We have multiple options, but the one that isn’t working is the one we’ve chosen, where we pay lip service to having effective immigration law while pretending we don’t depend on cheap immigrant labor. Instead of choosing a path and committing to it, we’re doing what we seem to do with most things; we try to play both sides against the middle while using the issue as a political cudgel. We could either decide we need the inexpensive labor provided by these immigrants and reform our law to make that a legal and beneficial thing for them and us, or we could decide we don’t want these immigrants in our country and aggressively enforce our laws and force businesses to deal with the labor costs of citizens and legal immigrants. We won’t do either, because using it for Twitter posts and political attack ads is more on brand for the US Congress.
The retort was to point out that Newsmax and the OP are disproportionally reporting instances of immigrant crime to drive a narrative of a violent immigrant crime wave. I think that is an unfair characterization of reality, with it’s roots in racism.
crime rate would be lower by legal immigrants who went through the proper process, to be legal immigrants. but what are the stats on pure illegal immigrants… ?
Also for cheap labor, there are already plenty of visa programs out there. Its funny that left leaning people are for labor laws (ex minimum wage) yet give a pass on illegals following them?
I don’t think you need to speculate, Dorothy. It doesn’t take the scarecrow’s brain, the tin man’s heart, or the lion’s courage to draw reasonable conclusions based upon actual facts about the motives of Trump and his followers who clearly want to create anti-immigrant hysteria.
Trump stirs up hatred toward immigrants and says he alone can fix the problem.
I would suspect that nearly every American with driver’s license, citizen or not, has violate some law. I would suspect even if we took traffic violations out of the equation, most at some point or another have violated some law.
From the source doc: “Based on Trump’s memo, the U.S. will defer for 18 months the removal of certain Venezuelan nationals present in the U.S. on Jan. 20. It also allows those Venezuelans to work during that period of time.”
Not to complicate our legal v illegal; benefit v cost discussion ongoing here. But merely to point out that this move by Trump kicked the can down the road 18 months.
How well did ICE perform then on rounding up those 250,000 after their grace period of 18 months was up?
What percentage of this group then followed up with extension requests, what percentage self deported back to Venezuela, what percentage simply slid into the illegal categorization of overstaying permitted special status?
Congress has massively and consistently failed to bring immigration solutions into legislation. The scope of the problem exceeds the limits of DHS, HHS to effectively control.
I believe TMI linked (different thread) a recent DHS inspector general report that shines a light on unaccompanied minors and how their account of easily slips through the cracks into a “we don’t know where they are” status.
Why not throw the Liberians into the Trump so so, do as I say not as I do executive action mix in regards to preferred special status immigrants.
Have conditions in Liberia improved such that those folks are returning home?
On March 27, 2018, President Trump had issued a memorandum directing DHS to start a 12-month wind-down period of DED for Liberia, but eventually extended DED protections twice during his administration. President George W. Bush initially granted DED to about 10,000 Liberians in the U.S. after their TPS expired in 2007.
Liberia is better, I mean, they aren’t regularly torturing and killing people in the streets, the guy that lost the election didn’t invade the capital, and I think they have water and electricity in Monrovia, but that place is a long fucking way from OK.
I got way too deep in the goings on in Liberia working on an asylum application while Charles Taylor was “president”. That is not a place I would want anyone to go to. They have improved significantly since then, but starting at the very very bottom gives a lot of chances to improve.
The right takes this issue to far into ridiculous category
But some on left need to at least acknowledge this is a problem needing a fix. Imo this issue weighs much heavier this election than abortion and gun rights. Current vice president has the closest power to fix these issues, if she were to take action on those 145k past due Venezuelans right now, she would easily win.
Please show me on any thread in the past 13 years I have been on this site where a single Democrat has been ok with the immigration problems in the United States and not ackknowlege there is a problem. I’ll settle for a statement where even one Democrat says that it’s even a small problem and blow out of proportion.
