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A great man once said feeble minds discuss people, mediocre minds discuss events, and great men discuss feeble and mediocre minds. As befits my station (see: flair), I will endeavor to do the first two.
Yesterday, Ron Desantis proudly shipped 50 illegal immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard. See Breitbart and Fox News’ takes as well. The individuals were supposedly offered a plane ticket to Massachusetts, without being told they were being sent to a small, isolated island unprepared to receive them as part of a political stunt. Amusingly, not sharing a border with Mexico, Desantis actually had to source his illegal immigrants from Texas. I suppose rustling up 50 of the 772,000 homegrown illegal Florida Mans was too difficult, or may have upset some core constituency, who knows. The only shelter in Martha’s Vineyard has room for 10 and is obviously not equipped in the way that Boston, New York or DC would be and the plane ticket to those places would have been much cheaper.
Also of note: see the Fox News article for the Florida legislature’s $12 million
‘immigrant relocation program’Own The Libs/Desantis for President fun.I can stomach a border wall and even see the necessity, despite disagreeing with what it represents. I can sympathize with people living near the border and dealing with crime and drug cartels. But manipulating impoverished people seeking a better future and treating them as nothing more than chattel to score political points and ‘own the libs’ absolutely turns my stomach. Which, judging by the Breitbart comments and replies I expect here, laughing at my pearl clutching is absolutely the point. You want me to be mad, you want me get up on my soapbox and bleat some self-righteous Soyjak lines about muh poor illegals so you can get mad right back and it feels good.
So I guess I won’t do that, although I never know what to say instead. I’m sorry that you hate Obama and Clinton (see: Breitbart article) so much that the thought of them having to deal with poor third worlders is amusing. I’m sorry that you’re so angry about illegal immigration and the libs that we’ve come here. Please, let’s all try to treat our countrymen better and do what we can to dial down the hate.
I don't take your pearl clutching as legitimate worry. It's weaponized concern; no human is illegal, but also it's not generally your communities suffering the constant tide of human detritus.
If you want me, or people like me, to take this concern seriously, you need to put your money where your mouth is for a few generations. Spend the next thirty years getting shipped hundreds of thousands and tens of millions of these people, and then, at the end of it, still argue that you care and no human is illegal and strive to help them.
If you think this is unreasonable, then we're at an impasse, because we've already been lied to on the immigrant problem for decades. We've been betrayed by amnesty, by lax border security, by sanctuary cities and their advocates. The left mashed defect on this issue, and we're not going to hit cooperate until you give us a few wins.
As an open borders advocate, I have no interest in providing charity for immigrants. When I eat at a restaurant that's owned and staffed by immigrants, I'm putting my money where my mouth is. When I buy produce that's picked by migrant workers, I'm putting my money where my mouth is.
What I see as needing to end is not letting immigrants in, it's incentivizing the wrong kind of immigrants to come here by making charity and or free social services available to them. Mass immigration was great for America in the 19th and early 20th centuries because it operated under the model I prefer. I say we go back to it.
Are you referring to legal immigrants or illegal immigrants? I notice that a lot of American rhetoric simply uses 'immigrants', and since the topic of discussion is specifically illegal immigration in this case, it would helpful to be specific about what you're arguing.
An open border advocate believes there should be no restrictions placed on entering the country. As such, there would not be any illegal immigration.
In a hypothetical Caplanian utopia with one billion Americans, sure. But as it stands now, illegal immigrants are a category of person. Muddying the waters by referring to Chinese international students, Indian H1Bs and Central American border-jumpers as 'immigrants' is very misleading.
It's akin to referring to both squatters and law-abiding tenants who pay their rent on time as 'residents', and then talking about being 'pro-resident' or 'anti-resident' when the 'anti-resident' side are really just against squatters and the 'pro-resident' side thinks charging rent is immoral.
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