"the Mooch"

People can say it's a show. The timing of it certainly plays into the mid-terms, no doubt. Also one of the main things he campaigned with. Cutting back illegal immigration.

I'm somewhat curious as to the number of anchor babies (for lack of a better term) that vote in each election. It would take 18 years to have an effect, but it would be an everlasting one if the SC ruled that you do not get automatic citizenship if your parent or parents are illegal.
 
J-Rod10 said:
People can say it's a show. The timing of it certainly plays into the mid-terms, no doubt. Also one of the main things he campaigned with. Cutting back illegal immigration.

I'm somewhat curious as to the number of anchor babies (for lack of a better term) that vote in each election. It would take 18 years to have an effect, but it would be an everlasting one if the SC ruled that you do not get automatic citizenship if your parent or parents are illegal.

There's a lot to unpack here. Weren't you just griping about the timing of the Kavanaugh sexual assault accusations? "People can say it's a show." This whole administration and its actions feel like one big reality TV show, don't they?

Isn't the usual Republican position, the usual conservative position, against "activist" judges who try to reinterpret constitutional precedent? Or does that not count if it favors a Republican political position?

Are you calling your fellow citizens "anchor babies"? The term has been discredited as dehumanizing, and rightly so, and I bet you can find a term (how about "babies"? And when you're talking about a person, use "who" not "that" if you want to recognize their humanity).

And you're talking about repealing or reinterpreting standard constitutional law through an executive order because you're concerned over what kind of electoral effects it might have? This belies an assumption that immigrants vote a certain way, which isn't true, but do you think it could be because of one party's policies?

Do you think that disenfranchising as many people as possible, including children born to immigrants, is the best thing for the US? Or the best thing for the Republican party?
 
It's obviously a show.

It's not only unconstitutional it's flat out dumb.

Make whatever claims you want as far as anchor babies, Trump doesn't care, it's a marketing tactic based on the lack of feasibility of the executive order.
 
carnivorous chicken said:
There's a lot to unpack here. Weren't you just griping about the timing of the Kavanaugh sexual assault accusations? "People can say it's a show." This whole administration and its actions feel like one big reality TV show, don't they?

Isn't the usual Republican position, the usual conservative position, against "activist" judges who try to reinterpret constitutional precedent? Or does that not count if it favors a Republican political position?

Are you calling your fellow citizens "anchor babies"? The term has been discredited as dehumanizing, and rightly so, and I bet you can find a term (how about "babies"? And when you're talking about a person, use "who" not "that" if you want to recognize their humanity).

And you're talking about repealing or reinterpreting standard constitutional law through an executive order because you're concerned over what kind of electoral effects it might have? This belies an assumption that immigrants vote a certain way, which isn't true, but do you think it could be because of one party's policies?

Do you think that disenfranchising as many people as possible, including children born to immigrants, is the best thing for the US? Or the best thing for the Republican party?
That's sort of what the Supreme Court does, interpret constitutional precedent.
 
Oddly enough, I agree with Chump that pregnant women flying in to deliver a baby and then flying home should not be allowed. That doesn't seem right. And that's what he plays on. There's enough in what he says for many people to agree with part of what he says to miss the fact that all it is is a stunt to get his people out to vote. He knows that he can't do what he said and if he did it would be challenged in court and thrown out.

Facts do not matter - only the show. It is indeed a reality TV show because that's all he knows. He has never run a large business of any sort and has no idea how to manage let alone lead. But he does know how to sell fear.

15,000 troops to the border to stop the invasion. What a lot of nonsense. Of course the border needs to be guarded and that's why there are something like 100,000 border control guards down there. This is just another stunt to whip up fear. I have heard people crapping on about the alien invasion and the gangs that are about to overrun the country funded by Democrats. What a crock. Caravans of aliens come most years and they can be managed. They are not an invasion and they will not take over the country.
That part alludes to the fear that some on the right have that as demographics change, old white guys may become the minority and they might lose that death grip on power.

That's also why we have big tax cuts for the rich to keep poor people poor. Wealth redistribution upwards is not an accident. It is by design. And how do tax cuts get paid for? By decimating welfare programs. The math is simple. And so is the economic theory.
 
The U.S. had like 350k immigrants last year.

Even if the caravan is 4k people, that's only a few percentage points of the annual immigration.

The caravan is b.s., anybody who managed a C in 7th grade mathematics knows this assuming they aren't reacting emotionally.
 
Saw some stats on births from illegal immigrants yearly.

Something like 297,000 a year born to illegal immigrants. More than 14 states combined. More than 48 states each. Only Texas and California top that.
 
Trump sent 5000, not 15,000, troops to the border. Which is still hilarious in all sorts of ways. The immigrants, who will be applying for asylum (not, what -- rushing the border?), won't reach the border for weeks (that's after the midterms, BTW), and will be a drop in the bucket in terms of numbers of immigrants per year in the US as SavOr points out. It's clearly to please his xenophobic base. It's also about the same amount of soldiers that the US sent to Syria to fight ISIS. And it's going to cost a lot of money.

So, immigrants. The right fears them. We know that factually speaking they commit fewer crimes than citizens born here. And they contribute tremendously to the economy, including many who perform jobs most Americans wouldn't do for the wages, and many who have skills most Americans don't who contribute to American companies.

What is the right scared of again? I mean aside from the sizeable lobby that fears brown skin. If the right didn't so aggressively pander to racists and xenophobes right now, I am sure they would be getting more Hispanic votes due to their positions on social issues.

And Republicans -- you're anti-Semitism is showing. Fox is constantly blasting George Soros, including claiming that he is somehow responsible for organizing these refugees. WTF. Idiots eat it up and believe it.
 
Trump did say it could be up to 15,000.

They're going to support border patrol logistically.

Do they get paid extra while remaining in the US, or do they get paid the same as they would be paid for the month?
 
J-Rod10 said:
Do they get paid extra while remaining in the US, or do they get paid the same as they would be paid for the month?

nope to the first part and yes to the second part.
 
This is just one guy, but something I think is funny:

My neighbor. Owns a land management company. His company has starting turning over $1mill per year in earnings. He employs half of his staff with an immigrant work force. It was a small time, glorified landscaping company until he started offering Rick Allen's (Republican Senator) construction company the keys to his Jeckyl Island beach house. Now he's getting city and county contracts. He can underbid most of the local companies doing the same work because he pays below minimum wage to that immigrant work force with no benefits and no payouts to Social Security, Federal taxes, or unemployment insurance, etc. Take a wild guess how he votes and whose sign gets put in his front yard at election time.

This immigration BS and religion is how the Republicans have been turning the middle class and labor force away from their traditional tendency to vote Democrat. No Republican is doing anything to protect their jobs or their pensions. They are barely even hiring them.

Some interesting tidbits from Pew: Undocumented immigration (Republicans like to call them Illegal because it sounds worse) has been on a steady decline since 2007. The number peaked at 12.2 million. If you do the math, undocumented immigrants account for about 3.5% of the total population. They account for roughly 8% of the labor force. California, Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey and Illinois account for 59% of all undocumented immigrants. Most of them rest of them are in the southern states. Two thirds of all undocumented immigrants in the US have been here for more than 10 years, which means significantly less are entering the US every year, which is also why that overall number has been in decline.

The reality is, immigrant labor replaces slave labor. Republicans like my neighbor don't want that labor pool to dwindle. But, undocumented immigrants can't legally vote, so they need to ride the votes of the people that fear those immigrants will take their jobs.
 
J-Rod10 said:
Trump did say it could be up to 15,000.

They're going to support border patrol logistically.

Do they get paid extra while remaining in the US, or do they get paid the same as they would be paid for the month?

That's absolutely insane. Three soldiers for each asylum seeker?
 
irk miller said:
This is just one guy, but something I think is funny:

My neighbor. Owns a land management company. His company has starting turning over $1mill per year in earnings. He employs half of his staff with an immigrant work force. It was a small time, glorified landscaping company until he started offering Rick Allen's (Republican Senator) construction company the keys to his Jeckyl Island beach house. Now he's getting city and county contracts. He can underbid most of the local companies doing the same work because he pays below minimum wage to that immigrant work force with no benefits and no payouts to Social Security, Federal taxes, or unemployment insurance, etc. Take a wild guess how he votes and whose sign gets put in his front yard at election time.

This immigration BS and religion is how the Republicans have been turning the middle class and labor force away from their traditional tendency to vote Democrat. No Republican is doing anything to protect their jobs or their pensions. They are barely even hiring them.

Some interesting tidbits from Pew: Undocumented immigration (Republicans like to call them Illegal because it sounds worse) has been on a steady decline since 2007. The number peaked at 12.2 million. If you do the math, undocumented immigrants account for about 3.5% of the total population. They account for roughly 8% of the labor force. California, Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey and Illinois account for 59% of all undocumented immigrants. Most of them rest of them are in the southern states. Two thirds of all undocumented immigrants in the US have been here for more than 10 years, which means significantly less are entering the US every year, which is also why that overall number has been in decline.

The reality is, immigrant labor replaces slave labor. Republicans like my neighbor don't want that labor pool to dwindle. But, undocumented immigrants can't legally vote, so they need to ride the votes of the people that fear those immigrants will take their jobs.

That guy, he needs to be turned in.

A trailer manufacturer somewhat locally was raided a while back. Arrested pretty much all of the HR department, CEO, and owner, and over half the workforce. They were being paid $25/hr under the table to weld the trailers up.
 
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The reaction by Trump -- and support among his followers -- for sending the American military to the border (an unconstitutional act, I believe) is a symptom of the normalization of racism in the US. The NYT published a decent story on the rise of this phenomenon today: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/03/magazine/FBI-charlottesville-white-nationalism-far-right.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

I worked on an anti-terrorism project for several years. The notion that the problem of white nationalist violence was something law enforcement wasn't aware of isn't true. My group heard from people high up in law enforcement in the US, including the FBI, who were interested in having groups like mine examine the problem. The problem was that groups such as Sovereign Citizens had already began murdering cops and threatening anyone who looked into them. Most academics were unwilling to take on this kind of risk -- it was much more dangerous than studying Islamist extremists in foreign countries, for example (and speaking of foreign extremists, white nationalists in the US are clearly the most serious terrorist threat to Americans, despite the fearmongering against foreigners).

We are seeing the inability and unwilingness of confronting early incarnations of white nationalism now. Racism has been mainstreamed and embraced by people such as Trump. It's what allows groups of teachers in Idaho to think it is OK to dress up in racist caricatures for Halloween without thinking how it might make their Hispanic students think http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2018/nov/02/insensitive-and-inappropriate-costumes-worn-by-mid/.


Murders in minority dominated churches, synagogues, on the streets, in yoga studios, bombs sent to democrats while people on the right argue that they believe it could be a "false flag" operation carried out by democrats, political violence by groups such as Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys, and the forever "whataboutism" from the right that equates protesting Mitch McConnell and Sarah Sanders in restaurants to sending out bombs and calling for the extrajudicial imprisonment of political enemies are troubling signs.
 
No, it isn't illegal to send the military to our border. Furthermore, someone being ok with our military being sent to logistically support Border Patrol for a rush at our border in no way makes them racist.

The caravan was offered shelter, medical care, jobs, and schooling. They turned it down to march on towards the US.
 
J-Rod10 said:
No, it isn't illegal to send the military to our border. Furthermore, someone being ok with our military being sent to logistically support Border Patrol for a rush at our border in no way makes them racist.

The caravan was offered shelter, medical care, jobs, and schooling. They turned it down to march on towards the US.

This is actually kind of funny. Yes, Mexico offered the refugees temporary work permits if they stayed in Mexico. And Mexico, being a civilized country, makes healthcare affordable. I know, I live and work in Mexico.

The military can't do much but offer support. They can't directly participate in the detaining of immigrants -- that's prevented by law. Trump's wet dream of GIs running around shooting and handcuffing people is a fantasy meant to stoke the Republican turnout at midterm -- you said as much yourself. And let's be honest, as has been pointed out here and any resonable media outlet: the number of people involved is a drop in the bucket in terms of overall immigration, and as refugees they have a recognized right to apply for asylum. There's nothing illegal or crazy going on, depite the right's continual insistence on calling this a dangerous "invasion" with the possibility of migrants bringing diseases such as smallpox (which was eradicated decades ago) and other ridiculous claims. Mexico looks downright kind in comparison to the US right now.

As for Trump being racist, maybe sending the military to the border as an act itself is racist, although to deny that Trump's rhetoric about the refugees is racist is ridiculous. He's fearmongering and playing on stereotypes, telling people that they are bad people, that there are Middle Easterners among them, that they are coming here to commit crimes, that they are dangerous, that they will kill police. Have you seen the ad put out by the Republicans the other day? Right in the fascist playbook of stoking fear of the immigrant other.

But really, do we still need to argue about whether Trump is racist? Is there any doubt? He has a long tradition of racism going back to the 1970s. He refused to rent apartments to African-Americans and was found guilty of this in court. In his casinos, he decried blacks counting his money: "laziness is a trait in blacks." I could go on and on. How about opening his campaign by claiming that Mexican immigrants are rapists?

You also can't argue that there hasn't been an uptick and a normalization of racism in the way I mentioned in my previous post. Feel free to defend this administration. Usually it's been on its economic merits. But in accepting that (as if someone else couldn't keep the economy running without the racism and misogyny) you have to accept everything else. To deny it is ludicrous.
 
It is a drop in the bucket, compared to the yearly numbers.

They typically see 80-120 a day. Last week, they were up to 500 a day, and overwhelmed at that number. When 4,000+ arrive at the same time, well, it won't get any better.
 
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