Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Weird that Google doesn’t make it easy to find anything about Vermont...

 d-usa wrote:
Page after page of “us” vs “them” posts.

Complaints about identity politics.

Go figure.

Maybe a change of tactic is needed...

LET'S CONQUER MEXICO!

Then... the southern wall would be much manageable.

 Disciple of Fate wrote:

 SkavenLord wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
Page after page of “us” vs “them” posts.

Complaints about identity politics.

Go figure.

Another day in the off-topic forum. It’s fascinating to see such a spectrum of opinions though, as well as how people argue for or against these positions.

Yeah, best part is if you also witnessed the Obama era for these threads, its just astounding how far some people have just moved quietly along with the new 'reality'.

Right, I faintly recall an explosion of lengthy Obamacare threads some years back. I could be wrong however.

 Xenomancers wrote:

It has nothing to do with the economic standing of the people?

In what respect? Are you referring to the nation as a whole being wealthier than ever but the common people having issues?

Yes, thats something we should address. Perhaps if we had not spent the last 30 years pushing every national income gain into the hands of the ultrawealthy at the expense of average wages remaining basically stagnant once adjusted for inflation, we'd have a lot fewer social issues on general. Attacking that problem will solve or mitigate a whole host of challenges facing the US, not just immigration. As is, immigration is also helping us keep an economic edge over other developed nations and maintian positive and continuous population growth, while nations like Japan and Italy shrink and stumble.

How TF are we wealthier than ever with a 20 trillion national debt?

Mostly the fact that GDP is higher than any previous year, basically as has been true most every year for the lifespan of anyone on this board and their parents and grandparents too.

Most of that is America owing debt to...Americans, the bulk of that money is going right back to us, and most developed nations are heavily in debt of some sort, thats hardly unique to the US.

And if we want to talk about the national debt, well, perhas we shouldnt have just undertaken some rather hairbrained tax cuts that have ballooned it tremendously and done little else but allowed lots of big companies to buy back a whole lot of stock. Perhaps we should rethink weapons systems with expected program costs that exceed the entire GDP of Russia (F35). Perhaps we should rethink invading and occupying nations every few years, because thats costing us an insane amount of money. Hell, the US has been in Afghanistan and Iraq most of my lifetime, bleeding millions every day. Perhaps we should look at reclassifying Capital Gains and taxing it the way its being treated, as income. Immigration is nowhere near the top of that list.

 cuda1179 wrote:
I'm hesitant to "gut" many social safety nets, but let's be honest, there is plenty of room to trim the fat. I think it was Vermont a few years back that implemented some new restrictions on food stamps that I totally agree with.

It was simple really. If you were a young (18-49 I believe) person, able bodied, able minded, and had no dependents you had work requirements. Have any job, regardless of how many hours worked or pay rate, OR do minimal community service, OR do some job training.

There was something like a 90% voluntary drop-out rate.

But as discussed in another thread, tying safety nets to mandatory work means subsidising business who couldn't be bothered to pay enough to attract these people in the first place. By all means, make some sort of volunteering be included, but not regular jobs.

The issue is, most of that type of work is so terrible people would rather just remain unemployed.

Apparently Kennedy's son was a financier for Trump via Deutche bank and arranged a $1M loan for Trump. This was revealed the day after Kennedy announced his retirement.

 skyth wrote:
Apparently Kennedy's son was a financier for Trump via Deutche bank and arranged a $1M loan for Trump. This was revealed the day after Kennedy announced his retirement.

Speaking of Kennedys, wouldn't that Joe Kennedy guy from the House of Representatives make a great democratic candidate for the next elections? I imagine after the chaos of Trump a lot of people could long back to the stability of a familiar name. I think he looks very presidential.

 skyth wrote:
Apparently Kennedy's son was a financier for Trump via Deutche bank and arranged a $1M loan for Trump. This was revealed the day after Kennedy announced his retirement.

Might explain why he retired so suddenly, didn't want to seem like his decisions were tainted by his son

 skyth wrote:
Apparently Kennedy's son was a financier for Trump via Deutche bank and arranged a $1M loan for Trump. This was revealed the day after Kennedy announced his retirement.

Check the date of the loan.

 Xenomancers wrote:
First asylum is BS. The term does not apply to immigrants. These aren't political refugees persecuted out of their country. They aren't going to be killed for their political views if we send them away. Their life just sucks.

None of these people qualify for asylum - nor do we have to grant ANYONE asylum. It's 100% nonsense to even suggest that. There is a legal process for seeking entry into this country - to claim these people don't have access to it is nonsense. Most of them probably don't even try. It's a known fact among these people that there is a list they could get put on but it will take forever and they will likely be denied. So they take it into their own hands. They pay a professional human smuggler to sneak them into the country (that should really be the clue that they are doing something illegal).

Ok, normally I'd read the rest of the way through the thread but at this point, we have achieved critical wrong.

Point of fact, quite a few of these people actually DO qualify for asylum, which is where the shitstorm started when they could not produce someone's child who was ruled to be here legitimately by a court (and it took months to find said child). Second, yes, actually the US is obligated under both international treaty and domestic law to accept certain classes of asylum seeker. In this next part you are conflating refugee status and asylum. They're two different things under the law. The list is for refugees, an asylum seeker can come any time, and as long as they can get onto US soil can claim asylum. It's even a legal defense in Immigration court because it was assumed at some point some administration would try to limit asylum seekers by barring them entrance. Which has been not only reported on, but video taped.

And, just to add some insult to this: No, several cases have come up where no one was accused of a crime, they just took their kids while they were in the interview for asylum status. The DoJ just LOST the case the ACLU brought against them for this activity.

 Xenomancers wrote:
How TF are we wealthier than ever with a 20 trillion national debt?

Because the national debt doesn't really work the way that household debt does. A household can't print money or tell people to give it money and has to exist on the timeframe of human lifespans. The US does not, in fact, have an enormous credit card anchored off the coast.


Debt crises do exist and happen when a country for example doesn't control its own monetary policy or prefers the consequences of defaulting over the consequences of creating money to pay for the debt.



In the case of the US it isn't like poorer countries who owe money to the IMF. The US runs a major trade deficit and instead of financing it by using up currency reserves, which would run out immediately, the balance of payments is kept by foreign countries purchasing the debt (among other transfers). So US debt is kept cheap, to the benefit of the US, and its imports are kept high, to the benefit of the people selling stuff. When global development rises to the point where countries don't need to buy US debt to stabilise their currency or fuel their exports, this little system will obviously not be workable. The US will then, maybe, play by the same or similar rules as any other countries. Who knows what will happen. Maybe in the next decades sometime the US is gonna have to pay or otherwise have a debt crisis. The only alternative to this, though, is to blow up the global economy right now for no reason.

@anyone who hates immigrants: are you Native American? If not, when do you leave?

 Disciple of Fate wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
I'm hesitant to "gut" many social safety nets, but let's be honest, there is plenty of room to trim the fat. I think it was Vermont a few years back that implemented some new restrictions on food stamps that I totally agree with.

It was simple really. If you were a young (18-49 I believe) person, able bodied, able minded, and had no dependents you had work requirements. Have any job, regardless of how many hours worked or pay rate, OR do minimal community service, OR do some job training.

There was something like a 90% voluntary drop-out rate.

But as discussed in another thread, tying safety nets to mandatory work means subsidising business who couldn't be bothered to pay enough to attract these people in the first place. By all means, make some sort of volunteering be included, but not regular jobs.

The issue is, most of that type of work is so terrible people would rather just remain unemployed.

My idea is have them help with infrastructure upkeep. As the saying goes; kill two birds with one shotgun.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
@anyone who hates immigrants: are you Native American? If not, when do you leave?

 Disciple of Fate wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
I'm hesitant to "gut" many social safety nets, but let's be honest, there is plenty of room to trim the fat. I think it was Vermont a few years back that implemented some new restrictions on food stamps that I totally agree with.

It was simple really. If you were a young (18-49 I believe) person, able bodied, able minded, and had no dependents you had work requirements. Have any job, regardless of how many hours worked or pay rate, OR do minimal community service, OR do some job training.

There was something like a 90% voluntary drop-out rate.

But as discussed in another thread, tying safety nets to mandatory work means subsidising business who couldn't be bothered to pay enough to attract these people in the first place. By all means, make some sort of volunteering be included, but not regular jobs.

The issue is, most of that type of work is so terrible people would rather just remain unemployed.

My idea is have them help with infrastructure upkeep. As the saying goes; kill two birds with one shotgun.

I would build a two tier safety net.

Tier 1) basic living conditions will be met (Housing, food, basic medical)

Tier 2) better of the above but with work requirements. City beautification is something most cities could afford more of. Maybe take some of the abandoned sections of some cities (Phillie and Detroit stand out) and pay people to restore them and provide themselves the means to live there. Maybe some construction work, but mostly because I'm very unsympathetic with what I've seen of the industry. It took a construction contractor 7 years to add two lanes to 10 miles of road near my house when I lived in Loudon County Virginia, and it just didn't make sense to me. The roads were empty at night. They could have had all that work done in 1/7 of that time and I just struggle to be convinced that it's an industry that actually does any real work most of the time.

Unfortunately neither of those ideas are likely to help the rural poor, who I think are just harder to help in general because their more spread out and with less surrounding work to be shuffled their way.

I feel like I probably know this answer, but what exactly was the immigration process during the time of Ellis Island? Did everybody go to the US embassy, get their paperwork processed, get a Visa, and then get on a boat to the US? Or did you get on a boat, disembark on Ellis Island, and if you weren’t riddled with disease you got into the country?

People like to talk about “my ancestors did it the legal way, they didn’t just show up expecting to get in”, but I thought “show up to get in” WAS the legal process back then?

 d-usa wrote:
I feel like I probably know this answer, but what exactly was the immigration process during the time of Ellis Island? Did everybody go to the US embassy, get their paperwork processed, get a Visa, and then get on a boat to the US? Or did you get on a boat, disembark on Ellis Island, and if you weren’t riddled with disease you got into the country?

People like to talk about “my ancestors did it the legal way, they didn’t just show up expecting to get in”, but I thought “show up to get in” WAS the legal process back then?

.
Depends entirely on the period you're discussing.

 LordofHats wrote:

I would build a two tier safety net.

Tier 1) basic living conditions will be met (Housing, food, basic medical)

Tier 2) better of the above but with work requirements. City beautification is something most cities could afford more of. Maybe take some of the abandoned sections of some cities (Phillie and Detroit stand out) and pay people to restore them and provide themselves the means to live there. Maybe some construction work, but mostly because I'm very unsympathetic with what I've seen of the industry. It took a construction contractor 7 years to add two lanes to 10 miles of road near my house when I lived in Loudon County Virginia, and it just didn't make sense to me. The roads were empty at night. They could have had all that work done in 1/7 of that time and I just struggle to be convinced that it's an industry that actually does any real work most of the time.

One of the more interesting concepts I've seen floated around is taking some of the 'historical' ghost towns out West and converting them into modernized housing coupled with historical sites.

Unfortunately neither of those ideas are likely to help the rural poor, who I think are just harder to help in general because their more spread out and with less surrounding work to be shuffled their way.

There's also the facet that with the rural poor you have to factor in the switch from family/privately maintained rural livelihoods(farms are a big example of this) to industrialized/company owned competitors.

 d-usa wrote:
I feel like I probably know this answer, but what exactly was the immigration process during the time of Ellis Island?

A bit different than now. Before 1890 the Federal Government didn't actually play any roll in processing immigrants. It was something that states did and I'm not sure what the actual procedures were. We didn't really pass any quotas on immigrants until the 1910s and onward, so we kind of just let anyone who wanted in in and since most of them were white and Christian in the 19th/20th century no one really cared quite that much. Nativism was a politically powerful but socially fringe movement until the 1920s. When Ellis Island opened, ships would basically bring immigrant passengers (some ships only transported immigrants) to the island to be disembarked before continuing on into New York Bay. The immigrants would be processed and handed their documentation (welcome to America pamphlets) then taken to shore. I'm not entirely sure what the procedure was in 1924 honestly. I do know that things like naturalization, questioning, health inspections, and some eugenics based procedures were basically part of the deal at the time.

The US-Mexico border is different because it's always been somewhat fluid in terms of population. Until the later half of the 20th century openly coming from one side to the other and back again was even part of the daily routine for a lot of people. It didn't become much of an issue until the drug war started, and labor availability started to become a political hot topic (circa the 1960s).

Did everybody go to the US embassy, get their paperwork processed, get a Visa, and then get on a boat to the US?

After 1924, the Immigration Act became law and the act heavily restricted immigration and established quotas by country of origin. Immigration at that point was largely handled via the US embassies around the world and Ellis Island became an office for paperwork snafus and ceased to be a processing station. At that point most immigrants were expected to already have all their paperwork in order by the time they arrived Stateside and the US no longer had a broadly open door policy on immigration period.

Or did you get on a boat, disembark on Ellis Island, and if you weren’t riddled with disease you got into the country?

People who were sick or "morally defective" were examined and decisions were made. If it was a disease that passed and wasn't serious you'd spent maybe a lot of time at the Ellis Island hospice before being allowed into the country. People with lifelong communicable diseases (and no money) were generally sent home. Morally defective encompassed a broad range of issues including genetic disease, mental illness, and "what do you mean you don't believe in jesus?" Hindu's actually weren't legally allowed to enter the US until 1965 when the Immigration Neutrality Act revoked parts of the Immigration Act of 1924, though there were some in country before that.

People like to talk about “my ancestors did it the legal way, they didn’t just show up expecting to get in”, but I thought “show up to get in” WAS the legal process back then?

Until 1924 it pretty much was. Today 100,000,000 Americans are descended from people who passed through Ellis Island when it was a Immigration Processing center, so you know. Some people might need to lighten the feth up and realize who stupid saying that comment is cause chances are they're descended or closely related to someone who's ancestors just showed up.

The best people.

All the asylum seekers who are coming north should have to apply in Mexico for asylum, they choose the US for economic reasons. My solution is all the Central American asylum seekers keep Mexico and we take ALL the Mexicans into the US and make them citizens. Cut all immigration from Europe, Australia, or Canada. And the New Mexicans can build a country of their own.

Because Mexico, a country with a yearly death toll that is worse than any current war zone is where you want to seek asylum to escape the violence back home...

Yeah, Mexico isn't much better than most of South America. People would just be trading in one gang for another.
Really the only permanent solution is to improve living standards in South America and put an end to gang violence. As long as that continues people will keep coming to the US no matter what the US government does.

 thekingofkings wrote:
All the asylum seekers who are coming north should have to apply in Mexico for asylum, they choose the US for economic reasons. My solution is all the Central American asylum seekers keep Mexico and we take ALL the Mexicans into the US and make them citizens. Cut all immigration from Europe, Australia, or Canada. And the New Mexicans can build a country of their own.

No one dreams of escaping a violent bloody country to move to a slightly less violent bloody country.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Yeah, Mexico isn't much better than most of South America. People would just be trading in one gang for another.
Really the only permanent solution is to improve living standards in South America and put an end to gang violence. As long as that continues people will keep coming to the US no matter what the US government does.

One of the issues here is that they for the most part really are not getting away from gangs or poverty coming into the US. They get put generally in poorer neighborhoods, they have trouble with communication (for some strange reason the US doesn't require Spanish in our schools, despite it being the native tongue of a large segment of our own indigenous population. Canada has French and English, US should have English and Spanish) Our current labor and immigration laws mean they will be exploited for cheap labor (they really, really need to unionize) and despite being almost exactly what the right wants to immigrate here (mostly white, virtually all Christian) they face immense hostility.

But we already have a New Mexico...

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
But we already have a New Mexico...

Obviously we'll rename New Mexico to Old Mexico and Mexico to New New Mexico because it's the 21st century people get with the times

 thekingofkings wrote:
All the asylum seekers who are coming north should have to apply in Mexico for asylum, they choose the US for economic reasons. My solution is all the Central American asylum seekers keep Mexico and we take ALL the Mexicans into the US and make them citizens. Cut all immigration from Europe, Australia, or Canada. And the New Mexicans can build a country of their own.

Achem, you must not know Mexico: Let me tell you something about a recent scandal down there: a busload of school children was trying to raise money for a trip, the mayor felt this might disrupt the party he was throwing his wife, and had the police go after them, the children the police did not shoot they then sold to the cartels, who enslaved them, and then murdered them, and burned the bodies.

40 plus kids. Mexican kids. Not immigrants, their own children.

So, why would NO ONE apply for asylum in Mexico, I wonder?

 thekingofkings wrote:
All the asylum seekers who are coming north should have to apply in Mexico for asylum, they choose the US for economic reasons. My solution is all the Central American asylum seekers keep Mexico and we take ALL the Mexicans into the US and make them citizens. Cut all immigration from Europe, Australia, or Canada. And the New Mexicans can build a country of their own.

So, when do you leave mr immigrant? Sorry, family of immigrants. But that doesn't matter to you when they are Mexican, so I assume you are packing your bags.

Or you are a gross hypocrite, I dunno.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 thekingofkings wrote:
All the asylum seekers who are coming north should have to apply in Mexico for asylum, they choose the US for economic reasons. My solution is all the Central American asylum seekers keep Mexico and we take ALL the Mexicans into the US and make them citizens. Cut all immigration from Europe, Australia, or Canada. And the New Mexicans can build a country of their own.

So, when do you leave mr immigrant? Sorry, family of immigrants. But that doesn't matter to you when they are Mexican, so I assume you are packing your bags.

Or you are a gross hypocrite, I dunno.

you are correct, you do not know or my post went wayyy over your head.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 thekingofkings wrote:
All the asylum seekers who are coming north should have to apply in Mexico for asylum, they choose the US for economic reasons. My solution is all the Central American asylum seekers keep Mexico and we take ALL the Mexicans into the US and make them citizens. Cut all immigration from Europe, Australia, or Canada. And the New Mexicans can build a country of their own.

Achem, you must not know Mexico: Let me tell you something about a recent scandal down there: a busload of school children was trying to raise money for a trip, the mayor felt this might disrupt the party he was throwing his wife, and had the police go after them, the children the police did not shoot they then sold to the cartels, who enslaved them, and then murdered them, and burned the bodies.

40 plus kids. Mexican kids. Not immigrants, their own children.

So, why would NO ONE apply for asylum in Mexico, I wonder?

If you are referring to the event I think you are referring to, then it was students, not school kids, and they were trying to steal buses for their trip, not raising money. Which is still absolutely horrible of course.

 thekingofkings wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 thekingofkings wrote:
All the asylum seekers who are coming north should have to apply in Mexico for asylum, they choose the US for economic reasons. My solution is all the Central American asylum seekers keep Mexico and we take ALL the Mexicans into the US and make them citizens. Cut all immigration from Europe, Australia, or Canada. And the New Mexicans can build a country of their own.

So, when do you leave mr immigrant? Sorry, family of immigrants. But that doesn't matter to you when they are Mexican, so I assume you are packing your bags.

Or you are a gross hypocrite, I dunno.

you are correct, you do not know or my post went wayyy over your head.

To the contrary, you have demonstrated little understanding of how the world works beyond a narrow view that you've allowed to be given to you. In hindsight I phrased things mockingly when I shouldn't have, but I severely doubt you would have listened regardless. Ultimately that stance will be to your detriment more than any other, and I have little sympathy for self-inflicted harms.