The rural Americans themselves spoke through the survey results.
The question I never hear answers by the pro-immigration side is: do we need more people in this country? A related question is, with the decline in manufacturing jobs: do we need more low-skilled workers in this country?
If we want to talk about drugs, the vast, vast majority of illegal drugs(excluding pot and MDMA) come into the US from across the Mexican border.
Actually, there are quite a few drugs manufactured right here in the USA, including âiceâ methamphetamine, which continues to be a huge health issue in the US. Itâs cheap and the ingredients are in the US and it eats permanent holes in the brains of users and creates lifelong pulmonary arterial hypertension which is VERY expensive to treat.
Letâs clarify something first⊠itâs not an issue of âpro-immigrationâ vs âanti-immigrationâ, itâs really âpro-illegal-immigrationâ vs âanti-illegal-immigrationâ. This is an important distinction, as many people in the âanti-illegal-immigrantâ camp are actually pro-immigrant.
As to whether or not we need âmore people in this countryâ, I think most would agree we should always keep the door open to the right people (non-criminals), but that those people need to follow the legal process for entry (as many of our European ancestors did a century or more ago). The issue of a saturated job market is self-correcting through supply and demand⊠if there are no jobs available for low skilled workers, many/most would probably just return to their home country.
Your information is out of date. Most meth is made in super-labs.
Keep in mind that immigration policies a century or more ago were influenced by explicitly racist factors as shown by their explicit favoring of Northern European WASP immigrants over those from Catholic, Southern/Eastern European, or non-White societies. One fine example of this was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which was proposed and implemented by legislators/supporters who were spouting racist and heated anti-immigrant which is very similar to those espoused by anti-immigrant movements today.
Also, before the mid-late '19th century, there really wasnât much of an immigration vetting process provided one was an immigrant from Northern European and preferably Protestant.
And bona-fide Native-Americans would find all the anti-immigrant rhetoric from âreal murikansâ to be exceedingly ironic considering what transpired after the British and other Europeans started colonizing what they considered the âNew Worldâ.
I know there have been âdrug bustsâ of meth labs in our state fairly recently. I donât know where âmost methâ is made, but do know that it can be still made fairly inexpensively with materials that can be purchased fairly easily. Regardless, vilifying immigrants isnât addressing the other host of problems our country is facing, urban and rural. It is much easier to distract by pointing at disenfranchised people than it is to figure out solutions to difficult problems. Yes, more people makes problems of lots of poor, low-skilled folks needing jobs and resources makes things tougher, but just blaming everything on immigrants doesnât solve the problems.
Well, why arenât the latter people lobbying for more legal immigration and simpler legal immigration processes (compared to the existing very complicated processes) so that the current immigration demand can be satisfied legally instead of illegally?
Fairly inexpensive in terms of monetary cost for the maker. However, the chemical processes involved leaves behind exceedingly toxic residues which are not only toxic, but also highly combustible as shown in several news stories of meth labs exploding or former meth houses causing unknowing new residents to become very sick before they found the cause.
Decontamination of former meth houses is also a very expensive process and may not always be successful.
@ucbalumnus â what is the âthe current immigration demandâ? Iâve heard the usual âwe need more immigrants to support an aging populationâ but that would mean excluding low-skilled immigrants because they wouldnât contribute as much as high-skilled immigrants (high tech people, etc.).
https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/nationwide-trends indicates that, as of 2013, pot was the biggest portion of illicit drug use, followed by prescription drugs (including prescription pain medication). Presumably, the latter were mostly obtained from doctorsâ offices and pharmacies or illicit secondary markets after being initially manufactured or imported legally, rather than smuggled.
Yes, I agree that making âiceâ leaves behind very toxic residues that are tough to get rid of. Fire fighters I have spoken with said that if an ice house is suspected, the fire department can be called, but they have to be given notice that they will be going to an ICE place, so they can wear appropriate protective gear and can work with police to get the lab dismantled. Ice is a HUGE problem because it is quite inexpensive for folks to make and they donât care that they are contaminating the area where they are making it and nearby as well.
Also, there has always been migrations/movements back and forth between Mexico and the states bordering it. Not too much of a surprise considering that border only existed as a result of the âTexas Revolutionâ and later the Mexican-American War of 1846-48 and many Mexican families have been spread across that border for generations before those historical events took place.
Even when that war ended, Mexicans went back and forth across that border no differently than how I cross the Hudson River to visit friends and relatives in NJ and cross back to go home or how NJ residents cross the river to commute to work in Manhattan and then commute back in the evenings.
It only became an issue when the US government started to cut off/severely restrict access on that border a few decades ago.
@cobrat â what were the immigration policies in South Korea, Japan, China back then? What are they today?
When people talk about illegal drug problems, they usually donât mean pot. Marijuana is well on its way to being legalized in this country.
None of those countries had an official policy to publicly portray themselves as a ânation of immigrantsâ per the Emma Lazarus" quote on the Statue of Liberty:
Also, very ironic you donât want to holding the US to higher standards as it and past generations of high-minded Americans have doneâŠ
And FYIâŠSouth Korea didnât exist before 1945,
That other countries may have racist immigration policies is no reason to emulate them.
The biggest non-pot illicit drug problem is the illicit use of prescription drugs.
@droppedit : QED
@cobrat â the SoL was made in the 1880s. The US population is 6X that now. How many people do we need here? BTW, I know about South Korea (my father was in the USAF in the 1950s).
@ucbalumnus â so the US immigration policy was similar to other countries at the time?