I have always thought of myself to be more liberal than not. For example, totally support abortions, LGBTQ rights, healthcare for all, minimum wages, etc. However, on immigration I just don’t get the dems. They seem to stand by illegal immigration which is plain stupid. Why? Why not instead come with a reasonable proposal to legally allow these folks to enter the US. Or spend more money to help this countries grow on their own? They don’t seem to care enough about reforming the legal immigration system (which is clearly broken badly) as much as they care about protecting undocumented immigrants and illegal immigration. Any counter ideas? Wanted to get some perspective here since I strangely find myself agreeing with Trump on this.
I consider myself a liberal immigrant and totally don’t get their take on illegal immigration.
Why is it so difficult for Democrats to understand the meaning of the word ‘illegal’ in illegal immigration.
Because it a civil infraction, not a crime, like a parking ticket.
healthcare for all and minimum wages are definitely evil... since they are not working well in reality
The Dems are wrong about immigration, but you are wrong about the Dem’s policies on immigration. The Democratic establishment has built up the border policing and people like the Clintons have made Trump-like arguments about undocumented migrants. In the current context they are arguing for the immigration status quo more or less. The administration, on the other hand wants to increase repression and so they call the Democrats “soft on illegal immigration”. (Much like conservatives called Democrats “soft on crime” previously - even though the Dems promoted building the largest prison system in the world, eliminated social welfare access for people with drug-use violations, and pushed 3-strike/mandatory minimum laws). Both parties are relying on xenophobia to a) Blame social problems in the US on “others” b) justify increased domestic repression. But the repression-approach just creates a black market and makes undocumented immigrants vulnerable to crooked employers or gangs. It’s immigration laws that are the problem, not undocumented immigrants.
Well it depends on what you use to judge right and wrong. If you believe in patriotism/national republics then of course it's right for a country to enforce its immigration laws. However, if you believe in justice in some more global level, then why is it fair that some people are entitled to a much better standard of living/protection for human rights/etc just by the coincidence of birth? Then aren't all restrictions on immigration (by any nation) unfair? So from that view it's the law that's wrong
Bingo
And of course in reality open borders will bring everybody to the lowest common denominator, but these "idealists" dont care about reality.
This stance depends a lot on where you get your news. Democrats aren’t against border security. Haven’t been and won’t be. That’s a false narrative being pushed by certain news outlets. What Democrats are against is a 2200 mile wall. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to the border other than Southern California, but there are literally hundreds of miles of inhospitable nothingness between towns. And entire mountain ranges that are damn near impassable. What Democrats don’t support is building walls in the middle of nowhere. There are literally places where you could erect a camera to watch a mountain pass, and when you see someone approaching it send someone out there and still catch that person hours later because they’re still in the middle of nowhere. I’m a democrat, and fuck his wall. But cameras and monitoring systems, large budget increases for both CBP personnel and ICE personnel (to track down and deport visa overstayers), totally for it. But I’m not going to support $10’s of billions of dollars to build a wall in the middle of fucking nowhere.
I feel like the Dems today are very different from the dems under Obama, Clinton or Bush. You are right that in the past, they made a lot of the same arguments that Trump is making today. They also supported border security and a wall. But now, it’s more about opposing Trump in every way possible to win over the Latino community. For example, Trumps 5 billion border wall is not an unreasonable ask. It will reduce illegal immigration by most counts. Yes, it doesn’t deal with the bigger issues since most illegal immigrants come through ports of entry, but it will have an impact and 5-6B is a small price for that. Still the dems oppose it like it is the worst thing in the world. And some of them (including Ocazio who I actually likes) have proposed abolishing ICE which is absolutely ludicrous.
The problem being that A) he got $1.85B in walk funding last year and still hasn’t spent about half of it B) his own administration projects $70B to build the wall, not including the legal costs of the eminent domain rights along the border. $5B is just his bid to “open the taps” so to speak. It’s way more than $5B
I don’t believe 5B is enough. Usually government new project budgets are off by 4-10X. (Based on news such as F35 jets, Boston big dig, etc.)
I imagine it takes time to actually build a wall. Also, the 5B proposal is to cover only 100-150 miles. Giving him a wall today does not automatically mean he can get 70-80B tomorrow. He will have to negotiate that separately. Also, Nancy Pelosi is on record saying that a wall is immoral.
My point being they should recognize he is president and make a trade for that 5B wall. The wall does have some value in terms of stopping illegal entry. Their inflexibility here is what baffles me.
The wall wasn’t an emergency or even a high priority for the first two years of his term, when Republicans controlled both houses AND the White House. If he really wanted it, he would have gotten it already. It only became an “emergency” after Republicans lost the house. So two things for you to consider: 1) Trump doesn’t actually want the wall. He wants the fight for the wall. Fighting about the wall keeps him in the news cycle on his terms, and it rules up his base. It’s their rallying cry. If he “wins” and gets the wall, then he has to find something else to rile up his base about. You saw some of this in SOTU where he threw as many evangelical hot button issues out there - he’s trying to see what will stick. 2) for the same reason Republican refused to negotiate with Obama during the 2013 shutdown when he was president, Democrats are refusing to negotiate during a shutdown now. And McConnell himself laid out a very strong argument against allowing that to happen back in 2013 - if you let POTUS use a shutdown government as leverage, you’ve opened Pandora’s box and POTUS will shut it down every time he doesn’t get his way. That’s not how our system of government was designed, and it’s important for both parties to not let that become the status quo. Now, given that McConnell himself set this standard in 2016, it’s hypocritical that Republicans are whining about the same standard being applied in the opposite direction today.
5 bln is about 0.1% of US budget. It is a rounding error. There are a lot of money behind open border. It supplies labor willing to work for nothing, and layers of businesses that depends on this. while many have financial interests in keeping the status quo, I hope that the rest of citizens are willing to fix this.
It's less than Nancy's annual botox budget.
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P.S. as a legal immigrant, I also appreciate that all the efforts to reform legal immigration have come from Republicans. For example, merit based immigration.
This has been my view as well. I completely agree with you.