Why do liberals support immigration so much?

Tosh5457

I agree with most liberal ideas, because they're usually rational, but the one thing I don't think is rational are their ideas about immigration and affirmative action. Why do they support the continuation of legal immigration as it is, and why do they support giving amnesty to illegal immigrants?

Legal immigration laws are allowing mass immigration, both to USA and Europe. The problems already started decades ago:
- rejection of host country's culture
- formation of localities where the natives become minorities. In every case I've seen in Portugal and other countries (like France), the culture that becomes dominant between the kids and youth is a gangster culture.
- rise in criminality
- in some cases unfair competition (chinese shops which buy very cheap products from China to sell here, which is an unfair competition to the local merchants);
- and on top of that, liberals support affirmative action, which is discriminatory and racist (it helps people solely based on race, and it discriminates natives). In Portugal, a good example of how unfair affirmative action is, is the allowance of foreign students from Portugal's former african colonies to go to medicine with really low grades, where students from Portugal must usually have a grade of 18 out of 20, minimum, to study medicine. This situation is making some portuguese natives who have really high grades, which obviously worked much harder than the foreign students, to give up on medicine, since the foreign students are taking some slots.

And about illegal immigration, why do they support amnesty as a rule? Too much amnesty gives an incentive for other immigrants to come illegally to the country, it doesn't even make sense to have borders if you give amnesty to all the illegal immigrants.

Just to be clear, I'm not against immigration - I'm in favor of smart immigration laws, not the laws there are today in most european countries and USA. As for amnesty, it's supposed to be an exception, not a rule. For example, if some refugees went to an European country illegally I think they should get amnesty while their country doesn't have conditions to receive them. But amnesty to immigrants who just run through the borders doesn't make any sense. And I'm completely against affirmative action.

turbo

Liberals don't support immigration. They just don't vehemently resist immigration like the GOP does.

Immigration is a fact of life (after all, all but a few of us - some of my ancestors excepted) in the US are not immigrants. When I was a child, I was given a hard time because my mother's family was French-Catholic (Metis) and because my father's family immigrated here due to the potato famine in Ireland. Who can come in and be assimilated and who must be vilified? Is that a fair question?

Tosh5457

The GOP only resists illegal immigration, and very weakly.

The fact that americans are descendants from immigrants doesn't mean you have to support an irrational immigration system that allows mass immigration just because. Since Japan doesn't have the tradition of immigration in their past, does that mean they have to stick to it forever?

When a country's future is at stake, of course that's a fair question.

Jack21222

Just curious, do you have any statistics that legal immigration increases crime? Are you seriously going to tell me that Indian and Chinese kids have a "gangster culture?" In this country, when most people whinge about immigration, they're specifically talking about immigration from Mexico. I hear almost nobody complain about Canadians or Scots immigrating.

I think that if we streamlined the process to immigrate to the country, to let more people in legally after a straightforward screening process, we'd cut down on illegal immigration substantially. If we do that, I'd be more comfortable being much stricter about illegal immigration.

I just can't get angry at illegal immigrants for wanting to improve their lives in a nonviolent manner, even if it means they are willing to take lower wages than an American citizen.

I'm not a nationalist, and I have no particular loyalty to this country, so I really don't care if the person who built my house (or whatever else you'd like to consider) was born in the USA or born in Mexico or any other country.

Lastly, if you want to talk about affirmative action, start a different thread. It is an entirely separate topic which has nothing to do with immigration.

Tosh5457

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_crime

No, indians and chinese don't. But if I said specifically who has a gangster culture, I'd be called a racist.

Your solution to illegal immigration is to allow more people in legally? Legal immigration already lets way too many people in without any good reason behind it.

I don't have a problem with illegal immigrants either, but like the name says, they went to the country illegally, so they can't stay. You can't mix emotions with law.

Pythagorean

From that page:

Ryan_m_b

Please post references to literature that support all of these claims. To clarify the research must take into account the whole picture, posting studies that focus on particular areas (i.e. one ghetto in Paris or one Chinese supermarket in London) is not acceptable.

Personally I would class myself as liberal (though that word means different things depending on where you are) and I don't mind immigration at all.

Vanadium 50

This whole thread is starting on a false premise. Read up on FDR's immigration policy, especially towards the Japanese.

Jack21222

Thing is, illegal immigration is basically just a paperwork issue. My proposal is to streamline the paperwork process. Then, they're no longer here illegally. Problem solved.

And you CAN mix emotions with law. That's why many laws exist, and that's what the punishment for breaking laws is based off of in part. A violent assault often carries a lighter jail sentence than rape, even though they're somewhat similar in some respects (an attack on the body of another), but rape is so emotionally repugnant that society doesn't stand for it, and doles out harsh punishments.

In the same way, I feel that illegal immigrants should be given a medium-sized slap on the wrist and given the choice of taking a difficult yet feasible path to citizenship or being deported. As long as they aren't committing other crimes, I'd like to give them the option to become a citizen. To me, it's none of my business where they want to live.

Ryan_m_b

I think you're trivialising the connection here, it's not just based on initial emotions. There are many quite complex and well thought out moral systems at work in society and very empirical ways of measuring harm. Other wise I agree with you.

nitsuj

lol, it's a tax / GDP base.

without prejudice, white folks just don't make babies like they used to.

Despite the couple of generations for tax/GDP generating integration, it is fair better than a declining population. In particular if a country is already spending beyond its tax income.

The amnesty thing is probably optics from a government perspective.


BBC news had a cool stat the other day. "White" births in the US accounted for less than half the total births, (in some recent time frame).

"....mix it up until there are no pedigrees..." RHCP - Midnight

In addition, it is "cherry picking" from the non-US citizen population, another obvious comparative benefit.

Gokul43201

Here's a counter-argument (not that you actually provided an argument):
http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/07/smal...eurs/index.htm

Locrian

From a US perspective, given the amount of money transferred from workers to retirees these days (1 trillionish a year) having a larger worker base paying taxes would be a good thing.

In my mind that's an argument for reforming the entitlement programs, but there's no will to do that. So it's either more workers, higher taxes, or lower benefits. . . and we're not gonna do the last two. . .

Tosh5457

Well you can take it to the nationality/race level, in that case it's even clearer where most of the crime comes from, since in USA there are statistics on that. I don't see anything being done to change that though.

I can find different studies that say exactly the opposite thing, am I supposed to show the ones that support what I'm saying? These claims are very obvious, and are supported by observation.

It's false that liberals support immigration? I don't know what liberals you are referring to.

You can, but you shouldn't, but that's not the point. My point was that you can't ignore an existing law because of emotions, which is what amnesty is.

You found something good about immigration - it would be even worse than I thought if there were no positive things about it! But it has to be weighted against the bad things.
Here's the core problem with the current immigration law in my opinion: it leads to replacement of the native population. In US some will use the argument that the only natives are the indian-americans, not european-americans, but USA itself was founded by european-americans. In my opinion immigration should never ever lead the natives to become minorites in their own country.

lisab

We could have more babies, but that's not going to happen, either.

Locrian

True!

We could even incentivize it. I’ve always thought the first sign that we’re doing the whole wealth transfer thing wrong is that 4x-5x as much wealth is transferred to retirees as children (or the children’s families). I understand there’s value in treating our elderly population with some care, but children are the future of the country. . . and will be the ones paying those taxes pretty soon.

I once figured it up and if you swapped transfer payments between children and elderly (Soc Sec/Medicare vs Medicaid/Education etc.) the excess would amount to over $9,000 per child per year. That would allow our society to take a lot of the hardship out of child rearing.
I’m not saying that’s a good idea, I’m just agreeing with you and pointing out that there’s a pretty good reason we have the demographics we have.

In any case, that would be a 25 year solution to a 5 year problem. . .

rootX

Something I read recently,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18100457
Non-Hispanic US white births now the minority in US