Every time I meet someone who opposes illegal immigration but claims to support legal immigration I ask one question. If the law changed so that all immigration was legal, you’d be fine with it, right?
Nobody so far has been fine with it. I conclude that the question of legality is a dodge for people who are embarrassed about their actual motives.
I wouldn’t say it’s considered to be racist to oppose outlaws who came here without the proper paperwork, visa, etc.
Not intrinsically, but pretty commonly it is driven by bigotry over culture, religion or skin colour.
You know all the people up in arms over the wave of Ukrainian refugees? Oh wait, there’s nothing of the sort? Well, there you go.
I think it’s very telling that it’s not about “How do we allow them in legally” but it’s about “Kick them out”. If they were simply mad about illegal immigration then the natural discourse would be “Why do they not come over legally then?” The answer there is that of course it’s insanely difficult to legally become a citizen of the US, and it can take years - even decades, but people have a family that’s hungry now.
The discourse going to “Kick them out” shows that it’s not about legal immigration at all, it’s that they don’t want a specific type of person around them. Otherwise we’d be having fairs and events to help people get their citizenship right now. After all they want to be here, the even want to pay taxes. If they just need to come in legally then the vast majority would, if our process allowed it.
The answer there is that of course it’s insanely difficult to legally become a citizen of the US, and it can take years - even decades, but people have a family that’s hungry now.
Same for other places. Even Canada, which is apparently one of the best destinations, has a system that’s poorly designed to the point of maliciousness.
Exactly. In and of itself, criticizing illegal immigration is simply criticizing an illegal act. However, it is usually steeped in racist logic and arguments. Talking about how people who come over our southern border are genetically inferior and prone to crime is racist as fuck. Adding roadblocks to immigration for brown people while simultaneously streamlining immigration of white South Africans (the guys who did Apartheid) is racist as fuck.
There for sure was.
Where, and to what degree relative to Arabs or Latin Americans or whatever?
Like sure, you can find someone who said it was bad somewhere, but even in places like Romania or Poland they were never the main target of the xenophobic rage.
Thats because the media didnt try to cause mass hysteria. Man you guys are so easily manipulated by media i think we should force psychological classes so you can see the warning signs of manipulation
Edit: you are the easiest people to manipulate and its already obvious.
Uh-huh. Straight to forced re-education programs and shadowy conspiracies.
When the fascists send people to argue for them, they’re not sending their best.
No no… that’s their best.
Hopefully you’ll be in that class.
YES.
If you’re an American, our entire history of immigration legislation is racism bundled on racism following in the tradition of racism. Were it not for chattel slavery and our betrayal of the native tribes our racist immigration laws would be the most shameful part of our history.
And if you’re not American, your own country’s immigration laws are almost certainly based on either racism or “nationalism”, with the latter mostly being a holdover from when “French” and “English” were considered different races.
Unlawful emmigration to a country should be, at worst, a bureaucratic fine and probation. Anything more is simply bigotry in a polite suit.
No, but it is racist to assume that a person is an illegal immigrant based solely on their race.
Likewise, i think there is a deeper connection being made, that theres an assumption that an illegal immigrant is a bad person, and i also do not think that is a valid assumption.
To know if a person is a bad person, you have to know the person.
It’s racist to use immigration law to maintain a racial underclass. For instance, many essential agricultural workers in the US do not have access to the courts or law enforcement to protect their rights. If a citizen assaults one of these workers, the worker cannot safely report the assault to law enforcement without being punished for doing so.
I worry a lot of it is human trafficking or at least human trafficking lite. A lot of employers really like having employees they don’t actually have to pay properly or obey workplace safety and other protections for, and who will be afraid to speak up about fraud and other illegal practices.
But to me that would be easily solved if we only made it illegal to hire people without a permit, but never deport or otherwise penalize the workers. And publicize that heavily. So if you don’t have a permit and your boss is abusing you, just call the hotline on the billboard and let us know and we’ll arrest them and you can go find another sketchy employer and tell on them too when they piss you off.
No one would be hiring people without permits if there were actual consequences for the employer. We wouldn’t be stuck with trying to figure out how to deport people and whatnot. They’d only be able to hire people the law is already protecting as workers. but nobody actually wants to hold rich people accountable for having caused all this trouble in the first place.
Most of the current immigration laws are due to racist intent. In the 80s they didn’t like how many Mexicans were coming across the border each year to do farm work. The workers would come, stay while there was work to be had, and then return home. When new laws were enacted making it harder for workers to get across the border, there came a class of people that would sneak the workers across. And this came with a fee from the workers. Now it costs them more to get here, so they need to stay longer to make up the money. It became easier to just find a place to live in the US all year round.
The US needs the Mexican workers. To simultaneously demand help, and punish them for showing up to help is dumb, and I suspect fueled by racist thoughts. The immigrants boost our economy, help feed our population, and are less likely to break laws that citizens. There’s a whole (probably many) book about it, and it’s even in comic form. https://www.amazon.com/Open-Borders-Science-Ethics-Immigration/dp/1250316960
While we need to know who is coming across our border to prevent spys and terrorists, the current laws make those entrants easier to hide, as there is now a whole industry to sneak people across.
Why are poor mexicans being exploited?
Is there just not enough money to go around that the farmers can’t pay farmworkers a fair wage and attract white Americans to work on the farms?
It just feels like this isn’t a sustainable practice. Who works the field when mexico becomes richer?
Or is it the Snowpiercer paradigm? There’s has to be a downtrodden class?
How is buying 500 million dollars yatchs ok when people are literally starving! Did those rich people grow up with a different set of moral values?
I am so tired.
Not really, but most people’s reasoning is racist.
As other pointed out, it is not technically racist to be against illegality, but asking with free will for laws and system with a racist bias to be strictly applied is racist as a consequence (as in, you’re not racist by yourself, but you are racist in your speech/action), so in our world, i’d say yes it is racist in a certain way.
Often people who oppose illegal immigration do seem to also be racists.
I think if someone says they oppose illegal immigration and also genuinely feels they have done serious introspection and feel they are not racist, they might benefit from asking themselves what they dislike about illegal immigration and see if those things actually have the negative impacts they fear or if the negative impacts they see are but drops in the bucket compared to other sources of similar impacts.
Not all opposed to illegal immigration are racist, but (obviously) all racist are against illegal immigration (And immigration in general).
First off: technically, almost everyone opposes illegal immigration—the issue is whether it should be reduced by deporting undocumented immigrants, or by changing the laws to legalize more of them. (The exceptions who do support illegal immigration as-is are generally employers who exploit immigrants.)
Second: If the current law is racist, then supporting increased enforcement is racist while supporting reform (probably) isn’t. (And I would describe a law as racist if it disproportionately impacts racial minorities when alternative laws with an equivalent effect on public safety would not.)
Not automatically, unless you’re only opposed to illegal immigrants of specific races.
In a perfect world, immigration would just be regulated due to welfare and legal reasons, which seems reasonable enough. In reality you might want to question why some legislation actually exists. Is it reasonable, or is its whole purpose to prevent some immigration?
