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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.
by breaking the law. Wonder why you omitted that?
The correct judgement would be for them to be immediately kicked out of the country, and anything more reserved than that is a blessing. Even being buffeted around to make liberals walk their walk is still more than they deserve. As far as I'm concerned, this is extreme leniency.
I've long theorised that the solution to ivory tower liberals virtue signalling about illegal immigration is to give them some actual skin in the game, instead of letting them escape all the negative consequences of their ideology inside their walled communities. It seems the governor agrees with me, and that the theory was sound. I applaud this action and hope that next time he sends 500. And then 5000. Until the message sinks in. You do not get to ruin our towns from your gated communities with no consequence.
My idea was that asylum applications cannot be granted unless a citizen by birthright sponsors them. Anyone could sponsor up to 100 entries. The list of sponsors (but not their assigned wards) would be public. You can volunteer your own names if you know them, or you can have them assigned. And if any of the people you have sponsored to enter the country commits a crime, you are held jointly responsible as if you had committed that crime yourself.
In addition, I'd apply that last part to human rights lawyers who frustrate deportations -- if anyone you rescued from deportation commits a crime, you are also held responsible.
People need to be held directly responsible for the consequences of their advocacy. Foisting it off on border towns and other people far away, ensuring there's no cost to you directly, is immoral.
Because I expected you to be able to parse 'illegal immigrants' as...well...doing something illegal.
Massachusetts has about as many illegal immigrants (250,000/7,000,000) per capita as Florida does (720,000/21,000,000). Neither share a border with Mexico. Tell me again what consequences Florida is suffering that Massachusetts isn't? Moreover, the majority of illegal immigrants settle in metropolitan areas which vote blue even in red states like Texas. The vast, vast majority of those voters obviously don't live in gated communities. Those that do, do not unilaterally decide policy; Obama and Clinton and so on respond to the desires of their voters.
The message won't sink in, because the hypocrisy that you think is there just isn't, not because you haven't shipped enough illegal immigrants to Massachusetts.
Our tax dollars (which I understand are still the vast majority of funding for border security) pay for federal agents and facilities in Texas, so I do indirectly bear that burden. If anything, blue states contribute more in federal taxes than reds.
I've said it's regrettable that border towns have these issues, and if there were a robust way to mitigate the effects on them I would support it. But as I've said, even under Trump there were still large numbers of illegal immigrants at the border. Your sponsorship proposal wouldn't stop illegal immigrants from illegally ignoring it any more than they do now. The only real solution I can see working is developing those nations to the point that they don't want to come here anymore; look at how the number of illegals from Mexico has dropped as conditions have improved, and those from other countries has increased as conditions there worsen.
Are you sure that doing so is actually easier, more practical and/or more sustainable than building a figurative wall and deporting anyone who makes it across? Or do you just much prefer helping migrants and foreign countries and consider any negative externalities for your own countrymen unimportant in comparison?
I suppose my point is that haven't we been doing that, and the incentives are so strong that people are coming anyways? I'm not going to propose that nothing we do matters, but it seems like short of fixing the economic disparities, there's no real lasting solution to the problem.
It's very much not an easy problem. As anti_dan alluded below, many countries south of the border are either oppressively socialist, or are oppressively anti-socialist (in some cases, thanks to the US/CIA), with the fun third option of "practically dominated by organized criminals with no obvious political lean." Trying (and failing) to absorb large numbers of pseudo-refugees into the nation of America, with its nominal values of democracy and liberalism, is probably easier than trying to get much of South and Central America to not be what it currently is.
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Why do you think this? There has been billions spent in aid to those countries over the years. We engage with free trade with them which would result in rapid QOL improvements to any nation, if they would just stop voting for socialists and engaging in crime.
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I know very little on the particulars of the American-Mexican border and its security, but I was so far under the transatlantic impression that border security and deportations were done half-heartedly at the most.
A significant portion of the border is extremely hazardous Sonoran desert where almost no-one lives on either side, so enforcement in those locations is quite difficult. A non-trivial number of migrants die every year attempting to cross the border in these sections.
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