Quote (Thor123422 @ 20 Aug 2020 07:45)

I love how you took my stance of "the average immigrant is good" and extrapolated that to "all immigrants are good".

This is why we can't have real conversations about this kind of thing. One side wants to bring in data and the other side gets all triggered by brown people.

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Aug 20 2020 01:04am)

You're missing the point. Saying "the average immigrant is good" is a highly misleading starting point for any honest debate about immigration since it lumps together two (or even three) very different kinds of immigration whose average contribution or burden for their host society is extremely different.

Let me try to illustrate this:
Assume there are three types of immigrant: skill-based legal immigrants, whose net contribution for their host society is a +8 on a scale from -10 to +10, non-skill based legal immigrants (family reunification, resettlement refugees etc.) whose net contribution is a -2, and illegal immigrants who are predominantly low education and coming from third world countries, whose net contribution is a -4 (once we include the depressing effect on domestic wages and their impact on the housing market, schools and public services etc).

If all three types have equal shares among the overall immigration volume, then the average contribution of immigrants is positive (+0.66), even if two of the three types are actually a drag on society. Hence, when someone is arguing that "type 2 and 3 immigrants are a net burden for us, we should lower the amount of those types coming to our country", it is a completely unsuitable argument to say "but the average immigrant has a positive impact". Worse than that, this argument tries to discredit a very legitimate concern, particularly when you couple it with statements like "it's purely xenophobia". It's really not hard to see where you're coming from here. ;)

Quote (Thor123422 @ 20 Aug 2020 08:26)

Yeah, I get all that. And we have a right-wing saying "we should stop all of those types, but say we're for 'legal immigration' while simultaneously reducing all legal avenues regardless of how much it benefits us".

If we had a right wing that does more than pay lipservice to "bring in the skilled ones!" then I wouldn't be saying this, but we don't.

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Aug 20 2020 01:56am)

Trump proposed exactly that last year, a revamp of the country's legal immigration system which would have shifted priority away from family-based categories and toward merit- or skill-based categories.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/15/us/politics/trump-immigration-kushner.html

According to the liberal(!) Migration Policy Institute, his proposal would have left the overall number of visas/legal immigrants at roughly the same level.
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/merit-based-immigration-trump-proposal-immigrant-selection

It was met by crickets in Congress, neither Democrats nor Republicans liked it, so the proposal went nowhere.

Quote (Thor123422 @ 20 Aug 2020 09:28)

So it went nowhere, and meanwhile Trump's administration has attempted to restrict legal immigration.

All of this just goes to my point lol

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Aug 20 2020 03:13am)

Intent matters in politics. Your claim was that right-wingers lie when they say "we're for legal, merit-based immigration". This proposal by the Trump WH shows that there were at least attempts to go in this direction, even though political realities doomed those efforts.

To be perfectly honest, I dont know why this proposal from the Trump WH was given the cold shoulder by Congressional Republicans. It's something that should have appealed to both the Trumpy "make America white great again"-faction of the GOP and the business-friendly Chamber of Commerce types.

Quote (Thor123422 @ 20 Aug 2020 10:23)

Because it was a token, not something he was willing to put real effort into.

Quote (Black XistenZ @ 20 Aug 2020 12:45)

Quote (Saucisson6000 @ 20 Aug 2020 12:56)

"The courts have denied the Trump Administration's latest attempt to force women to appear in-person to access abortion services in the middle of a pandemic."

Most abortions are completed ingesting a pill if you are less than 20 weeks. A drive thru pharmacy could fill the prescription, the person takes it at home.

Thus is not a big deal the bunch of fucktards jumped on the unclear sentence to do their memes.
/e illustrating their knowledge of the subject, or their real capacity of seeking the truth.

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