There are cultures where people eat cats, dogs, bats, pangolins, etc. Horse meat is sold at supermarkets in Canada. If you say that pointing this out is dehumanizing, this can only mean that you consider your own diet to be the only one fit for humans and everybody who eats something you don’t is not human.
This is the problem with repeating somebody else’s talking points. You don’t give yourself a chance to think about what you are actually saying. Talking points are cringe. All of them, left and right. If you’ve heard an expression repeated several times on TV or social media, that’s reason not to use it.
Clarissa's Blog 
It’s however dehumanizing to make up (“create”, to use JD Vance’s words on TV yesterday) stories that tend to show immigrants in ways deliberately off-putting to the local population — especially when they’re not true.
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“stories that tend to show immigrants in ways deliberately off-putting to the local population — especially when they’re not true”
What about if they’re true? Like…. MENA migrants in Germany are far, far more likely to be involved in random knife attacks on others than those of German background.
Is it dehumanizing to point that out? Should it have any affect on migration policy?
What about “illegal aliens admitted by the Biden administration have killed X number of citizens, often after being released from US detention”?
Should that be reported? Should it affect migration policy?
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“Should that be reported? Should it affect migration policy?”
There are many ways to answer this question, depending on your intention.
Jewish people, for instance, believe that life begins at birth. Abortion is legal in Isreal up to the moment of birth.
So if, during the high immigration of poor Jewish immigrants to New York in the 19th and 20th centuries, someone were to observe, rightly, that Jews abort more pregnancies, and this is terrible for New England values, would it be true? (likely yes). Would it be dehumanizing? Absolutely yes. Would it be proper to use it to affect immigration policies? (absolutely no).
You know, by its design, that mass immigration exists to bring in people that will certainly be different from you, and it will take years to fully integrate them. And that in this process they will change you as much as you’ll change them. This is built into the process.
Again, I assume that you know this instinctively, but people typically throw away what they know to be true when they’re trying to win an argument. Just change “Haiti” to “Polish” or “Irish” and you’ll see people beginning to see the exceptions. You only need to hear Clarissa argue, and suddenly, the rules are no longer important. You start hearing about IQ, as if that was ever the basis of immigration.
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“by its design, that mass immigration exists….”
To do a bunch of stuff that, if I’m not mistaken, a majority of citizens have not signed on for and if put as you very clearly put it, a majority of citizens would never sign on for it.
Why should it happen again?
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How does “a majority of citizens” sign up for policies in a democracy? Which majority signed up for Trump’s covid policies? What about his Muslim ban? etc. Isn’t it the nature of presidential systems that the president makes policies, using the legitimacy of his electoral mandate? If you don’t like him, you vote him out and hope that the next person changes it. You don’t go demonizing other humans who have done nothing to hurt you except follow the rules. The Haitians in Ohio, as the Governor said on TV yesterday, are there legally.
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Here’s the problem. Every presidential candidate in the past 30 years promised to do something about the open borders. Every candidate promised to limit immigration. Exactly zero of them delivered after being elected. All we ever get is amnesty (do you know what that is? Maybe you aren’t American, and if so I can explain). This amnesty is invariably called “comprehensive immigration reform or bill.” This has become a joke at this point.
Why we can’t get a president or senators or congressmen or anything who would follow the will of the people is a fascinating issue that I’d love to discuss. But it’s impossible to discuss because people cling to the dubious joys of political partisanship and don’t hear anything beyond praise or criticism of “their” candidate.
So you can “hope”, as you said, that the next president will do something about it but knowing how it’s been going for decade, it’s impossible to sustain that hope if you are even marginally aware of the history of this issue.
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They’re all terrified that social security (and every other deficit funding scam) will collapse if we can’t infinitely increase the number of workforce-age people forever.
They’re not wrong. But nobody wants to be the leper who talks about that out loud.
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From everything I’ve read, the problem with the southern border is topography and privacy laws. You can’t really fence it because of the Rio Grande, which doesn’t follow the human-drawn borders, and private lands at the border, which you can’t fence because it belongs to individuals. There are parts you can fence, and Trump tried that, but since you can’t fence everywhere, it’s useless. Plus, even the fences he built were either porous by design, or are easily surmounted.
And we haven’t mentioned the fact that most illegal immigrants come from visa overstays. I know a number of people who came to the US for school, and simply refused to return. They’re still here. They married and found a way to keep earning a living underground and contributing to society. They avoid crime because they’d be caught and deported (which explains the finding that most immigrants don’t commit crimes like natives). In any case, until visa overstays are taken care of, this category of people will keep coming.
But how do you solve the fence issue? Should government just forcibly take over people’s lands and terraform the Rio Grande so it can be fenceable?
Of course this is never forcibly articulated by politicians, so we continue instead to demagogue each other.
My question to you, Clarissa, is why don’t you focus on your representatives and senators? There’s little the president can do if there’s neither the overwhelming political will of the country (in both parties) to solve a problem that benefits their political or demographic or economic aims.
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Can anybody link to where I explained at length how to solve the illegal immigration issue without fences or studies of topography? I can’t repeat that whole thing again. Short answer: Canada. Let’s do it like that hotbed of racism and white supremacy known as Canada.
As for visa overstays, that’s a talking point from 20 years ago. I had no idea that people still clutch on to it.
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Canada is great in that their immigration is merit-based (which usually skews towards third-world countries, where people prioritize higher education and are high achievers. See Nigerian/Ghanaian immigrants in the US and in Canada). That, eventually, leads to more xenophobia down the line, when people start crying about “20,000 Haitians in our neighbourhood” even when they’re there legally.
The cure to xenophobia is to end xenophobia. No matter what immigration plan you put forward, there’s always someone who hates it. I’d prefer more merit-based immigration in America myself, rather than family-based. But that will only increase more brown people, and lead to even more xenophobia.
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If people in third-world countries are such high achievers, then why are they third-world countries? Why are these high-achieving people so desperate to join the society of the low-achieving xenophobes we have over here?
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Even worse if they’re not true. e.g. “Drinking blood of Christians” and other disgusting blood libel.
Vance’s excuse would be “yes, we make these things up to draw attention to mass immigration.” If we won’t accept that horrible argument when it comes to Jews, why should we accept it with others?
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“Vance’s excuse”
Why should mass migration happen against the will of the majority of the citizenry?
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How do you measure the will of the citizenry is a question you haven’t answered. Majority of Americans support a comprehensive immigration bill (yes, that includes amnesty), but you can see Clarissa there still demagoguing it. So when does the will of the majority matter and when does it not?
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This is a bizarre obsession with Jews, that’s for sure.
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They’re a prominent migrant group, so it’s no obsession. I regularly bring in Irish and Polish as well. But you’re Jewish so it’s easy to use something you can relate with. If you have a problem with that, you’ll have to say why more explicitly.
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Yes, report the facts, not the nazi prostitute lies!
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People should give a second to thinking about how what they write looks. I don’t see answer trees in my app. There’s no way for me to know who “the Nazi prostitute” in this comment is. I’m very interested in the addressee of these Nazi prostitutes’ – a historic phenomenon if which I’m, sadly, unaware – prostitution but there’s not even a hint of that in this comment.
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The nazi prostitute is Laura Loomer.
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OK, in that case, I support your comment.
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“where people eat cats”
Attested in Poland during the hunger after WWII…. cat was euphemistically called “królik dachowy” (roof rabbit).
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I’ve eaten dog.
What I haven’t done is drive without a license and kill somebody’s grandma.
https://nypost.com/2024/09/13/us-news/haitian-driver-makes-illegal-turn-in-springfield-oh-smashes-into-moms-truck-with-autistic-daughter-in-back/
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“What I haven’t done is …. kill somebody’s grandma”
But we’re assured that he’s here legally so it’s all good! No biggie!
It’s horrible and dehumanizing to mention crimes committed by legal immigrants!
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Wasn’t charged with anything, apparently. So I guess it’s all legal and fine.
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“I guess it’s all legal and fine”
Take that, hater!
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Before September 11, 2001, holding a US driver’s license was decoupled from one’s immigration status. You simply showed up at a DMV with some proof of a US address (utility bills, etc), and were able to receive a license after passing the appropriate tests. Unfortunately, driver’s license is now tied to a person’s immigration status. There are a number of completely legal immigrants who are not able to obtain one because they are in a limbo of waiting for paperwork (for example, my green card renewal took a whopping 2 years) – they entered legally, their presence is completely legal, but driver’s license cannot be obtained/renewed. Obviously, illegal immigrants will not be able to obtain a license under these rules. I am in favor of complete decoupling of DMV and licensing from immigration, so that we can make sure that people who are driving cars are qualified to do so.
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Right now, I have a friend who is having the devil’s own time getting a driver’s license, for that very reason. I’m with you on that one.
But also, she doesn’t drive. Because it’s not legal.
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Sometimes, not driving is not a real choice a person has in this situation.
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It’s always a choice. Had a family friend growing up, who was a *mechanic*, and lost his license for years because of DUI. Did not drive. During those years, he got sober, found Jesus, and rode a moped and a bicycle most places, and called my parents whenever he had a dentist appointment or something that was just too far to get to. When we’d take a car to him, he’d diagnose it by riding around in the passenger seat with us. Absolutely huge pain in the rear, but he obeyed the law because he wanted that license back. Got it, eventually.
Yes, being poor, losing your license, not being able to get a license… all that sucks and makes life way harder. Plenty of people live with it. It’s not an excuse for getting behind the wheel of a car and driving unlicensed, untested, and uninsured.
The uninsured part in particular is a nasty piece of work. The last guy to run over my dad was uninsured, the medical bills ran into the stratosphere, and our insurance wouldn’t pay because the other guy was at fault. We managed to put a lien on some property he owned, but the guy was somehow able to sell it on the DL, and we could never collect.
Yeah, we should make it easier for legal immigrants to get a drivers’ license. No, that’s not an excuse for people to drive illegally.
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There is a world of difference between driving without a license because you never got it or lost it (for example because of a DUI) and driving with an expired license for a couple of months while waiting for documents to come. Obviously, it is wrong in all those cases, but a legal immigrant driving their car with an expired license (insured) bothers me much less than a person with a suspended license doing the same. I do not want to defend people driving without a license (which is wrong in all those cases) but rather my point is the laws should be changed. And don’t even get me started on people on certain kinds of visa having to come to DMV once a year in person to renew their license. The system is broken very badly (for everyone!), and Covid made everything so much worse. The DMV is so bad where I live that citizens are now asking questions about whether it is OK to drive with an expired license as they are not able to get an appointment to renew in time and walk-ins are not guaranteed (spoiler: there is no grace period). It’s a good thing I was trained to stand in lines and deal with insane bureaucracy as a child as I’m finding that training quite useful here.
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I understand what you are saying but it so happens that the driver’s license stands in lieu of a passport in the US. It’s the only form of government ID that everyone has. Nothing else comes close. So if the millions upon millions of illegals get licenses, that opens the door for them to get absolutely all rights of citizens, including voting. All meaningful differences between illegals and citizens would end. That is absolutely an inconvenience to legal immigrants but the alternative is a nightmare.
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“All meaningful differences between illegals and citizens would end”
That’s exactly what the open border freaks want. They’re very clear about that.
That’s also why they’re fanatically against in-person voting and proof of identity….
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Would you rather there be people in the US who can’t (learn to) drive? Does that make the city safer if there is a class of people who don’t know the rules of the road and who will (as we know with these things) operate motor vehicles in order to get from one place to the other?
The thing conservatives usually fail to see is that these rules were not put in place just to be generous. They’re there because they solve a problem or mitigate bigger ones. If our roads become more dangerous because we’re trying to catch people, how does that make our lives better?
It’s what we learnt with prohibition.
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I’d rather these people weren’t here at all. They should go home and apply from there, going through the legal channels. I’ve made no secret of wanting this, so it’s strange to ask me which modifications to the current mess I want. None. I want none. I want immigration cases if people who are in the country illegally not to be processed at all, ever.
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“the driver’s license stands in lieu of a passport in the US. It’s the only form of government ID that everyone has”
Perhaps citizenship/immigration status should be added to drivers licenses?
That would solve a lot of issues.
I’m sure the open borders freaks would have a cow about that one (and I’m sure no legal immigrants would be upset).
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I’m fine with this, actually. But no one has proposed it in congress. See, you can’t read people’s minds.
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“No one has proposed it in congress”
Drivers licences are the pervue of states not the federal government. Theoretically states could already include that information.
And in other news you self-identify as an open borders freak?
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What’s stopping red states from implementing this, if it will solve the problem?
In the same vein, what’s stopping Ohio governor, mayor, and senator, from taking care of the citizens of Ohio that the senator says are struggling?
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The political and business elites in the US are in favor of open borders because they don’t have to live with the results. They live in mansions surrounded by high fences, send their children to $35K a year elementary schools, travel by private jets, hire expensive doctors and don’t come in touch with the rabble.
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@Clarissa
So if this is the case, why are you directing your ire at the immigrants rather than at the so-called elites?
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I have not directed any ire at immigrants. They are pawns in all this, victims. I feel bad for them but even worse for their children.
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My question is, rather, why should we expect no inconvenience from the exploding numbers of illegals in the country? We are against mass migration precisely because it makes life worse for everybody. It makes sense to oppose the cause, not the symptoms.
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I came to this country before September 11, 2001. The system worked very well without the driver’s license being used in lieu of a passport, so there is a precedent. Also, there are two levels of driver’s licenses currently in place, one where the driver’s license can be used as a “real ID” (you get a star on your license and can use it to go through the airport security), and one where you do no have that extra check that gives you the “real ID”. I believe that decoupling it is quite simple, and there even is a mechanism already in place where the license is just a license and not an ID. Having seen international students and postdocs suffering with these insane rules makes me very much in favor of decoupling this.
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Yes, we need to decouple official ID from drivers’ licensing.
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A region of a country where I come from is known for eating dogs. I never ate one but I have no doubt that people do eat cats and dogs (and squirrels), perhaps even in the US (and perhaps even in Springfield, OH). The sad part of the entire story is that people are getting more incensed about cats and dogs being (allegedly) eaten than about human beings (both local and immigrants) being assaulted, killed, and abused. I kind of understand why Vance led with the pet eating story, because sadly, many people care more about their pets than about their neighbors.
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We are getting to a point where people are intellectually unable to process anything beyond highly emotional memes and slogans.
I’d support IQ-based legal immigration to repair this growing problem.
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“people are intellectually unable to process anything beyond highly emotional memes and slogans”
I can’t help but think that’s be design…. people get goosed up emotions in the campaign and then don’t expect anything from those they elect.
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Exactly. It’s like a sports match. Our team won! Let’s celebrate! That “our team” will then proceed aggressively to make our lives worse is not noticed.
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IQ doesn’t seem to protect against this very well ime
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“skews towards third-world countries, where people prioritize higher education and are high achievers.”
So strip mining talent from third-world countries is okay?
Doesn’t Nigeria need professionals?
Sorry Nigeria, a bunch of bougie Americans need you to work for them.
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Isn’t that what Canada is doing? I’m only stretching Clarissa’s argument just a little bit.
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And what’s wrong with Nigerians (or any other citizen of the world) coming to work for Americans? Is this not how the country has grown from its early days? Are Nigerians/Ghanaians/Kenyans etc complaining about the stress of travel or integration? Was Obama’s birth not as a result of one such intercontinental travel? Was Trump’s not?
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Yes, strip-mining talent is OK because we’re concerned with what’s best for the US. That’s what the discussion has been about. You’re changing the frame of reference.
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I still don’t understand why all that amazing talent that’s urgently needed in the US failed to make Haiti or Ghana livable.
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What a bunch of bull. Aren’t there people living and thriving in Ghana and Haiti right now? Because there are people fleeing a place doesn’t mean that there are no people living and thriving there. See Mexico.
Sometimes I wonder whether you’re really an academic, cos you argue like a high schooler.
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It’s a conservative blog, not an academic essay.
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But why does it have to also be a dumb one? Not all conservatives are empty-headed. You at least expect better from a department head.
But then, like she says every day, our system has gone to the dogs.
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OK, but wouldn’t the people thriving there want to stay there? So the high-achievers stay, right? Who’s coming, then?
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“Keep trying. You’re almost there. I know you can do it.”
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I’m glad you are studiously memorizing my words. It will do you a world of good.
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Now you just need to apply them to yourself and we’re good.
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Using the royal “we” now, are you? Are these other people in the room with you right now? Do you hear their voices?
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On visa overstays and that being a talking point from 20 years ago: has the situation changed?
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Obviously it changed since the border was eliminated completely.
The talking point about 11 million illegals in the country is as outdated.
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The GOP: THEY SHOOT THE DAHWGS! https://youtu.be/B9vNQIHjUGs?si=mTyt16iHr0AKeH7D
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And they wreck school buses: 11yo killed, 20 children injured.
But sure, keep talking about pets. It’s what the MSM wants.
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Shitlib response: “it’s Dayton, not Springfield, so it doesn’t count!”
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