Politics (AKA all the worlds problems are America's fault)

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godix
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Politics (AKA all the worlds problems are America's fault)

Post by godix » Fri May 18, 2007 12:13 am

So there are some politically minded people on the org, I figured I'd give it a shot talking to you people as if you were my equals or something. At least for a little while until I get pissed off at all you limp wristed pansy ass liberals.

I'll start things off by babbling about the topic of the day. Immigration. Just mentioning it is guaranteed to give a republican a heart attack, a democrat an orgasm, and a mexican some hope that just once in their lives they might earn more than a McD's cashier. What Americans don't realize, primarily because we're myopic jackasses who only know other countries exist because all the things we buy are stamped with 'Made in some thirdworld shithole', is that we are by far not the only ones with immigration issues. France is damn near a Muslim country now and the reason the EU doesn't have a constitution boils down to basically 'they want to let those smelly funny speaking non-white colored non-christian foreigners in to steal my job'.

So as a problem many first world countries have, I'd like to propose a solution that none will actually even consider. Let almost everyone in. Seriously. There should be two reasons to keep someone out. 1) They're guilty of a major crime in their home country that's also a crime in the country they want to go to. 2) They pose a medical hazard to the public at large. That's it. If you can pass those two basic steps then welcome to America! Or France. Or Germany. Or whatever other civilized nation you want to come in to. Let that rule circulate for 6 or 7 months among the people trying to dodge rape and death squads in Africa, the mexicans wondering which drug lord is going to shoot at their ass tonight, or just the guy tired of standing to his waist in ox shit for 50 cents a month. Then institute a 'shoot to kill' rule for all border patrol agents. After all, anyone who still needs to sneak in must either be a criminal or public health risk. While I don't actually want border patrol to kill people it is the most effective deterrent to keeping out who we want to stay out.

So there you have it, the godix plan to solving immigration woes. And, for a change, I actually mean this. I honestly believe that is the ideal immigration policy for a first world country.
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Post by Otohiko » Fri May 18, 2007 12:37 am

I personally always distinguished, at least here in Canada, between the immigration system as such, and the refugee system.

The immigration system, which my family went through, is just fine and works correctly - I'm sure it's similar in many other countries. It took my family 5 years and a good 1/3 of our savings between originally applying for immigration and actually stepping off a plane in Canada. We went through thorough checks, massive amounts of paperwork, and even a few stupid bureaucratic snags - but all in all, I would say they let us in fairly and with consideration. Probably brought a good bit of skilled labour to the country.

The refugee, aka. uncontrolled immigration system, meanwhile, is retarded - I don't like to advertise this fact, but I had to translate documents for several Russian refugees, and while I couldn't prove it, I pretty much knew these documents on which they were basing their claims were fake. They also worked illegally and unfairly mooched off the over-generous welfare system.

I don't know, one thing I'd like to see in the immigration system is combining it with the country's needs. You know what? Canada needs a ton of people to go up north and help explore/exploit the mass of unused natural resources there - both skilled and unskilled labour. Why the fuck do we have people settling on welfare in Toronto in ridiculously large numbers?
My solution would be to set up conditional immigration. Fine, come here, but on the condition you're gonna go work up north. The jobs there are NOT bad (in fact far above the awful minimum-wage on average), you're not going to die of starvation or cold as the infrastructure is fine, and you're not going to be a fucking waste of space.

I'm a socialist by conviction, but I think the welfare state has gone too far. In America it hasn't really, though there are aspects of it here and there. In Canada and Europe it has. I believe people should work and, more ironically still, there is a shitload of profitable work to do, here and elsewhere.
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Post by Arigatomina » Fri May 18, 2007 1:13 am

Can you imagine if everyone who wanted to come over crowded at the legitimate entrances to the country? Even if we made it super easy for them to get work permits, green cards, whatever the "legitimate pass" is, the sheer blockage would be a nightmare. I doubt we'd crack down on criminals that way, either. If we make it super easy for everyone else, you know it'll be that much easier for the criminals as well. Right now they have to hide with the rest of the groups sneaking in at night - that wouldn't change. They'd just be sneaking in at day mixed with a very long line of refugees and seasonal workers.

I think we should take advantage of immigrants. Find out what they want over here and how we can use that. Cheap hardworking labor force = no more outsourcing factories to third world countries. We could just set them up on the border. It might cost a little more to build, but at least the legalized cheap workers would be paying taxes on their earnings. One of the major complaints about parttime illegal immigrants is the jobs they take and the way they live extremely cheap so they can send every penny back home. If we bring those factories back to the US, they'll be taking jobs that were never 'ours' to begin with and the economy can still benefit from it.

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Post by badmartialarts » Fri May 18, 2007 1:26 am

I tend to agree.

Most of the fuss about immigration stems from the fact that immigrants are willing to work for far less, in far less pristine conditions, than American workers. This is what is also leading to the outsourcing problem. So American workers band together, and yell "No more immigrants! Stop taking our jobs!" Wait...wait wait. I don't see ANY immigrants taking any Americans jobs from them. I worked at Wal-Mart as a cashier...there wasn't some random Mexican dude who just rushed in one day and said "Get out, I'm taking your job!" I quit working there because I figured I could make more doing something else. Do you see poor white Americans sitting at Lowe's or Home Depot waiting for a house painting job? (Actually, I have at times, and I applaud them for getting off their butts and competing the old-fashioned capitalistic way, with their labor skills vs. their competitiors in an open market.) Poor American citizens don't want to work as migrant farm hands. They don't want to wash your car. They barely like taking your order at McDonalds. Immigrants are not taking any jobs that Americans want; they never have.
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Post by godix » Fri May 18, 2007 2:25 am

If we're concerned about the effect on the first world nations we could educate these people to a minimum employable level. We could teach them their host countries culture. We can bury them in paperwork and background checks and tracking their movements so we know who's coming in and that dangerous elements are hiding among them. We could deny them from permanently living off the state. We could point them to sectors of the economy that need reasonably cheap labor. We could, and should, do all those things to minimize the initial impact. Long term we don't need to worry about because the Vietnamese refugees of 30 years ago are turning into one of the best educated, highest earning, and high tax paying minority groups of today so long term this would probably help actually. But that's all secondary. Of primary importance is 'Are you a violent criminal? Are you a health risk? No? Come on in.'

I think I wasn't clear what I was talking about in my first post. I'm not talking about immigration of the educated and those able to afford to run through the system. I'm not even talking about immigration of those that have skills and do work Americans don't want to. I'm talking about the person who's life in their home country is so fucking shitty that even if they ended up as a homeless bum living in a back alley of some first world country they'd STILL be vastly better off. I'm talking the Africans who go to EU not for a job but rather because they'll end up dead in some petty tribal war if they stay home. I'm talking people so desperate they try to cross oceans in, literally, a barrel. I'm talking the type of person who actually thinks illegally coming to America and doing tons of hours of back breaking work at below minimum wage is better than staying at home and starving cause there are no jobs. These aren't people that can pay 1/3 their savings to immigrate because their savings isn't even enough to buy a value meal at McDonalds. These aren't people you put in factories to make shit because these are people who's sole employment to date has been watching a yak defecate to fertilize a field. These are the people, to use todays major US immigration announcement, who you don't ask to pay a $5,000 fine because that's their yearly salary and they're feeding their entire extended family in their home country with it. Will letting those people in a first world country cost money? Of course. But I personally live in the richest country in the world and feel I have no right to look at someone who only gets food to eat three days out of the week and say "Sorry, can't do anything, after all you might take all the quickie mart jobs or make my taxes go up a few percent".

Let's use a specific example here. Sudan. Currently it's a hellhole in middle of a genocide that no one will call genocide because if they did they'd have to do something about it. Instead the world just stands around wringing it's hands and writing harsh editorials to each other. Now one solution to the problem is just letting it go on, eventually they'll succeed in their genocide and that's the end of that problem. Which is the approach the world is currently taking. Another option is to send in troops to stop this but Europe takes years to see the need to stop a genocide even when it's next door, they barely notice one happening on a different continent. As for America, Iraq has turned Americans even more self centered and isolationist than the shortsighted ignorant bastards usually are. My view provides a third alternative. Send in troops for a very short time. Just long enough to ask all the people sitting in camps waiting to be killed 'So do you want to live in America, the EU, Canada, Australia, etc or you wanna stay here?' Then load up everyone who wants to go on a cargo plane and give them citizenship in some first world country. No long protracted military mission. No hundreds of billions being spent, with greedy bastards skimming off the top every step of the way, into trying to turn a shithole into a little bit less than a shithole. Oh yeah, and as a minor side benefit that's so trivial it's barely worth mentioning, hundreds of thousands of lives would be saved. And, incidentally, greatly improved while we're at it.

So it'll cost some money to educate these people to an employable standard. So they end up taking many jobs from the bottom rung of the economic ladder. So social services will end up costing more. Doesn't matter. Hundreds of thousands of lives are saved. In one country. Imagine the sheer number of people this would help worldwide. We could do more aid to people in the third world than the UN has done during it's entire history if we just said "Ok, you can leave there if you want. It's worth a slight raise in taxes. Welcome."
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Post by CodeZTM » Sat May 19, 2007 11:42 pm

You're right. Although, I'd like to add a third requirement to enter our country. I'd like to make it so that immigrants have to at least take a class (maybe a one day seminar?) that explains the rights of the U.S Constitution (or for other countries, whatever their rights are spelled out in). This way, immigrants know exactly what they can and cannot do. That fifth amendment would probably come in handy sometime for some of these immigrants.

But in all seriousness, America was built as a haven for those fleeing from prosecution in Europe. Why, then, are we not allowing those to come from their prosecutions and pains?

And plus, most of the immigrants in my area (primarly of Mexican descent) work harder than the average Joe around here, which causes the Average Joe to get all riled up about "them damn mexicans..".

Eck, just a personal opinion.

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Post by Orwell » Sat May 19, 2007 11:51 pm

code_chrono wrote:You're right. Although, I'd like to add a third requirement to enter our country. I'd like to make it so that immigrants have to at least take a class (maybe a one day seminar?) that explains the rights of the U.S Constitution (or for other countries, whatever their rights are spelled out in). This way, immigrants know exactly what they can and cannot do. That fifth amendment would probably come in handy sometime for some of these immigrants.
I'm pretty sure that's a large part of the green card test.
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Post by godix » Sun May 20, 2007 12:05 am

code_chrono wrote:You're right. Although, I'd like to add a third requirement to enter our country. I'd like to make it so that immigrants have to at least take a class (maybe a one day seminar?) that explains the rights of the U.S Constitution (or for other countries, whatever their rights are spelled out in). This way, immigrants know exactly what they can and cannot do. That fifth amendment would probably come in handy sometime for some of these immigrants.
I'd assume there would be basic classes to acclimate immigrants into the host country and a basic covering of their rights AND RESPONSIBILITIES would be covered. But yeah, an usually looked over point is that once illegal immigrants are legal they'll have the same rights as Americans have. Meaning companies with those much talked about American jobs won't go bankrupt trying to compete with a company who's prices are low because they illegally underpay/overwork their employees.
But in all seriousness, America was built as a haven for those fleeing from prosecution in Europe. Why, then, are we not allowing those to come from their prosecutions and pains?
Actually to a large degree the US has never lived up to it's noble claims of being free from prosecution. Hell, right near the start European puritans were such dicks to anyone believing differently that William Penn had to go start his own state to get away from them. The Puritans didn't want freedom from prosecution, they just wanted to be the ones doing the prosecuting instead of on the other end. When America took over the west we could have taken over most the rest of Mexico while we were at it but we didn't because there were brown people living there and they didn't have gold on their land. If you look at history that was actually an explicitly stated reason even, at least the first part. I'm just guessing about the gold based on the fact that whenever a brown person found gold on their land the US was there the next day to steal it. So I believe we should live up to the 'huddled masses yearning to be free' ideal but it's not at all surprising we don't. Hell, the surprising thing is that in general we believe that ideal is a good thing to begin with (assuming it doesn't cost us anything or give us the slightest bit of inconvenience of course)
And plus, most of the immigrants in my area (primarly of Mexican descent) work harder than the average Joe around here, which causes the Average Joe to get all riled up about "them damn mexicans..".
Interesting fact, the only mass immigration I can think of where the immigrants caused more problems for society than they gave benefits to society is also the only time the immigrates didn't have a choice about coming to America. Other than importing slaves all major immigration waves worked out to be a net positive for America.
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Post by Kionon » Sun May 20, 2007 12:24 am

Honestly, one of my most radical viewpoints is that we should just get around to having to the United Nations pull a Nicholas Seafort and form a world government in a sort of Super Federal System where nations act much the same way as US States, Canadian Provinces, or Japanese Prefectures. Global democracy as far as democracy actually exists. Right now the UN and the EU are doing the same shit the US did in the years after 1776: Might as well call it the Global Articles of Confederation. We figured out pretty quickly the problems with that. I just wish the Security Council agreed.

There are many reasons why I never see this happening, but the one that annoys me the most is that all the fucking fundamentalist Christians would claim the UN SecGen was the Anti-Christ.
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Post by godix » Sun May 20, 2007 3:28 am

Kionon wrote:Honestly, one of my most radical viewpoints is that we should just get around to having to the United Nations pull a Nicholas Seafort and form a world government in a sort of Super Federal System where nations act much the same way as US States, Canadian Provinces, or Japanese Prefectures. Global democracy as far as democracy actually exists. Right now the UN and the EU are doing the same shit the US did in the years after 1776: Might as well call it the Global Articles of Confederation. We figured out pretty quickly the problems with that. I just wish the Security Council agreed.

There are many reasons why I never see this happening, but the one that annoys me the most is that all the fucking fundamentalist Christians would claim the UN SecGen was the Anti-Christ.
For as much as I like democracy, I disagree. Some people just prefer living in a theocracy, communist dictatorship, or some other non-democratic government. I disagree with them but still, I see no reason to force my viewpoint on the whole world even if that viewpoint is 'the freedom to vote for who you choose'. Which is another reason I'm so strongly pro-immigration. If people can move to the country they want then if they really want democracy it's available to them but if they're happy with some other form of government that's available also. If some person is so stupid they want to like in a NK like dictatorship then let them, as long as all the people who don't are free to leave. Oddly enough, if free movement between countries was the norm it'd result in more freedom of choice for everyone than if the whole world was a democracy.

Also from a more pragmatic side, every government will at one point or another unfairly persecute part of it's citizens. I don't care what the government type is or who the leaders are, the way bureaucracies everywhere blindly follow rules instead of common sense will mean someone somewhere is getting screwed. I prefer a world where the guy getting fucked can go to another country and apply for asylum if the fucking is bad enough. If there was a single world government there's no possibility to get away from it if you're fucked over by the government.
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