It seems to be one of those situations where you are damned for doing something you think is for the common good. Open doors to refugees and you will therefore create more refugees. But then you also hear of people waiting 10+ years in the US for their refugee status to be determined by a judge.
Whatever a nation does, it costs money. Money for public assistance and housing, or money for detention centers and removal. I wonder if money spent for economic incentives in the home countries would be better spent. Of course, with war involved that is a whole different issue.
I don’t know what fraction of migrants are young and angry. The few interviewed just wanted a job and education for their kids, not any differebt from the rest of us. People who have future tend to be less angry, too. After settling down if they feel they have future they may mellow. Besides, the migrants arriving now may have been pretty well to do in their respective country. The smugglers charge 5-10K per person. How many poor people can afford that? Most americans couldn’t. Luckily they don’t have to.
I wonder if the present migrant crisis isn’t just e a small part of an inevitable bigger population move. The population of rich countries is shrinking and there’s more desperation in poor nations. We may have reached a breaking point.
Well you can discern that information for yourself by seeking out news coverage from the gateway countries and the destination countries. Some of the video is very telling, and it’s very clear that the preferred choice of destination is all about the benefits.
Smart. That just means they are well educated. It may not be all negative. They may bring down labor cost. In Germany dry cleaning cost a fortune for example. If migrants take it over like asian immigrants did in the US, it would benefit general public and overall economy.
@JustOneDad, talk is cheap. As I said before, some people deserve to be dropped in Syria.
@awcntdb, we’re feeding children free school lunches. The tragedy.
However, you’re right, it’s not just schooling. Unlike some other folks, I don’t plan to die soon and want this country to prosper well in to the future. Feeding and educating children so that they can reach their full potential will do that. Denying them food and having a malnourished underclass will not.
I understand that cutting food for the poor in favor of tax cuts for the rich is the accepted doctrine of the right these days. But I do not believe that that will make this country stronger.
Angry and entitled is generally not great for the economy. I have always said and always will say that unattached males immigrating in large numbers is always a problem.
“The population of rich countries is shrinking and there’s more desperation in poor nations. We may have reached a breaking point.”
This! @Igloo, I agree. And frankly, this is something I remember reading about in the early 80s: the gross inequality around the globe and the growing ability of large numbers of people to migrate.
FYI: CIS has an anti-immigration agenda and its “study” is biased toward that agenda.
Cato Institute On CIS Methodology:
“Counting The Cost Of The Children Of Immigrants Who Are Born Citizens Is A Bad Approach.” According to a March 21, 2013 post by the Cato Institute’s Alex Nowrasteh, the CIS methodology for it’s study includes “everyone in a so-called immigrant-headed household regardless of citizenship status – especially U.S.-born children and spouses” which leads to vastly overstating the data:
The first issue - which is rather wonky - is how to measure immigrant welfare use. Our approach is to count the benefits used by immigrants individually while Camarota’s approach is to include everyone in a so-called immigrant-headed household regardless of citizenship status - especially U.S.-born children and spouses.
Our approach of counting immigrant welfare use individually is used by the conservative state of Texas to measure immigrant use of government education and other benefits. The Texas Comptroller’s Office did not include the children of immigrants who were American citizens when calculating the cost to public services in Texas because, “the inclusion of these children dramatically increased the costs.” The Texas report continued by stating:
“The Comptroller has chosen not to estimate these costs or revenues [of U.S.-born children] due to uncertainties concerning the estimated population and the question of whether to include the costs and revenues associated only with the first generation or so include subsequent generations, all of which could be seen as costs (emphasis added).”
[color=blue]In other words, counting the cost of the children of immigrants who are born citizens is a bad approach. If we were to follow Camarota’s methodology, why not count the welfare costs of the great-grandchildren of immigrants who use welfare or public schools today? Our study, on the other hand, measures the welfare cost of non-naturalized immigrants and, where possible, naturalized Americans. [/color=blue]
NILC: Immigrant Welfare Data Are “An Old CIS Trick.”
In response to the 2011 version of CIS’ “welfare” report, Jonathan Blazer of the National Immigration Law Center (NILC) pointed out that the CIS data were a “trick” intended to “make it look like immigrant households are welfare users and dependents and especially likely to be on welfare programs.” Blazer concluded that the inflated welfare numbers serves the “express agenda” of CIS.
PolitiFact: “Looking At Individuals Would Produce A Different, Lower Percentage.”
In a PolitiFact write up of comments made by Bill O’Reilly about the welfare use of immigrants from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, immigration experts explained that CIS’ methodology allows its study to include American citizens in addition to immigrants thereby creating a higher percentage than if the measurement was just of individual immigrants’ welfare use:
And, unfortunately, it also means that a country to save itself may have to come off as politically incorrect and mean and turn people away. A country cannot have it two ways when values are so incompatible, as laws and civic order are dependent on compatible values and respect for those values.
You keep saying, that @awcntdb, but you still haven’t answered the question: HOW are you going to turn these people away? Build an iron curtain on your borders, with landmines and armed patrols that shoot at anyone – even women and children – as they approach?
It’s OK to say, yes, I’ll shoot to kill refugees. At least that would be honest. Otherwise admit that this idea won’t work. Because we see every. single. day. that it doesn’t.
Maybe you missed the hypothetical nature of my comments. I’m an American. My responsibilities lie here at home. However, similar goes for the citizens who created and supported things like Assad.
I see. So, if you count American citizens as illegal immigrants, then you can say that illegal immigrants are receiving lots of government benefits. Once an organization starts disseminating dishonest arguments of that type, anything they say ought to be ignored, because they are liars. Bye, CIS, we aren’t going to pay any attention to your lies.
^ Not all American citizens are created equal. Some are more equal than others. /Sarcastic.
Is there a more equal citizen who once claims (or just speculates) Obama isn’t really an American?
It is true that at least there are two kinds of citizens who are truly not equal according to the law (eligibility for being elected as the President): the naturualized ones and the ones who were born with the citizenship. (Let’s not get into another controversy: Anchored babies. Should a anchored baby be more “worthy” as a citizen than a naturalized one?)
@katliamom, the reason that the borders in the US don’t work is because our current government doesn’t want to enforce our immigration laws. Central America is being emptied out of kids and their parents because of our lax border policies. Yes, people have always gotten across but not in these staggering numbers.
A great read that correlates to the current crisis in Europe is “Murder in Amsterdam” . It’s a difficult situation that lacks good answers, but these numbers of immigrants will forever change the countries that take them in.
Probably not wise to use a blatantly political group’s link, as your source, as Media Matters’ agenda starts before it begins looking at anything and would never report the results of a study that is opposite its agenda, and critics anything its political agenda disagrees with:
The study being critiqued simply says that households headed by immigrants (legal and illegal) have higher usage rates of government assistance programs, which is very true, and which the critics do not even dispute.
More importantly, the critics argument only works if they ignore the root cause of the problem. Well, thanks for constructing your critique from the middle of the problem, not from the beginning. I guess that is easier than dealing with the real problem.
Let’s start with illegals - One fundamental problem is people entering the country illegally with essentially no enforcement of our immigration laws. Obvious known problem. However, critics are saying that if they enter illegally and then have a child after entering illegally, then the welfare received should not be counted because the child is a US citizen.
Get that? The critics simply ignore the root cause of why there is an increase in welfare usage on the public coffers - the root cause of the increased costs of welfare is not the child, but the fact that the illegal should not be here in the first place. The logic is clearly lost on people that if the illegals were not here and not allowed in, then there would be no additional child here that could be used to increase welfare usage. And, as important, having a US born child does make a household a native-born household, it is still an immigrant-headed household.
As for families of legal immigrants, having a child drastically increases the amount of welfare the family can receive. Therefore, legal immigrants have an incentive to have children to get more money, and many do.
Therefore, regardless of what the critics want to complain about, it is a fact that immigrant-led households do use more welfare than native-born households, as a percentage of households. Just because some of the increase is caused by having US-born children does not change the fact they use more welfare dollars.
This type of critique is what I call “the stupid family with a flooding basement” thinking. A family has a basement that floods a lot and costs a good bit of money to get drained after a serious rain - a standard problem. However, instead of actually fixing the foundation, i.e., the root cause of the flood and the reason for increased repair expenditures, the stupid family increases its budget every year to handle the increasing cleanup costs, when it would be a lot cheaper and better to repair the leaking foundation. But, the stupid family never figures that out.
Same nonsense going on here in the argument against this study along with some really ignorant word-smithing. First, the critics ignore one root cause of the American-born children, i.e., an illegal immigrant who should not be here in the first place. And for all immigrants, critics claim that anti-poverty programs are not welfare. Huh? If anti-poverty programs are not a form of welfare, what the in world are they? This is critiquing for the ignorant because money handed out to people for something they could not do for themselves or did not produce or refuse to do for themselves is welfare.
Therefore, for the study’s critics to be accepted as valid, then money given to people to buy food, housing, and the like, should not be called welfare, but anti-poverty programs. Yeah, thanks of distinction without a difference. Basic logic - if people are given money and services for nothing in return and never have to pay it back, it is welfare, irrespective what others want to call it.
@riverbirch You said it yourself: it’s a difficult situation that lacks good answers. That I agree with.
And I agree that the US doesn’t enforce our immigration laws. But the cynic in me thinks that’s because it’s IN THE INTEREST OF big (and small!) business in America to let in lots of disenfranchised people who will work for a lot less than Americans, and will do jobs that Americans won’t. (BTW $17/hour jobs go begging in much of the agricultural west.)
I don’t think we need to make the illegals citizens to get our agricultural jobs done. In fact if they are made citizens they are going to be less likely to do this type of work if welfare is an easier option. Giving out Visas seems like the preferred solution to me.