I was working on a project this evening so wasn’t able to tune in to Donald Trump (not that I would typically want to watch a politician speak). What did he say? TIME has the transcript of the State of the Union speech.
I’ve just skimmed it so far. It seems to open with a terrifying series of natural disasters.
Hispanic American unemployment has also reached the lowest levels in history
This can’t be true, can it? Absent economic collapse, how could there be an “unemployed” lifestyle category in the days before unemployment insurance and welfare existed?
The stock market has smashed one record after another, gaining $8 trillion in value. That is great news for Americans’ 401k, retirement, pension, and college savings accounts.
My neighbors still hate Trump for making them richer! The boom will defer what had been an impending disaster in a lot of states with unfunded pension liabilities. Now they’re mostly sort of funded, thanks to the Trump Bump!
We slashed the business tax rate from 35 percent all the way down to 21 percent, so American companies can compete and win against anyone in the world.
Let’s see if we can fab chips in competition with the Taiwanese! I’m betting “no.”
All Americans deserve accountability and respect
We are showing respect to 2+ million Americans by keeping them in comfortable prisons?
America is a nation of builders. We built the Empire State Building in just 1 year — is it not a disgrace that it can now take 10 years just to get a permit approved for a simple road?
Shouldn’t this be “America used to be a nation of builders” then?
We can lift our citizens from welfare to work, from dependence to independence, and from poverty to prosperity. … And let us support working families by supporting paid family leave.
The best way to be at work and independent is by being at home on paid leave and letting other people do the work? (See Paid Maternity Leave: Employers or Taxpayers should Pay?)
The fourth and final pillar protects the nuclear family by ending chain migration. Under the current broken system, a single immigrant can bring in virtually unlimited numbers of distant relatives. Under our plan, we focus on the immediate family by limiting sponsorships to spouses and minor children. … In recent weeks, two terrorist attacks in New York were made possible by the visa lottery and chain migration. In the age of terrorism, these programs present risks we can no longer afford.
Okay, but Syed Rizwan Farook brought in Tashfeen Malik as his wife and she encouraged him to wage jihad in San Bernardino.
Ryan Holets is 27 years old, and an officer with the Albuquerque Police Department. He is here tonight with his wife Rebecca. Last year, Ryan was on duty when he saw a pregnant, homeless woman preparing to inject heroin. When Ryan told her she was going to harm her unborn child, she began to weep. She told him she did not know where to turn, but badly wanted a safe home for her baby.
In that moment, Ryan said he felt God speak to him: “You will do it — because you can.” He took out a picture of his wife and their four kids. Then, he went home to tell his wife Rebecca. In an instant, she agreed to adopt. The Holets named their new daughter Hope.
This is a heartwarming story of American success? What happened to the biological mom? [Update: Journal of Popular Studies to the rescue!]
Atop the dome of this Capitol stands the Statue of Freedom. She stands tall and dignified among the monuments to our ancestors who fought and lived and died to protect her. Monuments to Washington and Jefferson
Slaveholders Washington and Jefferson were fighting for Freedom?
Readers: What did you think of the live delivery? My friends on Facebook are outraged… because Trump.
I think it was a nice speech. A little boring and maybe a little long but overall i would give it a B+.
It was a lousy speech. It was very boring and dragged on for much longer than it needed to (it was the third longest SOTU address ever record). For the most part though it was boring in relatively conventional ways, lots of platitudes, pauses for applause, and self congratulatory nonsense.
On substance the worst part was probably the immigration segment and I suspect that was probably the part of the address that riled up your liberal friends the most. Basically entire immigration related segment of the speech was dedicated to talking about MS13 and how immigrants are murderous thugs. He even had the families of some kids who died in gang violence present so that he could point to them while they were grieving and blame it on immigration. This is no way to conduct a national conversation on such an important topic and will only drive idiotic hysteria at a time when we can scarce afford it.
Trump’s emphasis on immigrant crime in particular was especially troubling considering that the overwhelming consuls of sociological research has for decades found that immigrants are less likely to commit crime than natives. In fact counter-intuitively second generation immigrants have higher crime rates than their parents, likely because they are better integrated into our more violent society.
If you are interested here is a pretty good review of the literature on the impact of immigration on crime: https://www.nap.edu/read/21746/chapter/9#327
Overall besides the immigration bits I’d say it was a shitty speech but fairly unremarkable for Trump. There certainly wasn’t anything praiseworthy about it.
The praise for the fact that immigrants have somewhat lower crime rates than natives is odd. Why not only let in immigrants that are 1/10 as criminal prone as natives? It’s not hard. Google does it when selecting employees.
I just some bits on the news — not my country so I need to ask, is it a standard for the prez to deliver one statement and then get applause, and then move one to the next statement, get applause and so on and so forth? It makes American politicians look like a bunch of servile sycophants, but it might have been the BBC edits.
[Moderator: Yes–look at older SOTU speeches by recent Presidents on YouTube.]
>The praise for the fact that immigrants have somewhat lower crime rates than natives is odd.
How so? If a higher percentage of my neighbors are immigrants than I am statistically less likely to be a victim of a crime than if they were native born. The clear and logical implication is that I am better off having first generation immigrants as neighbors than with native born neighbors. If we allow only a small number of immigrants into the country then their impact on overall crime rates will be minuscule and there will be very little benefit to me. However if we allow in large numbers of immigrants then the impact will be large enough to actually drive down overall crime rates and make me safer.
Your argument that only immigrants who commit crime at one tenth the rate of natives should be accepted simply makes absolutely no sense. Obviously it is the crime *rate* that matters, not the absolute level of crime in the entire country.
>Google does it when selecting employees.
Nations aren’t countries and this analogy is stupid. Google hires the best applicants they can find on the market for the wages they offer, nothing more and nothing less. A nation has a fundamentally different relationship with its citizens than a company with its employees. A nation serves to establish laws and institutions that serve to preserve rights and maintain a coherent society within its borders. Citizens do not work for the benefit of the country like employees. Neither Trump, nor Congress, nor anyone else at any level of government be it local, state, or federal, is your boss merely because you are a citizen.
If anything restricting immigration directly interferes with the rights of citizens who already live in the country. Suppose I own a building and rent out apartments to people, if an illegal immigrant wants to live in my apartment and the government stops me from renting it to them by deporting them than the government has directly interfered with my business and undermined my property rights. The same is true of government stopping companies (including Google) from hiring immigrants. Indeed it is ironic that you cite Google as your example considering that the company has publicly advocated for loosening immigration controls.
>I just some bits on the news — not my country so I need to ask, is it a standard for the prez to deliver one statement and then get applause, and then move one to the next statement, get applause and so on and so forth? It makes American politicians look like a bunch of servile sycophants, but it might have been the BBC edits.
it certainly wasn’t the BBC edits. I watched the entire thing live and that is pretty much how the entire thing went down. That’s why the speech ended up being so long even though Trump didn’t actually say much. If anything I’d Imagine the BBC would have edits would have reduced the amount of time spent on applause.
“If anything restricting immigration directly interferes with the rights of citizens who already live in the country. Suppose I own a building and rent out apartments to people, if an illegal immigrant wants to live in my apartment and the government stops me from renting it to them by deporting them than the government has directly interfered with my business and undermined my property rights.”
Why not buy an apartment building in El Salvador in that case?
Not quite. As the OED puts it,
Nation: A large body of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular state or territory.
Try telling the IRS that. When is tax freedom day again?
If you look at how things actually are, you might notice that there are also obligations. For example, opening the borders so that you can get more workers while their families go on welfare is an instance of privatizing profits and socializing costs. Paying for that welfare is your obligation as a citizen. Hence, as an existing citizen, rather than autoadmitting whoever turns up, you might want to have a say in what obligations you are assuming.
“the overwhelming consuls of sociological research has for decades found that immigrants are less likely to commit crime than natives.”
In the American case, what happens if you disaggregate natives by race?
“In fact counter-intuitively second generation immigrants have higher crime rates than their parents, likely because they are better integrated into our more violent society.”
I’ve heard of the same results for Europe so a violent destination society is probably not it.
@Benjamin: “the overwhelming consuls of sociological research has for decades found that immigrants are less likely to commit crime than natives.”
Somebody needs to tell the recent immigrants in Germany, France and Sweden that they are doing it wrong…
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-germany-crime/violent-crime-rises-in-germany-and-is-attributed-to-refugees-idUSKBN1ES16J
— Violent crime rose by about 10 percent in 2015 and 2016, a study showed. It attributed more than 90 percent of that to young male refugees.
It noted, however, that migrants settling from war-torn countries such as Syria were much less likely to commit violent crimes that those from other places who were unlikely to be given asylum. —
Trump offered amnesty to the dreamers. Democrats are turning it down.
That’s the biggest story. Democrats are proving to be completely unreasonable on the subject of immigration.
>Why not buy an apartment building in El Salvador in that case?
I don’t think you understand *why* immigrants have low crime rates. It’s because they are a self-selected group. Even in the most insanely hellish conditions most people prefer not to leave the land they grew up on, that’s what Puerto Rico is still inhabitted even though everyone on the Island is a US citizen, it is also why 40% of the Jews in Germany were still living there when WW2 started. It is only the relatively adventurous and strong willed people who choose to leave. The mere decision to emigrate in and of itself acts as a filter, the people who do it are less likely to commit crime, that’s why immigrant crime rates can be so low even when they come from nations which have very high crime rates. Another aspect of it is probably the fact that first generation immigrants know how much better things are in America and don’t want to risk deportation by committing crime.
In fact if you has actually read the link I posted earlier you would know that young poorly educated men from El Salvador have an incarceration rate of 1.7%, this stands in sharp contrast to young American man of the same class who have an incarceration rate of 10.7%.
>In the American case, what happens if you disaggregate natives by race?
Nothing, the gap is so strong it remains even without controlling for race or fo socio economic class. Of course the gap is much stronger if you DO make those controls, but you don’t need to. The only controls that are used in these studies are controls for age and gender, which make sense and are not unfair in my opinion. Please actually read the link I posted instead of asking me these dumbass questions.
>I’ve heard of the same results for Europe so a violent destination society is probably not it.
You have to look at the neighborhoods these people are actually moving into. Believe it or not violent Ghettos have always existed in Europe and restrictive zoning practices deliberately perpetuate these regions of concentrated poverty. Immigrants obviously aren’t going to assimilate to the aggregate of the entire society, they assimilate to their immediate surroundings.
>Somebody needs to tell the recent immigrants in Germany, France and Sweden that they are doing it wrong…
Not all trends in immigration are identical. I was referencing American immigration in particular where the findings have always been the same. Refugees such as those currently arriving in Europe are very different from ordinary immigrants since they did not immigrate by choice but rather are forced to leave because of war or genocide. As such it stands to reason that the selection effects at play are much weaker. Furthermore it should be obvious to anyone that research conducted in America on American immigration is much more relevant to a discussion of American immigration policy, if you are willing to cherry pick the most extreme cases that happened on different continents under very different circumstances then of course you will be able to find exceptions, but doing so just makes you an intellectually dishonest moron.
>Trump offered amnesty to the dreamers. Democrats are turning it down.
In exchange for eliminating most family sponsorships which would have reduced immigration by about 40%. Kind of funny that Trump blathered all campaign about how he was not opposed to legal immigration and then once in office he tries to strike a deal in which legal immigration would be cut in half. It’s almost as though he dislikes immigration and sees it as an evil to be minimized…
>Not quite. As the OED puts it,
If you weren’t an idiot you would realize that my definition of “nation” is a description of the role of government whereas the OED is defining something much more general. The definitions are not contradictory and in fact describe different things, I was focusing on the role of government specifically within a nation because that is what is relevant to this conversation.
>If you look at how things actually are, you might notice that there are also obligations. For example, opening the borders so that you can get more workers while their families go on welfare is an instance of privatizing profits and socializing costs. Paying for that welfare is your obligation as a citizen. Hence, as an existing citizen, rather than autoadmitting whoever turns up, you might want to have a say in what obligations you are assuming.
This argument is bad on several levels, first of all Immigrants typically contribute more in taxes than they receive in benefits. Secondly it is trivially easy to simply restrict voting rights and welfare rights for low skill immigrants, for example they could be denied the right to welfare or a vote for twenty years (they are already barred from welfare for five years which has a substantial impact). Thirdly Immigrants tend to be young and healthy, while the overwhelming majority of government spending in this country goes towards the sick and elderly. Fourthly even if none of what I just said was true immigrants still would not constitute an “extra burden” since they would receive welfare from the same pool as people already on welfare. Are you a welfare leach worried that the immigrants are going to dilute your next check? If so I have very little sympathy for your argument seeing as it is purely selfish and entitled.
The statement that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes is complete BS.
By definition, every illegal alien who is on US soil is a criminal. Entering the US illegally is a misdemeanor if done once, but a felony if done twice or more – and we have seen many cases where criminals left and re-entered the USA multiple times.
Even leaving that aside however, the chance of a US citizen being incarcerated over their lifetime is about 6.6 per cent according to the latest calculation by the DOJ. And the immigrant population, younger and thus still more likely to commit crimes (75 year olds don’t commit a lot of crime) is already past the 6.6% number.
>By definition, every illegal alien who is on US soil is a criminal. Entering the US illegally is a misdemeanor if done once, but a felony if done twice or more – and we have seen many cases where criminals left and re-entered the USA multiple times.
This is the most circular arguments in the history of circular arguments, possibly ever.
“sociological research has for decades found that immigrants are less likely to commit crime than natives”
That’s an interesting statement given the dearth of reliable numbers.
Let’s take Hispanic vs White crime, for example.
On one hand, the FBI Uniform Crime Report apparently lumps whites and Latinos together under “White” so one really does not know what real numbers are ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States ).
On the other hand, Hispanics are incarcerated at a rate of about 831 per 100K vs. 450 for Whites. “American Asian” prison population rates are hard to come by, but perhaps it’s about 200 per 100K ( https://infogram.com/asian-american-incarceration-rates-1g0n2ow58010p4y ). Since overall incarceration rate in the US is about 716 per 100K, it would seem that Asian immigration contribution (about 30% of the total) brings the newcomers criminal stats down, perhaps closer perhaps below the natives’.
I understand that probably incarceration rate may not truly reflect actual criminal statistics, but since there are no statistics it’s arguably the best proxy we have. One could argue racial profiling, but why do Asians appear to excepted from that ?
“I don’t think you understand *why* immigrants have low crime rates.”
Reminder: We were talking about your desire to house illegal aliens as a right.
“You have to look at the neighborhoods these people are actually moving into. Believe it or not violent Ghettos have always existed in Europe and restrictive zoning practices deliberately perpetuate these regions of concentrated poverty. Immigrants obviously aren’t going to assimilate to the aggregate of the entire society, they assimilate to their immediate surroundings.”
Take it from someone there, now you’re just BSing.
” the fact that first generation immigrants know how much better things are in America and don’t want to risk deportation by committing crime.”
Jolly bad start if you sneak across the border then.
“If you weren’t an idiot you would realize that my definition of “nation” is a description of the role of government whereas the OED is defining something much more general.”
What it really means is you’re using words too big for you.
Also, do read the moderation policy.
>Let’s take Hispanic vs White crime, for example.
Do you not know the difference between race and immigration status? This is a purely racial argument, my argument was purely about immigration status, this should be obvious but not all hispanics are immigrants, in fact most of them aren’t. “Nonwhite” is not a byword for “immigrant.”
>Reminder: We were talking about your desire to house illegal aliens as a right.
My point is that they are only illegal because someone wrote a law to make them so. It’s completely circular to argue against immigration on the basis that immigration is illegal.
>Jolly bad start if you sneak across the border then.
This shouldn’t need to even be mentioned but legal immigrants get deported if they commit crimes as well.
>What it really means is you’re using words too big for you.
No, it does not. I was highlighting the differences between a nation and a corporation and in that context what is important is the role of government within a nation.
I think that the disagreement above regarding whether low-skill and/or undocumented immigrants are desirable shows that the U.S. shouldn’t have a single nationwide immigration policy. The answer is a state-by-state or city-by-city immigration system! See
http://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2018/01/28/compromise-unlimited-haitians-for-communities-that-prepare-to-welcome-them/
Let’s add, to deal with the disagreement about crime potential, that the city or state that welcomes an immigrant who is later convicted of a crime will (a) compensate the victim or the victim’s surviving family members, (b) pay for the cost of prosecution, and (c) pay for the cost of imprisonment. So if immigrants hardly ever commit crimes, this assurance to fellow citizens shouldn’t cost anything and the locality that welcomes immigrants can benefit from the economic boom that results.
>The answer is a state-by-state or city-by-city immigration system! See
This is a very appealing idea but I’m afraid that if implemented it would lead to states establishing border controls. One of the great strengths of America is that it has no internal borders to trade or movement. Of course there are ways around that problem, but if different states pursued different immigration policies I fear that it would eventually lead to pressure to start establishing harder internal borders.
“So if immigrants hardly ever commit crimes, this assurance to fellow citizens shouldn’t cost anything and the locality that welcomes immigrants can benefit from the economic boom that results.”
This proposal works if charge (a) is applied to crime committed by both immigrants and native born [charges (b) and (c) already apply to all crime]. Of course, if you account for the cost to victims of immigrant crime but not for the cost to victims of crimes committed by native born Americans then immigrant crime will appear to be more “expensive” even if immigrants commit crime at a lower rate than the native born.
“The answer is a state-by-state or city-by-city immigration system!”
This proposed expansion of government involvement in a process which is currently more market oriented is remarkable for a self identified Libertarian. Yes, the Federal government currently sets an overall quota and carefully screens applicants, but where they eventually go is determined more by market demand. Typically, a small number of founders are attracted to a location by some (often quite specific) economic opportunity. Over time, the community grows (or does not) in response to expanding (or lack of) economic opportunities.
Benjamin: I don’t think we would need border controls. As the cities that welcome immigrants would be responsible for providing them with welfare benefits, e.g,. free housing, the only immigrants who move to another city or state will be those who get jobs that provide a significantly enhanced lifestyle. So the immigrants welcomed by San Francisco that end up in Houston, Texas, for example, should be the ones who found good jobs in Houston. The immigrants who failed to thrive economically would tend to stay in their guaranteed public housing in San Francisco rather than go to another city and join the 2-year waiting list for a free house.
“By definition, every illegal alien who is on US soil is a criminal.”
Every employer who hires an illegal immigrant is also a criminal. Unlike most crimes, there has been a bipartisan policy of de-facto acceptance of illegal immigration for decades. It’s a bit disingenuous to focus on illegal aliens as “criminals” when employers and Congress are every bit as complicit in their “crime”.
philg: My understanding is that most immigrants must prove to the US Government that they are likely to be able to support themselves before they are admitted. Are you suggesting that cities would not be permitted to use this acceptance criteria but would instead be required to support any immigrants they accept?
Neal: Since the U.S. is not a market economy, every resident can, by definition, support himself or herself. A zero-income resident gets public housing at a cost that is proportional to income, purchases health insurance from an Obamacare exchange at a fair price (around $3/month for a Massachusetts resident on MassHealth), purchases food at a government-established price via EBT, and talks on an Obamaphone at a government-set price ($0 for the first block of calls and data).
Once prices are “means-tested” the question of self-support has already been answered.
philg: “support themselves” should read “support themselves without government assistance”.
Do you have data indicating that immigrants overall receive significantly more (per capita) in government assistance than native born Americans?
https://www.cato.org/publications/economic-development-bulletin/poor-immigrants-use-public-benefits-lower-rate-poor says “Non-citizens are almost twice as likely to have low incomes compared with natives” and therefore immigrants should be roughly twice as likely to qualify for a discount under the plethora of means-tested programs run by the government. I don’t think that anyone has good data on what these programs cost because there are too many and some are funded by coercing commercial property developers into giving up free apartments.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/09/01/immigrant-welfare-use-report/71517072/ contains stats as well (76 percent of immigrant households with children are on welfare, compared to 52 percent of native-born). The numbers for “low-skill immigrants” should be substantially higher because these aggregates include high-skill immigrants.
[Of course, merely because immigrants are twice as likely to be poor doesn’t mean that the NYT is wrong when it predicts that the path to greater prosperity for all Americans is more low-skill immigrants!]
John Lott released a paper yesterday on crime in Arizona… https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3099992
“Undocumented immigrants are at least 142% more likely to be convicted of a crime than other Arizonans. They also tend to commit more serious crimes and serve 10.5% longer sentences, more likely to be classified as dangerous, and 45% more likely to be gang members than U.S. citizens. Yet, there are several reasons that these numbers are likely to underestimate the share of crime committed by undocumented immigrants.”
philg: The Cato article is titled “Poor Immigrants Use Public Benefits at a Lower Rate than Poor Native-Born Citizens”. Anyway, you aren’t answering my question is about your proposal and how it relates to current policy. My understanding is that the current system (administered at the Federal level) is that a bureaucracy screens applicants and attempts to admit candidates who will not require government “assistance” (of course everyone needs some healthcare and children will require education). The screening is imperfect and some fraction of the individuals (apparently a lower fraction than native born Americans) do require some help from a rather complex safety net which is administered at the Federal, State, and local levels.
My understanding of your proposal is that are suggesting that instead of the existing system, screening and selection would be performed at the local level and that any jurisdiction which admits immigrants would be required to establish a separate safety net which provides 100% support for 100% of the immigrants. Is this what you are proposing?
I know! I love that title! Those (pro-immigration) Cato folks are geniuses for realizing that nobody will be able to understand the conditional probability issues and will understand it as “immigrants on average cost less than native-born” when the data show that immigrants cost roughly 2X as much (since they are 2X as likely to be poor).
@Benjamin:
“Google hires the best applicants they can find on the market for the wages they offer, nothing more and nothing less.”
And investors would dump Google in a heartbeat if it does not do what Google is doing: hire the best. The same is true for a country if it does not look after its own interest.
My family and I immigrated to the USA legally back in 1981. We paid the price of waiting, lawyer / paperwork cost, background check, medical check and all that you can think of. The whole process took 3 years (much, much longer today). And after when we arrived, we were required to report back in 2 years for an interview, and then again in 10 years to prove that we are “good citizens” and are no longer in need of government assistance and that we have become Citizen (to remove temporary status of Green Card).
Why should I have to take this long difficult path to rip the benefit of USA but let illegals in who cut me off? That is, if you are waiting on a checkout line, will you want someone else cut you off to the front line? What about if you were in the ER?
An illegal alliance who enters the country illegally is illegal and our government must not allow it otherwise it is not doing its job. It’s as simple as that. Whats so hard to understand about this?
philg: Poor people don’t just collect government assistance. They also work and contribute to the economy. What we are really interested in is the ratio of public assistance collected to overall contribution to the economy. Thus, the title to the Cato article gives the correct emphasis: it is the rate we are interested in. If immigrants use public benefits at a lower rate, it is likely (but not guaranteed) that their ratio of public assistance collected to overall contribution to the economy is also lower.
Also: If poor immigrants use less services (per capita) but immigrants are more likely to be poor then the impact on total cost is a wash relative to native born not a 2x cost.
Neal: You’re very persuasive on this subject. Since adding poor people to a country or an area will make everyone there way wealthier, about how using your powers of persuasive on your neighbors so as to fund a 100-unit “poor house” in your neighborhood? Once you’ve got it set it, let me know and I will arrange and pay for transportation of poor “contributors to the economy” to come live right next to you. (I still have leftover budget because my Bay Area friend didn’t end up wanting the offered Kentuckians on welfare; see http://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2018/01/28/compromise-unlimited-haitians-for-communities-that-prepare-to-welcome-them/ ) You can select for immigration status, if desired.
(Or, if you want to start small, I can send you just a couple of poor immigrants to share your house or apartment. Once they are making bank and move out, I can send you two more.)
philg: I don’t want to organize a charity, but there’s a house for sale four houses down. If you buy it and agree to pay the taxes and maintenance (I can’t afford to), I will be happy to find a poor family to live in it (I’ll cover their moving expenses).
How would be it be a charity, Neal? I thought you said that people who are poor enough to collect welfare are a big positive for an economy. If they’re boosting the economy, aren’t they by definition generating more than enough income to pay for housing? The “boost” to an economy could start only after basic housing, health care, and food are paid for out of wages, no?
“If they’re boosting the economy, aren’t they by definition generating more than enough income to pay for housing?”
No. There is not “definitional” relationship between income, total contribution to the economy, and ability to pay for housing in a specific location. It is quite possible someone could be a net contributor to the economy but still require charitable support to afford housing in a specific location.
“The “boost” to an economy could start only after housing, health care, and food are paid for, no?”
Yes, but fully accounting for the “boost” is more difficult than accounting for housing, health care, and food.
“I can send you just a couple of poor immigrants to share your house or apartment.”
You do realize this is an ad hominem argument, right? My willingness to share my home with a couple of poor immigrants has nothing to do with the validity of the argument I raised in #33.
A- Overall.
Good speech, great delivery. Definitely Presidential Trump over Off-the-Cuff Trump, yet he kept it natural and almost at ease. Basically, a recap of Trump’s numerous accomplishments and the generally great shape of the US Economy. The parade of heroes and victims made it personal and real in the best of the Trump tradition.
On the Immigration Front — which seems to interest the readers of this blog more than other issues, no Trump fan is going to be happy with his offer to legalize 1.8 million ILLEGAL ALIENS — more than is being protected by the current DACA nonsense. This however is mitigated by his enshrining of the Wall and enforcement, Terminating the ludicrous Diversity VISA Lottery and ending Chain Migration amongst the four pillars of immigration reform. It’s a big ask with a big give, again in the best Trump tradition.So, I think that many will find it in their hearts to forgive him. “Americans have Dreams” too was the punch line and a very effective one.
No mention of Sanctuary Cities and States which is a smart move since he does not need congress to deal with that and it is best not to poison the negotiations by bring these up. Ultimately, once they have a deal and laws passed on immigration reform, it’s easy to shut these down via the legal route and the inevitable SCOTUS ruling that states and municipalities cannot pass laws to contradict Federal Law or to obstruct in their enforcement.
Benjamin Ojeda:
> If anything restricting immigration directly interferes with the rights of citizens who already live in the country. Suppose I own a building and rent out apartments to people, if an illegal immigrant wants to live in my apartment and the government stops me from renting it to them by deporting them than the government has directly interfered with my business and undermined my property rights.
By this argument, if your prospective renter commits any mundane felony and is incarcerated then the government has “interfered” with your property rights in exactly the same way. So… no government at all for you then?
@Neal: If those poor immigrant are legally here, I will take them in and get them up and going for let’s say 6 months, till they are on their own. Would I do the same for illegal immigrant? Never! Because, who knows, in the future, someone close to you, who is a citizen, may need assistance and I’m sure you will want that someone to get assistance and consume resources before the illegals, no?
This whole discussion can be stopped once you read the definition of “illegal”.
And in case you didn’t know, it isn’t just the US is cracking down on illegals, Europe is too. In fact, France is gathering them and moving them out of the country (just Google it).
Another point of reference is this [1]. Those illegals not only consume direct resources, they also put extra pressure on High Schools to meet their demands for second language as English to name one.
[1] https://www.dailynews.com/2017/04/29/1-in-8-children-in-california-schools-have-an-undocumented-parent/
>Why should I have to take this long difficult path to rip the benefit of USA but let illegals in who cut me off? That is, if you are waiting on a checkout line, will you want someone else cut you off to the front line? What about if you were in the ER?
This is an analogy I see constantly but it doesn’t make a damn bit of sense. Immigration isn’t an inherently limited resource.
Here’s an analogy to help you understand how ridiculous this line of reasoning is. Suppose I want to cook some drugs in my garage for personal use, but this is illegal without a special government permit which is a PITA to obtain. I go through a lengthy and frustrating process to get the approval while my neighbor does the exact same thing illegally. My neighbor did not harm me, in fact I was not affected by their actions at all.
The same is true of immigration. I’m sorry your family put up with a lot of bullshit, but nothing more. You aren’t a victim of anything other than government incompetence.
>By this argument, if your prospective renter commits any mundane felony and is incarcerated then the government has “interfered” with your property rights in exactly the same way. So… no government at all for you then?
My right to rent the aparatment needs to be weighed against other people’s right not to get murdered. This is isn’t rocket science.
George A: So you think the U.S. will be better off if we track down and deport 75% of the people who pick our food?
[Response from Philip: If we stopped growing food, we’d be suffering like the folks in Singapore! They import 90 percent of their food. http://www.ava.gov.sg/explore-by-sections/food/singapore-food-supply/the-food-we-eat
Separately, I like the assumption that if we deport people who are currently picking food there will be nobody willing, at any wage offered, to step in and replace them. It is kind of like the assumption that if we imprison all of the current drug dealers there won’t be any more drug dealers because the vacuum in the market won’t attract new entrants.]
@Benjamin, I have to concur with George A. My family and I immigrated to the USA in 1978 and did it legally from J-1 to H1-B to permanent residence and finally to Naturalization. And we’re from a South America (aka a shithole by some). The process took over 14 years. You can argue all you want about the low risk of criminality of illegal immigrants, but that is not an argument for breaking the law and giving amnesty (yet again).
But now we have this human rights mess. Where does the fault lie? It lies on many sides: our government that does not enforce the immigration laws, the citizens and corporations who hire illegals, and the illegal immigrants themselves. Everyone is guilty for letting this fester for so long.
What I don’t understand is why the US hasn’t come up with a better solution. Why after all these years and the lessons from the last amnesty, there isn’t a fast-track H2-A/B seasonal working permit for millions of Mexicans? A whole industry could be made charging the Mexicans for visa processing fees and renewals. Mexicans would be recognized as legal documented persons and not at the mercy of their employers where human rights abuses can happen without consequence because of illegal immigrants fear of being deported (see Frontline documentary Rape in the Fields).
If I look at the current US (Trump?) strategy, it looks like it is to scare the bejezuz out of the undocumented Mexicans/Central Americans. Break up the sanctuary city protections, make a lot of noise, etc. After a few years of that, the thought is the numbers crossing the border drop and border security is “beefed up” and another amnesty is given to those already inside. The anchor babies get a path to citizenship, while the undocumented parents of anchor babies get renewal residence permits. And then the cycle is repeated again.
@Benjamin #41: So you are OK if your next door neighborhood who is “cook[ing] some drugs” without getting the proper permit like you did (paying for the permit, waiting for the permit, etc.) to do so and if he ends up trashing his own house (because he is not following the laws) and this brings down the value of your house, you are fine with that? Furthermore, you are OK that you have to do the hard and complex task of optioning permit, but he doesn’t because it does no harm to you?
If you truly believe in this, then you must also be OK if your next door neighborhood goes up the electrical pole and draws a line off of it to his house to bypass the meter — unlike you, he will pay $0 for his electrical bills — after all he has done no harm to you. You may not believe it, but this has been done and still is being done by illegals and none illegals.
@Neal #42: I”m not saying deport all illegals, I’m saying we cannot continue on this path. If we make it easy for illegals to be here, we are encouraging more of it and before you know it we won’t be able to manage it.
You also seem to assume illegals are just Mexican working on the farm or in construction. I’m talking about all illegals.
@GermanL
A better question is why do we need to import a FOREIGN UNDERCLASS to harvest our crops? Oh, because Americans are unwilling to do those jobs? OK, why are Americans unwilling to do those jobs? Because it is easier to sit back on the front porch of some inner city shit hole and enjoy welfare? OK, that’s the problem then. If the choice for able bodied men and women is not between welfare and back breaking work, but starvation and back breaking work, they’ll do breaking work. Don’t want to do such work or starve? OK, go get an education or acquire some skill that is in high demand, and earn a better living. That is REFORM.
Importing a foreign underclass, or condoning ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION, while paying more taxes to subsidize BUMS to sit around and be totally useless is plain RETARDED.
A nice speech, but it contained nothing of any substance, nor any plan to remedy the major problems we have.
He did indeed introduce a number of heroes and victims…however, not a single one of these persons had anything to do with Trump, or his policies. For example, he introduced a Korean man who, as a young man, had his leg cut off while fainting from hunger exhaustion on a railroad track. In short, the man overcame his injuries and learned to walk again with the aide of a prosthesis.
This was an obvious attempt to highlight the oppressive conditions in North Korea, but I’m still trying to figure out how Trump had anything to do with this man. Ditto for every other victim/hero he introduced.
He gave a brief nod to the victims & heroes of the Las Vegas shooting, but later beamed as he proclaimed his administration a strong supporter of the 2nd. amendment.
Immigration compromise???? Please. It all comes back to building his insane wall.
This speech is already forgotten, and for good reason.
It was quite a boring speech. The conservative media praised it (literally) due to the absence of major gaffes, while the liberals criticized it because of… you know, the big, bad Trump. My overall verdict of the media analysis was, idiocy as usual. (As you might have noticed, most of the US media prefers verdicts to facts and advocacy to reporting.) Trump was somewhat loose with the truth: nothing unusual, as making precise statements is not something he cares about. There was no new initiatives, as far as I could tell. The Republicans applauded often, the Democrats tried to boo him once.
I don’t believe you lost much by just ignoring the SOTU, but then again I had exactly the same feeling for Obama’s speeches. I do understand, “this is not who we are”, but who gives a f***.
We are in the middle of the culture war, so (just ask you Russian friends) taking it easy and making a lighthearted fun of the politicians is a practical lesson from the people who survived70 years of the noxious propaganda and the concentration camps. (I asked my Russian next-door neighbor, as usual.)
https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/politics/100000005710636/trump-state-of-union-highlights.html (PAYWALL after 5 links) has a 90-second edit. That’s about enough Trump for anybody.