BBO Discussion Forums: Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped? - BBO Discussion Forums

Winstonm, on 2018-January-13, 10:04, said:

If their money was green, I'll lbet they were. Profits generally trump racism.

hrothgar, on 2018-January-13, 03:03, said:

Such wonderful countries that the people are desperate to get out them such the Haita-American Senator- why aren't you living in Haiti. Trump has said nothing about the people who live- just common facts. Truth is always labelled racism.

cloa513, on 2018-January-13, 20:02, said:

Just because you racked your brain for hours without coming up with a counter-example does not make doing so a difficult exercise.

cloa513, on 2018-January-13, 20:02, said:

My Canadian contribution.

http://www.thecanadi...michaelle-jean/

You just don't find talent like this by slamming the door in their face and without a constant influx of it America would never have been great in the first place.

ggwhiz, on 2018-January-13, 22:50, said:

Why not let the ones in with talent and exclude the rest?

ldrews, on 2018-January-14, 08:59, said:

She came here at 9 years old and was raised by her (single 2 years later) mother, a min. wage seamstress who later worked the night shift at a psychiatric hospital.

Michael Jordan got cut from his H.S. basketball team, Oscar Peterson taught a master class on jazz composition using computers in his later life with his grade 3 education etc. ad nauseum.

You are truly one ignorant dude.

ldrews, on 2018-January-14, 08:59, said:

Because you don't know who has the talent.

One of the most obvious countries which would meet Trump's description is Somalia. One of the few good things to come out of there in recent years is Mo Farah who came to the UK as an 8 year old.

Another basket case is Afghanistan. http://www.bbc.co.uk...otball/41420649

ggwhiz, on 2018-January-14, 09:55, said:

Do not confuse ignorant with racist - one can be both.

ggwhiz, on 2018-January-14, 09:55, said:

So, would you let everyone in who applies and hope for the best?

ldrews, on 2018-January-14, 12:11, said:

There is a process called vetting and it can be tweaked but not by the likes of you. I wouldn't put you on a bus without instructing the driver to make sure you didn't miss your stop.

ggwhiz, on 2018-January-14, 21:13, said:

So, are you opposed to merit based vetting?

Traditionally, the Libertarian position on immigration fell into one of three broad categories.

1. So-called open border Libertarians

2. "Open border" after welfare reform

3. The Libertarian party platform

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I find it quite amusing to see Drews, great lover of Liberty that he is. proposing his new concept which I will describe as "shithole Libertarianism" which appears to be

"Closed border based on racist stereotypes"

BTW, Drews, "merit based vetting" gets applied to individuals.
The expression "shithole countries" applies to large demographic groups.

Using "merit based vetting" to defended against critiques about "shithole countries" is yet another pathetic attempt to distract attention from a point that your don't want to acknowledge.

cloa513, on 2018-January-13, 20:02, said:

Of course he said something about the people. The reported quote is “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” The point he's clearly making is that the people from those countries are undesirable.

Is this consistent with his stated preference for merit-based immigration? That means we're supposed to judge each applicant individually, and whether they come from a "shithole" should not bias it.

In comparison, there is something endearing about openly racist posters like j*******a. Pretending that Trump's just made a statement about the economic conditions in Haiti and African countries?? Pretending that a merit-based immigration system would automatically prevent immigration from Haiti and Africa??? (This one isn't even explainable with either stupidity or racism alone...)

barmar, on 2018-January-15, 00:17, said:

The key issue that screams of Fredo's (I'm smart) racism is not only the "shithole countries" comment, but that he continued by describing his preference for immigrants "from places like Norway".

Winstonm, on 2018-January-15, 08:47, said:

As if people from wonderful countries like that would want to come to Trump's America. But of course, that logic wouldn't occur to Trump, because he thinks he's the greatest at everything. Yesterday he even reiterated his claim to be "the least racist person".

And his whole remark flies in the face of why people immigrate in the first place. We're a country of immigrants, and (except for the slaves who were dragged here), most people immigrate to try to find a better life. Which implies that they're coming from places where life is not as good. For instance, in the 19th century we had a wave of Irish immigrants during the potato famine -- Ireland was a "shithole country" at that time.

If you don't want immigrants from shitholes, you don't want immigrants at all. Ohhh, I get it now.

hrothgar, on 2018-January-14, 22:21, said:

Currently Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Denmark, and Hong Kong all use a merit based or "point" system to manage their immigration selection process. Do you apply your same criticisms to these countries as well?

If we as a nation cannot internally solve this white backlash mentality, we are destined to fail as a nation.

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Overcoming this backlash means overcoming the man and the bigotry currently directing the executive branch of our government.

Like many countries, the US allows immigrants in for basically three reasons:

1. The immigrants are needed to fill jobs for which no citizen can be hired.
2. The immigrants are close family of a citizen or permanent resident.
3. The immigrants are refugees fleeing a dangerous situation in their country of origin.

All of these reasons require some safeguards (which currently exist) -- immigrants are vetted to make sure they aren't terrorists or other violent criminals, we make sure immigrants hired to fill jobs are fairly treated (including reasonable wages, so they aren't just undercutting the job market), and the third criteria requires a situation that's actually dangerous (civil war, country controlled by murderous dictator or drug cartels, attempted genocide against a minority of which the immigrant is a member... not simple poverty).

In general I agree with these three reasons (so not "unrestricted immigration" by any means) but I think we should be pretty generous in allowing people in provided one of these conditions holds (subject to the vetting etc described above). Other than straight-up racism the usual reasons for objecting to immigration seem to be:

1. Terrorism. But virtually none of the terrorist attacks are by immigrants! The "muslim terrorists" in the US and Europe are almost always people who were born in the country or came over as small children. Saying that we want to ban muslim immigrants who are fully vetted because their unborn kids might become terrorists is just racism, especially since most mass-casualty attacks in the US are carried out by white christian males.
2. Stealing jobs from citizens. The problem here is that companies hire immigrants for lower than the prevailing wage (maybe even lower than the legal minimum wage), undercutting the job market. This isn't really an issue with the back-breaking farm jobs (that Americans don't want) or the high-tech jobs (that too few Americans qualify for) -- we definitely need some immigrant workers for our economy to go! The best way to fix this problem is to make legal immigration easier and simultaneously crack down on misbehaving companies. Keeping immigrants "in the shadows" makes it easier for their employers to take advantage of them (and thereby also take advantage of citizens who want the jobs).
3. A flood of unassimilated people who are "foreign" will somehow hurt our culture or overwhelm our infrastructure. Potentially this could be true -- if we had a hundred million immigrants come in or something it would definitely cause lots of problems. But the number of people fulfilling the first two criteria will never be enough to cause a problem. And the third one only gets really bad if there are a lot of people in a bad situation, in which case we ought to send in a UN force to fix the situation in the home country, or at least coordinate with other countries to handle the refugee load. Anyway it seems hard to believe that 0.5%-1% of population can't be efficiently absorbed, and we are nowhere near even that modest number.
4. The people coming in are criminals. But every reputable study suggests immigrants are more law-abiding than citizens. And again, part of the problem is that by making legal immigration difficult, we have supported a huge black-market industry sneaking people across the border, and this industry is happy to sneak across criminals.

ldrews, on 2018-January-15, 11:20, said:

Learn to read shite-for-brains

The post that you are quoting claims that merit based immigration systems is a distraction.

Trump's original comment addressed "shithole countries".
This involves pevasive discrimination against entire geographies.
The statement is coming from an individual with a long and documented history of racism.

Introducing "merit based immigration" is at best non responsive and more likely is an attempt to distract from the conversation at hand.

Responding to this quote by citing that other countries use merit based immigration is completely non responsive.

Address the original point *****head...