With all sincere respect, I must say that the above is confused, specious, or just plain wrong. For example, no one in congress is working his or her 'heart out' to 'solve the mess.' People are pointing fingers and making claims and otherwise doing their best to score points against their political opponents, but there's no real effort being made by anyone who matters to fix the immigration problem along our southern border (which by the way, has been almost entirely self-inflicted--though you need to have facts to know this, trust me). If they were, the problem would be fixed. It's not that hard, really, if you're willing to think outside boxes and biases.

Sadly, the know-nothings in America are too focused on tried & true medieval methods of stopping invaders (walls, moats, cages, starvation, family separations, etc.) to understand or really care that there are global pressures on LATAM populations that have been building for more than a century that we've turned a blind eye to while we focused on what some bright-wit recently rediscovered and is calling great-power competition. We've allowed corrupt regimes to sprout and fester from top to bottom of the hemisphere, and we've supported some against others to the slow destruction of whole economies or their abandonment to the ravages of crime and revolution--all okay with us, so long as people stayed in their little crap-holes and kept giving us their mineral resources and their low-wage labor (when we needed it, as during WWII).

What's interesting is that NAFTA, which was derided as worthless and damaging to American laborers, was actually aimed at reducing the need for people to come to the U.S. to work. The idea was that the border area would be a stopping place where migrants could work and earn enough to send remittances south and so would not need to cross the border. And it was working. By 2010, the flow had decreased and the area was prospering, but the economic downturn of this century wreaked havoc all over and people from the south again starting looking here for work. And of course, in our twittering-idiot country, we forgot the reason for NAFTA, ignored the cause of the resurgence, declared NAFTA a failure, and all the immigrants evil, awful people. Yeah. People who were willing to risk their lives to work long hours at terrible jobs so they could send half or more of what they earn back to needy families (for some poorer countries, inbound remittances exceed their GDP).

I could go on and on, but I'll stop wth these several thoughts. Immigration and its long term effects on America are something I know more than a little about--starting around 1850, when we first asked in the census where people were born. Simply put, all immigration has been beneficial to America (yes, even illegal immigration), in spite of social upheaval, war, the great migrations, and all the rest. More important: immigration is absolutely crucial to the future of our country--we stem the tide at our peril.

Why? Because replacement birthrates matter. The U.S. has a healthy, growing economy for two reasons: We ruthlessly seek and implement efficiencies like no other country (we're all about a Dollar, after all), and we have more babies than we do dying people. The latter reason is the more important, and the only reason that's true is because of our immigrant population. As in most industrialized nations, Americans stopped making enough babies to prosper a couple decades ago, but immigrants bring with them lots of babies and often a culture and religion that encourages making more babies. This is the main reason America is prosperous, and all the other industrialized nations are facing economic stress. Consider why leadership in Germany was so eager to accept immigrants in the face of populist resistance. Merkel understood Germany doesn't make enough babies. They never recovered from the losses of WWII and progress. Russia, in fact, is a doomed country because it cannot make enough babies--and Putin knows it. Why do you think he's so hard over about places where there are lots of ethnic Russians? America needs its immigrants and their new blood if we want to keep our economic position in the world. If we become truly isolationist and manage to turn away all the immigrants, we will be as doomed as Russia.

And you needn't take my word for any of this. The data is available via google, more than its possible to digest. You just have to be willing to form your own opinions instead of uncritcally accepting what people of questionable intent are telling you.

The simple truth is this: What most people think they know about immigration is really just wrong, and the people screaming loudest about world-ending tides of evil immigrant hordes are just using a millenia-old method of rallying a terrified and ignorant populace to the cause. Barbarians are at the gates! Fire! Flood! Doom, despair, agony, deep dark depression, excessive misery!* The real truth is that our nation has room and to spare for a lot more people than we have. Moreover, we are God Blessed enough to be a nation of generally decent people who, when we bother to recall it and admit it, know that there but for the grace, etc., is us. We could fix this easy if we could ever all decide we really want to.

Regards
SangerM


P.S. BY the way, it may be interesting to some to know that in 2006, the 2nd largest number of illegal immigrants in the U.S. were people who came here on vistor visas and didn't leave when they were supposed to. I think that's still true today.

P.P.S. Often when illegal immigrants are caught breaking the law, it's because they are doing things we won't allow them to do legally, like driving without a license and insurance, or running a small business without permits, etc. We also don't encourage using banks and such, so they carry cash and become victims of crime, and they can't rent places to live so they end up squatters... and on and on. Yes, I know. If they didn't come here without permission they wouldn't have these problems, but consider how much of what makes them criminals is just bureacratic BS and wouldn't be a problem if we decided we didn't want it to be. It really can be that simple, which is why I wrote that no one is really working all that hard to solve the problems. It doesn't make good politics to solve a problem you can blame on the opposition and gets you votes. Princes don't fix things that keep people looking other than at them, and in America today, the GOP doesn't want its constituency to start asking where the emperor's brains are.

'nuff said.


* Yes, I remember that well. heh.

With all sincere respect, I must say that the above is confused, specious, or just plain wrong. For example, no one in congress is working his or her 'heart out' to 'solve the mess.' People are pointing fingers and making claims and otherwise doing their best to score points against their political opponents, but there's no real effort being made by anyone who matters to fix the immigration problem along our southern border (which by the way, has been almost entirely self-inflicted--though you need to have facts to know this, trust me). If they were, the problem would be fixed. It's not that hard, really, if you're willing to think outside boxes and biases.

Sadly, the know-nothings in America are too focused on tried & true medieval methods of stopping invaders (walls, moats, cages, starvation, family separations, etc.) to understand or really care that there are global pressures on LATAM populations that have been building for more than a century that we've turned a blind eye to while we focused on what some bright-wit recently rediscovered and is calling great-power competition. We've allowed corrupt regimes to sprout and fester from top to bottom of the hemisphere, and we've supported some against others to the slow destruction of whole economies or their abandonment to the ravages of crime and revolution--all okay with us, so long as people stayed in their little crap-holes and kept giving us their mineral resources and their low-wage labor (when we needed it, as during WWII).

What's interesting is that NAFTA, which was derided as worthless and damaging to American laborers, was actually aimed at reducing the need for people to come to the U.S. to work. The idea was that the border area would be a stopping place where migrants could work and earn enough to send remittances south and so would not need to cross the border. And it was working. By 2010, the flow had decreased and the area was prospering, but the economic downturn of this century wreaked havoc all over and people from the south again starting looking here for work. And of course, in our twittering-idiot country, we forgot the reason for NAFTA, ignored the cause of the resurgence, declared NAFTA a failure, and all the immigrants evil, awful people. Yeah. People who were willing to risk their lives to work long hours at terrible jobs so they could send half or more of what they earn back to needy families (for some poorer countries, inbound remittances exceed their GDP).

I could go on and on, but I'll stop wth these several thoughts. Immigration and its long term effects on America are something I know more than a little about--starting around 1850, when we first asked in the census where people were born. Simply put, all immigration has been beneficial to America (yes, even illegal immigration), in spite of social upheaval, war, the great migrations, and all the rest. More important: immigration is absolutely crucial to the future of our country--we stem the tide at our peril.

Why? Because replacement birthrates matter. The U.S. has a healthy, growing economy for two reasons: We ruthlessly seek and implement efficiencies like no other country (we're all about a Dollar, after all), and we have more babies than we do dying people. The latter reason is the more important, and the only reason that's true is because of our immigrant population. As in most industrialized nations, Americans stopped making enough babies to prosper a couple decades ago, but immigrants bring with them lots of babies and often a culture and religion that encourages making more babies. This is the main reason America is prosperous, and all the other industrialized nations are facing economic stress. Consider why leadership in Germany was so eager to accept immigrants in the face of populist resistance. Merkel understood Germany doesn't make enough babies. They never recovered from the losses of WWII and progress. Russia, in fact, is a doomed country because it cannot make enough babies--and Putin knows it. Why do you think he's so hard over about places where there are lots of ethnic Russians? America needs its immigrants and their new blood if we want to keep our economic position in the world. If we become truly isolationist and manage to turn away all the immigrants, we will be as doomed as Russia.

And you needn't take my word for any of this. The data is available via google, more than its possible to digest. You just have to be willing to form your own opinions instead of uncritcally accepting what people of questionable intent are telling you.

The simple truth is this: What most people think they know about immigration is really just wrong, and the people screaming loudest about world-ending tides of evil immigrant hordes are just using a millenia-old method of rallying a terrified and ignorant populace to the cause. Barbarians are at the gates! Fire! Flood! Doom, despair, agony, deep dark depression, excessive misery!* The real truth is that our nation has room and to spare for a lot more people than we have. Moreover, we are God Blessed enough to be a nation of generally decent people who, when we bother to recall it and admit it, know that there but for the grace, etc., is us. We could fix this easy if we could ever all decide we really want to.

Regards
SangerM


P.S. BY the way, it may be interesting to some to know that in 2006, the 2nd largest number of illegal immigrants in the U.S. were people who came here on vistor visas and didn't leave when they were supposed to. I think that's still true today.

P.P.S. Often when illegal immigrants are caught breaking the law, it's because they are doing things we won't allow them to do legally, like driving without a license and insurance, or running a small business without permits, etc. We also don't encourage using banks and such, so they carry cash and become victims of crime, and they can't rent places to live so they end up squatters... and on and on. Yes, I know. If they didn't come here without permission they wouldn't have these problems, but consider how much of what makes them criminals is just bureacratic BS and wouldn't be a problem if we decided we didn't want it to be. It really can be that simple, which is why I wrote that no one is really working all that hard to solve the problems. It doesn't make good politics to solve a problem you can blame on the opposition and gets you votes. Princes don't fix things that keep people looking other than at them, and in America today, the GOP doesn't want its constituency to start asking where the emperor's brains are.

'nuff said.


* Yes, I remember that well. heh.