Ok so the rape thing has nothing to do with the US policies, not sure why it's mentioned at all.
Nah I see people using numbers caused by stricter immigration control reducing illegal migration and trying to use them to justify lowering immigration control
No, I'm trying to say that we probably do not need to
increase immigration control. I bring up the rape issue because I'm trying to say this:
If I was going to try to come to the United States and
a. I had an 80% likelihood of being raped by someone
b. Human rights violations are happening at the detention centers
c. More folks were getting kicked out than able to come in
d. Which means that the time and money spent and being raped and probability of getting kicked out was essentially just a waste
And I was going to come here anyway to live despite not speaking English and not having papers and not having all kinds of everything else, I'm pretty sure that my life would be extremely shitty.
We could work off the premise that people who want to come here illegally are here in order to rape, murder, and take our jobs, but I can tell you statistically speaking that that's extremely unlikely. Look at the studies which say that folks just want a home. I mean, really, think about it--think about the people you know. Sure, there's always a few assholes, and every culture has a dark side, but it's not like the entire population of the United States is Donald Trump, even though he is a member of our crew who gets a lot of airtime.
And what I'm trying to say is that if the reason why people are willing to brave all of this nonsense is due to having an extremely shitty life, and the argument is "so we should make it just as shitty for them
here as where they came from, so they have no impetus to leave their home," that's a bad argument. First of all, torture is bad for the soul.
But second of all, I thought that the idea was that we were supposed to be better. "American exceptionalism, except when it comes to basic human decency for refugees & waterboarding & closing Guantanamo bay."
The argument has become: "Amercans are exceptional, which is why all of these horrible things we do are really okay. Because we had the right, given to us by god, to do the things to which we take exception when others do them."
I can't believe I'm about to say this, but I really believe that the proposed solutions are against American principles, values, and virtues. There's always going to be limits on ideals like the following:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me
Obviously... and at many other times, we haven't upheld those ideals either.
But what does it mean, anyway, to "Make America Great Again?" What I really want people to ask themselves is--is hypocrisy the road to greatness? We're all mostly pragmatists here, I think, or at least I feel like one--and I have to ask also whether punishing people trying to find a way out of a horrible situation is just or functional. Do you think it will do anything other than produce a cycle of revenge? Somehow, I manage to tell panhandlers "no, sorry" without hurling invective or attacking them physically. Even the tenacious ones. Even the asshole whose off-leash pitbull attacked me.
Even when it comes to your enemy--you have to have a certain respect for someone who bites at your heels so tenaciously. Who is it who needs to crush a tide of women, children, well-trod citizens of foreign lands under their boots? Treating these people with violence and the "point of a sword" causes us to lose face and honor. China built a wall to keep out the barbarian hordes. What great nation uses a wall and soldiers to keep away a pile of refugees, and would be
proud after the fact?
And like I said, I'm a pragmatist. So maybe under some circumstance these actions would be necessary, but this is what I'm convinced of--under no circumstance should we be shameless; not in our refusals to set a chair and glass of wine out for our wandering neighbor.