Anyone can demonize immigrants. It’s easy. It’s also morally wrong to do so. As I’ve demonstrated, every one of your “facts” is partially true, and also misses or denies a significant part of the story.
We can throw data at each other all day long. That’s not important. What is, is this question: are we going to continue to be a country …
Anyone can demonize immigrants. It’s easy. It’s also morally wrong to do so. As I’ve demonstrated, every one of your “facts” is partially true, and also misses or denies a significant part of the story.
We can throw data at each other all day long. That’s not important. What is, is this question: are we going to continue to be a country that welcomes “the tired, the hungry and the poor who yearn to breathe free”? Or are we going to become a stingy, selfish, narrow-minded country that turns its back on its heritage and its foundation? Every American generation has wrestled with this issue.
True, the GOP knows how to exaggerate and exploit fear of immigrants for political gain. That’s wrong, it’s indefensible. We will also be wrong if we cave to their fear, and join in demonizing immigrants.
Global warming is going to create climate refugees in the US, tens of millions who will flee California and the Southwest, for New England and other northern climes. That will greatly reduce our already overdrawn carrying capacity. What will another 90 million immigrants—Pew’s projection for the next 45 years, do to our ability to cope with that chaos?
As for letting everyone in who wants to come, we used to have a frontier. It's been gone for over 100 years. There are probably a couple of billion who would come here if they could. Where do you draw the line?
Half of our own citizens are tired, hungry, and too poor to afford a major car repair or a medical emergency, and many are a paycheck away from being evicted. Our working classes were doing a lot better in the first several post-war decades, before immigration numbers began swelling. You haven’t said anything to indicate that you are aware of them, much less care about them.
You probably don’t realize it, but you’re an American exceptionalist in your confidence that we can take people in without regard to numbers.
You also seem to be the left wing equivalent of a global warming denialist in your denial that mass immigration reduces the employment and wages of competing American workers. Cesar Chavez denounced illegal immigrants to INS because he understood that too much immigration would undercut his members’ wages. (Google it)
I can’t point to one thing you’ve said that doesn’t demonize immigrants. Tick disease? Immigrants. Traffic jams in Massachusetts? Immigrants. Climate change? Immigrants. Crowded emergency rooms? Immigrants. Your friend’s daughter’s grade inflation? Immigrants. The GOP recapturing Congress in 2022? Immigrants. For you, it’s immigrants, all the way down...
If I had the feelings towards immigrants that "demonizing" implies, I would have advocated earlier in this thread that there should be no immigration, rather than advocating 250,000-300,000 annually.
And if Pew was projecting that American fertility, rather than immigration, was going to add 90 million to the US population over the next 45 years, my focus would be on the need for Americans to reduce our fertility. But we are now barely over replacement.
My concern is overpopulation, not immigrants per se, and the US is badly overpopulated. My best friend is an immigrant, she knows my views well, and if I were demonizing immigrants--or if I were demonizing any group of people--she would not be my friend.
Anyone can demonize immigrants. It’s easy. It’s also morally wrong to do so. As I’ve demonstrated, every one of your “facts” is partially true, and also misses or denies a significant part of the story.
We can throw data at each other all day long. That’s not important. What is, is this question: are we going to continue to be a country that welcomes “the tired, the hungry and the poor who yearn to breathe free”? Or are we going to become a stingy, selfish, narrow-minded country that turns its back on its heritage and its foundation? Every American generation has wrestled with this issue.
True, the GOP knows how to exaggerate and exploit fear of immigrants for political gain. That’s wrong, it’s indefensible. We will also be wrong if we cave to their fear, and join in demonizing immigrants.
Can you point to where I’ve said anything to demonize immigrants? Is Nicholas Kristof demonizing immigrants in this article? https://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/09/opinion/compassion-that-hurts.html
Global warming is going to create climate refugees in the US, tens of millions who will flee California and the Southwest, for New England and other northern climes. That will greatly reduce our already overdrawn carrying capacity. What will another 90 million immigrants—Pew’s projection for the next 45 years, do to our ability to cope with that chaos?
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/15/magazine/climate-crisis-migration-america.html
As for letting everyone in who wants to come, we used to have a frontier. It's been gone for over 100 years. There are probably a couple of billion who would come here if they could. Where do you draw the line?
Half of our own citizens are tired, hungry, and too poor to afford a major car repair or a medical emergency, and many are a paycheck away from being evicted. Our working classes were doing a lot better in the first several post-war decades, before immigration numbers began swelling. You haven’t said anything to indicate that you are aware of them, much less care about them.
You probably don’t realize it, but you’re an American exceptionalist in your confidence that we can take people in without regard to numbers.
You also seem to be the left wing equivalent of a global warming denialist in your denial that mass immigration reduces the employment and wages of competing American workers. Cesar Chavez denounced illegal immigrants to INS because he understood that too much immigration would undercut his members’ wages. (Google it)
I can’t point to one thing you’ve said that doesn’t demonize immigrants. Tick disease? Immigrants. Traffic jams in Massachusetts? Immigrants. Climate change? Immigrants. Crowded emergency rooms? Immigrants. Your friend’s daughter’s grade inflation? Immigrants. The GOP recapturing Congress in 2022? Immigrants. For you, it’s immigrants, all the way down...
If I had the feelings towards immigrants that "demonizing" implies, I would have advocated earlier in this thread that there should be no immigration, rather than advocating 250,000-300,000 annually.
And if Pew was projecting that American fertility, rather than immigration, was going to add 90 million to the US population over the next 45 years, my focus would be on the need for Americans to reduce our fertility. But we are now barely over replacement.
My concern is overpopulation, not immigrants per se, and the US is badly overpopulated. My best friend is an immigrant, she knows my views well, and if I were demonizing immigrants--or if I were demonizing any group of people--she would not be my friend.