05-01-2019, 10:27 PM
(04-29-2019, 10:58 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:Immigrants applied to those who arrived 150 years ago, and US citizens applied to all the American generations who were born after them.(04-29-2019, 07:26 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(04-29-2019, 03:17 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: There is some justification for orderly entrance of immigrants so that the nation is not "over run" or overwhelmed.
But is there really such a thing as a "foreigner" in a nation of Immigrants? Tribes from Asia came here over 10,000 years ago. Spanish and Mexicans were the first whites to come to America, settling New Mexico in the 16th century. Some of them were also combos racially with the tribes that were here before Columbus. White Spanish Europeans also settled Florida, and then the British came in 1607 and the French soon after. Largely British immigrants settled the East Coast, and came further west mostly in the 19th century. The Spanish and then the Mexicans colonized California at the same time that American independence was being declared. Until 1848 the entire southwestern United States was part of Mexico. Blacks from Africa were imported by the slave traders from the 17th century until 1865.
Even by 1804 Lewis and Clark explored what is now the NW USA where no whites had ever been, except for a few fur traders like John Jacob Astor. Some Irish and Germans followed the British to America, and more came after the famines and revolutions of 1846-48. Many Germans settled in the northern Mid-west, a land not unlike their own. Eastern Europeans came in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island were built, including Russian Jews after the 1880s pograms. Chinese came to the West to farm, mine, do business, and help build the railroads. Japanese followed, and were sent to prison camps in world war II. More Jews came to NY and CA after the Holocaust. Mexicans came to work the fields in the 20th century, and more settled in the southwest in recent years, including undocumenteds. At various times, political parties have opposed immigration and erected anti-immigrant laws directed at particular ethnic groups.
You claim Red America is not so stupid as to allow immigration, and yet the nation has asylum laws that were passed long before the nation was divided into red and blue increasingly since 1968. We are required by law to accept immigrants who can show they are oppressed in the land from which they came. Now there is a crisis which the Republican Party itself has largely created, through its support of fossil fuel-driven climate change, and with the help of some bad decisions by Democrats as well. Drought has caused civil war in the Middle East (especially Syria), causing more Muslim immigration. Now a new emergency has been caused by drought and oppression in Central America, and asylum seekers are flooding the border.
I hope of course that the "elite" semi-automatic weapons will be outlawed during the progressive era soon to come. We'll see. It needs to be done, though I am not unmindful of the potential violent reaction by red-state gun nuts. But assuming a consensus has been reached to outlaw these weapons, a progressive blue-run administration will be able to crush this rebellion without too much trouble. The right-wing supreme court may be able to stop such gun laws, however. Originally, the rulings of the Scalia Court did not imply that such laws could not be passed.
The word immigrant no longer applies to most American citizens these days. Yes, there was a time when most Americans where immigrants like a hundred and fifty years ago on my fathers side and well over two hundred years ago on my mothers side. I dunno, I hope we don't see the day when Mexican Americans naturally divide or split between those who still primarily identify as Mexicans and those who primarily identify as Americans. I think things are going to get ugly if the current negative crap that's going on with the liberals these days continues. I'd say the reason we're seeing so many asylum seekers coming in mass is because the global blues understand that the good old days of taking advantage of America is on the verge of coming to an end. I like what Trump threatened to do about the illegal immigrant issue. Hell, I suggested doing something similar myself a while ago. Of coarse, he's not suggesting to remove your border security personnel and eliminate your boarder walls like me. He's just suggesting the idea of busing them in mass and releasing them in blue areas like yours for the blues to deal with right now. Like I've said, Trump is willing to give the bluer American folks a chance to prove themselves to the rest of America at this point. I've already told you that I'm not going to be there to save you or defend you when things start getting rough in blue areas.
Immigrants 100 or 150 years ago, and immigrants today. No difference. We are a nation of immigrants. Our history, our heritage, our essence, is one of immigrants coming to this land. Republicans shot down reforms that would have smoothed out the system, preferring fear and prejudice. Now they are reaping the consequences. The more Trump threatens to "end" the "good old days of taking advantage of America," the more they come, because we fail to help those people to rid themselves of their banana republic system and continue through our support for climate change to ruin their lands.
You have your own challenge in Minnesota, because you have not yet managed to turn your state red. It's probably going back to its long-time blue heritage now, which has brought it such benefits.
Interestingly, I was reading about the global warming episode 56 million years ago called The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) https://www.wunderground.com/climate/PETM a fascinating episode in Earth history when to adapt many mammals including our ancestors moved north to colder regions. Today's Republican-caused global warming is heating up the planet 10 times faster, and probably farther than the PETM (which started from a much warmer base climate), and now too humans are adapting by fleeing the tropical drought-stricken areas and moving north. You Classic Xer cannot stop the whirlwind of global migration, which your Reaganomics policies have caused because they stopped the needed regulations to encourage and bring about the transition to an economy that emits less greenhouse gases.