He's a well to do person that cannot fathom real hardship in life. His daughter will never be the one gang raped by migrants because he has the wealth to not live in the places we dump refugees into. So he comes up with a contrived story about his 5 year old needing a nap to try to "relate" to the imaginary refugee father he pretends to support.
Depends where you live. That's punishable up to a year in jail in some states as part of anti-homeless laws.
My municipality quit doing parades a couple years ago after the state made it a criminal offense to lay down or sit on public sidewalks because people could no longer attend them effectively.
I class myself as "open borders, not open boarders". Government should stop providing welfare, lodging, food, cash, and the rest of it; properly vet immigrants for health and especially criminal issues; and stop flying in refugees who don't know anything about their destinations and hate the destinations they get.
In other words, if immigration were truly voluntary and informed, and the immigrants had to work for a living or sponge off charities or their family and friends who were already here, it would work as well as id did prior to 1900.
But that's not what we have now, and there is zero chance of ever getting back to that. Given the choice of Trump's obnoxious and occasionally illegal deportations and closed borders, and the Democrats' wide open all-expenses-paid-no-vetting open boarders, I'll reluctantly choose Trump any day.
We can't absorb everyone poorer or worse off than us. There has to be some filtering. There can be natural pre-1900s filtering, or Trump filtering. The anti-filtering suck-em-all-in-at-taxpayer-expense "solution" is a recipe for disaster.
Even WITH all the nonsense you correctly decry we might still be fine if we hadn’t lost control of policing. If immigrants who broke the law could reliably get punished or deported and if shopkeepers and citizens could reliably defend themselves against predation, the issue would be safely contained.
The problem is that our political class has decided not to enforce law and order. GIVEN that seemingly immutable fact on the ground - the fact that shopkeepers aren’t being allowed to stop shoplifting and police officers aren’t able to prosecute rape when “protected groups” are involved - trying to simply discourage people in those groups from coming here is a next-best self-defense tactic. It’s not ideal, but it’s realistic.
I absolutely agree on that point. The abdication of law enforcement has possibly been even worse than the welfare state for making open borders untenable.
Good essay. One of my motivations for lifting weights is actually to be able to carry my kids for long distances as long as possible, and also throw them around and engage in other kinds of playfulness. It’s a good reason to lift!
I am not unsympathetic to the points expressed. Nevertheless, I am not convinced that the U.S. having “open borders” is sensible.
The U.S., unlike other nations which have coalesced over time based upon shared ethnicity and culture, is a country founded on an idea, what I would call classical liberalism (i.e., free speech, religious tolerance, limited government, free markets, etc.). In the past, immigrants to the U.S. — mainly from Europe — were generally supportive of those ideals.
The more recent immigration experience in Europe, and what we have seen on U.S. college campuses, have shown that many non-European immigrants do not share America’s founding principles. Many are religiously intolerant, do not respect freedom of expression, are amenable to the use of intimidation rather than rational discourse, do not favor free markets, and evince a lack of respect for the self-limiting structure of representative government. This should not be surprising nor be viewed as pejorative. It is simply a recognition that the world is made up of many different cultures, and some simply do not subscribe to the ideals upon which the U.S. was founded.
But that does seem to present a difficult problem when it comes to immigration. When a sufficient critical mass of the populace no longer subscribes to the U.S. “creed” (so to speak), that would seem to pose an existential threat to our system of government. Thus, while I am generally in favor of immigration for both selfish and humanitarian reasons, it seems sensible that a reasonable immigration policy should generally favor those who genuinely subscribe to American ideals.
“In the past, immigrants to the U.S. — mainly from Europe — were generally supportive of those ideals.”
This is completely historically ignorant. Italian immigrants were identified with organized crime and “anarchism”. Eastern European immigrants were identified with diseases and communism. Greeks were identified with laziness. Irish were identified with gangs and drunkenness. ALL past immigrants were (falsely for the groups as a whole) identified and stereotyped in ways that are well, very similar to the same kind of idiotic stereotypes we have today. We have M13 or whatever before it was The Mafia. We have “they all support Hamas” before we had “they all are anarchists”. We have “they’re not loyal to America”, before we had “they’re loyal to the Pope”.
Just go read some of the anti-immigration stuff from late 19th/early 20th century. It’s. The. Same. Bullshit. Different groups but the rhetoric and the hate mongering is exactly the same.
"Many are religiously intolerant, do not respect freedom of expression, are amenable to the use of intimidation rather than rational discourse, do not favor free markets, and evince a lack of respect for the self-limiting structure of representative government."
You just described the overwhelming majority of American citizens. Should we exile them from the country because they don't share America's founding values?
I think you are missing a step. I submit that people are as you say only because government meddles so much in our daily lives that people plausibly guess that if they do not sic government on others, others will sic government on them.
Or to put it another way, if government had not abrogated to itself the power to meddle, people would not turn to government to solve every petty annoyance in life. They would develop thicker skins to avoid most problems. They would cooperate with each other to solve the problems they could not ignore.
Government is always the problem. I am open to the possibility that some government actions are reasonable, but only on a case by case basis, and have not seen any non-government problems yet which were solved by governments.
I'm not sure what this has to do with my reply. My point is that the vast majority of both American citizens and immigrants oppose America's founding values, yet immigration restrictionists only want to keep the latter out of the country when, to be consistent, they should be in favor of deporting everyone who doesn't accept classical liberalism. How people came to hold their statist beliefs is irrelevant for my point.
It is only irrelevant to you. If you're going to take that attitude, then explain, please, how your introduction of your new topic (that current citizens would fail the same standard and should be exiled) was relevant to the comment you were replying to.
If you don't want other people extending your comments, then you shouldn't extend other people's comments.
After that bit about how immigrants don't believe in classical liberalism, the poster said:
"When a sufficient critical mass of the populace no longer subscribes to the U.S. “creed” (so to speak), that would seem to pose an existential threat to our system of government. Thus, while I am generally in favor of immigration for both selfish and humanitarian reasons, it seems sensible that a reasonable immigration policy should generally favor those who genuinely subscribe to American ideals."
If having a large majority of people in the country who don't subscribe to America's founding values creates an existential threat to society, and thus we should exclude those immigrants who don't have such beliefs, then, to prevent this existensial threat, we should exile all American citizens who also don't have such beliefs. Which would be almost everybody. Since I've never heard an immigration restrictionist argue that statist Americans should be exiled--and such an act would itself be an extreme violation of individual liberty--this argument in favor of immigration restrictions is bunk.
Now, explain to me how the origins of how people came to hold their statist beliefs somehow affects that argument. Keep in mind that almost all humans in history and almost all humans alive today held/hold to deeply statist, anti-classical liberal views. Thus, I highly doubt there's some special reason for American statism compared to everyone else.
Bud. You complained my comment was irrelevant. I said all changes in a discussion are irrelevant by that standard. Now you're repeating your original change in discussion.
You reminded me of zoning controls, which I despise, and which the naive might compare to border controls.
But detesting zoning does not mean I favor big box stores, skyscrapers, pig farms, or open cesspools in residential neighbors. No one is going to build big box stores or skyscrapers in residential neighborhoods because the infrastructure is not there, and pig farms and open cesspools violate neighbors' use of their land.
Unless government mandates it.
And that's the problem with open boarders. Government entices in the bums and thugs, virtually kidnaps refugees who don't want to be here, and creates all the problems which people come to associate with all immigrants, for right or wrong.
Government is the problem so often that it is guilty until proven beneficial. Those who want unchecked immigration must prevent government from aiding and abetting the bums and thugs BEFORE opening the borders.
Why do you have so little sympathy for the people getting raped? Can you not sympathize with the father that had his daughter raped by those refugees you love? Do you think the immigrants doing this raping don't have any kids? Father's can rape too you know, as can their sons.
These people's countries are countries of origin garbage because THEY ARE GARBAGE. It is inherent to their very biology. It can not be fixed by moving to "magic dirt". That's why they keep trashing every single place they go to. Good countries are good because they are NOT FULL OF THOSE PEOPLE.
I don't see any sympathy at all your your stance. It's psychotic and evil.
At this point nativists, especially in America, have not only proven themselves to be wrong about everything, they have demonstrated that they themselves embody all the negative qualities that they accuse refugees of having. Nativists are the ones who promote the kinds of corruption, authoritarianism, and crackpot economics that have turned other countries into socialist hellholes. Trump and his tariffs would be right at home with Juan Peron, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, and other third-world strongmen who massively damaged their countries. Nativists are also insanely tolerant of crime as long as it is one of their own doing it; they often nominate criminals, including rapists and child predators, to high office.
Increased immigration has not increased crime or made the country more left-wing. The idea that garbage people make garbage countries is obviously false, since many countries succeed in spite of having nativists in them. Many demographically identical countries have very different outcomes, the two Koreas being the obvious example. The two Koreas (and the two Germanies a few decades ago) show that either the "magic soil" theory is true, or there is some third factor besides soil and demographics.
Most humans are not rapists, that includes both natives and refugees. But all refugees are going through some pretty terrible things, otherwise they wouldn't be refugees. You can't just compare instances of two types of suffering, you also have to compare frequency. Bryan is statistically literate, that explains his attitude.
"Increased immigration has not increased crime or made the country more left-wing."
False, non-whites vote left. Nearly the entire leftward shift is demographic related. California went from Reagan to Newsome because of you animals.
"Many demographically identical countries have very different outcomes"
Yes, communism sucks. But all non-communists governments trend towards genetic determinate. China became a world power the second it stopped being communist, because East Asians are genetically virtuous.
"Bryan is statistically literate, that explains his attitude."
"Most humans are not rapists"
Yes, but having a rapist % too high makes life unlivable. Most people in the ghetto aren't criminals, but there are enough criminals that people aren't safe.
As to your average immigrant shit, they are welfare sponges and bad voters.
The thing is, usually your maudlin personal anecdote is meant to have some actual connection to the argument you're trying to make with it.
Your daughter getting tired on a tourist trip at the age of 5 has nothing to do with refugees, in any sense, at all. You have made up this connection and now you expect it to be convincing.
Anyway, the emotional claim falls flat because it's so clearly selective. Is there any emotional sympathy to be had for the natives whose lives and homes are wrecked by "refugees"?
What a beautiful story, sir. As a dad, myself, I can relate.
That being said, I see why you usually avoid emotional appeals. I am already on the open-borders train. But, based on the comments, I see that this has fallen flat, especially with your more regular anti-immigration subscribers. I think you should address the elephant in the room: the "rapefugees" allegation. But I know you rarely read your comments, so I will attempt.
First of all, let's acknowledge that the "rapefugee" allegations are based on truth. I think this is mainly a European thing and many of us in North America don't quite understand what's going on on the other side of the pond. But, as far as I can tell, these allegations are based mainly on three things:
3. "Grooming gangs" in the UK where mainly Pakistani men "groom" young women (including some minors) into having sex with multiple men. Often using coercion, manipulation, bullying, threats, intimidation, etc. Often the men would get paid for this, not the young women. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grooming_gangs_scandal)
In each of these cases, a disproportionate number of perpetrators were Muslim immigrants.
Now, disproportionate does not mean probable. For example, it's a well-known fact that most pedophiles are men, despite the fact that men are only half of the population. Men are disproportionately more likely to be pedophiles than women. As a response, some women (but not all women!) will never allow men alone with their children: https://www.todaysparent.com/blogs/opinion/my-kids-are-never-allowed-alone-in-a-room-with-a-man/ and some airlines will not sit children traveling alone with men traveling alone.
I don't know about y'all, but, as a man, I find this incredibly misandrist and downright insulting. Even if most pedophiles are men, the vast majority of men are not pedophiles! You know what I would do to your kid if they sat next to me on a flight? Talk to them, keep them company, help calm them down if they get nervous, maybe give em snacks, play with them, help them put on movies on the entertainment system, etc. I would be offended if the airline moved the kid to not be around me. Maybe not enough to permanently boycott the airline. But still, offended. I also know good, kind men who work in child care. I would trust my daughter to the care of these men.
Likewise, most Afghan, Pakistani and North African immigrants are not rapists and shouldn't be treated as such.
I think it’s usually a mistake to justify immigration from the immigrants point of view. Employers in this country have a right to hire anyone in the world they want to. By restricting immigration, the Trump administration is violating the rights of US citizens to hire whoever they want to a lot of people will say that they have a little sympathy for the immigrants, but fewer will say that they want to violate the rights of other US citizens.
Yep, we in the US have the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...unless it involves trading with, hiring, or renting a room to about 95% of humanity. Then those rights go out the window.
Employers have too many rights in general & they can also move jobs overseas more easily than a person can cross borders to find work, even within the same country.
What stands out to me in your reply is that you apparently have decided that you can determine when another person has too many rights, even when it involves something he created, such as his company. May I suggest that your life would be happier if you would re-examine this idea?
Where is this right of employers to hire anyone in the world they want to? Is it written down somewhere? Is it a natural law, civil law, moral law, international law?
It is the rest of the people who secure an individual's property through the state, its courts, its police and ultimately the armed might that secures the private property from invasion.
Such a stupidly generic statement is devoid of meaning. By that logic, everything I do is the State's business. There are no rights but State rights. No one owns themselves; the State owns everybody.
"All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state."
Except you. You are the one who sits above the fray controlling the State.
Exactly. What's the limiting principle on this line of thinking? And in what sense is the state securing my property if, in so securing it, everyone else is entitled to vote in any way they want on how I may use it? My property is hardly "secure" if there are no principled limits on what the state can tell me what to do with it.
Your property exists solely within the nexus of laws of a state. In this sense, the state secures your property. Property disputes are resolved with courts of law, by arguments and not by violence.
If the state gets conquered, the property rights vanish with it. Ask the people of Konigsberg.
It’s a natural law. Because humans must use their minds to survive, anyone who uses coercion to keep you from realizing your ideas is condemning you to spiritual or even physical death. This is precisely why the constitution attempted to limit the powers of government.
The same constitution, as interpreted for over 200 years, provides for naturalization of foreigners and does not provide for this so-called right of the employers.
Not that it matters, but it actually does. The constitution claims that all powers not explicitly granted to federal government are retained by the people. Ergo: no comment = people can do it.
2. "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." -- It is right there in the last 4 words.
This post is a great example of how good feelings lead to poor decisions. Nothing prevents you from helping refugees on your own dime and time; using force of State to open borders causes well documented social crisis. Sometimes, you got to use your brain boy.
By law, I cannot choose who is allowed to live in my neighborhood- which is a violation of freedom of association. So when the State opens borders, it is doing so by force. The force is applied onto people who don't want to live with immigrants.
Its illegal for me to sign a contract with my neighboring property owners ala an HOA that excludes protected classes. Its allowed for age and thats about it.
What leftward shift? The 2010s are over, dude. The USA and much of the rest of the world has had a rightward shift lately. This was partly driven by non-white immigrants and their descendants. Back in the 2010s there was this idea that the USA would become permanently more left-wing because everyone thought that non-whites would permanently trend left like African Americans. That turned out to be wrong. Instead they are just like white immigrants, they start out left-leaning but eventually end up in the same spread as native-born whites. Republicans, even Trump, have made large gains among non-whites in the past decade.
The leftward shift in California happened among whites too. It was mostly driven by emigration, not immigration, as predominantly conservative working class people left the state because of high living costs.
Communism sucks, but corrupt far-right authoritarians also suck. MAGA has brought us far closer to the latter. MAGA has non-white members, but it is still a predominantly white movement. It's existence (as well as that of Peronism in predominantly white Argentina) proves that white people don't have some kind of secret power to create and preserve freedom and civilization. They have the same capacity to fall for crazy demagogues as non-whites.
My understanding is that the "rapefugee" meme is mostly a statistical artifact created by the police changing how rapes and sexual assaults were recorded at around the same time more refugees were let in. To the extent there is some truth to it, the targets of the rapists were often other refugees, not natives. That doesn't make it any less horrible, but it does mean that not allowing in refugees wouldn't have reduced rapes or change who they happened to, it would have just changed what country they happened in.
One chart from Denmark proves little, especially since Europeans tend to be much worse at integrating immigrants than Americans and could stand to learn a thing or two. The fact that someone uses more than they pay in taxes doesn't neccessary prove they are a lazy sponge either, they are often simply working at a low income job that pays little in taxes, but still contributes to society.
I'm the son of refugees. I'm fully in favor of immigration and welcoming refugees, until and unless they (1) are criminals; (2) terrorists; (3) support terrorism, e.g., pro-Hamas, or would likely support terrorism, e.g., they're Islamists; (4) get taxpayer dollars; (5) support and/or when they become citizens would likely vote for socialism, communism, or any other tyranny; (6) They're bigots, e.g., antisemitic, anti-gay, anti-women, etc.
It is a huge problem when people with alien or evil ideologies, move into a society and replace the host culture. Witness what it is happening in Europe with their gradual but steady demographic replacement and the huge new attendant problems they have.
You are only considering first order consequences of immigration. Yes, you have reduced the suffering of one family to allow them here.
But consider the second order consequences and suffering of women not feeling safe alone in the city (with reason!), the 20x higher propensity for stranger rape, the election of economically illiterate communists as the mayor of NYC, the fractured community ties in neighborhoods that can't communicate with each other, the preferential treatment given to the migrants children in everything from SBA loans to college applications. Does that not also cause suffering?
Young children take naps in public, including park benches, all of the time. Why feel shame?
Likewise, I really didn’t understand the emotional situation there.
nor i
He's a well to do person that cannot fathom real hardship in life. His daughter will never be the one gang raped by migrants because he has the wealth to not live in the places we dump refugees into. So he comes up with a contrived story about his 5 year old needing a nap to try to "relate" to the imaginary refugee father he pretends to support.
I was wondering this, too. Nothing wrong with a small child sleeping in public.
I was thinking that exact same thing.
Nothing bad about letting your kid nap on a park bench.
Depends where you live. That's punishable up to a year in jail in some states as part of anti-homeless laws.
My municipality quit doing parades a couple years ago after the state made it a criminal offense to lay down or sit on public sidewalks because people could no longer attend them effectively.
Just stumbled into this post and I agree, it is totally weird.
I class myself as "open borders, not open boarders". Government should stop providing welfare, lodging, food, cash, and the rest of it; properly vet immigrants for health and especially criminal issues; and stop flying in refugees who don't know anything about their destinations and hate the destinations they get.
In other words, if immigration were truly voluntary and informed, and the immigrants had to work for a living or sponge off charities or their family and friends who were already here, it would work as well as id did prior to 1900.
But that's not what we have now, and there is zero chance of ever getting back to that. Given the choice of Trump's obnoxious and occasionally illegal deportations and closed borders, and the Democrats' wide open all-expenses-paid-no-vetting open boarders, I'll reluctantly choose Trump any day.
We can't absorb everyone poorer or worse off than us. There has to be some filtering. There can be natural pre-1900s filtering, or Trump filtering. The anti-filtering suck-em-all-in-at-taxpayer-expense "solution" is a recipe for disaster.
Even WITH all the nonsense you correctly decry we might still be fine if we hadn’t lost control of policing. If immigrants who broke the law could reliably get punished or deported and if shopkeepers and citizens could reliably defend themselves against predation, the issue would be safely contained.
The problem is that our political class has decided not to enforce law and order. GIVEN that seemingly immutable fact on the ground - the fact that shopkeepers aren’t being allowed to stop shoplifting and police officers aren’t able to prosecute rape when “protected groups” are involved - trying to simply discourage people in those groups from coming here is a next-best self-defense tactic. It’s not ideal, but it’s realistic.
I absolutely agree on that point. The abdication of law enforcement has possibly been even worse than the welfare state for making open borders untenable.
Good essay. One of my motivations for lifting weights is actually to be able to carry my kids for long distances as long as possible, and also throw them around and engage in other kinds of playfulness. It’s a good reason to lift!
I also lift uneven weights so I can carry my two daughters and a suitcase when rushing through the airport.
I am not unsympathetic to the points expressed. Nevertheless, I am not convinced that the U.S. having “open borders” is sensible.
The U.S., unlike other nations which have coalesced over time based upon shared ethnicity and culture, is a country founded on an idea, what I would call classical liberalism (i.e., free speech, religious tolerance, limited government, free markets, etc.). In the past, immigrants to the U.S. — mainly from Europe — were generally supportive of those ideals.
The more recent immigration experience in Europe, and what we have seen on U.S. college campuses, have shown that many non-European immigrants do not share America’s founding principles. Many are religiously intolerant, do not respect freedom of expression, are amenable to the use of intimidation rather than rational discourse, do not favor free markets, and evince a lack of respect for the self-limiting structure of representative government. This should not be surprising nor be viewed as pejorative. It is simply a recognition that the world is made up of many different cultures, and some simply do not subscribe to the ideals upon which the U.S. was founded.
But that does seem to present a difficult problem when it comes to immigration. When a sufficient critical mass of the populace no longer subscribes to the U.S. “creed” (so to speak), that would seem to pose an existential threat to our system of government. Thus, while I am generally in favor of immigration for both selfish and humanitarian reasons, it seems sensible that a reasonable immigration policy should generally favor those who genuinely subscribe to American ideals.
“In the past, immigrants to the U.S. — mainly from Europe — were generally supportive of those ideals.”
This is completely historically ignorant. Italian immigrants were identified with organized crime and “anarchism”. Eastern European immigrants were identified with diseases and communism. Greeks were identified with laziness. Irish were identified with gangs and drunkenness. ALL past immigrants were (falsely for the groups as a whole) identified and stereotyped in ways that are well, very similar to the same kind of idiotic stereotypes we have today. We have M13 or whatever before it was The Mafia. We have “they all support Hamas” before we had “they all are anarchists”. We have “they’re not loyal to America”, before we had “they’re loyal to the Pope”.
Just go read some of the anti-immigration stuff from late 19th/early 20th century. It’s. The. Same. Bullshit. Different groups but the rhetoric and the hate mongering is exactly the same.
"Many are religiously intolerant, do not respect freedom of expression, are amenable to the use of intimidation rather than rational discourse, do not favor free markets, and evince a lack of respect for the self-limiting structure of representative government."
You just described the overwhelming majority of American citizens. Should we exile them from the country because they don't share America's founding values?
I think you are missing a step. I submit that people are as you say only because government meddles so much in our daily lives that people plausibly guess that if they do not sic government on others, others will sic government on them.
Or to put it another way, if government had not abrogated to itself the power to meddle, people would not turn to government to solve every petty annoyance in life. They would develop thicker skins to avoid most problems. They would cooperate with each other to solve the problems they could not ignore.
Government is always the problem. I am open to the possibility that some government actions are reasonable, but only on a case by case basis, and have not seen any non-government problems yet which were solved by governments.
I'm not sure what this has to do with my reply. My point is that the vast majority of both American citizens and immigrants oppose America's founding values, yet immigration restrictionists only want to keep the latter out of the country when, to be consistent, they should be in favor of deporting everyone who doesn't accept classical liberalism. How people came to hold their statist beliefs is irrelevant for my point.
It is only irrelevant to you. If you're going to take that attitude, then explain, please, how your introduction of your new topic (that current citizens would fail the same standard and should be exiled) was relevant to the comment you were replying to.
If you don't want other people extending your comments, then you shouldn't extend other people's comments.
After that bit about how immigrants don't believe in classical liberalism, the poster said:
"When a sufficient critical mass of the populace no longer subscribes to the U.S. “creed” (so to speak), that would seem to pose an existential threat to our system of government. Thus, while I am generally in favor of immigration for both selfish and humanitarian reasons, it seems sensible that a reasonable immigration policy should generally favor those who genuinely subscribe to American ideals."
If having a large majority of people in the country who don't subscribe to America's founding values creates an existential threat to society, and thus we should exclude those immigrants who don't have such beliefs, then, to prevent this existensial threat, we should exile all American citizens who also don't have such beliefs. Which would be almost everybody. Since I've never heard an immigration restrictionist argue that statist Americans should be exiled--and such an act would itself be an extreme violation of individual liberty--this argument in favor of immigration restrictions is bunk.
Now, explain to me how the origins of how people came to hold their statist beliefs somehow affects that argument. Keep in mind that almost all humans in history and almost all humans alive today held/hold to deeply statist, anti-classical liberal views. Thus, I highly doubt there's some special reason for American statism compared to everyone else.
Bud. You complained my comment was irrelevant. I said all changes in a discussion are irrelevant by that standard. Now you're repeating your original change in discussion.
I give up. You can be as relevant as you want.
You reminded me of zoning controls, which I despise, and which the naive might compare to border controls.
But detesting zoning does not mean I favor big box stores, skyscrapers, pig farms, or open cesspools in residential neighbors. No one is going to build big box stores or skyscrapers in residential neighborhoods because the infrastructure is not there, and pig farms and open cesspools violate neighbors' use of their land.
Unless government mandates it.
And that's the problem with open boarders. Government entices in the bums and thugs, virtually kidnaps refugees who don't want to be here, and creates all the problems which people come to associate with all immigrants, for right or wrong.
Government is the problem so often that it is guilty until proven beneficial. Those who want unchecked immigration must prevent government from aiding and abetting the bums and thugs BEFORE opening the borders.
Why do you have so little sympathy for the people getting raped? Can you not sympathize with the father that had his daughter raped by those refugees you love? Do you think the immigrants doing this raping don't have any kids? Father's can rape too you know, as can their sons.
These people's countries are countries of origin garbage because THEY ARE GARBAGE. It is inherent to their very biology. It can not be fixed by moving to "magic dirt". That's why they keep trashing every single place they go to. Good countries are good because they are NOT FULL OF THOSE PEOPLE.
I don't see any sympathy at all your your stance. It's psychotic and evil.
At this point nativists, especially in America, have not only proven themselves to be wrong about everything, they have demonstrated that they themselves embody all the negative qualities that they accuse refugees of having. Nativists are the ones who promote the kinds of corruption, authoritarianism, and crackpot economics that have turned other countries into socialist hellholes. Trump and his tariffs would be right at home with Juan Peron, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, and other third-world strongmen who massively damaged their countries. Nativists are also insanely tolerant of crime as long as it is one of their own doing it; they often nominate criminals, including rapists and child predators, to high office.
Increased immigration has not increased crime or made the country more left-wing. The idea that garbage people make garbage countries is obviously false, since many countries succeed in spite of having nativists in them. Many demographically identical countries have very different outcomes, the two Koreas being the obvious example. The two Koreas (and the two Germanies a few decades ago) show that either the "magic soil" theory is true, or there is some third factor besides soil and demographics.
Most humans are not rapists, that includes both natives and refugees. But all refugees are going through some pretty terrible things, otherwise they wouldn't be refugees. You can't just compare instances of two types of suffering, you also have to compare frequency. Bryan is statistically literate, that explains his attitude.
"Increased immigration has not increased crime or made the country more left-wing."
False, non-whites vote left. Nearly the entire leftward shift is demographic related. California went from Reagan to Newsome because of you animals.
"Many demographically identical countries have very different outcomes"
Yes, communism sucks. But all non-communists governments trend towards genetic determinate. China became a world power the second it stopped being communist, because East Asians are genetically virtuous.
"Bryan is statistically literate, that explains his attitude."
"Most humans are not rapists"
Yes, but having a rapist % too high makes life unlivable. Most people in the ghetto aren't criminals, but there are enough criminals that people aren't safe.
As to your average immigrant shit, they are welfare sponges and bad voters.
https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1424,quality=80,format=auto/sites/default/files/images/print-edition/20211218_EUC232.png
He's the opposite of statically literate. He's emoting.
The thing is, usually your maudlin personal anecdote is meant to have some actual connection to the argument you're trying to make with it.
Your daughter getting tired on a tourist trip at the age of 5 has nothing to do with refugees, in any sense, at all. You have made up this connection and now you expect it to be convincing.
Anyway, the emotional claim falls flat because it's so clearly selective. Is there any emotional sympathy to be had for the natives whose lives and homes are wrecked by "refugees"?
What a beautiful story, sir. As a dad, myself, I can relate.
That being said, I see why you usually avoid emotional appeals. I am already on the open-borders train. But, based on the comments, I see that this has fallen flat, especially with your more regular anti-immigration subscribers. I think you should address the elephant in the room: the "rapefugees" allegation. But I know you rarely read your comments, so I will attempt.
First of all, let's acknowledge that the "rapefugee" allegations are based on truth. I think this is mainly a European thing and many of us in North America don't quite understand what's going on on the other side of the pond. But, as far as I can tell, these allegations are based mainly on three things:
1. The 2016 New Year's molestation incidents in Koln, Germany, committed mainly by North African immigrants. (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35231046)
2. A similar incident that same year at a concert in Sweden (https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7260/sweden-rape-afghan-migrants)
3. "Grooming gangs" in the UK where mainly Pakistani men "groom" young women (including some minors) into having sex with multiple men. Often using coercion, manipulation, bullying, threats, intimidation, etc. Often the men would get paid for this, not the young women. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grooming_gangs_scandal)
In each of these cases, a disproportionate number of perpetrators were Muslim immigrants.
Now, disproportionate does not mean probable. For example, it's a well-known fact that most pedophiles are men, despite the fact that men are only half of the population. Men are disproportionately more likely to be pedophiles than women. As a response, some women (but not all women!) will never allow men alone with their children: https://www.todaysparent.com/blogs/opinion/my-kids-are-never-allowed-alone-in-a-room-with-a-man/ and some airlines will not sit children traveling alone with men traveling alone.
I don't know about y'all, but, as a man, I find this incredibly misandrist and downright insulting. Even if most pedophiles are men, the vast majority of men are not pedophiles! You know what I would do to your kid if they sat next to me on a flight? Talk to them, keep them company, help calm them down if they get nervous, maybe give em snacks, play with them, help them put on movies on the entertainment system, etc. I would be offended if the airline moved the kid to not be around me. Maybe not enough to permanently boycott the airline. But still, offended. I also know good, kind men who work in child care. I would trust my daughter to the care of these men.
Likewise, most Afghan, Pakistani and North African immigrants are not rapists and shouldn't be treated as such.
This just led me to yet more negative emotions toward emotional appeals.
I think it’s usually a mistake to justify immigration from the immigrants point of view. Employers in this country have a right to hire anyone in the world they want to. By restricting immigration, the Trump administration is violating the rights of US citizens to hire whoever they want to a lot of people will say that they have a little sympathy for the immigrants, but fewer will say that they want to violate the rights of other US citizens.
Yep, we in the US have the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...unless it involves trading with, hiring, or renting a room to about 95% of humanity. Then those rights go out the window.
Employers have too many rights in general & they can also move jobs overseas more easily than a person can cross borders to find work, even within the same country.
What stands out to me in your reply is that you apparently have decided that you can determine when another person has too many rights, even when it involves something he created, such as his company. May I suggest that your life would be happier if you would re-examine this idea?
Where is this right of employers to hire anyone in the world they want to? Is it written down somewhere? Is it a natural law, civil law, moral law, international law?
Turn it around. Why is it anybody else's business?
Do you start everything with the assumption that only that which is explicitly allowed is moral?
It is the rest of the people who secure an individual's property through the state, its courts, its police and ultimately the armed might that secures the private property from invasion.
That's why it is their business.
Such a stupidly generic statement is devoid of meaning. By that logic, everything I do is the State's business. There are no rights but State rights. No one owns themselves; the State owns everybody.
"All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state."
Except you. You are the one who sits above the fray controlling the State.
Exactly. What's the limiting principle on this line of thinking? And in what sense is the state securing my property if, in so securing it, everyone else is entitled to vote in any way they want on how I may use it? My property is hardly "secure" if there are no principled limits on what the state can tell me what to do with it.
Your property exists solely within the nexus of laws of a state. In this sense, the state secures your property. Property disputes are resolved with courts of law, by arguments and not by violence.
If the state gets conquered, the property rights vanish with it. Ask the people of Konigsberg.
Everything is liable to be state's business. There exists no limiting principle.
State can conscript soldiers, break-up businesses (anti-trust), seize property (eminent domain), levy taxes.
All this done by liberal free-market countries.
"Might makes right"
It’s a natural law. Because humans must use their minds to survive, anyone who uses coercion to keep you from realizing your ideas is condemning you to spiritual or even physical death. This is precisely why the constitution attempted to limit the powers of government.
The same constitution, as interpreted for over 200 years, provides for naturalization of foreigners and does not provide for this so-called right of the employers.
Not that it matters, but it actually does. The constitution claims that all powers not explicitly granted to federal government are retained by the people. Ergo: no comment = people can do it.
Isn't the power to naturalize aliens is explicitly given to the federal govt?
Govt allows only those aliens possessing valid visa to enter the American territory. Do you think this condition is unconstitutional?
Unconstitutional and immoral
1. Natural Law
2. "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." -- It is right there in the last 4 words.
The same Constitution does not affirm "the rights of US citizens to hire whoever they want ".
You are confused about what the Constitution does, and where rights originate.
This post is a great example of how good feelings lead to poor decisions. Nothing prevents you from helping refugees on your own dime and time; using force of State to open borders causes well documented social crisis. Sometimes, you got to use your brain boy.
"Using the force of the state to open borders" -- what?
By law, I cannot choose who is allowed to live in my neighborhood- which is a violation of freedom of association. So when the State opens borders, it is doing so by force. The force is applied onto people who don't want to live with immigrants.
Huh? You do not own your whole neighborhood. There's no violation of some other property owner decides to invite an immigrant onto his land.
Its illegal for me to sign a contract with my neighboring property owners ala an HOA that excludes protected classes. Its allowed for age and thats about it.
Is it? What does the government do to you if you sign such a contract?
In the US, at a minimum its a violation of the Civil Rights Act.
Yeah, but the rapes though?
I don't want my government to help them with taxpayers money either. They can live or die, so long as they do it on land that is not ours.
And yes, they are to blame for their troubles. How many of us can honestly claim to be sinless and without guilt? Their thershold is just much lower.
"ours"
What leftward shift? The 2010s are over, dude. The USA and much of the rest of the world has had a rightward shift lately. This was partly driven by non-white immigrants and their descendants. Back in the 2010s there was this idea that the USA would become permanently more left-wing because everyone thought that non-whites would permanently trend left like African Americans. That turned out to be wrong. Instead they are just like white immigrants, they start out left-leaning but eventually end up in the same spread as native-born whites. Republicans, even Trump, have made large gains among non-whites in the past decade.
The leftward shift in California happened among whites too. It was mostly driven by emigration, not immigration, as predominantly conservative working class people left the state because of high living costs.
Communism sucks, but corrupt far-right authoritarians also suck. MAGA has brought us far closer to the latter. MAGA has non-white members, but it is still a predominantly white movement. It's existence (as well as that of Peronism in predominantly white Argentina) proves that white people don't have some kind of secret power to create and preserve freedom and civilization. They have the same capacity to fall for crazy demagogues as non-whites.
My understanding is that the "rapefugee" meme is mostly a statistical artifact created by the police changing how rapes and sexual assaults were recorded at around the same time more refugees were let in. To the extent there is some truth to it, the targets of the rapists were often other refugees, not natives. That doesn't make it any less horrible, but it does mean that not allowing in refugees wouldn't have reduced rapes or change who they happened to, it would have just changed what country they happened in.
One chart from Denmark proves little, especially since Europeans tend to be much worse at integrating immigrants than Americans and could stand to learn a thing or two. The fact that someone uses more than they pay in taxes doesn't neccessary prove they are a lazy sponge either, they are often simply working at a low income job that pays little in taxes, but still contributes to society.
I'm the son of refugees. I'm fully in favor of immigration and welcoming refugees, until and unless they (1) are criminals; (2) terrorists; (3) support terrorism, e.g., pro-Hamas, or would likely support terrorism, e.g., they're Islamists; (4) get taxpayer dollars; (5) support and/or when they become citizens would likely vote for socialism, communism, or any other tyranny; (6) They're bigots, e.g., antisemitic, anti-gay, anti-women, etc.
It is a huge problem when people with alien or evil ideologies, move into a society and replace the host culture. Witness what it is happening in Europe with their gradual but steady demographic replacement and the huge new attendant problems they have.
"Who could be more deserving of your sympathy than people fleeing the horrors of violence, homelessness, and hunger?"
Factory farmed animals ,but this is besides the point. The typical refugee is a drain on civilization and therefore should be kept out.
Learn to control your emotions, this is pathetic.
You are only considering first order consequences of immigration. Yes, you have reduced the suffering of one family to allow them here.
But consider the second order consequences and suffering of women not feeling safe alone in the city (with reason!), the 20x higher propensity for stranger rape, the election of economically illiterate communists as the mayor of NYC, the fractured community ties in neighborhoods that can't communicate with each other, the preferential treatment given to the migrants children in everything from SBA loans to college applications. Does that not also cause suffering?