Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[nenjin]

Jesus Christ your politics are fucking awesome

Well that's one way to put it.

[Baffler]

It is a bit silly that simply being born here is enough even if both of your parents aren't citizens (if that is indeed the case) but the way to fix that is not redefining the word citizen.

Why? It serves a couple of purposes. The obvious one is to make it simple for people who've lived here their whole lives to be citizens, even if their parents immigrated but never became naturalized for whatever reason. Also, since international law basically deals with stateless folks by sticking its fingers in its ears and shouting "I can't hear you!", it helps reduce the number of people who wind up in that situation. There's probably some more that somebody who cares more can list, but those are the big ones to me.

That only applies if they were stupid enough to renounce their Mexican/Honduran/Whatever citizenship before they snuck into the USA, and frankly if that's the case they deserve what they get. Anyone else who tries to cheat the government gets much worse than deported, they'll get no sympathy from me because they broke the law and didn't expect any consequences.

Tbh I'd be pissed if I legally immigrated to the USA to build a life for myself and some dickheads felt entitled to the same nation with no sense of the obligation of citizenry that entails and with it enriching crime I'd be pissed too.

Also this.

[Bauglir]

That only applies if they were stupid enough to renounce their Mexican/Honduran/Whatever citizenship before they snuck into the USA, and frankly if that's the case they deserve what they get. Anyone else who tries to cheat the government gets much worse than deported, they'll get no sympathy from me because they broke the law and didn't expect any consequences.

Except that's not true. Not all nations have citizenship by blood, so a person whose parents are from a nation with stricter requirements can, indeed, wind up without citizenship anywhere if born in a nation that doesn't grant it to anyone born there. Also, what's this about cheating governments and suchlike? Not being a citizen doesn't do things like get you out of taxes or anything.

[penguinofhonor]

I don't understand why an immigrant would feel more mad about children of illegal immigrants getting citizenship for free than children of citizens getting it for free. Neither one is getting endowed with an inherent sense of citizenry or obligation to the country.

[Loud Whispers]

I don't understand why an immigrant would feel more mad about children of illegal immigrants getting citizenship for free than children of citizens getting it for free. Neither one is getting endowed with an inherent sense of citizenry or obligation to the country.

Cos there's an obvious difference between someone growing up in a family who for generations has been obligated to the country and someone whose parents just illegally immigrated

[Bauglir]

Cos there's an obvious difference between someone growing up in a family who for generations has been obligated to the country and someone whose parents just illegally immigrated

must not be that obvious, i'm not seeing it

[Zangi]

It really depends on the spin you put out... what is more convenient to focus on.

It literally takes years to be approved for immigration to Murrica.
There is a very limited number of work visas and similar... plus random people with manual labor as skill-set probably ain't gonna attract much attention.

Many of the people who do come up north, they do it for a better life.  To send money home, to have a better life for themselves and/or maybe they pissed off some people willing+capable of killing them...

Though, I guess they did break laws by coming up here... so lets ignore everything else cause criminals ain't deserving of anything.


And yea, everyone pays taxes.  Whatever your citizen/immigration status. ... Unless you get paid off the books.  Ain't too many folks willing to get on the wrong side of the law there.  Uncle Sam gets his dues.

I don't understand why an immigrant would feel more mad about children of illegal immigrants getting citizenship for free than children of citizens getting it for free. Neither one is getting endowed with an inherent sense of citizenry or obligation to the country.

Cos there's an obvious difference between someone growing up in a family who for generations has been obligated to the country and someone whose parents just illegally immigrated

They smell different?

[Baffler]

A poor choice of words. The government sets up controls for immigration, and they do it for a reason, which illegal immigrants have bypassed. Being paid under the table is also a thing, but I can't find numbers for that so meh.

Many of the people who do come up north, they do it for a better life.  To send money home, to have a better life for themselves and/or maybe they pissed off some people willing+capable of killing them...

Though, I guess they did break laws by coming up here... so lets ignore everything else cause criminals ain't deserving of anything.

This attitude doesn't make sense to me. Even Mexico deports tens of thousands of illegal immigrants from Central America every year. They deported more people last year than the US did, in fact, and have much harsher rules concerning illegal immigration than even Arizona. And they call us racist for trying to control our own southern border.

Edit: Better source.

[smirk]

Cos there's an obvious difference between someone growing up in a family who for generations has been obligated to the country and someone whose parents just illegally immigrated

must not be that obvious, i'm not seeing it

Obligation is genetic, obviously. We breed 'em right! That's also why LW can be so certain...

It's almost like you want your country to be full of people with more loyalty to foreign nations than America, what could go wrong with that?

...that all illegal immigrants are a sneaky Fifth Column.

[penguinofhonor]

I don't think generations of family history are remotely necessary for a citizenship. If it was, we wouldn't make people full-fledged citizens for navigating bureaucracy for a few years and taking a couple classes.

[redwallzyl]

It's almost like you want your country to be full of people with more loyalty to foreign nations than America, what could go wrong with that?

...that all illegal immigrants are a sneaky Fifth Column.

obviously we must arrest all people having decent from any nation we are hostile towards us otherwise they might do something, maybe, probably not.

[smirk]

Being paid under the table is also a thing, but I can't find numbers for that so meh.

A lot of illegals are paid that way, which cuts out their fed and state income taxes. But they still pay sales taxes, rent, and the like. Also, at the income level most of those folks exist at, their equivalent legal citizen is getting their income tax and more back at the end of the year via tax refunds, EIC, etc. I'd personally call that a wash unless we're discussing a theoretical illegal immigrant who's working at 50k/yr under the table.

[Baffler]

I'd personally call that a wash unless we're discussing a theoretical illegal immigrant who's working at 50k/yr under the table.

Yeah we have H1-B visas for that, but that's neither here nor there.

[RedKing]

On a somewhat unrelated note, former Democratic State Senator Leland Yee has just been sentenced to five years in federal prison for attempting to smuggle firearms, rocket launchers, etc. to a known terrorist group. He was always totally against American citizens being allowed to own semi-automatic rifles, but apparently sees no problem with terrorist cells having access to machine guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-yee-sentence-20160223-story.html

The Triads are now a terrorist group? I'm not trying to defend Yee's actions, but let's not make this something it isn't. This was old-fashioned Chinatown corruption and organized crime, not "gib rokkets to ISIS".

Also, holy shit some of you guys.....

Look, I used to be in the "immigrants are welcome but they have to follow the rules or else GTFO" camp. Then I realized that was because relying on a legal metric was easier than taking a hard look at individual cases. or acknowledging that the entry system is a fucking Kafkaesque mess. We have interpreters in Iraq and Afghanistan that are on a FAST-TRACK for approval to seek asylum, and they're getting beheaded because they forgot to include form 627(b) along with five duly notarized testimonials from US commanders who are no longer in country. So sorry, come back in six months and start over.

And those are the fast-track applications. Want to immigrate because your country just kind of sucks in general and you have no food and no job? "Here, you're applicant #16,734,521, please wait your turn. Now serving #5!"

When my family (or at least one branch of my family) came here in the 1910's, this was the immigration process:

1. Sell all your shit to Russian neighbors to get monies.
2. Spend monies on boat ticket.
3. Take boat to America.
4. Get off boat, answer three questions (1. Name? 2. Nationality? 3. Where are you headed?).
5. If monies>0, get train ticket to wherever going. Otherwise, start walking. TO MONTANA.

That was it. No background check, no application process, no visa waiting period. They weren't citizens, but they could eventually apply for citizenship. And the kids born here were automatically citizens. If that wasn't true, I might not be a citizen today, because we'd have a permanent underclass of resident aliens.

It took one of my great-grandfathers 30+ years of applying to get his citizenship. He was rejected four times for "questionable moral character", because (in order):
A. He had not signed up for the draft in WWI. (He later had a lawyer prove that this was not true and actually produced his draft registration, but the court let the rejection stand, in part because of his German ethnicity)
B. He had submitted his citizenship as "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" (despite the fact that it was still the Russian Empire when he emigrated...so he was considered a Commie symp during the 1920's Red Scare)
C. His wife had divorced him. Clear sign of an untrustworthy scoundrel. A model citizen would have beat his wife into staying.
D. He was an alcoholic. This one is factual, and perhaps the most understandable one, but it was also after THIRTY FUCKING YEARS OF GOING THROUGH THIS SHIT. I'd be hitting the bottle too.

He finally got citizenship a few years before he died in a shelter for indigent men.

And yet, during all this -- during the time when he was considered disloyal for being German, disloyal for having emigrated from Russia, of low morals because his wife left him, and worthless because he was a drunk -- nobody talked about deporting his ass.

[Dorsidwarf]

True - but back then, foreign terrorism was basically nonexistent.