The latest reporting on this was that (1) not terrorists, (2) no bombs in car (3), the car appears to have been leaving a convenience stor parking lot and (4) it was heading from the U.S. side to Canada. Don't know why all that would have required President Biden to interrupt his Thanksgiving vacation. But yea, whine about not getting called upon at WH press conferences...
That's what Abbot thought too. $500 billion later, he's still foolishly wasting our tax dollars with that thinking. Besides, visa overstays have exceeded illegal border crossings for many years in a row. Estimates are 40%-60% of the nation's unauthorized immigrants are due to overstays. Overall, the total number of unauthorized immigrant population in the US, besides what you keep hearing on your social media feeds, is stable. Today, there are ~11 million unauthorized immigrants. Guess what - over the last 15 years, it has hovered just above or below 11 million. But of course, all we hear about is illegal border crossing and invasion. And more importantly, there has not been any real interest in immigration reform from those that complain the most about them. The political theater is just too useful. A Turning Point for the Unauthorized Immigrant Population in the United States | Social Science Research Institute (psu.edu)
The conservatives have always been for cancel culture and the freedom to discriminate against others.
Its not good news, I rather hear that Biden has done a decent job controlling the border crisis and inflation... Look, blue states and ultra left mayors are running our oldest and most important cities down to the ground. I just want our country to be better.
lol This only confuses the woke whiteys Can they support black people and illegal Hispanics and Hamas and fentanyl at the same time ?
This is a good point, but attitudes about immigration depend mainly on the type of immigrants. There's good empirical data on that from the 2000's, but I think that idea still holds. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,47&q=anna+mayda+immigration&oq=anna+mayda+immi#d=gs_qabs&t=1700795583335&u=#p=Bbv_iQSItwoJ Relating to the border, I think there are a handful of reasons why many people are more outraged at that than other illegals. To me it's a combination of race, poverty, the in-your-face news and online visuals of border convoys and border crossings, and a difference between attitudes from the cold war error. The study essentially states that rich immigrants get the community around then to feel better about immigration, while poor immigrants have the opposite effect. Border crossers are much poorer than anyone who has the money, family connection, or rich country background to receive and overstay a visa. Border crossers are also dominantly Latino vs visa overstayers being from everywhere. You can see border crossers on tv or social media. And lastly, during the Cold War, more Americans wanted to be light of hope and found it honorable that people from communist countries wanted to escape to here. Now, many don't see it as an escape from communism as much as an escape from poverty. Interact that with the increased inequality in America, a place also with increased poverty, and you have a strong growing resentment towards border crossers period, and also in relation to visa violators.
It's a reaction to stuff like this that happens all over Europe. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. If you are involved with youth soccer teams, you get exposed to the same fanaticism and intolerance from the same crowd, at any level.
I generally agree with you, but I have some differences. I agree that the combination of increased inequality in America and the visibility of border activities has led to a growing resentment towards border crossers. I somewhat disagree that the perception of immigration as an escape from poverty rather than political oppression is a major factor. The US is more welcoming to immigrants when the US is doing well financially (shortly after World War II) or is directly involved in conflicts (e.g., Vietnam War) that cause an exodus of people from a region. Arguably, the most politically oppressed are the Jews by Hitler, yet the US did not relax its quotas to take in more Jews while it was struggling to survive the Great Depression. They specifically have laws in place that deny visas to any immigrant "likely to become a public charge," and the FDR administration objected to giving priority to immigrants seeking refuge from racial or religious persecution. The major factor is the US financial well-being, with political persecution as a much weaker factor. Shaping public opinion that immigrants will take away your job or will harm you violently is the biggest factor, IMO, in anti-immigration in all forms. The (politically useful) focus of the right-wing media and politicians who demonize immigrants, especially those crossing the southern border, as taking your job or worse, criminals and invaders shape this public opinion. I think that is the biggest factor. Visa overstays (btw, most of them are from Mexico, India, China, Venezuela, and the Philippines), while still accounting for most of the new undocumented immigrants in the US over the past few years, are not visible and cannot be captured on camera to showcase to the public. They entered the country legally, and once they overstay, they basically disappear in the system without much fanfare or attention. If there were a way to visually capture this population, I'm sure they, or at least a subset of them (from Africa, from South America...), would be demonized as well, especially since this population might actually take away real job opportunities from the middle class Americans, unlike the 'poor' immigrants who work in industries that Americans tend to avoid.
I think there is a lot to that but that is more reason why we need a comprehensive solution. We need to address the reality of that not only a lot want to come to the US but we need more immigrants to fill jobs in the service, agricultural and construction sectors.
There is actually a sector of the Irish population that is like the rest of europe. Primarily towards central and Eastern Europeans who they feel took advantage of the EU to take their Jerbs. I was in ireland with an and American friend who looks Polish and he wasn’t treated well in Ireland to the point that some Irish refused to drink with him and he got kicked out of a pub. We were told that many thought he was Polish. Interesting I was treated very well in Ireland and many Irish wanted to drink and even take pics with me.
Let’s face it but racism is a big part of this. There are some 50,000 Irish here illegally and virtually every east coast Irish pub you can find someone there working illegally. We know for a fact they the last President wanted people from Norway rather than “shytehole” countries that happened to mostly be nonwhite. There is a lot of fear of South Asian and Chinese even though many of them are well educated and could likely easily contribute to our economy.
