Tom Paine 1949
Diamond Member
- Mar 15, 2020
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There is a need for more federal money to deal with this, both in the cities and at the border.
Most immigrants have always naturally found their way to big cities in the past, but cities no longer have as many industrial unskilled jobs available and our modern economy produces more suburban jobs, and rural agriculture is where many workers are needed. Land and housing in big cities like NYC is also extraordinarily expensive and the social problems found everywhere in the country are naturally intensified where population density is greatest — our cities.
So Republicans shipping hundreds of thousands of immigrants with temporary refugee status papers to Northern cities certainly creates big problems. Many will find their way to suburbs and underpopulated upstate towns and will be integrated successfully, but that takes time.
As for the border question, I have always felt the Democrats were wrong to accept so many economic immigrants in through the Southern border, treating them as “refugees” until long-delayed hearings can be heard. Even though the country needs foreign workers, there are better ways to handle this problem. This doesn’t mean Trump was “right” in his demagogic treatment of this problem, but I agree the Dems reacted to his demagogy with their own demagogy, and were often unwilling to adopt tough but necessary policies there.
Of course there are many other larger questions concerning illegal immigrants living in this country productively, and there is a need for a road to citizenship for these families — especially those with American citizen children (“Dreamers”) and a need to establish temporary “work visa” programs for foreigners, stricter requirements for employers’ checking workers’ citizenship, etc. These require new laws to be passed in Congress and hence compromise on all sides — not vilification and demonology which has prevented compromise and even willingness to consider compromise.
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