Immigration.
In the US, the vast majority of Immigrants make a huge contribution to our society - they risk life and limb to come to the US, they take difficult jobs, they accept difficult working conditions and low pay in some cases, trying to build a better life for themselves and their families.
They enter and graduate from our universities, they help drive all sorts of important sectors of our economy - high tech, science, medical, others.
As much as anything, the influx of talented and hard-working Immigrants from all over the world, over the last 200+ years, has made our country strong and successful, as the proverbial Great Melting Pot.
But now we are throwing that away - throwing away one of our greatest assets, as a country.
We are treating Immigrants like criminals that we don’t want, and pushing them away - arresting them without any sort of due process or legitimate reason, detaining them under sometimes god-awful conditions, deporting them.
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Our recent policies toward Immigrants are incredibly inhumane - we are terrorizing a large sector of our society, upending their lives, wrecking their lives. Many Immigrants are in a vulnerable position, a tenuous position, and come from precarious circumstances in their home country, and are doing everything in their power to make their lives a success and contribute positively to the economy.
And this is our thanks to them.
Our recent policies are foolhardy in the extreme - Immigrants are so important to many sectors of the economy, and they bring diversity of thinking and culture and food and the arts, which our society greatly benefits from.
We will lose this, they will stop coming.
And we will regret it. It will be a costly loss.
The attack on Immigrants is hurting the agricultural industry, the construction industry, the restaurant industry, the high tech industry, the scientific research community, to name a few - many important sectors of the economy.
It will weaken us as a country, in the long run. Significantly.
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It is said that many Immigrants are criminals, bad apples. This is part of the rationale for going after them.
Certainly there are dangerous, even highly dangerous, Immigrants in our society. Just as there are dangerous, even highly dangerous, non-Immigrants in our society.
Shouldn’t we just be going after dangerous criminals ? Immigrants or not ? And let everyone else live their lives ?
It is said that many Immigrants come here illegally. That is definitely true. Many Immigrants do enter illegally. But they contribute so, so much to our country.
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I do think there should be limits on Immigration. We can not open our borders to everyone. We have to keep Immigration at levels that the country can absorb and integrate new people effectively, without overwhelming or bogging down the economic and social fabric in place.
There should be some restrictions on Immigration levels, on the number of new arrivals.
But this insane attack on Immigrants already here, going on right now, is counter productive, destructive for Immigrants’ lives and for society as a whole.
Why attack Immigrants who have established a life in the US, and from whom society generally benefits, immensely ?
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What exactly is the motivation for the nonsensical attack on Immigrants ?
I think it serves three useful purposes, from the point of view of the current Administration and the wealthy and powerful in society.
One, it is a form of scapegoating - pointing the finger of blame for society’s ills at a vulnerable target, and pointing it away from the real problems: concentration of power and wealth, corruption of our government and media.
Secondly, it allows the current government to begin a crackdown on society, to begin tightening it’s grip on society, tightening the noose, to ease the country towards a violent police state.
The idea is to begin with the most vulnerable and easiest to attack - Immigrants - and then quietly extend that over time to include the wider society, especially dissidents and critics of the government, or anyone who does not comply.
So that we are in a warm-up period for fascism.
ICE is the administration’s violent tool. ICE is essentially outside the law, unaccountable.
The horrifying shooting this past week in Minnesota is a nightmarish example. There have been many others, in the past months - shootings, abductions, deportations without due process. Our Immigrant neighbors are in complete terror right now.
ICE, or some other branch of Federal enforcement, will slowly spread it’s targets to the rest of society. If we allow it.
Thirdly, in order for the public to accept a violent police state, it has to feel sufficiently threatened, sufficiently frightened.
Playing up the threat of Immigrants - stoking racism - is a good starting point, from the point of view of the powerful, to help frighten the public into submission.
A group that has different color skin, different customs, different languages - this is a relatively easy target to stoke fear towards.
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What is happening right now towards Immigrants is public policy.
Our government is consciously scapegoating and damaging and destroying Immigrants’ lives.
At the same time, they are frightening and deceiving the Public, into accepting these policies.
It can be stopped, if enough of the US Public opposes it.
We can stop it, if we choose to, if we join together.
We can choose to stop the insanity.
And support our Immigrant neighbors.
Namaste.