[SpecialOlympian]

[Albert]

Using children as propaganda is pretty low. The separation of families is indeed a harsh measure but the opposition has been using this as an emotional blackmail to divert from the real issue of broken immigration system. But then again it makes sense when position of Democrats is basically open border policy of allowing illegal immigration to continue. Not to mention they are the ones along with Republican establishment who are responsible for the dire and disorderly situation at the US southern border.

[One Degree]

Yes, isn’t it amazing how their parents have disappeared? If it were my child, I think they would find me easily beating on the door even if that door was an embassy. Where are the parents and why in the hell should we need to hunt for them?

[SpecialOlympian]

Yeah, the Democrats should totally stop using the children the Trump administration and ICE are holding hostage to score political points. Good point, Albert.

It's just so unfair that the Dems are using Trump's own actions to make him look like an incompetent monster who yanks children from their mother's arms just because he's yanking children from their mother's arms.

[Hong Wu]

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/20 ... edium=push

The government will miss Tuesday’s deadline for reuniting dozens of young illegal immigrant children with their parents, a Justice Department lawyer said Monday — though the judge who put himself in charge of overseeing the process said that still marks solid “progress.”

Of the 102 children under age 5 who were supposed to be reunited by Tuesday, the government says it should be able to connect at least 54 of them with their parents, Sarah Fabian, the Justice Department lawyer, said in court.

In every one of those cases the government will then immediately release the illegal immigrant families out into the communities, Ms. Fabian said, arguing their hands are tied by logistics.

For the remaining nearly 50 children, some of their parents have already been deported, while others were released and have already disappeared into the shadows of the illegal immigrant population, and the government has struggled to track them down. Several other children can’t be reunited with their parents because the adults have serious criminal records, the government said.

Judge Dana Sabraw, who ordered the Tuesday reunification deadline, said he was still encouraged by the numbers and by the government’s push to get things done.

Here's what actually seems to be happening regarding that story from SO's tweet. Imagine my shock to find out that it's more complicated than a tweet from some dude might suggest.

[One Degree]

Sounds like a nice set up for child trafficking the Democrats are encouraging. Get yourself a young child to take across the border and you are guaranteed admittance to roam the country.

[blackjack21]

(I do wish that BJ could curb his uncontrollable desire to personally insult as a method of trolling but that is beyond his ability it seems. I will save him some typing though. For the future we all note that you have a really good job and make a lot of money.

You needed a closed parenthesis in there somewhere. I'm simply stating that if you want to trot out educational credentials, refer to fiddle and banjo crowds, two tooth crowds and the like, at least live up to the Mensa pretentiousness.

Nobody, aside from the racists, is obsessed with race. Your analogy is asinine.

If the shoe fits...

In simpler words, smart people fare better. This is true and always has been. I do not find this much of a news flash.

In a system where Ohio factory workers have been promised a better life in exchange for free trade with China, it's not difficult to see why they feel betrayed and are not going to listen to "you are a racist" rhetoric anymore. Allowing Germany and Japan to flood the US with cheap industrial goods as a bulwark against communist expansion was understandable, although not always agreeable. Allowing a communist oligarchy to flood the US with cheap industrial goods to further the economic and military might of a communist oligarchy is exactly what we fought against for the preceding 70 years. We just have a bunch of labor arbitrageurs who don't give a fuck about the United States and will hire the best and brightest with the trillions they are making with their arbitrage to tell exceedingly creative lies in the media. This is coming to an end now, because the political left has made it clear that European Americans are their enemy--a foolish thing to do when they still depend on them politically at the ballot box. As a consequence, nobody cares anymore if you call them a racist. The charge has lost its power for the population at large. The only people who care anymore are people with media reputations and high level executives.

But is it being destroyed by diversity or greed by the few? You seem to think it is both. I think it is overwhelmingly the later.

I don't disagree with you. I get along very well with my gardener. He's always happy and smiling. His son is not. Jose works his ass off. His son sees the future of manual labor that the capitalist class of America has in store for him, and he doesn't want to do it. The political class promises him welfare for not working. The are simply buying votes. The Republican party traditionally opposed this, and every single election the Democrats run on the idea that Republicans want to poison the water, kill your grandmother and make your children starve in the streets. I get along very well with my maid too. She puts in 7 hour days cleaning my house. She will tell you her daughter is "loco." She's already a mom at 19 and on welfare. Does that mean people hate her, because she is of Mexican heritage? No. They hate that she's chosen a life of welfare dependency. In a society whose production is heavily dependent on high IQ, Mexicans tend not to be into "human capital." As automation accelerates, this is going to lead to another unemployed class of people who generally don't speak the language, don't assimilate into larger culture, fail out of its schools, and are routinely manipulated by politicians who offer them "protection" and "relief" from all the white people who ostensibly hate them. That political model isn't working anymore.

I do not believe that people of color are the problem with which we must be concerned as much as the devastated and heavily armed white people when they learn that they have been deceived. The racial scapegoating will carry us for awhile but not for ever.

Right. These people do not believe that the Second Amendment was put in place so that they could go duck or deer hunting. They are not complete fools, but they are routinely taken for fools.

I am not given to scapegoating. I will leave that to the far right.

The far right does very little scapegoating compared to the political left. I brought this up consistently when Obama went down the road of police shootings in gangland territory. Who has been running these jurisdictions for the last 50 years with no political competition to speak of? The Democratic Party. Who do they blame? Republicans. There isn't a Republican to be found in the South side of Chicago. Political correctness has raised the scapegoating of all social problems on white people to a high art. A good chunk of the white population simply isn't tolerating it anymore.

If indeed humans are to survive here at all, the real question is how to maintain society when individual merit does not matter much at all.

Moral codes and social cohesion will play a larger role, and this is another reason why diversity is not a strength. Law is too blunt an instrument to be putting pot smokers, drinkers or hallucinators in jail per se, but a devil-may-care attitude has created a huge class divide too.

My answer to this is the workers must become owners. This must be done at a level where ownership is observably real. I know people don’t like my ‘distractions’ of local autonomy, but it really is the answer imo.

That could become a significant factor, especially with the rise of CNC, 3D printing, etc.

1° just went full communist in a single post. Is everyone in the thread OK or am I the only person who got whiplash?

Socialism is typically the government stealing the means of production and holding "in trust" for the workers, while they live a lavish lifestyle at the expense of everyone else. That is why communism and most variants of socialism never works. In high tech, stock options are the currency of the day.

How do you define ownership when ownership becomes obsolete. Once the vast majority of people stop trading their labor for what they receive the notion of ownership becomes meaningless. One gets because one is....

That's already the case. The underclass gets paid not to do manual labor on farms. That doesn't mean that material progress stops. For example, the human genome has 25M genes and billions of base pairs. We still don't know shit about a lot of it. Moving from one-size-fits-all medicine toward tailored medicine doesn't mean that everything will get automated. There will still be lots of transition. It just so happens that scanners can do a better job of detecting cancer than doctors can now, and generally do a better job of identifying false positives. That means it's not going to pay as much to be learn how to diagnose as a day-to-day career, but it will pay even more if you are designing scanners.

We are using some old labor-driven technologies now simply out of preference. Or because some people are cheaper to use than to replace. I am thinking of garbage collectors for example. Fully automating this service is easily doable using today's technology.

Yes, and these jobs are maintained because of monopolies and labor unions, while simultaneously making a mockery of the "sustainability" and "global warming" crowd. For example, just like cord cutting, I should probably cancel my full garbage service and simply dump my trash in the recycle bin. Why? Separating garbage from recycling is meaningless, because the cans all get dumped in the same truck with no separation. Why? Labor costs. Instead of running separate trucks for lawn clippings, recycling and garbage, they put them in the same garbage truck but maintain the illusion that there is some sort of separation by picking up recycling every other week and lawn clippings every other week. Those cans are free. The garbage can is what costs money. It's not the cost of diesel that's at issue. It's the cost of paying drivers that is at issue. Automating the driving will take care of that.

They opened a BART tram from Oakland Airport to the Coliseum BART station. The novelty? No train driver. They still have a station attendant for the tram at one end, who does nothing as it is free and there is only one destination. Our mass transit system could easily be automated too. We would do much better to get rid of train drivers and hire more police for the trains, with the police potentially having some training on manually operating the trains in emergency situations.

Yet, that is another example of monopoly, labor unions and politics. I routinely mention a high school buddy with a masters degree in psychology who empties garbage cans for $120k a year. We already have "fake jobs" in that sense, as the train drivers can easily be automated and the garbage collectors can easily be paid $20 per hour instead of $50+.

They must feel like they are the owners or they will be resentful no matter how easy their lives.

That may be more of a "feeling of control." For example, buying a high powered server today doesn't make sense unless you are running a cloud environment or are a large organization. If you want to buy a new laptop with 16GB of RAM and a 1TB drive and a quad core processor, you might pay $1500. Yet, you could buy an old Dell 710 with 128 GB of RAM, 2 6-core processors and 12TB of storage for the same amount. Many apps haven't increased their needs, even though computing power marches on. So the payroll app that used to run on 4GB servers with 100GB of storage can still run on that type of platform. Buying servers to do that is not cost effective. Large corporations have their own private clouds. Small companies can simply spin up cloud instances at Google or Amazon for a tiny fraction of what it cost 10 years ago. I imagine robot leasing might be similar, just like people might use a computer at a hotel business center or a FedEx office.

Using children as propaganda is pretty low. The separation of families is indeed a harsh measure but the opposition has been using this as an emotional blackmail to divert from the real issue of broken immigration system. But then again it makes sense when position of Democrats is basically open border policy of allowing illegal immigration to continue. Not to mention they are the ones along with Republican establishment who are responsible for the dire and disorderly situation at the US southern border.

Well, with all of the extremists calling for an abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ironically an anarcho-capitalist position), the political left, I think, has sealed its own doom for the November elections. There's still some time, but I don't see any signs of them putting together a case for why we should elect them other than Trump has bad manners.

Sounds like a nice set up for child trafficking the Democrats are encouraging. Get yourself a young child to take across the border and you are guaranteed admittance to roam the country.

That's why they are beginning to use DNA testing.

[anarchist23]

Trump and his administration are creating a "hostile environment" for immigrants, using babies, toddlers and young children to blackmail immigrants to agree to anything to get their kids back. If I were American I would be ashamed of this situation.

The Trump administration is expected to miss a 10 July deadline to reunite young migrant children who were separated from their parents at the US-Mexico border, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) says.
After viewing a list of the 102 children under the age of five in the government's care, the ACLU said "it appears likely that less than half will be reunited" by then.
But despite mounting legal and social pressure, immigration authorities have offered little information about reunification or what comes next.
Lawyers have begun to speak out about the conditions, describing migrant toddlers clambering on court desks during hearings, forced to appear in court alone while their parents are detained.
What's happening on the ground?
Pamela Florian, a lawyer with The Florence Project, an Arizona non-profit providing legal and social services to detained immigrant families, told the BBC the family separation policy led to "a huge increase in the number of younger children" coming through the system.
"Now we're seeing toddlers, we're seeing babies," she says.
During a hearing on Monday, Department of Justice attorney Sarah Fabian said 59 children should be reunited with their parents by the deadline.
On Twitter, immigration lawyers have shared their experiences representing young children who cannot properly explain their situation, let alone navigate legal proceedings.
Fellow Florence Project attorney Maite Garcia currently represents four- and six-year-old siblings from Mexico whose mother is in custody, awaiting her asylum hearing.
The six-year-old is blind, but has been working with Ms Garcia since her younger brother is nonverbal - "in part because he's traumatised", according to Ms Garcia.
"She's finally understanding after many, many meetings that she risks deportation and so now she's more frightened than ever of returning.
"She's been able to confide to me that she's fleeing violence in her home country and doesn't want to return because she's afraid of, as she puts it, 'bad things happening'".
Oregon lawyer Lisa LeSage from the nonprofit Immigration Counseling Service (ICS) firm says the children often do not even know what a lawyer is.
"Often times with the young children, they might be crawling around or playing with a pen," Ms LeSage told the BBC of her in court experiences.
"Even a five year old who wasn't traumatised can't always tell you their address or what their parents look like or their last names. How do you expect a child to do all that?"
ICS currently has around five children they have confirmed were separated from their parents at the border, but the numbers keep changing.
"This is not something that the kids or their parents will ever get over," Ms LeSage says. "I can say across the country, we know of cases where parents have already been deported."
"It's a horrific situation right now, there's really no other word for it."
What's the legal situation?
Much of the confusion around reunification stems from the fact that adults and children go through two separate immigration systems controlled by two different agencies.
Adults must go through the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) while children classified as unaccompanied minors are in the care of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).
Judge Ashley Tabaddor, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, has volunteered with juvenile immigration cases in Los Angeles for years. She told the BBC the current migrant crisis has exacerbated the existing challenges of handling children's cases.
"It makes it even more difficult for the attorneys and for the court to ensure fundamental fairness because we need to ensure the proper adults are involved to fully protect the child's interests," she says.
"These are not unaccompanied children," Judge Tabaddor says.
"They are turned into an unaccompanied child when separated."
She added that now, many parents are "agreeing to whatever the government is asking for, to get their children back".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-44661777

[Drlee]

They are. They are using these hostages to appeal to their base. It is working beautifully.

[Zamuel]

Trump and his administration are creating a "hostile environment" for immigrants, using babies, toddlers and young children to blackmail immigrants to agree to anything to get their kids back. If I were American I would be ashamed of this situation.

I am.

Zam

[Hong Wu]

MFW someone gets caught illegally entering the country and gets detained, temporarily separating them from accompanying minors.

[Pants-of-dog]

Same tired old unfounded points. There's no argument that prosecution is a means of deterring asylum-seeking, that's not logically possible given this policy doesn't apply to people who enter through ports of entry. You can give up your tirade against the imperialist first world now.

This is false because the later rulings on the Flores Consent Decree stipulate all children in immigration detainment must be released after 20 days. When it comes to the parents being prosecuted and put in criminal detainment, children can not be held with them at all for obvious reasons.

You keep repeating this claim for effect but you have not substantiated it.

Detainment is not inhumane and, no, it's not a solution to these things. It's a solution to the by-product of these issues, which is catch and release, while a solution is found.

It's a better solution than simply releasing people. If you have a problem with it, you can provide your money and your housing.

Nowhere in that quote did I say that.

Your first statement is false. If they were, people entering through port of entry would be arrested.

Your second statement is misleading for reasons we've been debating this entire time. Separation is a byproduct of the law under two circumstances, criminal or immigration detainment. Your argument that there is a family separation policy is simply wrong.

I don't even know what you're trying to argue anymore. You seem so strained for points that this is a waste of time.

How about no? I don't want people exploiting loophole in our immigration system that allowed them to cross the border and gain free access to the country.

No, it doesn't.

The article's quote here is incorrect. I've already explained this.

"Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the U.S. will take a stricter stance on illegal crossings at the Mexico border by separating parents from children, rather than keeping them together in detention centers."

The Obama DHS was sued in 2015 for detaining immigrant families together, the result of which was a ruling that both had to be released. This was later overturned in 2016 in the case of the adult, so then only the child had to be released.

“If you are smuggling a child then we will prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you as required by law,” Sessions said Monday at a law enforcement event in Scottsdale, Ariz. “If you don’t like that, then don’t smuggle children over our border.”

The above quote is correct. The law, not the policy of the executive branch, requires children be separated either with criminal detainment or after 20 days of immigration detainment.

Except that isn't true either.

No, your understanding of my argument is not correct.

And yes, it is being used as a pretext to take away people's kids. Please see the above quote where Sessions makes a point of threatening to take away the children of asylum seekers.

No we don't. We have no evidence the latter is a Trump policy, just anecdotes of misbehavior on the part of local institutions.

I cited evidence in a government report from December of 2015, which was much closer to the height of inflows, of them already doing this. If it's not enough, perhaps you should give us your money instead of pretending to be entitled to the funding of taxpayers who are forced into this situation.

I don't have to. Fleeing third world (i.e. what people call "shithole") conditions is not a basis for asylum, at least in its original interpretation anyway, which was meant to address the needs of people whose rights were threatened by the state. I'm sure there are people who'd argue another interpretation like you, that it applies to people to some degree insufficiently protected by the state, but this is where the argument breaks down because the difference in interpretation is at root matter of political power and the tribalism behind each side. If you'd like to state you believe asylum should be granted because of crime and state inefficiency/corruption, for example, you can do that now and we can agree to disagree since it'll get nowhere.

I don't have to do that since I have some time on the left, and the anti-imperialist double standards are abundant.

1. You are the one who claimed this was about detering asylum seekers.

And considering the facts, it makes sense.

The asylum system you guys currently have cannot deal with the demand. By scaring potential asylum seekers with the threat if taking away their kids, he backlog can be reduced.

2. Arresting asylum seekers is a contravention of human rights and the treaties signed by the USA. Treating asylum seekers like illegals is not only immoral, but also a petty way for Trump to galvanise his support among xenophobes.

Using these unnecessary arrests to take away the children of asylum seekers is a deliberate attempt to treat asylum seekers as illegal immigrants. And Trump supporters are uncritically swallowing it, hook, line, and sinker.

The whole rationale for taking away children is based on the incorrect assumption that asylum seekers are basicalky the same as illegal immigrants.

3. Taking children away from their parents is inhumane. It causes significant psychological harm. You seem to applaud this. You seem to think this is a perfectly good solution for the US’s inability to process asylum claims quickly and effectively.

Why do you think punishing children is a good solution for administration problems in the asylum process?

4. Yes, they are arresting asylum seekers.
https://splinternews.com/ice-agents-arr ... 1822930272
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 58241.html
https://www.asylumist.com/2017/05/03/in ... of-arrest/

5. Seeking asylum is not a loophole.

It is a way of protecting people from persecution and is one of the obligations that the USA has according to the treaties it has signed.

When you describe it as a loophole for getting into the Us illegally, you are implicitly claiming that asylum seekers are the same as illegal immigrants, which is obviously an incorrect claim.

6. Your whataboutism where you try and deflect the blame onto the Obama administration is irrelevant. Even if this had not started under Trump, which it has, it would still be just as wrong if Obama had also done it.

7. I see you ignored the point that asylum seekers are not being allowed to access legal points of entry.

8. If you have no evidence for your claim that Central American asylum seekers are not fleeing persecution, I am going to now dismiss it as unsupported speculation.

[Conscript]

1. You are the one who claimed this was about detering asylum seekers.

Nope, I said it was about deterring 'them' in the sense who we were talking about in the national debate. That is, people who cross the border illegally and then are prosecuted regardless of whether they made an asylum claim or not.

The asylum system you guys currently have cannot deal with the demand. By scaring potential asylum seekers with the threat if taking away their kids, he backlog can be reduced.

Nope, it doesn't make sense as a strategy to reduce the number of asylum claims, because as I've said they can just go through ports of entry. There's no way to stop asylum seeking.

2. Arresting asylum seekers is a contravention of human rights and the treaties signed by the USA.

I like order at the border and so did Obama and other past presidents. None of them have agreed to this interpretation of international treaties before.

I realize you do not respect national sovereignty or borders as a socialist internationalist with some Marxist leanings, but if you cross the border illegally you should be prosecuted, not allowed to make a bogus asylum claim that then gets you released pending a court date 40% of people don't show up to.

Using these unnecessary arrests to take away the children of asylum seekers is a deliberate attempt to treat asylum seekers as illegal immigrants. And Trump supporters are uncritically swallowing it, hook, line, and sinker.

Detainment is not arrest. Change the Flores Consent Decree if you don't want separations.

3. Taking children away from their parents is inhumane. It causes significant psychological harm. You seem to applaud this. You seem to think this is a perfectly good solution for the US’s inability to process asylum claims quickly and effectively.

I'm done 'debating' you since you have a petulant tendency to talk to yourself and come up with your own conclusions. I've never applauded their children being taken away, all I've said is that detainment is preferable to release and subsequent high in absentia rates. Separation is an unfortunate byproduct of this that needs to be changed through legislation, especially now that the Trump EO has been rejected.

Why do you think punishing children is a good solution for administration problems in the asylum process?

You really are the worst discussion partner I've ever had.

4. Yes, they are arresting asylum seekers.

The people being separated and focused on in media were a product of the increasing border crossings and captures I cited at the start of this debate, the demographic of people crossing having provably changed to include more accompanied children. The couple thousand children cited as separated are a product of that, not asylum seekers at large. This is not up for debate or your manipulation of it.

You tried to shift the debate from the prosecution of those who entered in between ports of entry to the general detainment of both in order to make a false claim that the government is 'arresting' and therefore separating everyone who claims asylum.

Just acknowledge how piss poor your integrity is.

https://splinternews.com/ice-agents-arrest-asylum-seeker-at-his-own-asylum-heari-1822930272

Overstayed visa, not an arrest for seeking asylum

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-asylum-lawsuit-immigration-aclu-a8258241.html

Lawsuit is about detainment, not arrest of anyone.

https://www.asylumist.com/2017/05/03/in-trumps-america-are-asylum-seekers-at-risk-of-arrest/

Another overstayed visa.

You have failed to prove that the government is arresting asylum seekers at large, not people who cross the border illegally then file an asylum claim.

5. Seeking asylum is not a loophole.

It is a way of protecting people from persecution and is one of the obligations that the USA has according to the treaties it has signed.

You don't get to bitch about underfunding causing a backlog and then claim there's no loophole present with subsequent releases.

Also, I find it amusing you're integrating this rhetoric about treaties now that I educated you about it.

When you describe it as a loophole for getting into the Us illegally, you are implicitly claiming that asylum seekers are the same as illegal immigrants, which is obviously an incorrect claim.

I described it as a way to a) avoid prosecution for illegal entry b) then be released into the country pending adjudication of your claim, which as we've agreed will take a while.

6. Your whataboutism where you try and deflect the blame onto the Obama administration is irrelevant. Even if this had not started under Trump, which it has, it would still be just as wrong if Obama had also done it.

I don't think you know what that word means. I mentioned Obama to show an evolution in the law in response to his own policies, which set the stage for family separation as a byproduct of detainment or prosecution.

7. I see you ignored the point that asylum seekers are not being allowed to access legal points of entry.

Because it's not an argument against prosecution and closing the "catch and release" loophole, it's an argument to make ports of entry function as they should. We don't know the scale of it enough to make a claim that it's a forbidden alternative (it wouldn't just be reported on in a few articles by small media outlets if it was), and it's illegal for border control agents to do this.

8. If you have no evidence for your claim that Central American asylum seekers are not fleeing persecution, I am going to now dismiss it as unsupported speculation.

The burden of proof for the claim that Central Americans are fleeing persecution is not on me, it's on you. This is after you just asked me to prove a negative. You are a terrible debater.

[anarchist23]

At the anti Trump demonstration on Friday this will be played through loud speakers.

[blackjack21]

Using these unnecessary arrests to take away the children of asylum seekers is a deliberate attempt to treat asylum seekers as illegal immigrants. And Trump supporters are uncritically swallowing it, hook, line, and sinker.

We aren't swallowing anything. You pontificate as though Trump came up with all of this anti-immigrant sentiment on his own, and his supporters are just a bunch of gullible rubes. On the contrary, more than half the country agrees that illegal immigration is a big problem and so is immigration of legal immigrants who do not assimilate into the larger culture. Trump is the only politician who credibily sided with the American electorate.

We do not believe that people are here seeking asylum. We think they are here for economic reasons, and they are putting forth asylum claims as a means of manipulating populations on emotions rather than legitimate needs for asylum.

Taking children away from their parents is inhumane. It causes significant psychological harm. You seem to applaud this.

It happens all the time, and by the edict of the courts. Liberals love breaking up families. They have been doing it for decades. They just think that conservatives are for "family values" and so they think they can manipulate conservatives emotionally by trying to say that it is against "family values." It's pure cynicism. The left proposes that homosexuals have kids and further the notion that the kids not know one of their actual biological parents, while simultaneously requiring them to study science so that they know that scientifically that what they are being told politically is not true, and in fact scientifically impossible. Leftists routinely propose that women should raise children to dampen the influence of "toxic masculinity" and the like. Of course, criminals are always separated from the public, including their families. There is nothing new about that at all. Every person arrested or incarcerated is separated from others.

Even if this had not started under Trump, which it has, it would still be just as wrong if Obama had also done it.

That's a moral claim, not a political one.

7. I see you ignored the point that asylum seekers are not being allowed to access legal points of entry.

They can seek asylum at a US embassy in their own country. The issue isn't asylum. They're not looking for asylum in a legitimate sense. They are merely trying to pull heartstrings, and people aren't having it anymore.

8. If you have no evidence for your claim that Central American asylum seekers are not fleeing persecution, I am going to now dismiss it as unsupported speculation.

So what? It will still not change the political situation.

[skinster]

[Drlee]

We aren't swallowing anything. You pontificate as though Trump came up with all of this anti-immigrant sentiment on his own, and his supporters are just a bunch of gullible rubes. On the contrary, more than half the country agrees that illegal immigration is a big problem and so is immigration of legal immigrants who do not assimilate into the larger culture. Trump is the only politician who credibily sided with the American electorate.

Like him or not, this is true. Illegal immigration is very unpopular with the electorate. That in itself is the very reason the government should attempt to stop it. My solution is to go after employers because I know that would work. Nevertheless, POD seems to argue that our government should go against the will of the people who elected them. I find that position heartwarming but dangerous. They do too much of that now.

We do not believe that people are here seeking asylum. We think they are here for economic reasons, and they are putting forth asylum claims as a means of manipulating populations on emotions rather than legitimate needs for asylum.

Of course this is true. I know of few people who would disagree.

POD posits that we are bound by treaty and law to deal with these asylum claims. I don't disagree. The thing is that the laws and treaties were never designed or even imagined to deal with a problem of this magnitude. Something has to give. I believe it is the procedures that should change. Of course we need more immigration judges. That will make a broken system make wrong decisions faster. That's all. What I believe we need to do is to make asylum seekers explain why they didn't go to the nearest safe-havens and risk life and children in the long trip to the US.

I have no problem with larger immigration numbers. I approve of limited amnesty for those who have been here, productively for a long time. I want the so-called dreamers protected. But I do not believe that every 20 year old woman who shows up on our southern border carrying a child which may or may not be hers, is fleeing a gang that is trying, for no apparent reason, to kill her. Same for the men. At some point we need to force the men to stand and fight rather than run away.

Heartless? Maybe a little.

[Suntzu]

The population of the U.S. has doubled in the last 50 years. Time to stop.

[Libertarian353]

The population of the U.S. has doubled in the last 50 years. Time to stop.

Well considering our white birth rate, we'll be halved by 2040.

[Suntzu]

Well considering our white birth rate, we'll be halved by 2040.

So? A declining population doesn't seem to have hurt China.