I am certainly not an Open Borders proponent. I don’t actually know anyone who is, not one. If anyone is actually propounding it, as opposed to having people claim they are propounding it, I haven’t happened across their argument. And no, “I just want to live there” isn’t any more a basis for immigration, though it is how my ancestors an…
I am certainly not an Open Borders proponent. I don’t actually know anyone who is, not one. If anyone is actually propounding it, as opposed to having people claim they are propounding it, I haven’t happened across their argument. And no, “I just want to live there” isn’t any more a basis for immigration, though it is how my ancestors and probably yours got here.
Nor am I saying we are in our current state helpless. Otherwise why advocate more funding to control what is happening, more judges, more border patrol. And your word “channel” seems to be the best tactic we have; we just need a way clearer view on how to do that.
I just don’t have the same faith as you that long term our world will actually be organized into nation states in the way we now think of them. Nor even the long term safety of our technological powers, for that matter—we are already fending off cyberattacks on power grids, for example. But that’s a side point. I’m not really worried about some sort of technological apocalypse, however, just wary of the possibility and hopeful that it can be avoided.
I don’t think my view of the (hopefully far) future makes me a doom-sayer, just a different-sayer. “Doom” for me is the total loss of social organization—anarchy. Even the mass influx that may occur despite our best efforts doesn’t have to lead to that. I’m not sure that the nation state is an inevitable form of social organization; I’m more concerned with the idea that there IS a form of social organization than that it take a particular form.
Obviously the idea of the nation state can cause its own particular forms of war—and no, I don’t think there wasn’t war before the rise of the nation state. Our exemplars right now are Ukraine and the Gaza war and the nationalism behind each. I would say that the thing that makes me think about “return to the Dark Ages” is the renewed rise of tribalism as a basis of political identity. And that same urge is destroying nation states as we watch: actual tribalism is tearing apart places in Africa and SE Asia.
I am definitely glad to have lived my 80 years in a democracy and am horrified at the apparent surge of preference for authoritarianism, world-wide as well as in the fevered visions of trumpites. I’m not long term convinced we will have the same political structures in say, 200 years. As long as any such new structures let people live under the stability of some form of rule of law applicable equally to everyone, I’m cool with the idea. That rule is, for me, the root aspiration we need to keep up hope for the future. The loss of that is what I am worried about far more than who comes under it.
"The anti-American Left despises our culture" strikes me as much an overstatement as anything on the Statue of Liberty. There are certainly things I despise about our "culture" but I don't see that as making me anti-American. What IS our "culture?" In what ways is it perfect? In what ways imperfect and in need of change? You can't make broad statements without looking at the devil in the details. I'm I guess center-left, in that I admire a lot of farther Left goals but don't think they can be forced onto the population any more than theocracy can, until the population is ready as a whole to accept them. And so many of what were once "Leftist" goals HAVE been accepted by the population as a whole.
People who argue in favor of Open Borders are always at pains to deny it, and it becomes tiresome. What's so scary about two words, if you support free entry into the United States for everyone who wants to live there? Please tell me the neutral term that you prefer to use, and I'll use it, as long as it represents what you're really arguing for.
It isn’t so much a neutral term. It is a concept that doesn’t apply to anyone I know or have read. WHO exactly advocates opening the country to anyone who wants to live here? Without actually seeing such advocacy it is hard to evaluate or refute the talking points.
1. Lifting restrictions, or alternatively expanding visas, for skilled workers, from industrial to tech, who have the skills to contribute to the growth of the economy and fill needs that our own citizens’ skills lack. That may or may not lead to green card availability.
For the others
A. Current asylum laws as to refugees, as a statement of what American ideals are. We have absorbed gazillions of refugees—in my area, a huge number from SE Asia after Vietnam, with a vibrant addition to our culture. An amazing number are now established small sized entrepreneurs.
B. Allowance of others in line with the current quotas established for other immigrants from other nations, depending on the nature of the grounds for asylum determined most needful by the AG/Secretary for Homeland Security.
C. Amnesty or better a path to a green card for the “overstayed visa” sort of undocumented persons —those who have demonstrated actual contributions to our society, particularly those who have established successful businesses—I know a bunch of those folks, who pay taxes (if only sales taxes, over 10% where I live) but get no benefits.
D. Those in special circumstances already in place and allowed to stay after consideration by the immigration courts. Those don’t have a green option. One example is a guy I know who can stay here till his minor children are grown.
In all of these, the ideal to aim for is contribution to our society economically and culturally.
That's an outine of a good plan. Certainly not Open Borders. We could debate the limits of (A.) and (C.), and probably come to an acceptable compromise. I would only add a limited Family Unification program like Brazil has, that admits spouses and direct descendants down to grandchildren and antecedents up to grandparents in a matter of weeks, not months or years, but does not include adult siblings or more remote relatives.
yes on the unification. I have a friend who met and married a woman from Colombia who was here on a visa. This was LONG before immigration was such a debated issue. They cheerfully thought that the marriage meant she could stay, and for years just lived like a normal couple (no kids; they were older and on second marriages). Then she went back to Colombia because her mother was dying. And couldn't get back: it took several years and untold attorney fees to let her back into the country. She is back now: I don't know the arguments that succeeded. But it was a rude shock for both of them. She wasn't particularly interested in becoming a citizen herself and so never looked into how to get that status. The overstayed visa almost destroyed their marriage from the outside.
I know, it's outrageous. The US now has a temporary visa that let's the foreign spouse join the American spouse in the US - if it's approved - for all the months until the permanent visa is also approved. That's just dumb.
By way of comparison, I married my Brazilian husband in July of 2017. The next week, we took our Illinois Marriage Certificate to the Brazilian Consulate General in Chicago, registered our marriage, and applied for my spousal visa. A week after that, I went back to the Consulate to pick the visa up. My husband went home to rent us an apartment, and I joined him in November. I went to the Federal Police on the next business day to request my resident ID Card, and had it in less than a month.
Other countries have figured a lot of this stuff out years ago; not all of their solutions are scalable, but many are. We don't HAVE to reinvent it all ourselves!
I am certainly not an Open Borders proponent. I don’t actually know anyone who is, not one. If anyone is actually propounding it, as opposed to having people claim they are propounding it, I haven’t happened across their argument. And no, “I just want to live there” isn’t any more a basis for immigration, though it is how my ancestors and probably yours got here.
Nor am I saying we are in our current state helpless. Otherwise why advocate more funding to control what is happening, more judges, more border patrol. And your word “channel” seems to be the best tactic we have; we just need a way clearer view on how to do that.
I just don’t have the same faith as you that long term our world will actually be organized into nation states in the way we now think of them. Nor even the long term safety of our technological powers, for that matter—we are already fending off cyberattacks on power grids, for example. But that’s a side point. I’m not really worried about some sort of technological apocalypse, however, just wary of the possibility and hopeful that it can be avoided.
I don’t think my view of the (hopefully far) future makes me a doom-sayer, just a different-sayer. “Doom” for me is the total loss of social organization—anarchy. Even the mass influx that may occur despite our best efforts doesn’t have to lead to that. I’m not sure that the nation state is an inevitable form of social organization; I’m more concerned with the idea that there IS a form of social organization than that it take a particular form.
Obviously the idea of the nation state can cause its own particular forms of war—and no, I don’t think there wasn’t war before the rise of the nation state. Our exemplars right now are Ukraine and the Gaza war and the nationalism behind each. I would say that the thing that makes me think about “return to the Dark Ages” is the renewed rise of tribalism as a basis of political identity. And that same urge is destroying nation states as we watch: actual tribalism is tearing apart places in Africa and SE Asia.
I am definitely glad to have lived my 80 years in a democracy and am horrified at the apparent surge of preference for authoritarianism, world-wide as well as in the fevered visions of trumpites. I’m not long term convinced we will have the same political structures in say, 200 years. As long as any such new structures let people live under the stability of some form of rule of law applicable equally to everyone, I’m cool with the idea. That rule is, for me, the root aspiration we need to keep up hope for the future. The loss of that is what I am worried about far more than who comes under it.
"The anti-American Left despises our culture" strikes me as much an overstatement as anything on the Statue of Liberty. There are certainly things I despise about our "culture" but I don't see that as making me anti-American. What IS our "culture?" In what ways is it perfect? In what ways imperfect and in need of change? You can't make broad statements without looking at the devil in the details. I'm I guess center-left, in that I admire a lot of farther Left goals but don't think they can be forced onto the population any more than theocracy can, until the population is ready as a whole to accept them. And so many of what were once "Leftist" goals HAVE been accepted by the population as a whole.
People who argue in favor of Open Borders are always at pains to deny it, and it becomes tiresome. What's so scary about two words, if you support free entry into the United States for everyone who wants to live there? Please tell me the neutral term that you prefer to use, and I'll use it, as long as it represents what you're really arguing for.
It isn’t so much a neutral term. It is a concept that doesn’t apply to anyone I know or have read. WHO exactly advocates opening the country to anyone who wants to live here? Without actually seeing such advocacy it is hard to evaluate or refute the talking points.
What are the limitations that YOU think are appropriate for immigration into the United States?
Two varieties:
1. Lifting restrictions, or alternatively expanding visas, for skilled workers, from industrial to tech, who have the skills to contribute to the growth of the economy and fill needs that our own citizens’ skills lack. That may or may not lead to green card availability.
For the others
A. Current asylum laws as to refugees, as a statement of what American ideals are. We have absorbed gazillions of refugees—in my area, a huge number from SE Asia after Vietnam, with a vibrant addition to our culture. An amazing number are now established small sized entrepreneurs.
B. Allowance of others in line with the current quotas established for other immigrants from other nations, depending on the nature of the grounds for asylum determined most needful by the AG/Secretary for Homeland Security.
C. Amnesty or better a path to a green card for the “overstayed visa” sort of undocumented persons —those who have demonstrated actual contributions to our society, particularly those who have established successful businesses—I know a bunch of those folks, who pay taxes (if only sales taxes, over 10% where I live) but get no benefits.
D. Those in special circumstances already in place and allowed to stay after consideration by the immigration courts. Those don’t have a green option. One example is a guy I know who can stay here till his minor children are grown.
In all of these, the ideal to aim for is contribution to our society economically and culturally.
That's an outine of a good plan. Certainly not Open Borders. We could debate the limits of (A.) and (C.), and probably come to an acceptable compromise. I would only add a limited Family Unification program like Brazil has, that admits spouses and direct descendants down to grandchildren and antecedents up to grandparents in a matter of weeks, not months or years, but does not include adult siblings or more remote relatives.
yes on the unification. I have a friend who met and married a woman from Colombia who was here on a visa. This was LONG before immigration was such a debated issue. They cheerfully thought that the marriage meant she could stay, and for years just lived like a normal couple (no kids; they were older and on second marriages). Then she went back to Colombia because her mother was dying. And couldn't get back: it took several years and untold attorney fees to let her back into the country. She is back now: I don't know the arguments that succeeded. But it was a rude shock for both of them. She wasn't particularly interested in becoming a citizen herself and so never looked into how to get that status. The overstayed visa almost destroyed their marriage from the outside.
I know, it's outrageous. The US now has a temporary visa that let's the foreign spouse join the American spouse in the US - if it's approved - for all the months until the permanent visa is also approved. That's just dumb.
By way of comparison, I married my Brazilian husband in July of 2017. The next week, we took our Illinois Marriage Certificate to the Brazilian Consulate General in Chicago, registered our marriage, and applied for my spousal visa. A week after that, I went back to the Consulate to pick the visa up. My husband went home to rent us an apartment, and I joined him in November. I went to the Federal Police on the next business day to request my resident ID Card, and had it in less than a month.
Other countries have figured a lot of this stuff out years ago; not all of their solutions are scalable, but many are. We don't HAVE to reinvent it all ourselves!