BF2S Forums Operation Wetback (1954)

Uzique wrote:

i thought it was ideological and principle, really.

america is a country of immigrants. no 'american' citizen is a 'true' american. they were all aliens at one point in history. they were all running away from social, political, economic and religious iniquities, all fleeing some shitty native country for some shitty reason at some point. only now the white-christian hegemony has settled in after a century or so, and any new major influxes of immigrants and those in need-- any more "your poor, your tired, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free"-- is no longer america, land of the free with wonderful lady liberty, it's "FUCK OFF YOU SPIC SCUM WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, WE'RE BUILDING A MOTHERFUCKING WALL, KEEP YOUR POOR, TIRED, YEARNING FILTHY MASSES ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE FUCKING RIO GRANDE".

the ironic thing is that those complaining about jus soli legal principles wouldn't even BE AMERICAN THEMSELVES if it wasn't for that legal principle protecting the rights of their own ancestors, generations ago. amazing. priceless, really.

The US has been trying to keep people out about as long as it started letting them in.  Some of our drug laws were formed in an attempt to target various immigrants.  When railroad companies started hiring more chinamen rather than white men -opium laws started popping up.

DBBrinson1 wrote:

Uzique wrote:

i thought it was ideological and principle, really.

america is a country of immigrants. no 'american' citizen is a 'true' american. they were all aliens at one point in history. they were all running away from social, political, economic and religious iniquities, all fleeing some shitty native country for some shitty reason at some point. only now the white-christian hegemony has settled in after a century or so, and any new major influxes of immigrants and those in need-- any more "your poor, your tired, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free"-- is no longer america, land of the free with wonderful lady liberty, it's "FUCK OFF YOU SPIC SCUM WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, WE'RE BUILDING A MOTHERFUCKING WALL, KEEP YOUR POOR, TIRED, YEARNING FILTHY MASSES ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE FUCKING RIO GRANDE".

the ironic thing is that those complaining about jus soli legal principles wouldn't even BE AMERICAN THEMSELVES if it wasn't for that legal principle protecting the rights of their own ancestors, generations ago. amazing. priceless, really.

The US has been trying to keep people out about as long as it started letting them in.  Some of our drug laws were formed in an attempt to target various immigrants.  When railroad companies started hiring more chinamen rather than white men -opium laws started popping up.

The US has been trying to keep non-white people out as long as it started letting white people in*

The rest of your post then also fits in nicely after fixing the original sentence.

Wasn't it until quite after WW2 when the US started letting in non-whites immigrate properly. Australia had a whites only policy up until the 70's.

Turquoise wrote:

Uzique wrote:

the ironic thing is that those complaining about jus soli legal principles wouldn't even BE AMERICAN THEMSELVES if it wasn't for that legal principle protecting the rights of their own ancestors, generations ago. amazing. priceless, really.

There's a simple answer for that...

Look what happened to the first inhabitants here.  They didn't have border security.  Most of them don't exist anymore.

So while we might be descended from immigrants, that doesn't really hold much weight in the long run.

Most English citizens are descended from cultures that started on the European mainland.  Most Indians are descended from tribes that crossed Central Asia.  A large portion of Southern Italians and Spanish have Middle Eastern heritage due to the Muslim conquests of the Middle Ages.  A large portion of Eastern Europe has hereditary ties to the Mongols.

The list goes on and on.  The point is...  America may pride itself on immigrant heritage, but it's certainly not unique to our history.  By the same token, plenty of countries throughout the world have significant ties to immigration but they still implement tighter controls on their borders than we do.

To point the finger at us for being concerned about our own border security is just hypocritical.  We're much more lenient about harboring illegals than most other countries.  Mexico can't bitch, because they do some pretty harsh things to their illegal Guatemalans.

Aren't you moving to Canada already? Also, aren't you planning to not have kids? Why do you even care?

"America was indebted to immigration for her settlement and prosperity. That part of America which had encouraged them most had advanced most rapidly in population, agriculture and the arts."
James Madison

Turquoise wrote:

As much as I dislike the neocons, I realize they aren't truly racists.  The BNP really are.

Very funny, the Republican party is all about race, never mind the neo-cons.

Uzique wrote:

tracing human migration patterns over a grand-course of history isn't really a repudiation of your FOUNDING PRINCIPLES being about accommodating for the poor, the trodden-on, the desperate... 'land of the free', 'lady liberty'- your country was an ideological project -- "the City on a Hill" -- for the rest of the world to marvel at and take example. you let everyone in without discrimination, not because you were foolish, but because that was the point and part of the fundamental essence of your nation's birth. saying that britain's population is historically made of immigrants is totally besides the point: britain was birthed out of invasion, conquering armies, coercion and forced rule. america was birthed as a social project for the world's refugees and people deprived of basic liberal freedoms. hence my post.

Manifest destiny made us more like the rest of the world.  Like most modern nations, we went through a conquering stage.  Some would say we're still in it.

As much as I like many of our founding principles, I don't think it is practical to have an open door policy on immigration, although I do support naturalization reform (and granting more work visas).

Uzique wrote:

i realize there are realistic implementations and pragmatic considerations to deal with; im not disputing that. im just getting at the fact so many american citizens nowadays are vehemently opposed to 'immigrants' and the 'immigrant problem', whilst completely ignoring the ideological resting-point of your fair, fine nation. america without liberty and freedom is an america based on nothing but greed and capitalist free-market slavery.

Idealism means nothing if the infrastructure it wields collapses.  As important as freedoms are, economic stability is far more important.

Dilbert_X wrote:

Turquoise wrote:

As much as I dislike the neocons, I realize they aren't truly racists.  The BNP really are.

Very funny, the Republican party is all about race, never mind the neo-cons.

Not really.  You could say religion plays a part, but not race.

Uzique wrote:

i think the republicans hold a fairly well-lit candle up to the BNP when it comes to discrimination, subtle racism and bigotry, tbh.

if i had to go on a camping trip with nick griffin and the BNP or bush/rummy/cheney and the neocons... i'd take the BNP to a 5-star Ritz

The political party that enjoys keeping the black man/other minorities down is the democrats.  They have the most interest in keeping that segment of the population poor.  Keep em' on those social plans and they'll keep on voting for the D's.

Dilbert_X wrote:

Turquoise wrote:

As much as I dislike the neocons, I realize they aren't truly racists.  The BNP really are.

Very funny, the Republican party is all about race, never mind the neo-cons.

er, no.

Turquoise wrote:

JohnG@lt wrote:

It is relevant. Why do you care what the immigration policy is in this country if it won't effect you? The entire quota system is designed to protect the status quo in wages and jobs for unskilled labor. You have a college degree, you aren't unskilled labor. Who are you trying to protect yourself from by limiting immigration? Does it bother you deep down that the official language of America might become Spanish long after you are dead? Does it bother you that your offspring might intermingle gene pools with a brown person? What is the basis for your strong belief in putting a stop to immigration?

We had this discussion in another thread where rdx basically owned you.  I'd rather not rehash it here, but if you really want to, I'll link you to the posts he made in that thread because he basically said everything I was going to.

rdx never owned me but feel free to link the posts.

JohnG@lt wrote:

Turquoise wrote:

JohnG@lt wrote:

It is relevant. Why do you care what the immigration policy is in this country if it won't effect you? The entire quota system is designed to protect the status quo in wages and jobs for unskilled labor. You have a college degree, you aren't unskilled labor. Who are you trying to protect yourself from by limiting immigration? Does it bother you deep down that the official language of America might become Spanish long after you are dead? Does it bother you that your offspring might intermingle gene pools with a brown person? What is the basis for your strong belief in putting a stop to immigration?

We had this discussion in another thread where rdx basically owned you.  I'd rather not rehash it here, but if you really want to, I'll link you to the posts he made in that thread because he basically said everything I was going to.

rdx never owned me but feel free to link the posts.

Fine...  I'll actually rehash some of it, since I'm not really in the mood to use the search function right now.

The general gist of what he said was that every country has an identity that it naturally would like to preserve.  Like it or not, cultures have an effect on how principles are interpreted.  Because of the influx of religious people from Southern and Eastern Europe in the early 1900s, a lot of our populace was cozier to the concept of getting religion more involved in government than many of their predecessors.  Since a large portion of our immigration is coming from Mexico now, that slowly tilts our perspective more in their direction now.

While a certain amount of these changes are inevitable, it makes far more sense to have controls on immigration than to just say "anything goes", especially when our neighbor has massive problems with drug cartels.  We're already seeing the effects of these cartels in border towns, and even larger cities further inland are being affected, like Phoenix.

What I'm suggesting is that we reform our citizenship process to make it more like that of most countries, so there is less incentive to just sneak in.  Also, I would agree with ending quotas on work visas, although I think quotas make sense with citizenship.

Beyond that, our jus solis should be like most other countries, so that at least one parent is a citizen beforehand for it to apply.  That way, it won't be so easy to exploit.

Pragmatism should be our focus -- not some naive idealism with having no borders.

cpt.fass1 wrote:

Lol at fences lets blow more resources on something that has been useless since someone invented shovels.. The only way walls work is if you have people protecting them.

Fences are mostly useless, but border patrols can work if you give them the appropriate level of authority.

cpt.fass1 wrote:

Also it's not the immigrants I care about as much as it's the people who come here for work and never plan on staying. Majority of the Illegals are doing that cause they can't actually afford to live in this country.  All they do is work and send our money back to their country. If they had plans of staying here and contributed back to our system and have to follow the same rules I do, I wouldn't give a care.

This is going to sound weird, but I actually don't care about that part myself.  Where someone wants to send their money doesn't matter to me as long as it isn't funding criminal activity.

If anything, things would work out better for Mexico (and us in the long run) if we just opened up work visas to however many Mexicans wanted to come here temporarily so that they could send the money home and slowly make Mexico a better place to live.

Ultimately, it is in our best interests for Mexico to improve itself, but the problem is that the likelihood of that happening is very low even with reforms that would help the situation.  For the most part, it looks more likely that a large chunk of Mexico would rather live here -- which I can't blame them for.

cpt.fass1 wrote:

I'm actually really talking about all of the illegals not just the Mexicans.

Lets put this into goods instead of money. You live in a city state where everybody worked hard to grow trees and food for your city state. Then a few people migrate from an other city state and start working for less food then your workers, so you hire them. They're working, keeping only what they need to eat and shipping back the rest to the other city state. It's great for the owners of the farm because they're keeping more food for sale. So they tell the workers to get more workers and the same keeps on happening. Now all the hard work that the original workers did are going to feed other family's and they're giving everything they have just for enough food to feed there families. The land owners now have more then enough for themselves and riches beyond everyone, but the population is starving.

This is basically what happens if the immigrants don't actually intend on living in the place they migrate for.

There are other factors to consider though...  If taxation is properly levied on the farm, then that money can be reinvested in your own city state, so that education can be improved, for example.  If you educate your children better than your poorer neighbors can, your children can eventually get better jobs than the neighbors can work.

It's the general process of comparative advantage and how it applies to both poor nations and wealthy ones.

cpt.fass1 wrote:

Were as I do understand that, but then you're making yourself reliant on the other city state for the workers. After years of educating your population, you're going to end up with people who are too good to do the actual necessary work for the food. 

What we're ending up with in this country, loss of manufacturing jobs and an influx of office work. I'd say that probably 80% of our work force is office work.

So? Why is a factory job better than an office job? The factory job has significantly higher levels of overhead attached to it and thus is limited in the wages it can pay. We're better off as a nation with a focus on service industry jobs rather than manufacturing jobs. The only people who lament the loss of factory jobs are people who think a high school dropout should earn $50k a year in a nice cushy union work environment. Sorry, that's not reality, especially not in a globalized world.