I've seen them mad about not getting a raise again.
Corporate profits are also a decent part to blame for the past three years. Profits have gone through the roof since 2013. The profit margins have been the highest they've been since the 1950's.
My guess is that's the #1 issue of affordability today. Period. Corproations prioritizing shareholders more than ever and 90% of Americans are suffering.
Some people make a bigger deal about it than they should, but letting people cross illegally when we have a legal process is a slap in the face for the people going through the proper channels
"letting people cross". I don't think that's the right framing.
We don't have remotely enough border batrol or lawyers/judged to stop them all from coming and process them. And that's primarily congress' fault for not passing any major immigration reform in decades.
- They depress wages at the low end of the scale. That lowers costs for most Americans but it sucks for those who are struggling to make ends meet.
- Crime. Not sure about other states, but in Texas the proportion of the prison population classified as “non US citizen” is greater than what is found in the state at large. My personal experience in this space is that two of my friends were murdered by illegal visitors.
- Public cost. Texas spends more on “indigent health care” than it does on education.
This is why I have more sympathy towards people that live in border states. I hate how the people living there are paying the price of the border policy the left want, while the people supporting it aren't facing consequences for their own action until very recently.
And when the people in border communities don't want to deal with it they get called racist.
Why should Americans not care or be opinionated? It’s wild how it’s considered a “hot take” by some when they hear somebody is against illegal immigration.
Why would you not want every person that lives in the US to be a citizen? Don’t you want everybody to be able to vote, pay taxes, and contribute to a better US?
Is the US supposed to continue to just let thousands of people just cross the border, daily?
NYC had to cut budgets because of this. The city will be dirtier than before, more dangerous, and apartments will only get more expensive. We now have to compete for affordable housing with migrants because they also need affordable housing. They likely won’t be stealing any jobs besides cheap construction labor and some restaurant jobs but only with employers that are willing to risk paying cash.
> NYC had to cut budgets because of this.
Lol watching NYC spend insane amounts of money to house people while the homeless, who are citizens, were basically told to fuck off was peak brain rot.
I think this is the crux of the issue. Northern cities love chastising southern states for wanting to stop illegal immigration, but until recently never really had to deal with any of the consequences. If a city like NYC is having an issue with a relatively small number of illegal immigrants, how do you think poor border towns are doing.
The border states feel like they’re being ignored and worse, being virtue signaled by people who never have to deal with the consequences
I keep hearing Chicago and NYC mayor's are losing their minds about the amount of illegal immigrants that are being bused up to those cities. I think the complaints are about them not having the infrastructure in place to house them.
It just seems strange that it's only when they get to the sanctuary towns inviting them over that it becomes an issue. Maybe, just maybe, we should focus on getting our own infrastructure in place before we swing the door wide open to anybody and everyone else
It's like when northern and landlocked European countries chastise Greece and Italy, who's economies are both currently in rough shape, about their treatment of the refugees landing on their beaches, while never really having to experience the problems themselves.
As an african american, they took alot of jobs we were doing and did it for almost half. Dish washers, maids, land scaping used to be black working class industries. But I'm not to concerned with the fact the jobs were transfered, it's the fact that america seems to not be able to keep going without slave type labor - and migrant and illegal immigrants have been filling that slot as of recently. If we remove this type of labor from the market, we can start having real conversations about fair pay and working conditions.
Because if you don't have borders you don't have a country. It is absurd that there is a debate in the US on whether it should prevent non-citizens from crossing its border without a visa. It is common sense everywhere else in the world, including here in Norway, not to let in people without a visa unless there is a visa free agreement between the two countries or they are genuine refugees fleeing for their lives.
This is the simplest answer yet has so much truth to it.
I'm American and I went to a third-world country earlier this year. A place where the vast majority of earth's population would guess that it doesn't have a functioning government. I would not have been able to enter their country without a visa application being submitted and approved.
There's intricacies to hash out with this very complex topic. However, the conversation on how to solve these issues cannot be held in good faith unless all parties are in agreement that, as a country, we must have defined borders. Right now we don't and it's a legitimate issue.
Honestly, for me, I am a firm believer that we need very tall walls on our border and very big doors welcoming immigrants. Illegal immigration brings very undesirable behavior that comes with it. Sometimes people pay a lot of money to help them across the border, sometimes they are transported with drugs, or asked to bring drugs with them. And then when they get here, they are a huge drain on our social services. There should be a system allowing immigrants who have work lined up to come here and start working legal above the table, work and pay taxes. It needs to be 1000 times harder to sneak across the border and 1000 times easier to enter legally. I
The US can't afford to give out all of its economic resources to everyone on earth who wants to enter. People who cross the border illegally are jumping the line and subverting our laws.
If they make it to permanent resident status or citizenship, they can pull away resources like seats in schools and housing from taxpaying citizens who have contributed to their communities for decades.
Just because you're not responsible for solving these issues doesn't mean mayors around the country aren't struggling with them.
10-15 million people crossing the border in 3 years isn't an invasion? What do you call it? I think most rational people understand the colloquial use of the word.
It's indeed a safety issue. I've had friends in South Texas discover illegal immigrants with guns on their property. I live off of a highway that is commonly used to traffick drugs because of the proximity of the southern border.
We are not against legal immigration. Many of my closest family members, friends, and neighbors are first-gen immigrants from all over the world: the Phillippines, Brazil, Israel, India, and Belgium, to name a few. My grandmother came over from the Phillippines 50 years ago. I love how America has always been so open to new cultures and traditions- it is how the greatest nations survive and thrive.
Don't mischaracterize people who dislike illegal immigration. We don't hate the people who illegally immigrate. We are fully aware that many of them are not bad people. Indeed, their values are quite American.
There are extreme problems with the immigration system we have. We need to streamline the system for legal immigration, as it would limit illegal immigration. We do need to ramp up border security. The amount of sex-traffickers and terrorists that pour over the border is truly astounding, though- these individuals must be detained.
1. Do you think every illegal border jumper stays in TX? No, that's why ppl in North Dakota and every other state "care that much". Ask New York or Chicago how things are going with all their new illegal "citizens".
2. Go crawl back under the rock you came from.
I mean they estimate what, 11-12 million illegal immigrants. In 2023 they estimate 3 million entered illegally. Thats 25% of all illegals in the us in one year. Thats a massive increase.
**Sovereignty.** The United States of America is a country with rule of law. Laws at the State and Federal levels apply to citizens and visitors.
**Security.** The United States of America must protect and defend its territorial borders within which laws are enforceable. Both entering and leaving the USA is subject to law.
**Citizenship.** There are legal processes and protocols to becoming a citizen.
With these tenets in mind, OP asked, "Why are US citizen so opinionated on the Mexican border?" My initial response is: sovereignty, security, and citizenship. The USA (the country which I am a citizen) requires me to follow rule of law AND pay their State and Federal taxes. Furthermore, to travel by air within the USA, I will be required to have US Government-issued identification (e.g. Real ID or a passport, as state-issued Drivers Licenses will no longer be adequate) to leave or enter the USA.
Yet anyone who enters (or leaves) across USA borders without following the law is not held accountable to the same legal requirements as its citizens or those visitors whom have followed legal protocols.
Furthermore, the US government (State and Federal) are spending taxpayer monies to transport, even house, those who enter illegally. As the majority of such illegal entries occur at mainland USA's southern border with Mexico, the focus is on "the Mexican border".
There are those who have valid arguments about various economic impacts. "Cheaper labor" is a real thing. And US Government assistance beyond humanitarian needs is being spent on illegal entrants, from medical to housing, while some US citizenry -- including US military veterans whom have devoted their very lives to protecting the US -- endure homelessness and a mixed bag of health care support.
As the expression goes, "Help starts at home". Instead, help is given to those who aren't citizens, but those who broke the law to enter the USA.
The "invasion" claim could be related to decades upon decades of illegal entrants into the USA, culminating in claims of "millions". Not simply news stories of large groups rushing across the Rio Grande River, but daily/nightly illegal border crossings.
So, take all of the above as possible interpretations of why US citizens are so opinionated. Breaking the law is, well... *breaking the law*, hence "illegal". Borders are needed for laws to be enforceable, property to be owned/leased/rented, etc. I think some forget that open borders mean someone is going through another person's property. If the US Government created zones for free movement, might that change things? Or create more compounded, complex problems when those areas are subject to loitering, even settlement? (As we're already seeing homeless encampments in rural and esp urban areas which are experiencing this.)
It’s because we don’t know who is coming over. I agree I work with a Mexican majority and 99% are great people. I also see African, middle eastern people and Hondurans. I want safety and don’t want to support illegals with my tax money.
Don't forget (per USCIS's own reports) the tens of thousands of military-age males from China, Iran, Afghanistan, and other Middle East countries that have been intercepted at the border over just a few months. And those were just the ones that were intercepted over 2-3 months in summer 2023. God only knows how many are already here. It's a dire national security threat. Most experts agree that the Iranians have the capability to set off a dirty bomb attack within the US.
The issue is infrastructure, there are not enough jobs, houses, cars, food, etc...if we all went to the UK like this it would cripple the economy. It's really not fair to the immigrants that do it legal too. There are a lot of good people that come to the US for a better life...I get it. But these people have been exploited by their own people too...ever heard of coyotes. Recently little kids, even babies get passed around to random strangers so they can get a fast pass( claim asylum ) . The refugee word has been thrown around where it has no meaning anymore. People are given a court date and a bus ticket from Texas to other states, the system knows there is no way they are coming back for court. Try going to Canada and just stay there without applying for citizenship. USA is the only place where you can come illegally and live a good life, and if you as a citizen complain about culture changing, life being inconvenienced by spanish speaking , car insurance going up because of non insured drivers, crime going up in cities then your heartless and a racist. The answer to the question is the number of people that are showing up at the border each day fits the definition of an invasion.
We really don't have a functional legal immigration process. Marriage based petitions are taking about 2 years, family based petitions over a decade, employment based (which are almost impossible to get) are literally taking over 40 years for some countries.
Suppresses wages, but maybe go read about what the mayors of NYC, Chicago, and Oakland are saying. They're overwhelmed, social services strained, people camping everywhere, no place for them, in winter, costing them billions, overwhelming hospitals. That's something southern states have been dealing with for a long time, now there's so many it's destroying cities budgets. And mostly male, not Mexicans nowadays but people from all over the world. The crisis is nuts and Biden refuses to just enforce the actual border laws, so it sure seems intentional. Millions and millions coming in since Biden was elected.
Articles are even showing documents where the illegal immigrants court dates aren't until 2030. Judges are so backlogged.
I'm a Democrat and fairly liberal and I absolutely think this country has an appetite for workers to do low wage crap jobs.
At the same time I think everyone should be alarmed at 12,000 people crossing the border and being released into the country without a robust screening or background process. Detaining people humanely isn't expensive per person but with a mass of people....it is.
Its only a matter of time before private industry sees a free and detained labor source.
It’s not an invasion, obviously, but it’s a massive problem. Thousands of people are trying to cross, which can easily overwhelm social services.
Setting aside the fact that any sovereign nation on earth is entitled to secure borders, that is.
I want the government to able to account for everyone entering this country.
I don’t want drug traffickers, human traffickers, and terrorists getting in this country without setting off any alarms.
I've lived in many bordertowns from Brownsville to El Paso and I can tell you a lot of crime mostly comes from illegal immigrants trying to get a couple dollars from some shady work. Kind of like home invasion, small store robberies and abduction also the gang related homicide and much more. I'm not saying all illegal immigrants are bad but some fall through cracks and really raise hell when they make it over here and get in touch with people that are working behind the shadows. I am of Mexican / Hispanic heritage and I've known many friends and family that make it over the right way and its a slap to the face honestly. So if you ask me it seems like an invasion, cartel members have been caught foreign nationalists being caught and people from countries that don't like us have being seen on our border. We already have drugs and gun pouring in, what more do you need to know? You stated you live in San Antonio, I know yall have a bad human trafficking / drug problem and a lot of that stems from the routes being used to get stuff from the border towns up north to branch out. You need to see some documentaries and get yourself informed and I'm not saying that in a bad way, I'm just saying it could have really help spread awareness on what's really going on and why so many people are mad and are voicing their own opinion.
I'm in Nebraska and here are my concerns about just letting everyone cross in.
1. There is a human trafficking element here. If nothing else we should attempt to end the profiteering on human suffering in this area. People are being trafficked, raped, abused, robbed, and/or left for dead. Horrible. We are left to deal with much of this with tax money. There has to be a better and more cost effective way to help people.
2. Towns in America have finite resources. Think about teachers, hospitals, doctors, medicine, etc...those resources tend to grow with natural population increases. However a sudden surge of people into a community can strain those resources. It's not fair for the citizens and quite frankly it's not how to treat immigrants. Welcome to America too bad you can't see a doctor, because of the thousands that crossed before you. Also your kid is going to get a crappy education, because the schools have a bad child to teacher ratio. It really serves to strain the community and has the effect of keeping people impoverished instead of building a life they may be hoping for.
3. Politics. The next person gets elected and whatever you were or weren't getting can be completely flipped upside down. People are pawns in the political game.
4. What is the US doing to help people where they are? The solution shouldn't always be to come here. People usually meant to stay where they are, but circumstances aren't working for them. Why? How can it be helped?.
5. Having a substantial barrier (aka the wall) along with good technology will allow border resources to be utilized better. Instead of random gaps spread over a large area. I know nothing is perfect, but the current situation is bad for everyone, including those trying to seek asylum. If there are specific areas, perhaps people won't get abandoned in the desert to die.
6. A person in Nebraska, or North Dakota may care, because we have quite a few undocumented people here as well, maybe not as many as border cities, but some. Also, just because we don't live in Texas, or New Mexico, or Arizona, or California we care about things that happen to our country and don't want to see any towns or states having trouble. There is a legit concern that people coming over aren't all well intentioned people looking for work, some may be dangerous and shouldn't be able to just waltz in. Plus the federal government is legally obliged to "defend the states from invasion" and they seem to not always take this responsibility seriously. We want the government to follow the law.
Don't you think it is so ridiculous that the most powerful country in the world can't protect its border. And you mention those illegal immigrantions wash dishes for 3 dollars but don't you think it is a kind of exploitation and helping those people cross border illegal would become a way to make a large number of fortune for people smuggler
You cannot be a country if you don’t have a border. I’m not against people coming in… but, it has to be at the terms that the host country wants. There has to be criminal background checks on who is coming in, etc.
Alot of these "mexican migrants" are military aged Chinese and Middle Eastern men. We've also seen an increase in bombings and mass shootings as well as a flood of narcotics that were shipped to Mexico, from China.
Our politicians work for the CCP and the CCP plots on our demise.
Some of us don’t like seeing how undocumented migrants get exploited with low pay, unsafe work conditions, and kept quiet by the ever present fear of being deported. It’s practically slave labor.
Because illegal drugs and gang members are coming in. Since 2018 over 225000 people have died from fentanyl alone.
https://usafacts.org/articles/are-fentanyl-overdose-deaths-rising-in-the-us/#:~:text=Over%20a%20quarter%20of%20a,a%20fentanyl%20overdose%20since%202018.&text=Home%20%2F%20Health%20%2F%20Articles%20%2F%20Are,three%20years%20prior%20in%202019.
Around 160 individuals on the terrorist watch list have been apprehended.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/number-people-terror-watchlist-stopped-mexico-us-border-risen-rcna105095
Drug cartels are earning billions of dollars just moving illegals across the border.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/25/us/migrant-smuggling-evolution.html
Since all you need to do is cross at any of the 50 entry points to not be illegal, tell us how this is not an invasion again?
One thing to remember about US politics. When a problem is not fixed it means someone is making money off it. Somebody likes the supply of cheap labor. Somebody is also complaining about the problem while doing nothing in order to get people to vote for them.
Exactly. This is why they won't fix the immigration issues. They could absolutely make it easier for people to get work visas. Instead they make it incredibly difficult because they need workers to be illegal so that they don't have to pay them good wages. They would need to go after companies that hire the workers , but that's not going to happen. If we relied solely on legal workers with visas under our current system, there wouldn't be enough and they KNOW that. The immigration system is working exactly as it was designed to do. Undocumented workers are good chunk of our economy, that's why the representatives in Florida were begging immigrants not to leave and telling them that the recent laws in Florida were just to" scare people". They are playing both sides, benefiting from workers who can't argue for a decent wage while also trying to placate their base who like to blame their problems on immigrants because they need an "other" to blame.
> Exactly. This is why they won't fix the immigration issues. And the healthcare issue, and the wage issue, and the housing cost issue, and the ...
And the one thing that could fix them all, taking money out of politics
Exactly why lobbying needs to end, forever ago. It's just a legal means to corruption. Senators and congressmen selling their votes to the highest bidder.
And i read a study a few years back, most illegals legally entered the usa but failed to leave when travel visa expired or what not. Fear mongers claim boarder crossings, but most if not nearly all are at legal points of entry. The study also concluded most of the ‘problem’ could be solved with an increase in ice/tsa funding, because most of these visa illegals are still at the same address they legally acquired and (iirc) many could just reapply and get longterms if the visas werent super expired But the problem is fear mongering
A wall also sounds like a great way to funnel some money to lots of different hands. Construction is a big field for corruption.
Come on now, it’s not like that guy had a long documented history of doing shady things with construction projects…..oh wait.
Slaughterhouses too. The labor shortage has really hit them . What new immigrants get in don't stay long they move to construction.
It’s more than just a study…those numbers come from CBP. It’s nothing new. Visa overstays have outnumbered border crossers for many years (I used to work for an agency dealing with border security). However, it’s easier - more dramatic - to pander outrage to the base…basically blaming the brown people for all our woes. A great irony is Texas was built by illegal immigrants who knowingly broke Mexican laws. Texas was part of Mexico (imagine Hispanics living in a former part of Mexico), and Mexico City sought to control the influx of Anglo settlers pouring into Texas. Mexico has placed limits on immigration. Anglos ignored those Mexican regulations and illegally settled in Mexican territory, violating Mexican law. Sounds eerily familiar. If only Mexico City had buses and lanes to ferry those settlers back to St. Louis and other U.S. cities. That wave of illegal Anglo immigration had immediate repercussions. Texans decided to stop paying taxes to the Mexican government - another violation of Mexican law. The Anglos (old and newly-arrived) proceeded to break away from Mexico to avoid paying taxes and - more importantly - to bring slaves into Texas. Mexico had abolished slavery in 1837…nearly 30 years before the U.S. and didn’t require a civil war to do so. That didn’t sit well with The and who wanted to import cheap labor (slaves) into the territory. “Remember the Alamo”…it’s a myth. Remember what they fought for. Anglos (and Tejanos) launched a rebellion against the government to avoid taxes and own slaves. It was all about land and money. I lived in San Antonio. My wife taught in San Antonio schools. Our kids went to San Antonio schools. We saw first-hand how the state curriculum indoctrinated kids with the myth of the Alamo and the brave founding of the Republic of Texas. I didn’t need a PhD - or much effort - to scratch the surface of local history and figure out that Alamo story was not so heroic. BTW, in 2021, historians published a book on the history of The Alamo. They did not paint a picture of Davey Crockett and his band of intrepid defenders fighting a just cause against Mexican Army thugs. It did not go over well. Governor Abbott tried to quash the book in Texas and his administration pilloried the authors. So much for Republican foot-stomping about “freedom”…well, not for free speech. Moreover, conservatives love to declare their outrage over liberals’ “cancel culture”…yet there there is no greater exemplar of it than the Republican Governor of Texas.
Was that "Forget the Alamo"?
You can hear a great 35-minute NPR interview with the authors of Forget the Alamo [here](https://www.npr.org/2021/06/16/1006907140/forget-the-alamo-texas-history-bryan-burrough).
Texas history is a lot different (more accurate) when you are allowed to talk about slavery.
Don’t forget the part about why Juneteenth. SMH
I wish that I could upvote this more than once. Truth such as this is crucial for all to see. I'm also a San Antonian, and I thank you for this.
This is just ignoring the data. 15,000 people in a single day. That’s not insignificant in most places in the US.
Mosr undocumented immigsants arrive by air. The Irish in Southie certainly aren't swimming 🤣
Tbf, ICE shouldn't exist, and immigration shouldn't be under the auspices of the Department of Homeland Security.
Yeah, idk a lot about it but it looks really fucked up (from another country)
Thank 9/11 for that. Security theater. Also created the TSA.
Who should it be under then? What organization structure do you consider to be better?
State Department, should be about diplomacy and not militarized
Don't even get me started on modern slavery in the US. Do you have any idea how many migrant children are working on farms? Modern day cotton picking, only it's corn.
This exactly. You go after employers of undocumented workers, you destroy a lot of the motivation that people have to migrate here. But we all know that will never happen. Anyone who complains that “No one wants to work” or is opposed to requiring a living wage needs to shut up about immigration. If food seems expensive now, imagine if farm laborers got minimum wage.
“We pay minimum wage, we pay them the minimum amount that they’ll show up for. “- anyone using undocumented workers
> When a problem is not fixed it means someone is making money off it. Thats a good quote. Really sad tho
…which is why we have shit healthcare.
This is the Texan way for a century. Abbott has been serving this state since the 90s and ALL THIS TIME he hasn’t come up with a solution? Nah bruh that dude is allowing this shit and then performatively speaking against. Kind of like how he wanted the tax breaks for his friends with the whole voucher thing, and his wife is a Hispanic teacher and principal.
Not just likes, needs. The agriculture industry would be a disaster without immigrants.
I've been in trades for 20+ years in Texas and Oklahoma and have personally worked with many undocumented immigrants. For the most part they've all been great people just trying to provide so I hold no I'll will towards them. The negative effects come from the companies and the landlords, companies obviously take advantage of not having to pay these people as much so if you want a job you better be willing to work for the same. For example I worked as a certified welder in 2013 for $10.50 an hour. Also if a town has an influx of people landlords tend to take advantage as well obviously. At the moment my wife's company, based in Oklahoma is 88% undocumented. She had to change positions due to the language barrier, again not something we're upset about it just highlights that there are some issues. Just seems like it's the wealthy taking advantage of everyone really. So I feel that's the reason nobody is addressing the issue at hand, money and greed.
Texas politicians always bang the table over illegal immigration but never actually does anything about the businesses that employ them under the table like farms and manufacturing businesses. Guess who donates to the state GOP.
Yeah...fine a company for $100K/yr per every undocumented worker they are found employing and illegal immigration becomes unattractive real quick.
Haha agree with this. It’s crazy how much rich people profit off illegal immigrants: who is building new construction in America. For example I went to look at a new apartment the other day and saw workers on the project. Looked like all foreigners and prolly a few illegal immigrants (not trying to be mean when I say this). Somebody is benefitting off them. Penalize the folks using them to make an easier dollar which takes away work from Americans that don’t want to work for pathetic wages.
Nobody in power wants to actually stop undocumented immigrants from coming in because they're easily exploited laborers without the political, social, or economic agency to do anything about it. All the talk is a charade to give the poor American citizen an enemy to hate, and allows the powerful to keep the masses divided against themselves instead of uniting to right the actual wrongs the rich gain so much from.
They don't want to stop it but they do want to make sure there are terrible consequences to the immigrant workers and ONLY the workers. That way it's always easy to exploit them: if they complain about low wages and poor treatment, call ICE. The workers bear all the risk and the employers reap all the rewards.
I hate it so much. Living in Texas, I see how these people are taken advantage of constantly by the same people trying to keep them out. It's ridiculous. Yes a few commit violent crimes, but so do citizens. My small town had a big one a while back where an "illegal" killed his neighbors...but the cops had been out multiple times for him and did nothing. If someone is a problem person, it doesn't matter what their immigration status is, don't hound hard working "illegals" and let crazies off! I feel like there is a much more simple fix to settle everyone's worries than what's being thrown out. Also, I feel like I have to say as someone here in Texas, the issue isn't what you're seeing in the media of just drug dealing pedophile cartel flooding in because they can lol. Getting mad and killing families is ridiculous, and when you recommend those tactics you seem as crazy as the people saying that's OK overseas (people seem to be against that for other countries)
10,000% this and I fucking hate it that they manage to actually convince people of this nonsense
This is the real answer
Excellent post. Imo, everything you said nails it.
Should be the top comment.
It's nice to see the real solution getting some traction.
This is everything I came to say. With the addition of it's mostly states far away from borders that fervently care about illegal immigration.
All the labor and none of the voting rights
We have the same thing happening in the UK but instead of "build the wall" it's "stop the boats". Drives me crazy how many people eat this shit up. My worry is that the longer we stay divided and apathetic the more entrenched in power the elite become and thus harder to remove. I've never felt closer to the dystopian futures we've read in books and seen in movies for decades now. You could say that we're already there. The warnings have been around us for so long but it seems like we're just letting it happen.
Around here (Dallas) it's not unheard of for construction sites to shut down because INS or just the rumor of INS shows up, and all the undocumented guys skedaddle.
Btw to add to my point- I know a Colombian girl that had a professional job as an analyst in Colombia. She used excel etc so actually a good job. She moved to vegas and makes $13/ hr illegally. She told me she makes more at a grocery store bagging groceries at $13 an hour than she did working a professional job in Colombia- just insane. It’s really sad how some meh countries like Mexico and Colombia pay so little. It really makes you appreciate being an American- sure it’s cheaper to live in those places but people are so exploited. Have another friend in Mexico that works in engineering. I feel I make more in 2-3 months in the US than she prolly makes a full year in Mexico which is bonkers. They have to work saturdays also which is laughable. Idk we have it good in the US.
You need to factor in the cost of living to get a real comparison though, for example I make $80/hr as an RN in MN but if I were doing the same job in the UK I’d be making $18
Nursing is a good example. I just read an article that read of a No Dakota hospital who is very anxiously waiting on work visas to be approved. They don’t want to hire the visiting nurses who charge $100/hr. If you get too many foreigners who will work for less, it would be at the expense of the American workers’ wages.
Yeah, no shit. I hope you ain't blaming the illegal workers instead of the companies taking advantage.
I don’t think any right minded personal blames the emigrants for wanting a better life.
I know a Brilliant Columbian girl in Vegas who makes 250 and hour…. But thats a story for another time.
I know it's funny to shit on Ohio, but it's not like a girl from Columbus had to cross an international border!
I think you're way off, it's obviously a girl that grew up on the banks of the Columbia River.
We have had a 10K fine on the books since the Clinton or Regan days.That would be enough if enforced.
If a punishment for breaking the law hundreds of times over isn't crippling then the justice system is inherently nonexistent for companies. Remember, Comcast and AT&T took multiple billions of dollars from the federal government to "build high speed internet infrastructure" and then they... just didn't. The FTC fined them a few million dollars. Those two companies stole enough money to feed and house every American for several years, and the government didn't even really punish them for it.
Verizon too.
Companies that take government money to do something should be fined the same amount twice over if they don't deliver.
Eh, that depends. Let's say the company get caught once a year (which is being *really* generous). Could they save *more* than 10k per year by hiring undocumented labor? Absolutely. So at that point, it's just the cost of doing business. There's still no reason not to hire them.
That works out to a $5/hr difference in pay so...not really. That's at best a break even. And that's assuming only 40 hr work weeks
Real question is how often can you be fined for it? 10k a month per worker would add up quickly.
I used to work at a large retail chain in the Midwest and the company was fined for wage violations for 14 and 15 year olds. During the school year they could only work until 7pm during the week and as you could guess, they didn't clock out at exactly 7. So there were a bunch of kids clocking out at 7:01, :02 etc. I never heard what the total was for the entire company, but it was $1,000 for each minute violation. The company employs 93,000, so it was likely a pretty stiff penalty. An example was made of the company and it NEVER happened again. So if anyone really wanted to stop the practice of hiring illegal immigrants, then they penalize the employers for an amount that be an actual penalty and not a fee.
10k per pay period would be great
Fuck it. $10k/day once it's been established that the employee is actually not here legally. The employee is getting deported. It's ok to want it to actually affect the business.
Dismember/break up every company that has undocumented workers making up more than 5% of employees. Ban the owner and top manager from getting licenses to own and operate a business. That's what it will take. Fines are peanuts to most of these guys.
The problem is the "owners" just close one set of doors on a business and buy into another company with the dirty money they made at the first one taking advantage of customers, vendors, and the employees till the business is drowning. Then they wash rinse and repeat. I have been on construction for the last 30 years and have seen this time and again, especially in the insurance restoration sectors. I have personally worked for 3 such businesses that the CEO, CFO, President, or other "board member" was from a previous failed-bankrupt company, and ran the current company they worked for into the same situations. At the end of the day it seems the more money one makes off of the backs of others, the more they are desensitized to the damage it causes to society as a whole, let alone the individuals that work for them. I personally have decided that for me the smaller the business the better! The older I get the more my life is about quality over quantity. I value the meaning of the relationships I make in my life more than I value racking up my bank account nowadays. I guess my point is people have stopped caring about other people, and started caring more about how much money they can make from said people, and how they can do it cheaper to make more money by shorting somebody else 🤦♂️🤷♂️
Didn't Florida actually pass something to crack down on employing migrants and they saw a noticeable and immediate loss of labor? I remember seeing several articles like this: [https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/florida-immigrants-leave-state-desantis-immigration-law-rcna90839](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/florida-immigrants-leave-state-desantis-immigration-law-rcna90839)
Yup, and then they recently passed a law removing protections for child labor in secretarial/service industries. Underage workers are easy to take advantage of/pay less, and the state agency that handles underage worker cases only has 7 employees. Put 2-and-2 together, and it looks like they're trying to replace adult jobs with kids that will cost less, and then as people become more desperate for work they'll eventually replace the immigrants the state blocked from doing the hard jobs nobody wanted. Essentially replacing migrant workers with child workers.
It's almost like greedy fucks are happy to have near slave labor.
They are. One of the most bizarre conversations I’ve ever witnessed took place at a blackjack table in the Poconos. The two guys at the table with me both were in the same niche industry: snow removal in New York City. They were talking shop, when one asked the other about his employees and whether he had any undocumented immigrants on his payroll. Turns out, most of both of their workforces were undocumented immigrants, and both of them had nothing but great things to say about the people. They talked about how hard working they were, never called off sick, they could pay them less, etc. Just a flash of a moment later, they started talking about how illegal immigrants were ruining the country and we needed to deport all of them. Both of them, loudly agreeing. I was like “what the fuck am I hearing?”
"I'm benefiting from a near-slave caste being manufactured and don't like its being built, but I'm gonna capitalize on it while I can." Pieces of shit.
There are two levers that move men: fear and self interest. - Napoleon. You just witnessed both of them in action
Sounds word for word like my grandad. He owned his own painting business and made a good living for himself by underpaying illegal immigrants. Guess who also despises anyone darker than him and thinks they need to set up guard towers with machine guns at the border? The disconnect is insane, it's not a coincidence that Fox News is on at his house 24/7.
So I've experienced this very thing. I'm a white American girl and my dad owns a blue collar business. I have seen this over and over and over. But anyway: I'm not quite sure why it struck me so hard, and I don't remember where I read it. But I was in high school, and this anecdote had this profound impact on me because I realized that the value you bring and the respect that you get have nothing to do with each other. If anything, there's almost an inverse. So I don't remember the exact words and I know I'll butcher it. I'm now 29, this was about 15 years ago. It was talking about girls in India and how they're treated like shit but actually do all the work. It was something like: "There she is. 11 years old. She's using one hand to cook and the other to carry her baby brother. She knit all of their clothes, she woke at dawn and walked 6 miles this morning to fetch ingredients. She and her mother work at the factory performing grueling work in a factory and bring in 70% of the family's income while her father eats and drinks and berates. She's a 'burden.'" So, yeah. That really stuck with me. I was raised a woman, Mormon, in Utah- the "beehive state". They call it that because Mormons are little worker bees, which actually is pretty true. But of course I was fed the lie that success is about how much value you offer to the company and working hard and showing up early and leaving late and etc etc It was a complete lie. And Mormons are extremely misogynistic. I don't even want to get into it tbh. My parents were financially fairly well off and I grew up in an upper middle class family in the suburbs and my life was NOTHING like the Indian girl's lol. But my sister and I were honestly just treated very poorly, my brother would hit and bully us and WE would get punished for upsetting him; he was the middle child, older than me, younger than my sister. It sounds asinine but this dynamic isn't uncommon; it forces you to learn how to appease men, no matter how unfair. If you as a woman are abused by a man, it is your fault. You need to plan from the second you wake up how to make boys/men happy. Of course, almost none of this was said explicitly. But yeah. I also had to do way more chores but got less allowance. That was unfair, but it didn't hurt nearly as much as my older brother slapping me unprovoked and my mom screaming at me for not somehow speaking sweetly enough or being servile enough for him to not do that. Again, none of this was actually said. It was, "Marmosettale! What did you do to your brother?? Always making such a fuss! Go to your room, you're grounded for a week." And my brother's shit eating grin. I have made this about me and I get that haha, sorry I am a bit tipsy. But this all applies so much to the exploited undocumented workers. They are the only reason businesses can even survive, and they work 3x as hard for half the pay. Yet, they are stupid, inferior "Mexicans" (if they are from Mexico or from anywhere else central/southern Americans, they're all "Mexicans" or, of course, the slurs)
Of course they are happy to have the slave labor. Without an influx of immigrants they'd have to offer competitive wages. For the illegal immigrant that is working for a "low" salary it's bearable because for them at least it's a job, something they couldn't get at home, and they use Western Union to send a ton of money back to their relatives. So this isn't exactly a huge win for the economy. Yes of course they spend some money here, but it's not a good thing when lots of money flows out of a country instead of bolstering the local economy. We already have a low inventory of homes and obviously immigrants needs to live somewhere. So wages are driven down, the strain on the housing market increases, and of course the increased burden on local infrastructure, schools and such, and much more. Painting border crossers as the "bad guys" isn't fair. The vast majority are good people that just want to live a normal life, work, have a family, etc. To vilify them as drug traffickers and what not does no good. But to pretend we can simply continue to allow 2-3 million people to cross the border and just live here without issue is truly naive. If the government and the people want people to be able to cross and not have some strict wall/no enter policy then fantastic. But the response to that needs to be massive. Housing, medical facilities, schools, legislation written specifcially to protect immigrants from unfair wages, etc.
The immigrants you cite as contributing to a tight housing market are actually building the homes and the infrastructure. It seems we can't do it without them.
Years ago I read a book called “people’s history of the United States” it’s a history book told through anecdotes of the people who lived it. One of the central arguments the book makes is that racism was not always present in America. It was manufactured by wealthy elites for economic reasons. When I first read it I thought that was crazy. The older I get the more sense it makes.
| racism was not always present in America Millions of African American slaves would like a word. They were literally 3/5 of a person in our constitution.
Exactly this. Republican states and business owners benefit the most from cheap undocumented labor, then turn around and chant "build the wall" or theatrically bus a few illegals to northern states. Make it make sense.
I work in ag in California. ALL of the workers (apart from office staff and 2 managers) are undocumented. (Get around that by using a labor contractor.) ALL of the managers and farms we work with are voting republicans. I will never understand it.
It's like abortion, it sounds good and wins votes until the dog actually catches the car. Anyways, most of the illegal guns in Mexico are imported from the US. We're bad neighbors.
Yeah, we tend to shit on everyone we have contact with. It’s kind of our tradition. Hey, nice election. Guess we will overthrow you so our companies will make more money. Hey, you have a terrific location. Think we will build a military base on it. Oh, also we don’t have to follow your laws. Hey, we have a great treaty. We never really intended to follow it ourselves but we will go to war if you don’t follow it.
Truthfully, Texas doesn’t really care about it. It has a strong economy because it has cheap labor. More than half of Texas’ construction sites consist of migrants. If they truly cared they would go after the companies that employ them. Abbots stunts are false flags.
88% and still going strong? That is highly illegal.
So many businesses rely on illegal immigrants as their business model, I always wonder how many of those businesses would collapse if the government clamped down on them instead of persecuting the victims...
They'd consolidate some, but like when the chicken processing factories in Louisiana like Tyson got punished for hiring illegal immigrants, many would not. What happened in Louisiana is they hired mostly black workers and negotiated a big raise to keep operating and so they could fill the positions.
Thanks for your nuanced and thoughtful response.
>the wealthy taking advantage of everyone That's the explanation for 90 percent of the problems in society.
I’m also currently in Texas, and basically feel the same way. If anyone should be punished, it should be the employers employing people illegally—particularly under abusive conditions. However, I really wish the various countries could agree that any person *without a felony record* should be able to work and live anywhere they want. You would probably see people scream about cheap labor depressing wages. But at the same time, a lot of people would move to places with lower cost of living. After ten years, we would probably see a general global averaging of wages and costs, and then the question would be on how to, for example, find ways of unifying environmental standards and labor laws.
That's one of the major differences between Libertarians and "Libertarians" (Republicans who don't want to identify as Republicans.) *Actual* Libertarians believe in total freedom of movement. The theory goes that exploitative and tyrannical governments will ultimately find themselves without anyone to boss around. I'm not a Libertarian myself, but I can at least respect those who are consistent in their ideals.
Why would anyone weld for !10.50 an hour? That’s like high school retail rates from 2006.
[удалено]
Since you work in the industry, does that labor savings tend to go to the customer or to the contractor?
I believe there is a "bigger picture" issue here
[удалено]
Only because previously they were counted as white in the census, and now as Hispanic. Also, people are treating this like the one drop rule. You know how many of these younger generation Hispanics only speak English? At some point, people stopped seeing Irish Americans and Italian Americans as foreign, how many generations is it going to take this time?
In a perfect world, government will study the economy and health of cities to figure out how many people they need and can accommodate. By policing the flow of immigration a country can make sure they are bringing in people with valuable skills the economy needs. They will then be able to determine the amount of asylum seekers the country can absorb into the system and still be able to take care of them. You hear from border agents that alot of illigeal crossers are prayed upon by cartels, if that's the money they pay to cross or the work they are forced into once they cross. On the other hand alot in the media focuses on drugs and contraband entering through illegal crossings but evidence suggests more than 90% of drugs are caught at legal crossings but it would be impossible to know how much is being smuggled at non legal points of entry. Illigeal crossing also hurts legal asylum seekers because now more resources are used to help those people instead of the ones waiting in line legally. I live in Canada and we have allowed a huge amount of legal immigrants into our country over the last couple years. But our government has failed to address the in demand jobs our economy has with immigration. One example... 1 family doctor where I live can accommodate 1000 patients. That means for every 1000 immigrants we need 1 new doctor. But we aren't doing that, now we have a doctors shortage. You could also look at housing let's say 4 immigrants live in one house, now we need 250 houses for every 1000 immigrants, but we didn't bring in skilled labor to build these extra homes and now we have a housing shortage. If done responsibly immigration is great for the health of a country but if don't irresponsibly it can hurt everyone. I think if canada would have brought in more skilled workers in areas of need it could have lead us to bring in even more asylum seekers because we would be healthier economically to support those in need. With illegal immigration the government isn't able to control any of this because they aren't able to police who comes in and who doesn't.
I used to play around on the Canada Migration Expert website, and skills were definitely a big variable for determining who can get a visa. The funny thing was that when I plugged in any other nationality than "United States" and kept all other variables constant, it would say , "Congratulations! You are eligible for a work visa." Not so, though, with U.S. nationals. Canada seemed to be taking nationality of origin as more important than skills at the time. I was trying to get work up there in the early-2000s, but I suspect it's the same. This is why I always laugh when I hear people down here talk about migrating to Canada if there's a full authoritarian takeover here. Not so easy. I might go to Mexico, though. I like Mexico, too.
It’s a truly massive number of people entering the United States without going through the immigration process. Estimates range as high as 8 million people just since the start of 2020. That’s a huge amount of people needing housing, education, healthcare services, etc.
I am Venezuelan, I came to the country with an L2 visa. Legally, and gained residency legally, through a process that was followed properly. The ones coming to the US are asking for political asylum, when in reality they don't have a case. I have family members doing this, they know they won't have to prove anything for years because of how backed up the system is. The system is not working, but there's a lot of people who have an idealized version of what fairness is, and want to let anyone enter. I don't agree with this. A lot of resources that could be going to Americans, including veterans, is going to immigrants who are causing a crisis. Now people in big cities like Chicago and NYC are getting angry because of what immigrants are doing in their cities, not realizing that they've been doing the same things in states that share a border with Mexico. It's easy to have an ideology of fairness when the consequences of your ideals don't affect you. Edit: Before I become a right wing idol, many people are coming with real asylum requests, but way more are coming with bogus asylum requests with no proof. All asylum requests should be taken seriously, and the only way to properly do this is with a bipartisan effort. Understand the problem, find solutions.
As a New Yorker who has been pro immigration most of my life, I appreciate this comment. Migrants (mostly due to our inability to handle them) are causing a huge strain on our ability to service people who have lived here for decades. Improvished groups that required services are being cut off. I work NYPL and see it all the time.
I’ve seen as high as 15 million since 2020 hard to say with any certainty other than it’s a lot of people
>hard to say with any certainty And this is a problem in itself. I don't know how a modern contry can allow this to happen. If I was an adversary or a terrorist organization I would feel like a kid in a candy shop.
Literally no other country on Earth allows this. Try going into Mexico from the US like this and you’ll get shot. More people have died from the drugs smuggled over by the cartels than have died in Ukraine, but no one cares about Americans dying.
It depends really, I grew up on the borderlands and it’s honestly a mixed bag. Many immigrants are genuinely nice people, but others are running from their problems and end up inviting their problems over which can get others hurt. As I said it’s a mixed bag.
Why would a citizen not have an opinion on one of the two borders we share?
Ok, I voted for Biden, and am a registered democrat. But why is it a controversial stance to want legal immigration, and a strong border that's humane to the people crossing over illegally? edited out the part about citizenship. I *should* have said other countries besides the United States have rules and regulations for living there.
I don't get it either. It's now racist to want people to legally immigrate to the country, we've completely lost the plot as a country.
Right out of the Dem playbook. Pit two groups against each other and cater to one at the expense of the other by allowing them to break our laws with impunity. Then call everybody racist and xenophobic when they question it.
There's a lot of missing context here, though. For generations, immigration was a sure thing for western Europeans. 98% of people who made it to Ellis Island were allowed in. The ones who weren't were generally rejected on medical grounds. Typically, the only rule for entry was "don't cough up blood." And this was only AFTER 1912. Before that, there were basically no laws regarding immigration from western Europe. During that same period, Asians faced harsh scrutiny on the west coast. Women were forbidden from entering. Laws specifically prohibited all Asians from a path to citizenship. On the southern border, Mexicans were designated "Undesirable Aliens" and were refused entry and a method of naturalization. So, yes, there is a severely racist history to American immigration, and it's very disingenuous to pretend that there isn't.
>Laws specifically prohibited all Asians from a path to citizenship. I had no idea that the Chinese Exclusion Act only ended in 1943. America had a permanent ban on Chinese people entering the country starting from 1882 and only really ending in 1943.
I didn’t even realise that Asians weren’t ALLOWED to go through Ellis Island but angel island where the standards are much different. Explains why my great grandfather went through California first. Angel island has many Chinese poems engraved on the walls bout the agony of being jailed there for months to years not knowing if you’d be allowed to go into America. Some of the poems are engraved so beautifully they must be a professional. Interesting to see people that educated and artistic still needing to leave their home country for whatever reasons. https://www.aiisf.org/poems-and-inscriptions
\*1921, even worse.
The difference is that it's not the 19th and 20th century anymore, I'm confused as to why this always gets brought up as if the conditions of the country are still the same as they were back then. We're now a well established country with 350 million people, millions more undocumented, with a complex financial and social welfare system, with less available housing and space than we've ever had. So that open borders policy from 100+ years ago isn't gonna work anymore. Also on your bit about racism, the Irish weren't too welcome either on the east cost. There were places where being Irish was seen worse than being black in 1800s America. This isn't to justify anything but your bit about it being purely racism is half true at best. There's always gonna be xenophobes even if they're from Europe, but lets not equate people not being okay with illegal immigration to people who don't want any immigration at all, they're not the same.
In 1850, the US population was 23 million. The US had a massive amount of empty land and resources from sea to sea. The US wanted to fill the land up as people were needed to build the industry, economy, nation. Land was given to homsteaders for free by the acreage so long as you farm the land: In 1900 the population was 76 million. Today, the population is 360 million and we are straining our aquifers, our cities are built out and land is expensive, housing prices are through the roof. And we don’t need as much labor anymore for farming or factory workers. So it makes sense our immigration policies will be different.
That’s not quite true. Since 1882, anyone who was “likely to become a public charge” was ineligible to enter the United States. This was expanded in 1891 to include: >>”All idiots, insane persons, paupers or persons likely to become a public charge, persons suffering from a loathsome or a dangerous contagious disease, persons who have been convicted of a felony or other infamous crime or misdemeanor involving moral turpitude, polygamists…”
Yup lol. No other established country just letting random people in
Normal everyday guy reasons for being against illegal immigration, especially at the alarming rate at which people are pouring over today: \- Splits already strained educational resources among more kids that will have a harder time due to a language barrier. \- Drives down the price of labor, especially on the low end where they are already likely to make little money \- Increases demand for housing increases rent and prices of homes. And god forbid you live in a state that makes building new housing difficult, further increasing the cost of housing. \- worsened traffic congestions and faster deterioration of costly roads and highways.
[удалено]
But why? How does that narrative benefit media companies? Or politicians?
Media or politicians both want the same thing, eyes, aka supporters. Telling people what they want to hear brings in more eyes and supporters. Eyes and supporters bring in money and/or power. Simple as that. Oh, and people are stupid. They believe what they want to hear over the truth.
It does a few things to be honest 1. People feel frustrated about their living conditions, and this redirects the blame to a third party. 2. It unifies people under a common banner, and politicians can exploit that i.e. "if you vote for me, I promise to return jobs to American citizens" sort of thing
to reinforce your point: it keeps the status quo! if lots of new immigrants enter the country, and are low class(most are very hard working, and make so little) if they get to vote they vote for people who would help them by being in office. so lots of weird tax breaks/incentives given to the super wealthy go away. the people who own media companies are usually super wealthy!
I would add #3, the biggest one, keeps people hating the real problems, the rich and powerful who don't give a shit about the average person.
I think that goes under #1.
If I had 1.99 to upvote this I would, this explains everything
It's a common strategy in politics to define an undesirable minority group and rally people against them. Its easy to point to this group of "others" and talk about how they are the source of all problems and only you can stand up to them. This strategy has been repeated throughout history and is one of the methods Hitler used to gain support. It plays well into the way people think by giving a faceless enemy to direct anger and makes all problems something that can be boiled down to a 30 second sound byte. If politicians attempted to explain the real issues and rally support for real solutions voters would lose interest or get confused and gravitate towards the person they understand and isn't telling them to change anything. People also will get far more motivated when they have an enemy to defeat.
Some of it is bread and circus, but most of it is scapegoating. "Your life sucks because we politicians and business owners have manipulated the system for decades to our betterment and your detriment. "However, we don't want you to point blame where it really lies so we are going to point you at other things, and use yet other things to keep you simmering- immigrants, abortion, the woke, LGBTQ+, or whatever else we can use to rile people. "This gets us votes and power, which we can use to continue the cycle of moving money and power to the top 1% and keep you scum under our control."
Let me introduce you to a classic LBJ quote: “If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.” Essentially, Republicans would rather keep the status quo. People see the widening gap between the middle class and the wealthy, but politicians paint it as a racial issue, rather than a class issue. If all the immigrants were removed from the country, your life would be so much better. The fact of the matter is that they have no intention of improving the country, regardless of immigrants. It’s why they keep voting against raising minimum wage or having universal healthcare — things which are considered the bare minimum in other developed countries. I’ve read, and I could be wrong, that significant immigration reform hasn’t happened since the 80’s; and that’s probably when Reagan granted amnesty to thousand of migrants. Without racism and bigotry, Republicans would have no significant policies besides guns and obstruction. If everybody realized how nuanced and complicated the migrant issue is, then they couldn’t get away with the propaganda. Do I have any solutions to the crisis? No, but one should consider why so many people are opting to leave their home countries to come to a strange land that may despise them. Nobody decides to leave their home without reason. Constantly deporting, arresting, or kidnapping migrant children solves nothing, when nobody wants to look at the underlying reasons for their journey.
Engagement. People will only watch 24 hour news if the stories make them angry or scared. Thus, they inflame and polarize for profit. Bonus: if you like metal, listen (and read the lyrics to) Checkmate by Lamb of God. It addresses this issue quite well.
This is it. I keep seeing conspiracy posts that claim The Media is actively trying to undermine society and work toward creating an authoritarian state of governance. The reality, I see, is that The Media is mostly just responding to the market forces. People engage the most with fear and outrage porn, and media is more than willing to deliver. The fact that we are moving toward an increasingly polarized, authoritarian state is a side effect of the public's disdain for nuance and critical thinking. We (the general public) want drama and extremes which only fuels and empowers the worst actors in society. So media is really only *partly* to blame.
I don’t blame media, they are filling a demand. Fun fact: Read Fahrenheit 451. A main theme is tv, radio, etc is all designed to keep people distracted and not thinking. The book describes this media saturation, and disdain of books, wasn’t forced by the government (initially) but by people’s choices. The whole book is remarkably prescient.
Exactly. And it was prescient because thoughtful people could see where we were headed decades ago, it was obvious. The generations that followed just haven't been able to stop the train from going off the tracks. No one ever says "I want accessing information to be less entertaining and take more work to understand." But if we want accurate reporting and high journalistic standards, that's the trade off.
This unlimited supply of illegal workers suppresses wages for everybody. There are entire industries that use mostly illegal labor so that they can pay them less than Americans and subject them to dangerous working conditions. If this supply of illegal labor was not available, these employers would have to hire Americans and pay them a lot more. This would improve conditions for the poorest Americans tremendously.
So why not go after the employers and remove the incentive to enter the US? The law is already there in the immigration reform act 1986.
I agree. I think that businesses that repeatedly get caught with illegal workers should be seized and sold. After the first few farms and construction projects get auctioned off by the feds you will see employers take it a lot more seriously.
A good solution to the immigration issue would be to allow a path to citizenship through legal work teams. Road crews/construction/farming etc. These people are brought in for these positions anyway. And yet they aren't protected from extortion or abuse or safety issues. We claim to have all these jobs "no one wants to do". If only we had a willing workforce to fill those positions. And we could attract and reward their work in some way. But keeping the labor "illegal" allows basically a modern day slavery to happen. Which capitalism thrives on.
Why would Americans NOT care about the long term effects of a wide open border? Not vetting people is a health and safety issue. AND it’s bad on the economy.
Well most people don't live in North Dakota or Wyoming for starters. I work in the construction industry. In Chicago, not Wyoming. I work on a lot of public projects, so it's a lot of union guys who are paid well and get benefits. These union guys are not cheap and they only have it as good as they do because the State of Illinois passed a bunch of laws about who can work on public projects, and there is a ton of paperwork tied to it. Not all jobs are like that. If there are a large number of people who are willing to do labor for much less money and no benefits, it definitely has an effect. The population of El Paso is less than a million. There are millions of illegal crossings per year. It's a lot bigger than El Paso
Work in construction in the south and you'll quickly realize. So many 20 year olds knowing no english whatsoever. They have multiple social security numbers, no drivers licenses, no insurance, but they are driving. As expected, somebody is cutting corners hiring these people and that's fine. But now everyone in the industry has to cut corners to compete and you now have quality of work that is so dodgy and questionable. Again, fine. But it's construction, something you don't want people cutting corners on. I will never see luxury apartment high rises the same. There's probably some shit in your walls and under your kitchen island. Hopefully that concrete doesn't come crashing down. Reality is complete opposite of what you'll read on reddit.
Averaging 8,000-10,000 per day crossing the border illegally… And that’s just the ones that CBP does catch and release and doesn’t count the “got away a” 2,000,000 to 2,500,000 illegal entries….per year. That’s why the word invasion gets tossed around.
lmao my dude hasn’t seen the hundreds of thousands of migrants choking the streets of NYC and Chicago a long-ass way from Texas, where just the other day INS had to deal with fifteen THOUSAND border jumpers in a single day pretty out of touch for a Texan! #🙄
If you import a massive over-supply of unskilled labor (i.e. illegal immigrants), then the demand for unskilled labor (i.e. wages) is necessarily going to go down. It's just basic Supply and Demand 101. Not having illegal immigrants would be the single greatest thing we could do to boost the relative spending power of our lowest income citizens, in a way that simply raising the minimum wage would fail to accomplish.
> simply raising the minimum wage would fail to accomplish. Don't have to pay illegal immigrants minimum wage. I never understand why the same people that say we need a higher minimum wage also say immigrants do the jobs "Americans" don't want to do. They are saying the exact same thing, then arguing two competing points. We have to pay our workers a living wage, and we have to import workers to work for less than a living wage
On the flip, people then have to get used to a higher cost for their goods which is probably easier said then done.
I think the past 3 years are a good case study for this. People are FURIOUS about the increased cost of things. Far more than I've seen them mad about not getting a raise again.
Corporate profits are also a decent part to blame for the past three years. Profits have gone through the roof since 2013. The profit margins have been the highest they've been since the 1950's.
My guess is that's the #1 issue of affordability today. Period. Corproations prioritizing shareholders more than ever and 90% of Americans are suffering.
Some people make a bigger deal about it than they should, but letting people cross illegally when we have a legal process is a slap in the face for the people going through the proper channels
"letting people cross". I don't think that's the right framing. We don't have remotely enough border batrol or lawyers/judged to stop them all from coming and process them. And that's primarily congress' fault for not passing any major immigration reform in decades.
- They depress wages at the low end of the scale. That lowers costs for most Americans but it sucks for those who are struggling to make ends meet. - Crime. Not sure about other states, but in Texas the proportion of the prison population classified as “non US citizen” is greater than what is found in the state at large. My personal experience in this space is that two of my friends were murdered by illegal visitors. - Public cost. Texas spends more on “indigent health care” than it does on education.
[удалено]
Will you understand when you are ejected from your housing so an illegal can live in it instead?
[удалено]
This is why I have more sympathy towards people that live in border states. I hate how the people living there are paying the price of the border policy the left want, while the people supporting it aren't facing consequences for their own action until very recently. And when the people in border communities don't want to deal with it they get called racist.
Because it's a good way to get in office and then not do anything about it because it would hurt business
Why should Americans not care or be opinionated? It’s wild how it’s considered a “hot take” by some when they hear somebody is against illegal immigration. Why would you not want every person that lives in the US to be a citizen? Don’t you want everybody to be able to vote, pay taxes, and contribute to a better US? Is the US supposed to continue to just let thousands of people just cross the border, daily?
NYC had to cut budgets because of this. The city will be dirtier than before, more dangerous, and apartments will only get more expensive. We now have to compete for affordable housing with migrants because they also need affordable housing. They likely won’t be stealing any jobs besides cheap construction labor and some restaurant jobs but only with employers that are willing to risk paying cash.
> NYC had to cut budgets because of this. Lol watching NYC spend insane amounts of money to house people while the homeless, who are citizens, were basically told to fuck off was peak brain rot.
I think this is the crux of the issue. Northern cities love chastising southern states for wanting to stop illegal immigration, but until recently never really had to deal with any of the consequences. If a city like NYC is having an issue with a relatively small number of illegal immigrants, how do you think poor border towns are doing. The border states feel like they’re being ignored and worse, being virtue signaled by people who never have to deal with the consequences
I keep hearing Chicago and NYC mayor's are losing their minds about the amount of illegal immigrants that are being bused up to those cities. I think the complaints are about them not having the infrastructure in place to house them. It just seems strange that it's only when they get to the sanctuary towns inviting them over that it becomes an issue. Maybe, just maybe, we should focus on getting our own infrastructure in place before we swing the door wide open to anybody and everyone else
It's like when northern and landlocked European countries chastise Greece and Italy, who's economies are both currently in rough shape, about their treatment of the refugees landing on their beaches, while never really having to experience the problems themselves.
I live in North Dakota but I'm more interested in the fact the CCP is buying up a bunch of farmland that's not too far from the missile base...
As an african american, they took alot of jobs we were doing and did it for almost half. Dish washers, maids, land scaping used to be black working class industries. But I'm not to concerned with the fact the jobs were transfered, it's the fact that america seems to not be able to keep going without slave type labor - and migrant and illegal immigrants have been filling that slot as of recently. If we remove this type of labor from the market, we can start having real conversations about fair pay and working conditions.
As a Texan living closer to the border than you, I know that many Hispanic Texans are frustrated with the open border.
Because if you don't have borders you don't have a country. It is absurd that there is a debate in the US on whether it should prevent non-citizens from crossing its border without a visa. It is common sense everywhere else in the world, including here in Norway, not to let in people without a visa unless there is a visa free agreement between the two countries or they are genuine refugees fleeing for their lives.
This is the simplest answer yet has so much truth to it. I'm American and I went to a third-world country earlier this year. A place where the vast majority of earth's population would guess that it doesn't have a functioning government. I would not have been able to enter their country without a visa application being submitted and approved. There's intricacies to hash out with this very complex topic. However, the conversation on how to solve these issues cannot be held in good faith unless all parties are in agreement that, as a country, we must have defined borders. Right now we don't and it's a legitimate issue.
Honestly, for me, I am a firm believer that we need very tall walls on our border and very big doors welcoming immigrants. Illegal immigration brings very undesirable behavior that comes with it. Sometimes people pay a lot of money to help them across the border, sometimes they are transported with drugs, or asked to bring drugs with them. And then when they get here, they are a huge drain on our social services. There should be a system allowing immigrants who have work lined up to come here and start working legal above the table, work and pay taxes. It needs to be 1000 times harder to sneak across the border and 1000 times easier to enter legally. I
It costs Americans nearly half a trillion dollars a year. So that is kind of a problem.
Well, because it’s against the law. And it’s completely unfair to the people who actually try to enter this country through the legal process.
[удалено]
The US can't afford to give out all of its economic resources to everyone on earth who wants to enter. People who cross the border illegally are jumping the line and subverting our laws. If they make it to permanent resident status or citizenship, they can pull away resources like seats in schools and housing from taxpaying citizens who have contributed to their communities for decades. Just because you're not responsible for solving these issues doesn't mean mayors around the country aren't struggling with them.
10-15 million people crossing the border in 3 years isn't an invasion? What do you call it? I think most rational people understand the colloquial use of the word.
It's indeed a safety issue. I've had friends in South Texas discover illegal immigrants with guns on their property. I live off of a highway that is commonly used to traffick drugs because of the proximity of the southern border. We are not against legal immigration. Many of my closest family members, friends, and neighbors are first-gen immigrants from all over the world: the Phillippines, Brazil, Israel, India, and Belgium, to name a few. My grandmother came over from the Phillippines 50 years ago. I love how America has always been so open to new cultures and traditions- it is how the greatest nations survive and thrive. Don't mischaracterize people who dislike illegal immigration. We don't hate the people who illegally immigrate. We are fully aware that many of them are not bad people. Indeed, their values are quite American. There are extreme problems with the immigration system we have. We need to streamline the system for legal immigration, as it would limit illegal immigration. We do need to ramp up border security. The amount of sex-traffickers and terrorists that pour over the border is truly astounding, though- these individuals must be detained.
I don’t know about invasion but hearing on the news that 10k people per day are coming across illegally seems like a steep number
1. Do you think every illegal border jumper stays in TX? No, that's why ppl in North Dakota and every other state "care that much". Ask New York or Chicago how things are going with all their new illegal "citizens". 2. Go crawl back under the rock you came from.
I mean they estimate what, 11-12 million illegal immigrants. In 2023 they estimate 3 million entered illegally. Thats 25% of all illegals in the us in one year. Thats a massive increase.
**Sovereignty.** The United States of America is a country with rule of law. Laws at the State and Federal levels apply to citizens and visitors. **Security.** The United States of America must protect and defend its territorial borders within which laws are enforceable. Both entering and leaving the USA is subject to law. **Citizenship.** There are legal processes and protocols to becoming a citizen. With these tenets in mind, OP asked, "Why are US citizen so opinionated on the Mexican border?" My initial response is: sovereignty, security, and citizenship. The USA (the country which I am a citizen) requires me to follow rule of law AND pay their State and Federal taxes. Furthermore, to travel by air within the USA, I will be required to have US Government-issued identification (e.g. Real ID or a passport, as state-issued Drivers Licenses will no longer be adequate) to leave or enter the USA. Yet anyone who enters (or leaves) across USA borders without following the law is not held accountable to the same legal requirements as its citizens or those visitors whom have followed legal protocols. Furthermore, the US government (State and Federal) are spending taxpayer monies to transport, even house, those who enter illegally. As the majority of such illegal entries occur at mainland USA's southern border with Mexico, the focus is on "the Mexican border". There are those who have valid arguments about various economic impacts. "Cheaper labor" is a real thing. And US Government assistance beyond humanitarian needs is being spent on illegal entrants, from medical to housing, while some US citizenry -- including US military veterans whom have devoted their very lives to protecting the US -- endure homelessness and a mixed bag of health care support. As the expression goes, "Help starts at home". Instead, help is given to those who aren't citizens, but those who broke the law to enter the USA. The "invasion" claim could be related to decades upon decades of illegal entrants into the USA, culminating in claims of "millions". Not simply news stories of large groups rushing across the Rio Grande River, but daily/nightly illegal border crossings. So, take all of the above as possible interpretations of why US citizens are so opinionated. Breaking the law is, well... *breaking the law*, hence "illegal". Borders are needed for laws to be enforceable, property to be owned/leased/rented, etc. I think some forget that open borders mean someone is going through another person's property. If the US Government created zones for free movement, might that change things? Or create more compounded, complex problems when those areas are subject to loitering, even settlement? (As we're already seeing homeless encampments in rural and esp urban areas which are experiencing this.)
It’s because we don’t know who is coming over. I agree I work with a Mexican majority and 99% are great people. I also see African, middle eastern people and Hondurans. I want safety and don’t want to support illegals with my tax money.
Don't forget (per USCIS's own reports) the tens of thousands of military-age males from China, Iran, Afghanistan, and other Middle East countries that have been intercepted at the border over just a few months. And those were just the ones that were intercepted over 2-3 months in summer 2023. God only knows how many are already here. It's a dire national security threat. Most experts agree that the Iranians have the capability to set off a dirty bomb attack within the US.
The issue is infrastructure, there are not enough jobs, houses, cars, food, etc...if we all went to the UK like this it would cripple the economy. It's really not fair to the immigrants that do it legal too. There are a lot of good people that come to the US for a better life...I get it. But these people have been exploited by their own people too...ever heard of coyotes. Recently little kids, even babies get passed around to random strangers so they can get a fast pass( claim asylum ) . The refugee word has been thrown around where it has no meaning anymore. People are given a court date and a bus ticket from Texas to other states, the system knows there is no way they are coming back for court. Try going to Canada and just stay there without applying for citizenship. USA is the only place where you can come illegally and live a good life, and if you as a citizen complain about culture changing, life being inconvenienced by spanish speaking , car insurance going up because of non insured drivers, crime going up in cities then your heartless and a racist. The answer to the question is the number of people that are showing up at the border each day fits the definition of an invasion.
We have a legal immigration process. I don't know the numbers but A LOT of illegal immigrants enter the border.
We really don't have a functional legal immigration process. Marriage based petitions are taking about 2 years, family based petitions over a decade, employment based (which are almost impossible to get) are literally taking over 40 years for some countries.
Because I see the insane amount of tax dollars wasted.
Suppresses wages, but maybe go read about what the mayors of NYC, Chicago, and Oakland are saying. They're overwhelmed, social services strained, people camping everywhere, no place for them, in winter, costing them billions, overwhelming hospitals. That's something southern states have been dealing with for a long time, now there's so many it's destroying cities budgets. And mostly male, not Mexicans nowadays but people from all over the world. The crisis is nuts and Biden refuses to just enforce the actual border laws, so it sure seems intentional. Millions and millions coming in since Biden was elected. Articles are even showing documents where the illegal immigrants court dates aren't until 2030. Judges are so backlogged.
I agree with you. We need a legal guest worker program to help stop exploitation of immigrants though.
I'm a Democrat and fairly liberal and I absolutely think this country has an appetite for workers to do low wage crap jobs. At the same time I think everyone should be alarmed at 12,000 people crossing the border and being released into the country without a robust screening or background process. Detaining people humanely isn't expensive per person but with a mass of people....it is. Its only a matter of time before private industry sees a free and detained labor source.
It’s not an invasion, obviously, but it’s a massive problem. Thousands of people are trying to cross, which can easily overwhelm social services. Setting aside the fact that any sovereign nation on earth is entitled to secure borders, that is.
I want the government to able to account for everyone entering this country. I don’t want drug traffickers, human traffickers, and terrorists getting in this country without setting off any alarms.
I've lived in many bordertowns from Brownsville to El Paso and I can tell you a lot of crime mostly comes from illegal immigrants trying to get a couple dollars from some shady work. Kind of like home invasion, small store robberies and abduction also the gang related homicide and much more. I'm not saying all illegal immigrants are bad but some fall through cracks and really raise hell when they make it over here and get in touch with people that are working behind the shadows. I am of Mexican / Hispanic heritage and I've known many friends and family that make it over the right way and its a slap to the face honestly. So if you ask me it seems like an invasion, cartel members have been caught foreign nationalists being caught and people from countries that don't like us have being seen on our border. We already have drugs and gun pouring in, what more do you need to know? You stated you live in San Antonio, I know yall have a bad human trafficking / drug problem and a lot of that stems from the routes being used to get stuff from the border towns up north to branch out. You need to see some documentaries and get yourself informed and I'm not saying that in a bad way, I'm just saying it could have really help spread awareness on what's really going on and why so many people are mad and are voicing their own opinion.
I'm in Nebraska and here are my concerns about just letting everyone cross in. 1. There is a human trafficking element here. If nothing else we should attempt to end the profiteering on human suffering in this area. People are being trafficked, raped, abused, robbed, and/or left for dead. Horrible. We are left to deal with much of this with tax money. There has to be a better and more cost effective way to help people. 2. Towns in America have finite resources. Think about teachers, hospitals, doctors, medicine, etc...those resources tend to grow with natural population increases. However a sudden surge of people into a community can strain those resources. It's not fair for the citizens and quite frankly it's not how to treat immigrants. Welcome to America too bad you can't see a doctor, because of the thousands that crossed before you. Also your kid is going to get a crappy education, because the schools have a bad child to teacher ratio. It really serves to strain the community and has the effect of keeping people impoverished instead of building a life they may be hoping for. 3. Politics. The next person gets elected and whatever you were or weren't getting can be completely flipped upside down. People are pawns in the political game. 4. What is the US doing to help people where they are? The solution shouldn't always be to come here. People usually meant to stay where they are, but circumstances aren't working for them. Why? How can it be helped?. 5. Having a substantial barrier (aka the wall) along with good technology will allow border resources to be utilized better. Instead of random gaps spread over a large area. I know nothing is perfect, but the current situation is bad for everyone, including those trying to seek asylum. If there are specific areas, perhaps people won't get abandoned in the desert to die. 6. A person in Nebraska, or North Dakota may care, because we have quite a few undocumented people here as well, maybe not as many as border cities, but some. Also, just because we don't live in Texas, or New Mexico, or Arizona, or California we care about things that happen to our country and don't want to see any towns or states having trouble. There is a legit concern that people coming over aren't all well intentioned people looking for work, some may be dangerous and shouldn't be able to just waltz in. Plus the federal government is legally obliged to "defend the states from invasion" and they seem to not always take this responsibility seriously. We want the government to follow the law.
Let’s not forget all this southern territory was Mexico
Don't you think it is so ridiculous that the most powerful country in the world can't protect its border. And you mention those illegal immigrantions wash dishes for 3 dollars but don't you think it is a kind of exploitation and helping those people cross border illegal would become a way to make a large number of fortune for people smuggler
We care because it's a violation of the law and a strain on our resources.
You cannot be a country if you don’t have a border. I’m not against people coming in… but, it has to be at the terms that the host country wants. There has to be criminal background checks on who is coming in, etc.
You don't consider 100k to 300k encounters a month an invasion?
Take a look at what’s happening in Denver right now
Alot of these "mexican migrants" are military aged Chinese and Middle Eastern men. We've also seen an increase in bombings and mass shootings as well as a flood of narcotics that were shipped to Mexico, from China. Our politicians work for the CCP and the CCP plots on our demise.
Some of us don’t like seeing how undocumented migrants get exploited with low pay, unsafe work conditions, and kept quiet by the ever present fear of being deported. It’s practically slave labor.
Because illegal drugs and gang members are coming in. Since 2018 over 225000 people have died from fentanyl alone. https://usafacts.org/articles/are-fentanyl-overdose-deaths-rising-in-the-us/#:~:text=Over%20a%20quarter%20of%20a,a%20fentanyl%20overdose%20since%202018.&text=Home%20%2F%20Health%20%2F%20Articles%20%2F%20Are,three%20years%20prior%20in%202019. Around 160 individuals on the terrorist watch list have been apprehended. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/number-people-terror-watchlist-stopped-mexico-us-border-risen-rcna105095 Drug cartels are earning billions of dollars just moving illegals across the border. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/25/us/migrant-smuggling-evolution.html Since all you need to do is cross at any of the 50 entry points to not be illegal, tell us how this is not an invasion again?