Immigration Gambit

Mark Kruger

Late blooming political scientist & historian, Net engineer, programmer, technology expert, bad speler, consultant and business owner.

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174 Responses

  1. Kolohe says:

    The media overeach cuts both ways.Report

  2. Kolohe says:

    Meanwhile, some new Trumpian outrage will take the place of the current outrage.

    Restricting immigration is one thing Trump seems to actually believe in, the one thing he’s actually motivated by ideologically, the one thing his administration has consistently been bull in a china shop about, and the one thing that’s seen significant political pushback and actual legal curtailment because they’ve been so damn the torpedos full speed ahead about it.Report

  3. greginak says:

    A couple non-pajama related thoughts. I don’t identify as a Dem being farther to left than most D’s. However the concept that D’s are thrilled with this crap show since it’s good politics is sleazy and insulting. Come on your last post was the knock on D’s, not this one. That Trump and minions end up validating some of the worst stereotypes of R’s is pretty much true. Sad. That ain’t hyperbole.

    I can see the Miller strategy of fueling outrage as deliberate tactic. The most obvious weak point is that wildly fanned flames don’t always go in the planned direction. It’s a high risk strategy and if it doesn’t work you’ve burned your own ass with no easy way to back down.

    Well we had somewhat of a bipartisan agreement on immigration 15 or 16 i think. The hard liners on the right didn’t want it. Damned if i can see any way to get enough of the sides together to fix the darn thing.

    This outrage may fade from general view. True dat. However some groups, recent immigrants and POC’s, may not forget this. Like seared in their minds forever kind of remember. Will Telemundo/Univision be talking about this far after it’s out of the big time news? Most likely.Report

    • Mark Kruger in reply to greginak says:

      Greg,

      Mea culpa on my characterization of Dems as “thrilled”. I was overstating in an attempt to be humorous. The point being that Trump’s policy is a political windfall for Dems – the politics leans in their favor in my view. I was not suggesting (or should not have suggested) that their empathy wasn’t genuine.

      -MarkReport

  4. Chip Daniels says:

    Trump can’t back down.
    The base is in control now, and they smell blood.

    Republican blood.

    For years the hucksters riled up the rubes with talk of welfare mothers in Cadillacs and crack babies and drug mules with calves the size of cantaloupes but since they always held the wheel, they could steer back to reality and stiff the base.

    But now the base has control of the wheel. They put their man in the White House and more importantly, they can take out any sitting Senator or Congressman of their party.

    Read the comments anywhere.

    Flight 93, the Fourteen Words, White Genocide…They aren’t playing a game, this isn’t a gambit, this is real for them.Report

    • Saul Degraw in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      Trump is the base. Even if he could back down, he wouldn’t want to. I see this in his gesture and poses. They are repulsive to me but I also see something jocular in them like he is gesturing “AmIrite?” to his supporters over how to feel about people of color and the horrible nature of the Democrats.Report

  5. Saul Degraw says:

    Trump, Miller, and Sessions are what they say they are. Stone-cold racists who want to inflict pain and misery on as many people of color as humanly possible. Miller and Trump seem to get particular pleasure out of trolling/pwing the libs. Sessions is not as trolly but he believes in what he does.

    And this policy is clearly inhumane and the language of Trump and Miller is also inhumane. Describing refugees/migrants as a infestation is very horrible language and this is far from anything Obama did.

    I don’t really get this tut tutting that the media and Democrats can over play their hand here. This is language that should be alarming to any decent people. I think you still underestimate how much Democrats and the left are disgusted and alarmed by Trump and see this as shameful for the United States.Report

    • Chip Daniels in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      Yeah, I’m done with the shushing about hyperbole.Report

    • Koz in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      I don’t really get this tut tutting that the media and Democrats can over play their hand here. This is language that should be alarming to any decent people. I think you still underestimate how much Democrats and the left are disgusted and alarmed by Trump and see this as shameful for the United States.

      Well, because in the immediate term this Trump is a Nazi business is obviously bullshit. But more importantly, I suspect what will happen is that the Administration and the GOP in Congress will give ground on family unification while holding firm against Central American migrant asylum claims, and politically speaking, that won’t be a bad place to be standing.Report

  6. Koz says:

    Democrats feel like they won the lottery. You could not craft a scenario more tailor-made for them. It has everything: racism, harm to children, draconian policy, and an evil Mr.-Burns-like mastermind in Stephen Miller who clearly enjoys the spectacle. It positively glows with right wing evil intent. The description of “ripping” children from their parents is so good that Democrats are peeing themselves to give a take. There are even stories of callous, emotionless border guards toying with family’s lives. Stephen Spielberg couldn’t do better. It seems to validate everything they have been saying about Trump’s plan to turn the US toward fascism. Yes, Democrats are hyperbolic, invoking Hitler and every other trope of oppression, but who can blame them? The Trump administration makes it so easy! And the separation of families has real, devastating consequences for children.

    Yeah, I think this is exactly what Democrats think. And frankly, I haven’t been following the outrage of the week as much as some, but on this score I think they’re very mistaken, especially in terms of how I anticipate this will play out politically.

    Anything related to the Trump Administration is politically unpredictable, but there’s actually at least a couple things here which could work to the Republicans benefit. First, there’s the idea that in general we don’t want this sort of migration to America. These Salvadorans or Hondurans or whoever, are likely not to have the educational, financial, cultural, language background to assimilate to bourgeois America. More importantly, Americans have the collective prerogative to decide who should come here and they’re not going to approve of migrants or lib interest groups doing an end-run around them.

    Then, there’s also a significant intention to support the cops, as various commenters here have lamented recently. And for me at least, there’s no situation where that reflex is stronger than where the cops are doing something they’re not supposed to in order to uphold a legitimate public interest.

    Finally, my guess is that this policy isn’t going to last for very long. Either through legislation, or lawsuit ping-pong, or simple acts of the executive branch, this is going to evolve into reuniting families in custody, at the border. Or at least the Administration and/or the GOP in Congress will make significant moves in that direction. And if libs try to sustain the outrage machine, as I suspect they will, then I think they are going to lose significant credibility after they have been complaining for the last week or so that about the cruelty of family separation.Report

    • Chip Daniels in reply to Koz says:

      These Salvadorans or Hondurans or whoever, are likely not to have the educational, financial, cultural, language background to assimilate to bourgeois America.

      See this is what I mean, where anti-immigrant rhetoric is lifted directly from 1890, except with “Yellow Peril” swapped out for “Mexican”.Report

      • Lenoxus in reply to Chip Daniels says:

        The kids in the audio recordings have the audacity to cry for “Mami and Papa” instead of “Mom and Dad” like decent white American child prisoners would.Report

      • Mike Schilling in reply to Chip Daniels says:

        I’m morally certain there are Salvadorans and Hondurans dishonest enough to serve in Trump’s cabinet or dumb enough to be on Fox and Friends. Maybe not dumb and dishonest enough at the same time to replace Sean Hannity; that’s a rare combination.Report

    • Saul Degraw in reply to Koz says:

      This is racist trash that has been spread again and again and is an absolute lie. The same thing was said about Asian-Americans until the mid-20th century. The same thing was said of Jews from Eastern Europe, Italians, and other Eastern European immigrants. Of the Irish, the Greeks, and even the Swedes and Germans!!!Report

      • Koz in reply to Saul Degraw says:

        No, it’s more accurate to say that this (and other examples of a similar sort from other commenters) is an expression of deeply corrupt racism consciousness that libs are using to pollute our cultural discourse.

        And ancillary to this, there is something important worth mentioning that has largely gone under radar. Historically, the overall experience for voluntary immigration to America has been very positive, for immigrants and their families as well as America itself. I myself favored liberal immigration policy up until, say twenty years ago. But things are different now.

        First of all, the nature of labor has changed since the bulk of mass legal immigration, and it’s harder to assimilate into the bourgeois economy than it used to be. Nonetheless, I think most Americans have understood this and internalized this into their thoughts on the matter, one way or the other.

        What’s largely gone unremarked is, we are also in the middle of substantial cultural conflict which this particular flavor of immigration tends to amplify. In fact, that’s largely why the lib interest groups are in favor of it. Today’s libs are the heirs of the 19th century plantation Democrats who had to expand the jurisdictions of legalized slavery in order to maintain it, who couldn’t see that their mentality was inevitably opposed to tany possibility of prosperity.

        America should not expand further into a low-trust, low-wage, low-solidarity culture. We have our plate full now assimilating the Americans we already have against that without taking in more foreigners from low-solidarity cultures.

        In a vacuum, expanded immigration to America should be good for us. But circumstantially, we can’t afford the contemporary lib mentality of cultural antagonism.Report

        • Chip Daniels in reply to Koz says:

          “Low Solidarity” is the new “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion”.

          In late October 1884 Republican candidate James G. Blaine seemed all but certain to win the presidency. With the election only one week away, he was campaigning in New York City, wooing the vital Irish Catholic vote to secure New York State and its many electoral votes. Everything was going his way until a Presbyterian minister named Rev. Samuel Burchard, speaking at a pro-Blaine event that evening, denounced the Democrats as the party of “rum, Romanism, and rebellion.”

          Report

          • Koz in reply to Chip Daniels says:

            “Low Solidarity” is the new “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion”.

            Is that so? Tell me then Chip, which conservatives/Republicans/immigration restrictionists have you heard talk about “low-solidarity culture” except me?Report

          • Pinky in reply to Chip Daniels says:

            How so? I don’t think I’ve ever heard that phrase before. It doesn’t strike me as tipping one’s hand. I don’t see the comparison at all.Report

            • Chip Daniels in reply to Pinky says:

              @pinky @koz

              The premise in asserting that immigrants are “low solidarity*” means that they are somehow unable to contribute positively to the American culture, that they have some inherent defect.

              The same charge made against every group, because “this time it’s actually true”.

              *In this case, “low solidarity”” is a weird term that doesn’t have a meaning other than “Inherently Bad”.
              I mean like, if they were all socialists, we should welcome them? And when do we start deporting Libertarians for insufficient solidarity?Report

              • Pinky in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                It seems like you’re putting words in Koz’s mouth.

                ETA: I think that “low solidarity” means that the people aren’t assimilating well. I would have phrased it differently, because I think the problem is more on our side that we’ve forgotten how to encourage assimilation, but the words themselves have a pretty clear meaning, and the meaning is not “inherently bad”. My guess is that if Koz meant “inherently bad”, he would have said so.Report

              • Pinky in reply to Pinky says:

                I also should have added:

                Koz, would you tell us exactly what you meant? Did you mean what I think, what Chip thinks, or something else?Report

              • Pinky in reply to Pinky says:

                And now that I’ve read through everything, I’m going to add to my addition to my ETA, that Koz said exactly what I suggested he meant, even in the same paragraph that he used the phrase “low solidarity”. So there’s no reason to accuse him of meaning something other than the phrase’s obvious meaning both in and out of context.Report

              • Koz in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                The premise in asserting that immigrants are “low solidarity*” means that they are somehow unable to contribute positively to the American culture, that they have some inherent defect.

                That’s a questionable conclusion given that, apparently, you have only seen that phrase used in that context in correspondence with me.

                As far as my thoughts on the matter go, there’s nothing inherent about immigration that says that immigrants are necessarily coming from low-solidarity cultures. Circumstantially though, these particular immigrants are. All this ought to be pretty clear given that I described the relevant circumstances of these particular migrants well enough in the train of comments that you’re responding to.

                Moreover, even if you were right on this particular point, it wouldn’t be sort of thing that you’re entitled to make a definitive pronouncement on. It would be part of the back-and-forth of our political culture, which you are deliberately attempting to short-circuit as a consequence of your corrupt racism consciousness.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Koz says:

                So what exactly does “low solidarity” mean, and why should we believe that recent immigrants suffer from it while previous ones didn’t?Report

              • Koz in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                First of all, Honduras and El Salvador have especially high incidence of lots of anti-social things: murder, rape, other domestic violence, gang activity, alcohol abuse, etc.

                This creates a double-edged sword of numbers for the US to receive them as immigrants. If we take in a lot of them, we don’t know what the beefs are, we don’t know who the perpetrators or victimes are (it’s entirely possible that some are both), it’s very likely that all the compatriots will settle together somewhere in America and carry the same problems here that they had in the home country.

                If we just accepted one or another immigrant here or there, we wouldn’t have that particular low-solidarity problem (there would be no other alternatives to assimilation) but that wouldn’t help very much either.

                But most importantly, the main problem with “low-solidarity” immigration doesn’t have anything to do with immigrants of any sort, it has to do with _us_. The _United States_ is an increasingly low-solidarity society, whose antagonism is fed by the malevolence and bad faith of libs, especially the corrupt racism consciousness I mentioned before.

                The desire for immigration among libs is substantially (and increasingly explicitly) an expression of that antagonism. You need to figure out how you’re going to make peace and live in harmony with Nebraskans, Carolinians and Republicans before you should be figuring out how Central Americans are supposed to fit in.Report

              • J_A in reply to Koz says:

                murder, rape, other domestic violence, gang activity, alcohol abuse, etc.

                As a resonant who has done a lot of work in El Salvador since the 90s I can tell you that a big contributing factor to gang violence in El Salvador has been the extradition of Salvadorians from US based street gangs, specially from California.

                We can debate with the MS-13 originated where it did, but it did not originate in El SalvadorReport

              • Koz in reply to J_A says:

                That’s certainly well within the realm of possibility AFAIK, but for me at least it doesn’t materially change anything regarding the matter at hand.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Koz says:

                Oh, you mean these folks are like Okies!
                Got it.

                But really, don’t you think the problem with_us_ is the inability of rural redneck culture to adapt to the modern world, marked as they are by high levels of spousal abuse, low rates of marriage, opiod addiction, and rejection of American moral values of inclusion and multiculturalism?
                Y’know, Belmont/ Fishtown and all that.

                How are we going to assimilate these people and instill in them the bourgeoisie notions of hard work and self discipline?Report

              • Koz in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                But really, don’t you think the problem with_us_ is the inability of rural redneck culture to adapt to the modern world, marked as they are by high levels of spousal abuse, low rates of marriage, opiod addiction, and rejection of American moral values of inclusion and multiculturalism?
                Y’know, Belmont/ Fishtown and all that.

                Absolutely that’s a big problem, but that’s not _this_ problem though.

                This problem has to do with the disdain Belmont has for Fishtown (and increasingly the disdain Belmont has for the rest of America that really doesn’t fit into that dichotomy: eg, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Utah, Atlanta, Des Moines, Kansas, Houston, Nashville, etc), thereby lowering our stock of solidarity as Americans.

                The solution is for the libs (and some Republicans for that matter) to earn some credibility with the rest of America. Rebuild our stock of solidarity, and then we could actually implement some useful policies that aren’t available to us now.Report

              • Nevermoor in reply to Koz says:

                Why, in your estimation, is “earn[ing] some credibility with the rest of America” a one-way street?

                It sure seems to me like every conservative who espouses non-racist views, and suggests their party is non-racist, has a heckuva lot of credibility to re-earn with the rest of America (and is currently moving in the wrong direction).Report

              • Koz in reply to Nevermoor says:

                Why, in your estimation, is “earn[ing] some credibility with the rest of America” a one-way street?

                For a lot of reasons really, but the immediate one is the Presidency of Donald Trump, which most libs don’t approve of.

                It’s up to the libs to demonstrate to the voters two things: first, that they’re not playing hide-the-ball games regarding how they intend to govern at the time they are campaigning. Second, that they intend to represent the interest of their voters (and ideally all American voters though this won’t be possible all the time) against lib interest groups or the representatives of the Establishment.

                Without those things (and let’s face it, libs don’t have them now and the GOP has its own problems of the same kind), you can’t make your case to the voters. Even if they might otherwise be inclined to agree with you, they can’t hear you because everything you say is a scam infomercial to put you back in power where you’re going to do whatever you wanted to before.

                The unfortunately reality is that Donald Trump represents far better than any plausible alternative the model for political officeholders as the fiduciary representative of the voters.Report

              • Michael Cain in reply to Koz says:

                That’s a really odd mix of cities and states you’ve got there. Minneapolis is blue in a purple state that voted for Clinton; Phoenix is blue in a red state that has voted (by initiative) for policies like independent redistricting and higher minimum wages; Utah is red, except for quite blue Salt Lake City; Houston is blue headed for deep-blue; etc.Report

              • Koz in reply to Michael Cain says:

                Yeah, I wasn’t real fastidious about cities proper vs metropolitan area vs state. But they are all places where it’s quite likely that they will be a state or part of a state that will go red in an important races: governor, Senator, US Representative, President, etc. (There some legit chance that a Republican can win statewide in Minnesota, quite likely in all the others).

                The upshot is that the hardcore LA, SF, NY, NoVa, MD Demo base feels culturally alienated from those places as well, in circumstances where their caricature of Red America being uneducated meth-addict hillbillies doesn’t hold any water.Report

              • Michael Cain in reply to Koz says:

                If we’re going to do this based on areas…

                The 13-state Census Bureau West in 2016 voted for Clinton in the EC 98-30, flipped three state legislative chambers from red to blue, and flipped two US House seats. Ballot initiatives favored by the Dems and opposed by the Republicans passed in Arizona, Nevada, Montana, and Colorado. The 12-state NE urban corridor — the CB’s Northeast plus Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia — voted for Clinton 104-21 (I think 21, I didn’t go count again). The rest of the country produced 30 EC votes for Clinton.

                The Republicans have problems in the West — the voters are getting younger, more urban, look with much less favor on mining/drilling on public lands, etc. Utah’s legislature put an independent redistricting commission referendum on the ballot because two-thirds of Utahns favor such a thing (and Utah is arguably the only western state where partisan gerrymandering is a thing). Nevada is seeing huge private labor union growth. When Zinke goes home to Montana, where he has aspirations to be governor some day, it’s a whole different stump speech, because he doesn’t dare piss off the local environmentalists.

                My own bet for November is that the Republicans are going to have more problems in the West and NE urban corridor than the Dems have in the rest of the country. Just my opinion, but the Republicans are having as much problem reaching out, it’s just happening in different places.Report

              • Koz in reply to Michael Cain says:

                My own bet for November is that the Republicans are going to have more problems in the West and NE urban corridor than the Dems have in the rest of the country. Just my opinion, but the Republicans are having as much problem reaching out, it’s just happening in different places.

                It could be, but I don’t think so. I think those kinds of regional issues are going to be secondary except as they relate to Trump himself, and the D’s desire to repudiate everything associated with him.

                Ryan Zinke knows what to do or say so as to not piss off Montana enviros. But Montana also went for Trump in 2016, so libs are going to have Montana on their shit list, which is in turn going to make Montana more likely to go Republican in November.

                And truth be told the partisanship of Montana is pretty weak any relative to some other states, so I see this sort of effect will be more important there.

                Specifically, I think for the Senate races in particular, I have relatively vague model with five factors:

                1. Trump approval rating/generic ballot
                2. Candidate quality
                3. Incumbency
                4. Partisanship differential of the state/district
                5. Partisan motivation intensity

                It’s this last factor which I don’t think the media or even the analysts have thought through enough. For Republican-inclined voters in Arizona and the Ohio River valley/border states (WV, MO, IN) they are voting to express their cultural partisan affiliation. They are going to vote _for_ Trump, _against_ Hillary, _against_ Obama, no matter which particular R or D is on the ballot.

                For North Dakota and Montana by contrast, the D’s are in much better shape. Even if the GOP has a huge partisan differential in its favor, the voters there aren’t nearly so motivated to express that in other races.

                When you look at the map this way, I don’t think you can justify your idea of where the trouble is based on regional factors. I’m substantially more bullish toward the GOP than other analysts. Though, it’s important to note that we’re in a much different world with Trump at 45% approval than we would be if he were at 39%.Report

              • Michael Cain in reply to Koz says:

                No one — well, at least not me — said there weren’t “cultures”. I claim that differences in cultures, and ongoing changes to cultures, result in a pronounced geographic pattern. And that come November, that pattern will become more pronounced. Reading your comments, I infer that you think AZ and IN vote Republican because they share a culture. I assert that they vote Republican for different reasons, and will evolve in different directions in the future.

                Any discussion of how culture drives electoral results, differences in east and west, and doesn’t include a discussion of ballot initiatives is woefully incomplete. Eg, this November, in deep-red Utah, the only western state where partisan gerrymandering is a thing, there is a ballot initiative that will take redistricting out of the hands of the legislature. It currently polls 51-24 in favor. If that holds up, come November 2022, Salt Lake County will be in one US House district instead of split across four, and Utah will send at least one Democrat to Washington. This past session, the Utah legislature voted for a limited Medicaid expansion (unlikely to obtain the needed waiver, as it flat-out violates numerical limits in the law); regardless of whether the waver is granted, in November Utahns will also vote on an initiative that would override the legislature, do a simple straight-up expansion, and raise the state sales tax to pay for it — it’s currently polling 63-30 in favor.Report

              • Koz in reply to Michael Cain says:

                Reading your comments, I infer that you think AZ and IN vote Republican because they share a culture. I assert that they vote Republican for different reasons, and will evolve in different directions in the future.

                Not really, I was mostly making argument of the way particular motivations happen to line up right now, not trying to say anything particular about culture.

                Specifically, I wasn’t trying to say that Arizona and Indiana have a shared GOP culture. What I was trying to say that both are historically Republican states, and the Republican-leaning electorate of both states are going to be motivated to pull the lever for an R this November.

                In this case it might not matter as much because AFAIK the GOP candidates there (McSally and somebody I’m forgetting) are pretty good. But on the D side it means that the power of Donnelly’s incumbency or Sinema if somehow we thought she was a particularly great D candidate is worth a lot less.

                And to a substantial extent, this happens because people who might want to vote Democrat for this or that reason feel they can’t afford to in the current polarized environment.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Koz says:

                I love this sort of exchange:

                “Let me explain to you how these brown people are inferior due to their social problems.”

                “Hey, I could say the same of Alabama.”

                “Whoa, ease up on the smug disdain, Mr. Elitist!”Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                This particular flavor of outrage works better when you didn’t play the Oakie Card a few comments before.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                I wasn’t going for outrage.

                I was going for, the loudest yelps for tolerance come from those who most ardently insist on the inferiority of others.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Well, I’m glad we’re better than people like that.Report

              • Koz in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                “Let me explain to you how these brown people are inferior due to their social problems.”

                “Hey, I could say the same of Alabama.”

                Chip, this is a frustrating response for a couple reasons. First, you have a much different relationship with residents of Alabama relative to Hondurans or Salvadorans. In the former case, you are compatriots, which has important abstract and concrete consequences both. This would seem too obvious to mention, except that you don’t seem to acknowledge this in your prior comment.

                Second, this is illustrating the point I’ve been trying to get at with Michael. The non-Demo parts of America are not just Alabama, or like it. There’s really only a few places in America where the GOP is truly not competitive at the statewide level, probably somewhere between five and ten states. So to say that we’re only voting Republican because we haven’t clued to the realities of the multicultural world around us, most likely means that you’re not paying attention to the recent events of the world, inside or out of the United States.Report

              • Jesse in reply to Koz says:

                ” In the former case, you are compatriots, which has important abstract and concrete consequences both. ”

                I have almost nothing in common with say, a Trump supporter from Alabama.Report

              • Koz in reply to Jesse says:

                I have almost nothing in common with say, a Trump supporter from Alabama.

                But you do. You may think that you don’t, but you do. You share a flag, an army, a President, a soccer team, a tax code, all sorts of things really. And those things absolutely can act in ways that are binding on you.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Koz says:

                So to say that we’re only voting Republican because we haven’t clued to the realities of the multicultural world around us, most likely means that you’re not paying attention to the recent events of the world

                Maybe!
                Maybe it is my particular viewpoint, in that I live and work within that majority-minority multicultural world, which is alien to the Republicans.

                In almost every situation I am in, a white Christian male is the minority. Most of my business meetings are conducted by people who speak English as a second language, and who either were born somewhere else or the children of those who did.

                So the point of view of a Trump supporter is as alien to me as an ISIS recruit.
                And, maybe more importantly, I don’t view their opinions as in conformance with the American ethos, that goal which has never been attained but always hoped for.

                To be blunt, the American dream is here in this mixed community of different ethnic groups and religions, not in the white ethnic caste system of the Trump forces.
                The Trump fan in Alabama is welcome to join this America, but that is his choice.Report

              • Koz in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                In almost every situation I am in, a white Christian male is the minority. Most of my business meetings are conducted by people who speak English as a second language, and who either were born somewhere else or the children of those who did.

                That could be. But unless I’m mistaken you live in California which is part of America.

                And I suspect the culture wars in America will finally be over when the GOP operationally takes over California, and implements policies regarding water use, labor, housing, education, infrastructure development, and so forth.Report

    • Mike Schilling in reply to Koz says:

      This post is even better in the original German.Report

    • Maribou, Moderator in reply to Koz says:

      @koz

      Call it “deeply corrupted lib racism consciousness thinking” if you want (to yourself, not on here) but “These Salvadorans or Hondurans or whoever, are likely not to have the educational, financial, cultural, language background to assimilate to bourgeois America. ” is some xenophobic bullshit. Many many Salvadorans, Hondurans, etc have already assimilated. Central American refugees have been assimilating successfully in both the US and Canada since at least the 80s. My mom taught them when I was a kid; as an adult, I’ve worked with them, I’ve got extended chosen family from those countries, you don’t get to blanket judge whole countries’ worth of people as likely not to be able to assimilate on whatever grounds. I mean, do whatever you want in your head but you can’t do it on here. Maybe in the Reagan era, it was a valid debate and people had to learn differently, but it’s not, now. And if you insist on having it anyway, if you think your “Failure to assimilate” is somehow special and different from the 90 historical examples that have been proven wrong in the past, and not about people themselves, then you can make a little extra effort to find a way to argue what you want to argue without attributing the problem to people from certain countries’ abilities. (@InMD has been managing to argue without being an appalling xenophobe just fine, perhaps because he doesn’t think some people are likely to be less able than others based on nationality, the claim that you made.)

      If I’d been awake and around when you posted, I would have called you on it then and shut it down as a line of argument.

      As it is, I don’t feel like going back and sorting through the thread and cleaning up things that shouldn’t have been said from things that are just wrong and dumb, on any side of the argument.

      But don’t do it again. Next time it’ll be consequences. I’m seriously tired of you saying stuff like this.Report

    • Mike Schilling in reply to Koz says:

      I haven’t been following the outrage of the week as much as some

      It’s kidnapping of children, some as young as three months. Would you like to make light of it further?Report

      • Koz in reply to Mike Schilling says:

        I wasn’t making light of it the first time, I was playing it straight.

        There’s some of the whys and wherefores of this I haven’t caught up with. Eg, why they weren’t stopped in Mexico, which judges ruling says what, about detaining families at the border, etc.Report

  7. LeeEsq says:

    ICE is holding infants in tender age shelters. Babies who can not speak. Considering the administrative incompetence and grift of the Trump administration, there is a good chance many of these children will end up permanently separated from the parents. Trump deserves all the heat is getting on this. He and his cohorts are wild and blood thirsty beasts. They have no conscious.Report

    • InMD in reply to LeeEsq says:

      Serious question though- should the infants be held with their parents in detention facilities? If not is arriving with an infant sufficient to gain unsupervised entry until their day in court?

      I don’t like any of those options or whats happening, I’m just trying to figure out the solution beyond ‘go back to what we were doing.’Report

      • Saul Degraw in reply to InMD says:

        Keeping children with their parents is healthier for both the child and the parent. Many of the children who are taken are too young to speak or even really know their name. There is a good chance that they will never see their parents again. Trump has stated his gleeful racism again and again. So has Miller. There is a woman from Guatemala suing ICE because she was released and ICE won’t tell her where her son is. ICE seems too racist to care about keeping proper records. They might not even know where her son is.

        This is a horrible stain on human rights and America’s reputation. We are going to spend decades in the doghouse because of this.Report

        • LeeEsq in reply to Saul Degraw says:

          At least ICE had the decency not to tell the mother that Sultan Trump is taking her son for his Janissary Cotps. I don’t even want to think about their plans for the girls. Monsters.Report

      • LeeEsq in reply to InMD says:

        The parents and children should be allowed out on bond or their own recognizance or on bond like previous administrations allowed. If that is too liberal for Trump then it is better for families to be together in detention. At least put them in the same facility and let the parents see the children sometime. Just because the current system is messed up is no reason to make it crueler.Report

      • pillsy in reply to InMD says:

        If not is arriving with an infant sufficient to gain unsupervised entry until their day in court?

        Sure, why not.

        It might not be 100% ideal, but a more ideal solution would require an immigration and border control apparatus that deserves a lot more trust than it currently warrants.Report

      • dragonfrog in reply to InMD says:

        InMD: should the infants be held with their parents in detention facilities?

        It’s what Canada does (in far far smaller numbers – they also avoid incarceration when it’s not actually necessary). In some cases, child Canadian citizens spend time in detention centres, because their caregiving parent(s) is/are being held pending deportation hearings.Report

        • InMD in reply to dragonfrog says:

          I don’t think Canada is really a reasonable comparison. My understanding is that they don’t have issues with mass illegal immigration/asylum seekers literally showing up on the door step, and certainly nothing like the magnitude of the US.Report

          • dragonfrog in reply to InMD says:

            It’s certainly a smaller magnitude than the US.

            It’s not so small that my local opposition MP didn’t just send me a racist dogwhistle “Trudeau is failing to curtail illegal border crossings” flyer this week.

            But, to some extent it seems independent of magnitude of border crossings that:
            – only those deemed a flight risk are detained, rather than everyone by default
            – there are detention facilities arranged for whole families to stay togetherReport

            • InMD in reply to dragonfrog says:

              Maybe it is. Or maybe it’s because the system has never been overwhelmed after 3 decades of political paralysis for which the GOP shares the lion’s share of the blame.Report

              • dragonfrog in reply to InMD says:

                And just like that, with a stroke of his pen, Trump appears to have managed it.

                Not that what he’s done is in any way free of problems. But there you go.Report

              • InMD in reply to dragonfrog says:

                I think the jury is still out on what he’s managed. The more I read the more I suspect this has been going on for over a decade and a hardline enforcement decision by a clueless administration finally blew it up.Report

              • InMD in reply to InMD says:

                Edit to add, by ‘going on for over a decade’ I mean in a much more limited way. Even Dubya, for all of his…shortcomings we’ll say, probably had a sense of what would happen and the optics, especially having been governor of Texas.Report

              • Mark Kruger in reply to InMD says:

                It is beginning to look (and I say this with trepidation while I put on my Kevlar vest) that Trump has the potential to move the ball forward. It’s entirely possible that a new law – not perfect but perhaps with fewer dire consequences – comes out of this debacle.

                If Trump manages to make progress by setting fire to the whole system and then sitting back while everyone runs to put it out it’s going to be awkward – not to mention a very bad precedent.

                I will make one further prediction (with the caveat that I am often wrong). If progress is made the media will immediately claim progress was A) in spite of Trump, B) a terrible bill that didn’t go far enough. While other administrations might be credited with a “success”, no such credit will be given to Trump.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Mark Kruger says:

                This seems to rely on a bit of magical thinking.

                That a crew of people who hold implacable fear and loathing of an ethnic group will manage to enact a policy that advances human dignity and justice.

                What they want, what their voting base wants, is to inflict punishment upon those who they feel have wronged them.

                When they insist that these immigrants are criminals who need to be punished, we should take them seriously.Report

              • pillsy in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                Yeah, the obstacle to reform has always been and continues to be the anti-immigration Right, and Trump’s erratic, blustering approach just isn’t going to help put them in the mood to compromise.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to pillsy says:

                Yeah, the obstacle to reform has always been and continues to be the anti-immigration Right…

                Yes… but we also run into the whole reason why the pro-gun people don’t feel they can compromise with the anti-gun people.

                Edit: I.e. the “compromise” won’t be honored.

                We’re currently ignoring our immigration laws. So we’re going to pass a bunch of laws which we’re also going to ignore?

                , and Trump’s erratic, blustering approach just isn’t going to help put them in the mood to compromise.

                I disagree.

                We’re going to need the anti-immigration people to bless some type of amnesty. Trump is proving he’s their guy, that he can be trusted, and he has their interests at heart.

                Make a deal with him, but expect he’ll be faithful to the letter of the law even if it means ripping apart families… and him showcasing just how ugly our current laws are is, imho, a good thing for putting pressure on everyone to create sane laws.Report

              • bookdragon in reply to Dark Matter says:

                Dark Matter: [Trump]’ll be faithful to the letter of the law

                I nearly laughed out loud reading that. The guy who flouts every law and standard governing ethical behavior and breaks any deal at any time? The one who regularly cheats contractors?

                This is not someone to make a deal with. He’s proven repeatedly that he is completely untrustworthy and his word on a deal is worth zilch.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to bookdragon says:

                This is not someone to make a deal with. He’s proven repeatedly that he is completely untrustworthy and his word on a deal is worth zilch.

                Trump is a walking demo on why the Imperial Presidency is a bad idea, and yeah, Congress needs to spell out what the law is so he’s forced to follow it.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                This seems to rely on a bit of magical thinking. That someone a crew of people who hold implacable fear and loathing of an ethnic group will manage to enact a policy that advances human dignity and justice.

                Economics and politics are mostly about self interest, not ethics.

                When they insist that these immigrants are criminals who need to be punished, we should take them seriously.

                They are criminals. So are the drug dealers.

                The solution is to change the law, not to ignore it.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Dark Matter says:

                The solution is to change the law, not to ignore it.

                Yes. We need to greatly expand the number of seasonal work visas, refugee asylum claims, and permanent visitor visas from Mexico to reach a point where immigration laws can be enforced.

                In order to do this, we need the Democrats to take the Presidency, the House and reach a fillibuster-proof majority in the Senate.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                In order to do this, we need the Democrats to take the Presidency, the House and reach a fillibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

                If you have that, you won’t use it for immigration reform. There will be other, much more important things to do.Report

      • Mark Kruger in reply to InMD says:

        The question is (has always been) between liberal open border policies and conservative strict boundary policies. The law itself cannot be rigorously enforced “as is” without unintended consequences. Previous administrations preferred to “split the baby” (ugh! what a terrible metaphor in this context!) and sort of half enforce it – using it for more egregious or problematic cases rather than prosecuting or detaining every crosser or asylum seeker.

        As I think I said above the law is problematic but Trump’s gambit amounts to a scorched earth policy. It remains to be seen if his executive order “rescinding” the separation policy is able to find middle ground to tamp down the hubbub. My suspicion is that coverage will now shift to children held “in detention” with their parents and we’ll get a new wave of outrage.

        Simply put there are sizable contingents on both sides here. Some argue for wide open borders with controls we wink at and enforce lightly, others for draconian measures, tracking and what amounts to police surveillance. Most folks are somewhere in the middle I think – but it’s easy to see how the issue does not lend itself to ready solutions.Report

  8. InMD says:

    As someone on the ‘controlled immigration’ side of this I think the current crisis was made inevitable by 30 years of failing to fix the system. Trump gonna Trump and separating families is indeed inhumane. What I’m still not hearing in the midst of all the hysteria and handwringing is what exactly the policy solution is.

    Open borders is terrible for a host of security, infrastructure, and public health reasons. This is especially the case when tens of thousands of the people coming are apparently unaccompanied minors which is what the Bush-Obama approach inadvertently incentivized. I also think there’s a limit to the number of third world immigrants we can absorb as a culture. That ceiling is considerably higher than a European country but leaving it totally unchecked will eventually bring our already strained social cohesion to a breaking point.

    Maybe this will finally force a comprehensive solution but I doubt it. The Republicans have hit a level of xenophobia so detached from reality and the Democrats become so hell-bent on turning illegal aliens into a protected class that compromise may be impossible.Report

    • Chip Daniels in reply to InMD says:

      Open borders is terrible for a host of security, infrastructure, and public health reasons.

      Except history demonstrates exactly the opposite.
      Literally, this claim has been made every single time, about the Germans, Irish, Chinese, Slavs, Italians, Jews, and anyone else who spooked the dominant group at the time.

      This notion that we can “absorb” a finite number of people takes a very curious view of the human person.
      It assumes that these people are needy mendicants, who have no capacity for being industrious or creative and will forever be lying idle receiving alms.

      Yet history shows these are almost always extremely hard working and creative people who deliver a powerful benefit to our economy and culture.

      Really, this entire edifice is a vampire idea, killed by evidence over and over, and yet resurrected each and every time.Report

      • Saul Degraw in reply to Chip Daniels says:

        Relatively recent to very recent Arab immigrants to Michigan and other places in the mid-West were highly involved in reversing economic decline in the areas.Report

        • InMD in reply to Saul Degraw says:

          See my comment below. I am not anti-immigrant I’m anti stupid immigration policy. This isn’t the same as people who came through the system and were settled responsibly.Report

          • Lenoxus in reply to InMD says:

            “The system” is contracting — actual border checkpoints are being closed. It was always a myth that immigration hawks support some kind of “line” for people to get in, beyond the smallest trickle. After all, when was the last time a Republican proposed raising the quota for legal migrants? Or increasing ports of entry? Or even just making the process less of a Kafkaesque nightmare? Those ideas are seen as too dovish and bleeding-heart, even though they’re strictly about legal immigration.

            What we’re seeing now is a desired goal, not just a result of partisan conflict.Report

            • Nevermoor in reply to Lenoxus says:

              I agree with this.

              For example, I have a friend born here, who grew up here, who married an English woman, and who then had to spend years navigating our legal immigration system so that his wife could come to America and work here. And he’s a guy with plenty of resources and helpful political connections.

              The idea that we have some functioning legal immigration system, or that the GOP would actually like to create one that allowed non-trivial immigration in a functioning way, is simply false (and used as a distraction in conversations like this one).Report

      • InMD in reply to Chip Daniels says:

        Dude read what I wrote. Huge numbers of them are unaccompanied children. What foster system are you going to put them in? Baltimore’s? St. Louis’? My guess is they’re out of space in the border towns and I’m assuming they can’t all stay at your house.

        As for history you’ll have to be more specific. We’ve absorbed big waves before and we can do it again but lets admit that the standards of whats expected are a hell of a lot different than the 19th and early 20th centuries. Unless you’re willing to say we can throw them destitute into overcrowded, disease ridden tenements or send them off to lives of manual labor in the hinterlands then the comparison doesn’t hold water.

        If a policy had been set by Congress and we had infrastructure to process them then fine but we don’t and it isn’t going to be built overnight. Even the adults need to be housed, fed, clothed, and oftentimes educated. The federal government has made no accommodation for it and the local jurisdictions aren’t equipped.

        It also isn’t a ‘vampire’ idea to recognize what’s happening in the West with this politically. Not only here but in Germany and France and the UK and Italy and Austria and Hungary. You can’t treat the concerns of citizens of democracies as secondary to the interests of foreigners and not get a backlash.Report

        • Chip Daniels in reply to InMD says:

          Unless you’re willing to say we can throw them destitute into overcrowded, disease ridden tenements or send them off to lives of manual labor in the hinterlands

          That hasn’t changed either.

          Immigrants then, as now, live in very poor neighborhoods until they find their footing and move up.
          They work at manual labor in meatpacking plants in the hinterlands of Iowa or farms in the hinterlands of California.

          Even the adults need to be housed, fed, clothed, and oftentimes educated.

          No, they don’t is my point.
          Where are we going to find cheap labor to build housing for these immigrants, and food to feed them?

          Maybe we can go to the Home Depot parking lot and find some cheap immigrant labor, to work at construction and agriculture!

          I mean, this view is that these people come here as invalids, lying helpless on a pallet.

          It overlooks that every immigrant is a source of human capital and labor.They don’t need to “be housed”, or “be fed”, they don’t really need anything other than the opportunity to work.Report

          • InMD in reply to Chip Daniels says:

            To me this sounds like the kind of magical thinking thats gotten us where we are. I don’t see how we can keep letting it play out under the current incoherent structure where sometimes the law is enforced and sometimes it isn’t, and different jurisdictions are left on their own to manage as best they can with whatever resources they happen to have.

            I’m not an ideologue on this issue. Maybe there’s a plan involving fund transfers to heavily impacted jurisdictions and waivers or loosening of labor laws for migrant workers to get them legally in the system at wages the market will bear. I am all ears if someone wants to propose a plan like that but I don’t hear anyone doing it.Report

            • pillsy in reply to InMD says:

              Destruction of the political power of the anti-immigrant wing of the GOP is a precondition for any policy improvements. They’ve demonstrated that they won’t accept any sort of compromise roughly a million times, and will use their power to scuttle any compromise that doesn’t include them.

              At a certain point you just need to take the damn football away from Lucy.Report

            • Dark Matter in reply to InMD says:

              The problem isn’t the economics of immigration, the problem is the politics of it.

              Immigrants are a net bonus. They add more money to the system than they consume a few years out. The only group whose wages they depress are the min wage crowd and I don’t see why my kids deserve min wage. We are the most aggressively assimulistic country on the planet, there are no issues with immigrants’ 2nd, 3rd generation.

              The bulk of the problems created by illegal immigration occurs because it’s illegal, not because it’s immigration.

              With those as the underlying facts there’s all sorts of plans that would work. Staple a green card to every college diploma. Hand out green cards if you hide and pay taxes here for a decade. Let businesses “sponsor” workers. Restrict welfare for the first decade you’re in the country.

              But the laws have to be loosened enough that people are willing to follow them. We currently have roughly 3.4% of the population of the US as illegals, that’s a breakdown in law enforcement. Immigrants commit less crime than average but we’ll have actual criminals hiding with them below law enforcement’s radar and so forth.

              There are multiple massively good things we could do for the economy if we reformed the system so the xenophobes weren’t setting policy. Brain drain is other countries educating doctors, other highly educated people, and the US stealing them by offering them a better life. We should do more of that. Immigrants mostly come here to work and add to our economy, we should do more of that. The US has serious problems paying for pensions and our other social programs, immigrants are an effective way to increase the economy without increasing to our pension debt load, etc.Report

        • pillsy in reply to InMD says:

          Open borders would eliminate most, if not all, incentives to send minors unaccompanied.

          So given the choice between creating possible problems with assimilation in the future with the extremely present problems of authoritarian xenophobes like Trump, Sessions, and Miller in control of large numbers of authoritarian xenophobes in agencies like ICE and CBP, well, it’s not a hard call.

          Moderates in the GOP have been trying, since the Bush Administration, to compromise with Democrats to make the system somewhat less broken at every turn. Each time they’ve been stymied by the xenophobic wing of the party, no matter who controlled Congress or the White House.

          History tells us that compromise is not possible, and that our government cannot be trusted with the power necessary to control the borders. This, open borders and undocumented people as a protected class are the only acceptable option.Report

          • Jaybird in reply to pillsy says:

            Open Borders.

            Robust Social Safety Net

            Multiculturalism

            Pick two.Report

            • pillsy in reply to Jaybird says:

              Since the fiercest objections to all three all come from the same group of people, who form a large but distinct minority of the population, I see no reason to believe this is a choice we need to make.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to pillsy says:

                Made for you then?

                Fair enough.

                Edit: These aren’t things that you have to have, mind. It’s easy to do without any of them. But, and we’ve gotten into this before, I don’t think that you can have more than two. Best to pick the two beforehand.Report

              • pillsy in reply to Jaybird says:

                In order to choose between two, we’ll have to wield enough political power to render objections to the third irrelevant.

                And we’re currently on a path to having none of the three.Report

              • Nevermoor in reply to Jaybird says:

                I know how much you love the “pick two” framing on nearly every issue, but it is a terrible match here.

                Open borders equals multiculturalism because we go back to the ideals on the base of the statute of liberty, and are strengthened by a more diverse culture. Just as we have been for centuries.

                None of that is in any way incompatible with a better safety net. Immigration means new low-wage hard working relatively young folks to balance out the boomers who are the actual safety net problem as they move into retirement.

                I’d suggest you need to either drop your framing this time or explain why this situation has anything to do with the classic fast/cheap/good example.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Nevermoor says:

                Multiculturalism doesn’t mean “people from all sorts of cultures!”

                If what you mean by “multiculturalism” is the same thing as can be found in Epcot’s World Pavilion, then, yes. I’m a big fan of multiculturalism too.

                If all we’re talking about is different outfits, different foods, different festivals, and different music all floating on top of a Disnified Monoculture, I’m down with arguing that these things are, indeed, compatible.Report

              • pillsy in reply to Jaybird says:

                @jaybird

                Remember taco trucks on every corner?

                Handwringing over halal food? Or for that matter the endless waves of moral panic we’re subjected to over indecent music and slovenly dress preferred by (usually) younger members of minority groups?

                How about the way religiously mandated headgear seems to be a near-continual source of tension and outrage? It’s less salient here but lots of European countries have debated (and even passed) laws about whether people can wear some kinds of hats.

                The idea that the sticking point for multiculturalism is not going to be the most outwardly visible markers of someone’s culture seems implausible in theory, and that theory appears to be borne out in practice.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to pillsy says:

                Well, let’s use religiously mandated headgear as the example because that one is fun.

                The Hijab.

                If you see the Hijab as little more than a way to yell “Yay, hurray! We’re present, we’re reverent, get used to it!”, then it’s a fun thing to wear and it’s very much something that you can celebrate by wearing it in solidarity with others without it being cultural appropriation.

                If you see it as religious oppression of women, it means something else entirely. (Here’s a Vice article.)

                Personally, I see it as similar to the Confederate Flag. Sure, I believe you when you say that it represents your heritage and it’s not representative of any weird internalized attitudes about women or anything but, damn, that shit has a *LOT* of baggage and asking me to ignore that baggage is asking a lot.

                If what we talk about when we talk about multiculturalism is just the fun way to announce that people are different from each other (but, deep down, we’re all the same), then I’m down with multiculturalism.

                Heritage! Not hate!Report

              • pillsy in reply to Jaybird says:

                Well, let’s use religiously mandated headgear as the example because that one is fun.

                I thought you might go for that one, and the issue posed with headscarves is not that unusual.

                How do you disambiguate between stuff that’s harmless or maybe even empowering from stuff that represents viewpoints that are inimical to your Epcot Center vision of multiculturalism? You have a problem if you completely ignore what people say about their own practices, but you also have a problem if you give them the final say.

                Defining the boundaries of what aesthetic differences are harmless and which are signs of fundamental disagreements is not straightforward. Nor is it obvious to me that it’s necessary. The liberal tradition owes a lot to the idea that it’s OK for people to have different religions, which lead to differences across all the surface aspects of culture as well as quite a few deeper issues of worldview.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to pillsy says:

                Well, the Hijab means different things in different contexts. At one far end of the spectrum, you’ve got Linda Sarsour explaining how it helps make her different. At the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got religious police punishing women who don’t wear it.

                I suppose that, even farther down the happy and good and progressive side of the spectrum is the “hijab for a day” thing that was fashionable for a while. Yeah. There were a handful of essays about *THAT*. (Here’s a representative one.)

                If the question is “well, who’s right when it comes down to what it means?”, my answer is “I don’t know.” But I also know that my answer to the question “is Hijab harmless?” is also “I don’t know.”Report

              • Maribou in reply to Jaybird says:

                @jaybird One thing you most definitely have is people punishing Muslim women for wearing it, legally or extralegally, and attacking them physically and verbally. I know you *know* about this because you linked to an essay that references such attacks extensively, in this very comment I am responding to.

                Where does that fit into your binary spectrum?Report

              • pillsy in reply to Jaybird says:

                But I also know that my answer to the question “is Hijab harmless?” is also “I don’t know.”

                It depends on a lot of complicated context that a casual observer will simply lack. And all to answer question that is, IMO, inimical to small ‘l’ liberalism.

                Lots of stuff isn’t harmless.Report

              • bookdragon in reply to Jaybird says:

                I’m going to say you’re missing some reasons here. The president of the Natl Honor Society at a local high school here wears a hijab. And sneakers and blue jeans. It’s an expression of her faith that frankly it strikes me as basically the Muslim version of Modern Orthodox. (So, groups I disagree with on a number of theological issues and am not likely to join, but I can respect those who choose to belong and follow their practices).

                but, yes, there is certainly a lot of baggage associated with the hijab. There’s a whole TON of baggage associated with crucifixes too. Do you react the same way to seeing Catholics wear those?Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to bookdragon says:

                I’m old enough to remember when women were harassed and threatened for not wearing a bra in public.Report

              • Maribou in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                “old enough to remember”?

                That shit still happens, it’s happened to me within the last five years. (and i’m pretty sure from other reports by women I know that the declining frequency with which I experience it has to do with me getting older and fatter, not with it becoming particularly less common).Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                “Therefore, what we see Iran doing is okay. Check-*MATE*, bigots.”Report

              • Maribou, Moderator in reply to Jaybird says:

                No one said that.

                Knock it off.Report

              • bookdragon in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                I’m with Maribou on both remembering and still seeing that, though not directed at me since I’m at an age where I’m virtually invisible to men. lolReport

              • Maribou in reply to bookdragon says:

                @bookdragon He’s missing a lot of reasons, I agree.

                (And yes, I see people wearing crucifixes, crosses, medals, etc., all the time and yet he stopped complaining about them 20 years ago.)Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to bookdragon says:

                I’m fine with women using the hijab as an expression of faith.

                I’m not fine with the full face/body black hijab being on gov IDs.

                I’m also not fine with women being forced to wear the hijab as a demo of men’s control over them.Report

              • Maribou in reply to Dark Matter says:

                The “full face / body black” is not what is commonly referred to as the hijab. Perhaps a chador (though the face would show) or a niqab. If the eyes are hidden, a burqa.

                I’ve only ever heard white people and fundamentalist Muslims use hijab to include the latter three, unless they are talking about the practice (where the general term is sometimes used as a verb) rather than the garment.

                Generally speaking, when informed, non-extremist people say “hijab” they mean “headscarf” or “hair covering” or perhaps “shawl-like garment covering the hair and shoulders/bust area” at most, not a niqab or a burqa.

                I would recommend that people learn more about the practice in all its variants, and read a lot more by people who have chosen to wear, and to not wear, different forms of traditional female Muslim dress, as well as reading up on what actually happens to Muslim women when countries outlaw vs require different forms of veiling (they both suck), before developing proscriptive opinions about it. It’s an extremely complicated topic, extremely divisive within Islam, and not something to be tossed around and chewed over like it’s “fun”, in my opinion.

                If what Jaybird was getting at above is that multiculturalism entails people having to learn about each other more deeply, in many such situations, with many such arguments to be had, many syntheses to be forged, and many people who object or don’t care about each other involved … well, sure. But the US, just like Canada, has been that way from its very smallpox-blanket-infested beginnings (or, less scathingly and more US-specifically, from well before Lafayette and Hamilton were a key part of the military during the Revolutionary war). Having done a bad job of it many times over doesn’t make it less part of the national character. Just makes it a part we could stand to improve. A lot.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Maribou says:

                Hardly my first fashion error.

                I’m a male engineer. Other male engineers have told me I have no sense of fashion or style.

                As a matter of policy I have no opinion on women’s fashion.Report

              • Maribou in reply to Dark Matter says:

                “As a matter of policy I have no opinion on women’s fashion.”

                And yet you just expressed more than one such opinion.

                (By which I mean, if you can’t tell what a hijab is or isn’t, you probably shouldn’t be talking about whether people can wear them on govt ids or not. Likewise deciding what you are and aren’t fine with. Though I think “women’s fashions shouldn’t be forced on them by men who dominate them” is an opinion we can all get behind, regardless of the context, and I’m not counting that as a “fashion opinion” by your reckoning.)Report

              • Jaybird in reply to bookdragon says:

                Do you react the same way to seeing Catholics wear those?

                I don’t make a habit of it.

                But I don’t think that it’s a 1:1 comparison.Report

              • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

                I don’t make a habit of it.

                Nicely done.Report

              • habit…see what you did there…Report

              • bookdragon in reply to Jaybird says:

                Maybe I should have said Amish women wearing prayer caps and modest dresses?

                That is pretty close to 1:1Report

            • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

              1. “Open Borders” is a red herring, something no one outside of a few ideologue libertarians is actually proposing.
              A higher quota of immigration from Mexico and Central America, work visas to seasonal workers and asylum for refugees; these are what is on the table.

              2. “Robust safety net” is something that immigrants aren’t immigrating to get; No one is coming here to loaf on welfare, and never have.

              3. Multiculturalism. There is no choice to be made here. The composition of American culture is evolving no matter what we do.Report

              • pillsy in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                @jaybird was responding to me; I did say I want open borders upthread.

                I don’t want them in an absolute sense; I do want them compared to what we have now, and compared to anything we’re likely to get as long as the anti-immigrant GOP remains a political force that has veto power over any policy changes.

                They’ve repeatedly shown us who they are and what they want.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to pillsy says:

                I will say the whole “NOBODY IS ARGUING FOR OPEN BORDERS!” in a thread in which someone is arguing for open borders is representative of the debate at large.Report

              • No one is coming here to loaf on welfare, and never have.

                With occasional tiny exceptions, and “loaf” may not be accurate. A few years ago we had a problem in my state. (I’m doing this from memory, and the fine details may be off somewhat.) Our state constitution includes a small public pension for anyone old enough, poor enough, and residing in the state legally. A small number of people were bringing their parents in legally, then signing them up for the pension. Not for the pittance that it paid directly; but because by statute, anyone who qualified for the pension automatically qualified for Medicaid. Some people moved here intentionally to get their ill elderly parents health care. By the time there were enough people doing this to get noticed, parts of the ACA had gone into effect. We had taken the expanded Medicaid, which came with the string that we were no longer allowed to make qualification changes in the original Medicaid that would result in people losing coverage (w/o a waiver, at least).

                I was the legislative staffer whose desk this one wound up on. I spent a lot of time that session explaining the details of why the state would lose far more money than we were spending on Medicaid for those immigrants if we cut them off. I would have to dig to be sure, but I believe we eventually got a waiver that let us not cover them until they had been in the country for five years. In the sponsorship arrangement they came in on, the sponsor guaranteed to be responsible for all financial expenses, including health care, for five years.

                The size of the problem was blown all out of proportion, but we were still struggling with the budget effects of the Great Recession and people were looking for any dime they could find that looked like fraud to cut.Report

              • J_A in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                work visas to seasonal workers

                The funny thing is that most Central American/Mexican low skills immigrants would much rather have seasonal work visas, work six, nine months, and go back to their families the rest of the time. They really don’t want to bring their families or to stay here permanently. But with the current system, once here, it is almost impossible to go back home and return again next year.

                Seasonal work visas were part -the best part, probably- of the Bush 43 plan. It would dramatically cut the number of permanent migrants, and, more particularly, the costs of services associated with the children.

                If people really wanted to improve the system, reduce the costs, and the actual number of migrants, they would offer hundred of thousands of seasonal six moths work visas.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to J_A says:

                We get our cheap labor, they get their remittances, they go home when they’re done.

                Everybody’s happy.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

                For what it’s worth, I agree that #2 is the one that will be hit hardest.

                #1 and #3 it is.Report

            • Saul Degraw in reply to Jaybird says:

              I think you are still absolutely wrong here but it fits your desire to play Socrates.Report

              • LeeEsq in reply to Saul Degraw says:

                It’s a little known fact that the Athenians did not like Socrates because they perceived him as hostile to democracy. Socrates had links and sympathies to the aristocratic and oligarchic faction in Athenian politics. The people that did not like democracy.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Saul Degraw says:

                Jesus, I’m not playing Socrates.

                I’m not opening with “Oh, you say that Immigration is Good?”

                I’m, instead, playing the pessimist. Schopenhauer, maybe. I think that you want things that are mutually exclusive and if you try for everything that you’re going for, you’ll be lucky to get any of it. Playing Aesop, maybe.Report

            • Dark Matter in reply to Jaybird says:

              It’s not “pick two”, it’s “define robust safety net without setting the bar so high that only a mono-cultured society can manage it”.

              We’re stuck with multiculturalism. However is our “robust safety net” is already insanely great by international standards, if not by the Left’s desired “more, more, more with no inequality” standards.

              No one starves. Almost everyone who wants to work can. There’s no religious oppression by international standards. And what we call “poor” most countries would call “middle class”.

              Most Americans have NO IDEA how much money is sloshing around in the system by international standards. Lots of people are willing to come here, work hard, and be (what we’d call) poor, and it’s STILL an absurdly great deal for them and a VAST improvement on what they used to have.Report

          • InMD in reply to pillsy says:

            I think this gets the history backwards. Trump is mostly IMO an effect of the failure to handle the immigration situation on the southern border. That is not a future problem with hypothetical implications, that is a now existing problem that ebbs and flows but has metastasized since the can got kicked in 1987.

            I disagree with the idea that open borders/protected class status would help long term. I think it will create more Trumps and mini Trumps outside of a few safe zones and lead to a de facto devolution of immigration policy to the states and localities. That serves no one well and is even harder to fix.Report

            • pillsy in reply to InMD says:

              Every attempt to fix the problem since then has been scuttled by anti-immigration xenophobes in the GOP, the same ones who made Trump the nominee.

              Open borders are not an ideal policy approach or even a good one. But there really isn’t an alternative as long as “border control” is stalking horse for bigotry and authoritarianism, and its proponents remain implacably opposed to legal immigration just as much as they’re opposed to illegal immigration.Report

            • Nevermoor in reply to InMD says:

              Strongly disagree. I’m with Krugman on Trump being the culmination of sixty years of dogwhistle politics and simply being some combination of too inept to dogwhistle and too personally invested in attacking minorities to care about dogwhistling.

              As to your prediction, I don’t see a strong anti-Irish, anti-Italian, anti-Asian, or other similar faction, even “outside of a few safe zones.” We’re a melting pot.Report

          • Mike Schilling in reply to pillsy says:

            Moderates in the GOP have been trying, since the Bush Administration, to compromise with Democrats to make the system somewhat less broken at every turn. Each time they’ve been stymied by the xenophobic wing of the party, no matter who controlled Congress or the White House.

            Nowadays “the xenophobic wing of the party” contains four redundant words.Report

    • Saul Degraw in reply to InMD says:

      This is a more polite version of what Koz wrote above and it is still very wrong.

      America was controlling immigration. It is very hard to immigrate here legally and that is part of the problem. Refugees are going to come illegally if they can’t seek asylum easily and legally.
      We can also take them in and they do work. They work hard.

      But plenty of people have hazy and inchoate notions of American “bourgeois” values think that it is impossible for Hispanic immigrants to assimilate. This is bullshit. People said the same things of my great-grandparents and my grandparents were assimilated. Jewish, not WASPy but still American. Saying Jews are different is revisionism and whitewashing.Report

      • InMD in reply to Saul Degraw says:

        What’s your policy then? Lay it out, where the money comes from, who is responsible when there’s a screw up, and how you manage integration.

        I’m the son of an immigrant so drop your assumptions about my assumptions.Report

        • Saul Degraw in reply to InMD says:

          More border checkpoint nets. More VISAs. More asylum judges. Less discretion for asylum judges to district. Education to combat xenophobiaReport

      • Maribou, Moderator in reply to Saul Degraw says:

        @saul-degraw It’s unreasonable and unfair to lump what InMD is arguing in with what Koz is arguing. Seriously unfair, doesn’t add to the conversation. Don’t do that next time.Report

    • Kolohe in reply to InMD says:

      The US mainland has open borders with Puerto Rico. PR has had problems long before Maria hit, yet has not completely depopulated.Report

  9. Mike Schilling says:

    Democrats feel like they won the lottery.

    Exactly how I feel. I’m 100% in favor of child abuse if it’ll help take back the Senate.Report

  10. Troublesome Frog says:

    I think the people who are putting pressure on Trump to make a U-turn on this are doing him a favor. The logistics of taking care of thousands of separated children are terrifying, and it’s obvious that it’s being done with all of the aplomb of a typical Trump project. The longer this goes on, the more of a complete horror show it’s going to be. A team with the skills and budget to run this type of operation and the desire to do it right would be courting disaster. This team has no chance of pulling it off.

    How many of those kids are going to get lost in the system and never see their parents again? How many of them have special medical needs that only their parents know about and will die mysteriously before they can figure out what’s wrong with them? How many are going to die of heat-related complications in tent cities? The sheer numbers and ineptitude here make all of those things virtually guaranteed.

    What’s going to happen when you realize too late that a law enforcement agency with a disturbingly high percentage of racists and sadists isn’t a very safe place so keep a bunch of little boys and girls with no English skills to report abuse, no guardians and minimal oversight?

    I’m also expecting images/video to start coming out from the places they’re so desperately trying to keep out of the media. Whatever non-telegenic stuff is going on now, it’s probably only going to get less telegenic over time as the probability of leaks slowly approaches 1. That’s not going to be good either.

    I have to guess the best thing he can do for himself is declare victory, start reuniting the families, and blame something on the Democrats or say something racist on Twitter to move the media cycle. The second best thing is to keep it going and deal with his crew’s general ineptitude using his crew’s natural skill at covering up disasters. Because this thing is going to generate skeletons faster than most people can find closets.Report

  11. Slade the Leveller says:

    IMHO, the real question is are people arriving in overwhelming numbers? According to Pew the total rose to around 11 million in the mid-2000s from around 3.5 million in 1990, and it’s hovered around that 11 million mark ever since.

    If the population is static, is it a problem requiring the draconian measures that have, until today, been in effect? This really seems like a solution in search of a problem.Report

  12. Saul Degraw says:

    The jacket incident makes me feel like we are in maximum trolling territory. Miller is planning on outraging the Democrats out. I have been thinking of this poem lately.

    https://m.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/september-1-1939Report