A majority of Americans back building a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, according to a new survey. The new Monmouth University poll found that 53 percent of respondents support ba…
There isn’t 100 problems in America, there is one problem that has 99 symptoms that are all equally bad because they are all caused by the same problem. Your house floods and your floor is ruined, your walls are ruined, your furniture is ruined, your clothes are ruined, your TV is ruined… Your problem isn’t what is ruined, your problem is that the plumbing has a burst pipe that is flooding your house. You can work on replacing and fixing and complaining about everything that is ruined because of the water and it will be for nothing because you didn’t fix the pipe.
Illegal immigration is symptomatic of a broken economy cause by unrestrained greed.
If hiring illegal immigrants was unprofitable and profits/income were taxed appropriately, the country could afford to not have any problems.
It is very telling when the laws are used to dissuade and punish the illegal immigrants for working instead of the companies and corporations for hiring them. If you make illegal labor unprofitable then you will largely get rid of it.
Of course it’s also very telling when people choose to use an incorrect term like illegal immigrant. Because of how often it is parroted and forced down our throat that we treat such an absurd statement as normal. (Not an attack on you. Just a comment on how natural it is even for myself to say that term without thinking) People aren’t illegal. They may have crossed the border illegally. They’re still immigrants whether they cross-legally or not. Calling them illegal immigrants and treating them as illegal allows us to dehumanize them easier. And enables the people abusing them to abuse them more.
They should be afforded the same basic guarantee and protections as anyone else. The same labor rights and expectations. Not forced to hide in the shadows. The people abusing them would change their tune suddenly if it cost the same to hire an immigrant as it did a citizen. And if we treated them with some basic respect and decency. We would not have to try to track them down all the time. Many of them would actively register and try to stay on good terms with the government. Making it easier for us to actually go after the few that are here for nefarious purposes.
When I say illegal immigrants I’m talking about the way they entered the country. Illegal is an adverb in this situation because it describes the way they immigrated.
In the future I’ll try to use “illegally immigrating persons” so as to make this absurdly clear.
I know that. I said as much. My point was, regardless of how they got here (legally/illegally) they’re just immigrants.
Crossing the border illegally isn’t much different or more serious than jaywalking. Legally speaking. We don’t categorize or call out people as jaywalking Americans. So why do we feel this burning need to categorize immigrants in that way? Because it benefits a particular group with far-reaching resources and power.
By feeling compelled to refer to them in some way as being illegal. We short-circuit a lot of other logical process when it comes to topics surrounding these immigrants. Is it our broken immigration system that is a problem? No it’s illegal immigrants. Is it greedy conniving underhanded employers that hire illegal immigrants that are the problem? No we just stopped with them being illegal immigrants and therefore they are the problem.
I think you and I would both agree however that it is our immigration system. That is a problem. That it is the people taking advantage of them and employing them, that are the problem. But we are not helping them or ourselves by using the terms and language chosen by the abusers.
TLDR.
They’re just immigrants. And nearly every last one of them would happily be documented and have legal status if our immigration system wasn’t problematic and broken. Referring to them as illegal takes the onus off the system and places it where it doesn’t belong. Does that make sense?
There’s a lot more than just unrestrained greed wrong with the US, although that is a big source of problems. Democracy is broken in a variety of ways as well, only some of which could reasonably be attributable to the economy. Ultimately there’s no single thing you can point at and go “fix that one thing and we’re good”, there’s a bunch of interconnected problems that all feed on and reinforce each other. That makes it particularly hard to solve problems because any solutions are half measures since no single solution addresses all the problems.
As just one example, our government does not represent the will of the people. There are many reasons for this some intentional, some not.
On the intentional side we’ve got the electoral college and the Senate. The founders feared that an eloquent populist could get elected by exploiting an ignorant populace (oh the irony). As a check to this they expected the states to be run by more educated and politically savvy individuals that would be less swayed by a populist and thus the EC could prevent their election. Likewise the Senate was meant as a check to Congress, since Congress represents the interests of the people, like the Senate represents the political leadership of the state.
On the unintentional side we have gerrymandering, voter suppression, first past the post voting, and unrestrained political funds. The first couple items on that list should be self explanatory. First past the post voting leads to a system that’s only stable when there are only two viable parties. This in turn also drives the parties to extremism to try to differentiate themselves from each other as much as possible. It actively punishes moderation and compromise. Into this mix then comes unrestrained political funds which drive the all important advertising, but also are used as bribes both to and from politicians. Ultimately the ones “donating” those funds in many cases are doing so with the goal of getting legislation passed or repealed that benefits them, which is a big part of how we’ve ended up with unrestrained greed.
We need to fix all the problems, we can’t afford to focus solely on one, but we also can’t get so obsessed with finding the perfect solution that we never make any progress. Fixing employment is one part of the problem. Proper taxing and making sure the incentives there are aligned is another. Providing a path to citizenship for people both domestically and elsewhere as well as providing incentives to encourage the kind of workers we need is another piece. Removing dark money and unrestricted (and unmonitored) political donations is also a piece of the puzzle. So is switching to a better voting system like STAR. The electoral college absolutely needs to go, as recent events have shown it actually makes the thing it was supposed to protect against possible. We should probably also rethink the Senate in general, it may have served a purpose in the original version of the US, but following the civil war and the strengthening of the federal government it increasingly makes no sense.
These are all problems the US has that need to be addressed, but this isn’t even remotely an exhaustive list. I didn’t even touch on our economic issues and things like how we’ve allowed corporations to grow to obscene sizes that never should have been tolerated due to nearly unchecked consolidation. Or how we’ve allowed the rich to skirt taxes and hide wealth in ways that are difficult to track.
Ah, sorry I meant they weren’t intentional in the way the US government was originally designed. Gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the unrestricted funds are intentional by the people who have set them up. The FPTP voting is an interesting case as I don’t think it was intended to have the result it has, but now that it has the two parties are very dedicated to preserving it
There isn’t 100 problems in America, there is one problem that has 99 symptoms that are all equally bad because they are all caused by the same problem. Your house floods and your floor is ruined, your walls are ruined, your furniture is ruined, your clothes are ruined, your TV is ruined… Your problem isn’t what is ruined, your problem is that the plumbing has a burst pipe that is flooding your house. You can work on replacing and fixing and complaining about everything that is ruined because of the water and it will be for nothing because you didn’t fix the pipe.
Illegal immigration is symptomatic of a broken economy cause by unrestrained greed.
If hiring illegal immigrants was unprofitable and profits/income were taxed appropriately, the country could afford to not have any problems.
It is very telling when the laws are used to dissuade and punish the illegal immigrants for working instead of the companies and corporations for hiring them. If you make illegal labor unprofitable then you will largely get rid of it.
Of course it’s also very telling when people choose to use an incorrect term like illegal immigrant. Because of how often it is parroted and forced down our throat that we treat such an absurd statement as normal. (Not an attack on you. Just a comment on how natural it is even for myself to say that term without thinking) People aren’t illegal. They may have crossed the border illegally. They’re still immigrants whether they cross-legally or not. Calling them illegal immigrants and treating them as illegal allows us to dehumanize them easier. And enables the people abusing them to abuse them more.
They should be afforded the same basic guarantee and protections as anyone else. The same labor rights and expectations. Not forced to hide in the shadows. The people abusing them would change their tune suddenly if it cost the same to hire an immigrant as it did a citizen. And if we treated them with some basic respect and decency. We would not have to try to track them down all the time. Many of them would actively register and try to stay on good terms with the government. Making it easier for us to actually go after the few that are here for nefarious purposes.
When I say illegal immigrants I’m talking about the way they entered the country. Illegal is an adverb in this situation because it describes the way they immigrated.
In the future I’ll try to use “illegally immigrating persons” so as to make this absurdly clear.
I know that. I said as much. My point was, regardless of how they got here (legally/illegally) they’re just immigrants.
Crossing the border illegally isn’t much different or more serious than jaywalking. Legally speaking. We don’t categorize or call out people as jaywalking Americans. So why do we feel this burning need to categorize immigrants in that way? Because it benefits a particular group with far-reaching resources and power.
By feeling compelled to refer to them in some way as being illegal. We short-circuit a lot of other logical process when it comes to topics surrounding these immigrants. Is it our broken immigration system that is a problem? No it’s illegal immigrants. Is it greedy conniving underhanded employers that hire illegal immigrants that are the problem? No we just stopped with them being illegal immigrants and therefore they are the problem.
I think you and I would both agree however that it is our immigration system. That is a problem. That it is the people taking advantage of them and employing them, that are the problem. But we are not helping them or ourselves by using the terms and language chosen by the abusers.
TLDR.
They’re just immigrants. And nearly every last one of them would happily be documented and have legal status if our immigration system wasn’t problematic and broken. Referring to them as illegal takes the onus off the system and places it where it doesn’t belong. Does that make sense?
I really thought this was going to end with you saying immigration is the flood of your metaphor which causes every other problem in this country.
There’s a lot more than just unrestrained greed wrong with the US, although that is a big source of problems. Democracy is broken in a variety of ways as well, only some of which could reasonably be attributable to the economy. Ultimately there’s no single thing you can point at and go “fix that one thing and we’re good”, there’s a bunch of interconnected problems that all feed on and reinforce each other. That makes it particularly hard to solve problems because any solutions are half measures since no single solution addresses all the problems.
As just one example, our government does not represent the will of the people. There are many reasons for this some intentional, some not.
On the intentional side we’ve got the electoral college and the Senate. The founders feared that an eloquent populist could get elected by exploiting an ignorant populace (oh the irony). As a check to this they expected the states to be run by more educated and politically savvy individuals that would be less swayed by a populist and thus the EC could prevent their election. Likewise the Senate was meant as a check to Congress, since Congress represents the interests of the people, like the Senate represents the political leadership of the state.
On the unintentional side we have gerrymandering, voter suppression, first past the post voting, and unrestrained political funds. The first couple items on that list should be self explanatory. First past the post voting leads to a system that’s only stable when there are only two viable parties. This in turn also drives the parties to extremism to try to differentiate themselves from each other as much as possible. It actively punishes moderation and compromise. Into this mix then comes unrestrained political funds which drive the all important advertising, but also are used as bribes both to and from politicians. Ultimately the ones “donating” those funds in many cases are doing so with the goal of getting legislation passed or repealed that benefits them, which is a big part of how we’ve ended up with unrestrained greed.
We need to fix all the problems, we can’t afford to focus solely on one, but we also can’t get so obsessed with finding the perfect solution that we never make any progress. Fixing employment is one part of the problem. Proper taxing and making sure the incentives there are aligned is another. Providing a path to citizenship for people both domestically and elsewhere as well as providing incentives to encourage the kind of workers we need is another piece. Removing dark money and unrestricted (and unmonitored) political donations is also a piece of the puzzle. So is switching to a better voting system like STAR. The electoral college absolutely needs to go, as recent events have shown it actually makes the thing it was supposed to protect against possible. We should probably also rethink the Senate in general, it may have served a purpose in the original version of the US, but following the civil war and the strengthening of the federal government it increasingly makes no sense.
These are all problems the US has that need to be addressed, but this isn’t even remotely an exhaustive list. I didn’t even touch on our economic issues and things like how we’ve allowed corporations to grow to obscene sizes that never should have been tolerated due to nearly unchecked consolidation. Or how we’ve allowed the rich to skirt taxes and hide wealth in ways that are difficult to track.
These things are intentional.
Ah, sorry I meant they weren’t intentional in the way the US government was originally designed. Gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the unrestricted funds are intentional by the people who have set them up. The FPTP voting is an interesting case as I don’t think it was intended to have the result it has, but now that it has the two parties are very dedicated to preserving it