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US Political Discussion: Biden/Harris Edition (Rules in OP)
- Thread starter mongey
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Ordacleaphobia
Shameless Contrarian
We're gunna build a wall around Canada, let me tell you, it'll be the biggest, most effective, and frankly, ok- frankly? Just the best. And Mexico is gunna pay for it.
Canadians are so nice they'd just pay for it.
Drew
Forum MVP
Honestly, the idea that Mexicans "need to improve their quality of life" but Canadians don't is ITSELF part of the systematic and institutionalized racism that I'm describing here.
We've actually seen net emigration of illegal Mexican residents over the past 10 years, though that's slowed a little recently. And as @thraxil points out, we DO have a large number of Canadians coming into the country illegally, in greater numbers than from Mexico.
But, this actually speaks kind of neatly to the point I'm making - there's this public perception on illegal immigration that Trump has been trying very hard to sell. Immigrants and drugs are pouring over our borders. Most our coming from our southern borders. They're coming either because they're violent criminals or rapists, or because they're trying to sel;l drugs. They're trying to leave their "shithole countries" and mooch off US taxpayers here in the States. And none of that perception matches the reality. Most illegal immigration is in the form of people entering the country legally and then overstaying their visas. More Canadians have illegally entered the states than Mexicans. Illegal immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than legal residents, and are net generators and not consumers of tax revenue. Drugs generally are smuggled in through ports of entry than across the border.
The institutionalized racism is present in the very fact that people are way more willing to believe that about brown people than about other white people, and Trump is absolutely trying to use that for political purposes.
US Per Capita GDP is 33% more than Canadian, 60k vs 45k. That's a much smaller gap than between the US and Mexico, but it's certainly a lot EASIER to get into the US from Canada, and no one really expects "illegal immigrants" to be white, so you're less likely to attract attention once you're here.
Ordacleaphobia
Shameless Contrarian
Do you have sources for this?
https://itep.org/undocumented-immigrants-state-local-tax-contributions-2/
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.pb...s-about-how-immigrants-affect-the-u-s-economy
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vo...13/17229018/undocumented-immigrants-pay-taxes
https://immigrationforum.org/articl...migrant-tax-contributions-and-spending-power/
One more small point: I'm sure it's no longer the case since Maine has more or less legalized pot, but back when I was in high school up there in the 90's the *good* weed was all from Canada. It was also well known among the locals that lobster fisherman on the coast often made most of their yearly income outside lobster season by using their fishing boats to import various substances (the Maine coast is really twisted and hard for the Coast Guard to patrol properly).
Drew
Forum MVP
Of course. CBO as the source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Econo...igrants_in_the_United_States#Budgetary_impact
Again, the high level point I'm trying to make here - the rationale often provided for why we need a border wall to stop illegal immigration, and because there are good reasons it's pragmatic and not racist... the very things presented as evidence are examples of the institutionalized racism, since none of them are true and all of Trump's supporters take them for granted.
Yul Brynner
Fabricated Background
So what you are saying is if Ukrainians and Poles suddenly turned brown, the UK's dislike of Poles coming to the UK and the Poles' dislike of Ukrainian immigrants would become racist? So if Mexicans were white and Canadians were brown, would wanting stricter control of the southern border stop being racist?
Why do folks want a southern border wall and not a northern one?
I will say that while there is certainly widespread resentment and negativity towards Poles, Romanians, Ukrainians, etc. in the UK, it is very different than how refugees from the middle east and northern Africa are viewed or even how Asians are viewed/treated here. The media around the refugee crisis has been nasty and racist in ways that you just don't see with European immigrants. It certainly wasn't the *only* factor, but I do think part of why Brexit passed was a reaction to seeing *scary* brown people coming into Europe and wanting to keep them out of the UK.
Whether or not you're right about all this (I don't think you are, but that's beside the point), the irony is that crowd that believes the things they do about Hillary will have a lot more in common with her relatively centrist politics than whoever the eventual democratic candidate ends up being.
Drew
Forum MVP
Who says racism is always about the color of someone's skin? The UK's dislike of Poles and the Poles' dislike of Ukrainians is already racist, I'd say. Europeans have always tended to discriminate against ethnic groups further east of them.
That's an interesting hypothetical about flipping the racial groups at the various borders... But, in that scenario, I'd say we'd suddenly become a WHOLE lot more concerned about our northern border than our southern one.
Drew
Forum MVP
The details that are already out are amazing, lol.
This testimony session is borderline theater.
Yul Brynner
Fabricated Background
Is racism not about skin color? I would think white people hating other white people would fall under some other ism?
I just think back to my days as an ignorant conservative and thoughts about illegal immigrants. It wasn't ever about race for me. Mexico was a poorer country with a government more corrupt than ours. Canada was a better place to be than America. "Logic" dictated that more people were worse off in Mexico and wanted to come to America than in Canada. Canadians were better off in Canada and probably didn't give a shit about trading it for America. This caused more concern over security of the southern border than the northern border.
I'm not doubting a lot of people are racially motivated. I'm just saying it is possible to not be racially motivated in the matter.
White people actually have a long history and proud history of racism against other people that most anyone would consider "white" by modern standards. "White" only really started being used as a blanket term when it became to the ruling class's advantage to do so, so as to create a more distinct and plainly visible delimiter between slaves and non-slaves.
https://medium.com/message/how-white-people-got-made-6eeb076ade42
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-voting/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.8ab49fbae1b6
It's not like this kind of attitude isn't still prevalent in certain instances either. Just look at how much anti-Semitic sentiment still exists in the world. While obviously a significant portion of that group is not "white" by modern interpretations of the term, I'd say a lot of them have skin that's the same color as mine. An average joe would look at me and, say, Leonard Nimoy (honestly, it was just the first name that came to mind) and describe both our races as "white." An alt-righter or klansman, conversely, would say that I'm white while Leonard Nimoy is a Jew.
Ordacleaphobia
Shameless Contrarian
Eh, I wouldn't say so.
Asians for example still have white skin (I don't know where 'yellow' came from), yet they still experience racism. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a lot of Americans that are racist against Russians now- they're white. It's just easier to understand and explain to others with skin color because it's a blatant physical difference.
If we're kicking back, you crack open a beer and say "We hired this Canadian dude at the plant today- guy can't operate a fidgeridoo to save his damn life" and I say something like "well yeah what'd you expect? Those leafs can't operate anything that requires attention to detail, they just slap it together and say it's good to go," I'm being pretty racist, no two ways around it, really.
I think it just doesn't provoke as visceral of a reaction because for whatever reason it seems acting racist toward white or Asian people is "not as big of a deal," people are more willing to chalk things up as harmless, joekz, banter, etc if it's aimed at a white person.
