“Our nation is a nation of immigrants. More than any other country, our strength comes from our own immigrant heritage and our capacity to welcome those from other lands." -Ronald Reagan
It’s ridiculous how far right the USA has moved when it comes to immigration. Reagan was a scumbag overall but was right about this. Frankly it pisses me off that even the Democrats are so far right on this.
As someone who has a lot of contact with the right, the conflating of illegal immigration with our past and present as a nation of immigrants is the point of the wedge and why this is so effective. Many conservatives I know are fully in support of legal immigration, and even expanding legal immigration as long as it is not done at the expense of existing Americans like with H1B slaves many tech companies want to import.
The left then paints them as racist for it, saying it is xenophobia and not support for rule of law and protections for vulnerable Americans. Many grew up taking a job cleaning bus station toilets and other jobs to make ends meet or get back on their feet that the left now says “Americans don’t want”, proving no actual jobs are lost. They, rightly or wrongly, see this as the lowest skilled Americans having jobs stolen from them, and see “Americans don’t want these jobs” as “Americans don’t want these jobs for that pay” pushing wages down using illegal immigrant labor.
The left enjoys telling business that if they can’t afford to pay a living wage for their lowest paid jobs then they don’t deserve to be in business, while at the same time decrying the cost increases to food and janitorial if those industries had to pay non-migrant workers enough to do those jobs. It is an easily exploitable hypocrisy that even allowed Brexit to happen.
It allows the Fox News crowd to be swindled more easily, and it allows actual racists to get away with more because the conservative masses can’t hear the dog whistles, which is the point of dog whistles.
Many conservatives I know are fully in support of legal immigration
Then why do they oppose it? That’s a contradiction. They oppose asylum seekers which is legal immigration. They oppose and make up fake news controversies about legal Haitian immigrants saying they are “eating the dogs.” The actively want to make it harder to come into the country legally. Even for illegal immigrants, if we create a path to citizenship they would be legal, but they don’t want that, they want to kick them out. The legal status of them thus does not matter to them, it’s not their primary concern, they just want to get the immigrants out.
You need to explain to me how opposing legal immigration = supporting legal immigration. Resolve that contradiction for me.
The left enjoys telling business that if they can’t afford to pay a living wage for their lowest paid jobs then they don’t deserve to be in business, while at the same time decrying the cost increases to food and janitorial if those industries had to pay non-migrant workers enough to do those jobs.
There is only a “contradiction” because you are an extremist dogmatist who insists we should all fall on our knees and worship the free market like it’s a god. Whatever the market says goes! Humans be damned! How dare you question the glory of the market??
No, there is no contradiction here because we can pay people a living wage and bring down price gouging. Your issue is because of the fact you are an extremist dogmatist who treats free markets like a religion where it is blasphemy to question anything private corporations do, you act like price gouging is just a fact of nature, like a natural disaster, something that can’t be helped because it’s just the will of all mighty market which we cannot question.
Again, no, some of us aren’t religious zealots for free markets. We recognize that we can demand workers have higher pay and companies stop price gouging at the same time and there is no contradiction here. You can’t wrap your brain around this because you think private corporations are equivalent to deities which we are not allowed to question, so if workers are paid higher and the corporations choose to offset this by raising prices, oh well, there’s nothing we can do, you can’t question the decisions of the great mighty oligarchs, whom we must fall to our knees and worship!
Yes we can. Grow a fucking spine you cuckhold.
“Americans don’t want these jobs for that pay” pushing wages down using illegal immigrant labor.
Aren’t conservatives the ones who say “guns don’t kill people, people kill people?” Yet somehow this agency disappears when it comes to wages being lowered. Wages are lowered on their own, again, like a natural disaster, the free market is just something we cannot question and we have to accept whatever it throws at us. No, people lower wages. It is an active decision by private enterprises, the people who run them have human agency which you continue to pretend does not exist because you are a complete dogmatist who wants people to bow before them like gods. It is those people, human beings with agency who push down wages. Wages don’t just magically go down on their own whenever your country has immigration.
I would ordinarily love to discuss several of your points as you seemed to request, chiefly surrounding legal immigration, asylum, labor pools, and the painting of all “conservatives” as a monolithic bloc that all personally believe what the worst parts of the Republican party espouse, but I can tell by the vitriol, name calling, and disparaging assignment of who you decided I am for pointing out my own observations of others motivations that this will be pointless. I hope you have a better day going forward.
“The worst parts” is literally the Republican party’s major platform that they put front and center and is literally what they campaigned on? What on earth are you on about?
What’s there to even “debate”? You can’t change the mind of an extremist dogmatist. You cannot begin the discussion with wild claims about we aren’t ever allowed to question any decision a private enterprise ever makes then honestly be like, “I just want a serious discussion 🥲.” No, you don’t, you come here to just preach your religious ideology, and you’re upset some people don’t mindlessly accept it without question.
They are all just people. I don’t care if illegal immigrants take my jobs (even though that isn’t actually happening, it’s fear mongering)
Of course Reagan meant [white] immigrants.
It’s ridiculous how far right the USA has moved when it comes to immigration.
Agreed, and I think maybe we should remove the plaque from the Statue of Liberty as it clearly no longer applies.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Clearly they aren’t sending their best.
Reagan was an idiot about a lot of things. His policies were often at odds with his rhetoric which was quite progressive for its time and place. If you listened to him though, he was not openly hostile to immigration. Neither him nor H.W. where on the scale of today’s right.
Woah your saying the right is suddenly anti-immigration now? That is really nonsensical and ignores a lot of history.
Dems, Rebubs as individuals aren’t really anything other than drones that follow orders on what to think and what to get angry about. It’s a systemic issue where money is injected into the fringes to piss the other side off and force a defensive posture and eventually conflict from fear.
Every idea that categorizes into left/right needs to be challenged at this point.
The left will never prevail
The right will never prevailWe must recognize and respond to what is really happening.
We’re a nation of immigrants and we should cherish that. But at the same time you have to defend the borders. I don’t know why this is so controversial.
Again, Republicans have a moronic idea with building walls, but Democrats have no ideas at all and even refuse to acknowledge the problem.
It’s the same shit on so many issues.
I can’t help but notice you used the word “defend,” as if you’re talking about the military holding off an enemy advance rather than a policy of not letting desperate poor people move here.
Of course in the conservative world, that’s exactly the thought process. Dehumanization and bigotry are the first step of many policies there.
This can be flipped just as easily. I am noticing that you seem to be viewing the existence of borders in an inherently hostile viewpoint. Do you believe that this country, or any country, could survive if they let anyone and everyone on earth that wanted to come for any reason at any time and without any limits, into the country? Could Canada survive in its current state if 100 million Americans suddenly moved there? Could Tibet or Ukraine survive if millions of Chinese or Russian citizens moved there?
You appear to be implying that nations and national identity is inherently bigoted, which is exactly the thought process in some corners of the leftist world. Anarchy and destruction of existing society is the first step of many policies there.
I think instead of being hostile to people coming to the US for a better life, perhaps we could create faster pathways to citizenship. Allow them to work and pay taxes while processing, and allow them to have that better life, and to be invested in making the US a better place.
And nobody is saying just allow anyone in, we could still screen people (like we already do), but we could also treat them like people. This whole thing of making these people the enemy is FUD in order to allow the Right to control its base, and the Left now feels they need to do “border-Nazi-lite” because the Right has controlled the narrative on this for so long.
All Empires are running immigration. Immigrants come to where the money is being spent. This isn’t even just American history.
I thought the reason trump won was the Hispanic support. That was what was so strange about this election.
It’s not any more strange than literally any republican voting to shoot themselves in the foot. Nobody benefits from it. Not even the rich! It just feeds their money addiction like a drug dealer feeds a junkie.
Yup. But just remember that everyone, possibly including the native nations are all immigrants. Now the native nations were here first so obviously they should call the shots.
Definetly no cheating…
What are you talking about? Pedro is the exception, the one good guy. They won’t deport him, I need him! They can’t do that to me, can they?
“Mommy, why did we send Jesus to a concentration camp?”
I mean the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish race. It’s one of those things it is easy to talk about, “the Jewish race is being exterminated,” says one party member, “that’s quite clear, it’s in our program, elimination of the Jews, and we’re doing it, exterminating them.” And then they come, 80 million worthy Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. Of course the others are vermin, but this one is an A-1 Jew.
-Heinrich Himmler to senior SS officers, 1943.
He’s a good hombre.
They claim to love Jesus, so maybe they will spare him.
I doubt they would’ve even taken the sign off the lawn.
Immigrant workers in the US are the definition of essential workers. Many work hard agricultural jobs and take exploitatively low wages to do so.
It’s ok. Once DOGE kills the economy, everybody will be eager to trim trees and drive Uber and deliver DoorDash. Except there won’t be anyone able to pay them to do that.
Nonsense, the FREE MARKET will provide. The FREE MARKET loves us and wants to protect us from the mean old world.
The FREE MARKET that bans all freedom by placing Tariffs against other countries to control the market and banning the production of products such as lab grown meats before they come to market and car sales from manufacturers to consumers without having middle men. (Those 2 are just Florida examples).
We want the enslaved market
Yep, the FREE MARKET working as the founding fathers intended…
They’ll be “detained” in for profit prisons and then under the federal prisoner labor program they’ll get paid 10 cents an hour to do the same work. The detention will end up becoming indefinite and private corps will reap the profits of modern-day slavery on a bigger scale than they already do from our (disproportionately) large incarcerated population.
I hate how possible this is
And Californian’s rejected a ballot measure to make this illegal, so they’re getting what they wanted.
SOME Californians
Grrrrr
Absolutely insane this measure was rejected
Removed by mod
What are the increments between those 2 values?
So fucking true
I wouldn’t mind a sequel to the movie Day Without A Mexican
The sequel is called “All year round with slaves”.
Do not use a chainsaw like that. yikes.
thankyou.gif
The artist obviously haven’t used a chainsaw. That guy is about to get a face full of knocked backed chainsaw, let’s hope the brake works.
Edit: I just noticed how his feet are positioned. WTF? both feet flat on the ground! Is he walking beneath the branch he’s cutting? Gah!
Yup. You guys have got it nailed down! It’s the “backwoods country hicks” (you know, the people you constantly blame for everything) that hire illegal immigrants to maintain their pristine manicured suburban lawns.
Totally not the city suburbanites that the Harris campaign said would be their path to victory. Totally not the people who simp for their HOAs. Totally not the people who are just too darn important in their own careers to sink low enough to do their own lawn maintenance (they have to save their soft pillowy hands for their keyboards!) Not them at all!
It’s those darn “country bumpkins” that hire illegals to mow their lawns!
I don’t see how this follows from the comic… which was one single panel, by the way. It’s okay if it made you feel uncomfortable.
I mean, I’m in a Florida neighborhood with a lot of retirees where this is not a parody at all.
You are right about manicured lawns being a colossal waste, but all the Republicans around here sure seem to love it, even with the swampy climate doing its absolute best to turn it wild again.
Big houses and lawns make people miserable when they have to care for it themselves, assuming they are physically capable of doing that at all. Frankly people need to stop hoarding so much junk and being so OCD, but Trump’s immigration policy does little to solve that and Harris wasn’t going to move the needle much either.
In other words, HOAs and culture may real villains in this comic, but you are falsely associating them with harris suburbanites.
What about that comic implies any of that you nut job?
Yeah go ahead shoot your own foot off dude. Sooner the better.
