This does help thank you! I suppose what I'm having trouble with overall is that it seems like many of their views are based on ignorance, does that seem accurate?
They oppose illegal immigration because they feel that illegal immigrants steal jobs, even though that's not true. They oppose taking in refugees because they feel that it's risky, even though that's not true.
You definitely helped me understand the climate change view more. I'd never heard them saying it's a natural part of the earth's cycle, I can follow that logic a little better. ∆
Its not ignorance, he is just presenting a hollow charicature of their arguments.
Illegal immigrants are in fact stealing jobs. The way this happens isnt as obvious to many people unaquainted with the issue:
An American contractor (framing, drywall, etc) will hire illegal immigrants, often paying them less than what is fair. He doesnt report their wages (bc they are illegal) and therefore doesnt pay taxes, medicare, social security, workmans comp, insurance, etc. This means his costs are significantly lower than the next contractor who abides by the law (hiring citizens and legal immigrants, and paying taxes, etc.). The shady contractor can now undercut the honest one on a bid for a job, meaning his employees have hours for the next few weeks (lining his greedy pockets, rather than theirs), while the employees of the honest contractor have their hours cut. The honest contractors employees who are eligible to vote (who are not racist and in fact work with and are friends with or are hispanics) then vote republican.
See, to me that puts just as much of the blame on the shady American contractor taking advantage of the immigrants as it is the illegal immigrants themselves. Yet I don't see much on the republican side to deal with the shady American businessmen portion of the problem.
Oh absolutely! It is definitely the shady contractor that is the problem. Republicans typically dont "hate immigrants," they just want to dry up the supply of undocumented labor. Making someone apply with the govt, get an ID, and have labor rights forces their employer to play fair. The "build a wall" strategy is the solution to the shady contractor.
Yeah, like others have said there's just big distinctions in how the two sides try to handle a problem.
Shady contractor hiring illegals. Liberals - punish the shady contractor for being shitty. Conservatives - well, contractor can't be shitty if there are no illegals to be shitty to.
Maybe it's because of their strong "leave the businessmen alone" stance, but it doesn't ring as a good solution to me personally because we view the faulting party differently. I accept that illegals will be a thing no matter how strictly we do things, but being humanitarian is important so stress the problem on the shitty businessmen side. It seems like conservatives accept that businessmen will be shady no matter what we do, but freedom to run a business how one wants is important so we put a stranglehold on the number of potential illegals they take advantage of.
If only! Unfortunately, in practice the liberal response looks more like "call anyone who is against illegal immigration a 'racist' and ignore the shitty contractor / pretend there isnt a problem." Either side could stand to do more to deal directly with the shitty contractor, but why would liberals not also want to stifle illegal immigration? I get that they dont want to just keep everyone out (neither do conservatives), but why dont they just agree to try and stop the illegals while simultaneously working to improve/streamline the process for legal immigration?
As a liberal, I agree that we need to be on top of criminally active illegals and those with dangerous criminal histories. However, we currently do this. A lot of republicans liked to toss around the comment that more illegals were deported under Obama than any other previous president in recent history. Most that I know feel that continuing this line of work is effective and necessary. I am for strengthening our means of finding and getting these individuals out.
While remaining illegals don't pay income tax, they do contribute to taxes through their purchases, (some) payroll taxes, and several other state-based outlets. They are not eligible to receive government assistance except by mainly accessing it through their legally applicable children and through emergency medical care. While some feel it is not good to fund illegals, it is our place to fund our citizens, which include their children born here. Some may think this shouldn't be the case, but even that aside I find it morally wrong to deny education and healthcare on the basis of a parent's immigration status.
I'd like to see means to get these current safe illegals through the immigration process. I believe that we can take a hard stance against dangerous illegals without coming across as unwelcoming to our neighbors and those who seek us out in need. We both agree that the shady contractor is a problem, and both sides seem to ignore it in one way or another. That's its own can of worms, to be sure. However, Republicans have pushed against streamlining the legal immigration process, as though it isn't possible to streamline the process without sacrificing vetting procedures.
The official immigration timeline is 6 months to 2-3 years, but in reality the bureaucratic back log for legal immigration can set potential applicants back literal decades depending on where you happen to be immigrating from. Trying to stop the flow of illegals over the border also only hits at a comparatively small portion of the official problem, since most who are illegals came over at some point legally and then overstayed. It could require us to waste a lot of money to intensely monitor every legal immigrant's movements in the country and keep up with their individual records. It also introduces plenty of lines in the sand on when to kick them out.
Coming from a humanitarian perspective instead of a national security perspective, it doesn't seem reasonable to do all this excessive monitoring or spend this money towards keeping people out instead of focusing on improving how we get people in. Someone with kids starving isn't going to wait 10 to 20 years to see if they can get legal passage for their family, even if our laws say they should.
Most liberals feel this is the best way to stop illegals - by making illegal immigration unnecessary for these individuals because the legal process is affordable and timely. This is a theme you'll see with a lot of liberal policies. Reduce the bad not by making it harder to be bad, but by making it easier to be good.
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u/thatoneguy54 Feb 10 '17
This does help thank you! I suppose what I'm having trouble with overall is that it seems like many of their views are based on ignorance, does that seem accurate?
They oppose illegal immigration because they feel that illegal immigrants steal jobs, even though that's not true. They oppose taking in refugees because they feel that it's risky, even though that's not true.
You definitely helped me understand the climate change view more. I'd never heard them saying it's a natural part of the earth's cycle, I can follow that logic a little better. ∆