ok, gotcha, so you just threw out a theoretical short list of nations that someone might consider if they were thinking of other potential nations to call home?
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Pretty much. I was kinda curious to see what @shinobi would say about my list, actually. I mean, he specifically said (hoping I donât misquote him), âThis is something to which I have devoted a good deal of thought.â
I havenât given it any thought really, and it only took me a few minutes to come up with that list. Iâm sure if I gave it a ton of thought, I could find things I donât like about all of those countries (and as @arch8ngel points out, even if I gave it a little thought, I could knock at least one off the list). So maybe thatâs what shinobi means when he canât find a satisfactory place, i.e. the more you think about it, the better the USA looks.
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Sorry I let you down. But my earlier comment was truthful. I have devoted thought over the years and come up empty. I believe we actually might agree on this. I, too, cannot come up with a better alternative than the USA. That said:
This would be a far more pressing issue for me were I younger with national political leaders spending me into oblivion and impugning my future. At my age it would be imprudent and impractical for me to leave America and move to xxxxxx (pick any other country). Doing something of that sort is a younger manâs option, at least IMO.
Also, to be fair with myself, I live in a very traditional American place, completely under the control (locally speaking) of Republicans as opposed to RINOs. Back on 11/8/2016 my fellow citizens here set a voting record, most showing up to vote for Trump. We had 85% participation, a record I think. We rural folks state wide managed to out-vote the city people and give Trump a win in a swing state he badly needed. So even though national politics and policies are leaning socialist, locally we here cling to the old values which actually work.
And boy, do they ever. My local taxes are incredibly modest, actually having declined once or twice in recent years. Republicans here are very careful with our tax dollars and even local Democrat leaders (yes, we have some of those, too) are responsible and respected.
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No, they have foreign exchange controls. Have fun.
My state turned blue in 2008 and has been since, but it sounds like my locality isnât that different than yours except that the polls were much closer to 50/50 in 2016. The county I live in and work for is AAA rated by three bond rating agencies and just lowered the local property tax rate by a penny. My House rep is arguably the most conservative member in the House. Heâs got a target on his back in November.
Yeah, sure looks like it.
Never really applied to what I was doing when I was there, so this sort of thing isnât on my radar.
That âspending into oblivionâ is par for the course for the past 40 years.
Your acting like you think this is a new thing.
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In 2020 do you think this trend will continue? Psychologically there has to be something to be said for the fact that so many people showed up and that made it more obvious that the votes matter. On the other hand, as you noted, there are very few politicians on either side who really excite people. Theyâre all too scared and the leadership on both sides is attrocious.
I generally disagree on most topics with Rand Paul, but itâs very refreshing to hear him speak. Heâs one of the only politicians (Republican or Democrat) who seems to have a set of principles and actually follows them. (Although I think a lot of his posturing is still about getting special benefits for his constituents - but at least his constituents seem to be the people in his state as opposed to lobbyists).
I pretty much solely follow mainstream media. At least now Iâm aware of how unrepresentative it is. However, all the news commentators were commenting after the election about how out of touch they were and how they need to change. Itâs almost humorous that nothing seems to have changed. As someone who despises Trump (not people who vote for Trump), this makes me very nervous about 2020 and the so called 30ish percent approval ratings.
I do not see how Trump can pull it off again. I am generally pro-Trump (at least I was up until last Friday) so I hope Trump supporters do not jump all over me for writing that.
Trump was blessed in 2016 with a truly, outstandingly, horrid opponent. The Democrat party has FAR better POTUS candidates than that. Now whether one of those superior candidates can win the Democrat nomination is another matter entirely.
If you monitor only the mainstream American media you are unaware of the woman, in Fairhope Alabama, who was slaughtered by an illegal alien within the last several days. He was deported twice and returned twice. He was driving drunk and struck the woman with his truck in a hit and run. But the authorities got him. The guy is a serial offender with seven different aliases and was in possession of a gun at the time he killed the American woman. The eastern liberal media you follow would not come within 20 feet of a story like this. It is true, but a mainstream media conspiracy exists to keep such stories bottled up and the American public dumbed down.
I am old enough to remember when only Soviet media behaved this way. It was called âpropagandaâ back then. It still is propaganda, but now it has come to the âgood old USAâ.
Trumpâs actual approval rating among likely American voters, at least prior to last Friday, varied between 45% and 49%. I would need more time to know exactly how much damage Trump did to himself last week. He certainly put a big hole in my support.
Itâs a laugh riot, really; the American mainstream media is so stupid and out of touch. They are attempting to use Stormy to take out Trump. We donât care about that. But when he signed that asinine omnibus spending bill, which the media all but ignores, he lost millions of votes in one fell swoop. And if I might say, deservedly so!! Trump has nobody else to blame for that fiasco . . except Trump!
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Link for the lazy. Nothing on my CNN site search that story though, hmm.
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A single example of something that Trump supporters so unreasonably fear â criminals who happen to be illegal immigrants â donât make a trend. It also doesnât prove a conspiracy â lots of people die every day and most of their stories donât make the national news.
Not all illegal immigrants are good people. Not all illegal immigrants are bad people. Obviously.
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Very true. The odds are that more teenagers have died from car accidents due to distracted driving in just the past month since the FL school shooting, but the media is busy covering anti-gun marches about school shootings that are a tiny fraction of student preventable deaths, much less those preventable by legislation.
Also true. Yet it is frustrating for those who immigrated legally or those harmed by people here illegally that the immigration laws are not being enforced. You would think that as a country that prides itself on the rule of law, our politicians could agree on the narrow issue of deporting illegal aliens convicted of violent crimes, but consensus on even that is proving elusive.
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I did not realize this is a contentious. What do they expect?
No, they were too busy covering how terminator robot (aka Uberâs âself driving carâ) hit a woman due to a system and human failure.
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âGood peopleâ is not necessarily the same thing as âlaw abidingâ.
âGood peopleâ break all sorts of laws.
Similarly all sorts of âbad peopleâ follow the letter of the law while abusing others via the law.
The law, or lack of it, doesnât dictate morality.
The law, or lack of it, doesnât dictate ethics.
Unless your name is Javert, this shouldnât be hard to grasp⌠
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True. However, I just read something that said that overstaying their entry isnât a criminal offense, but only attracts civil penalties.
However, the issue under discussion now is prioritizing deportation of violent criminals. Crossing the border illegally isnât exactly violent.
Do agree that there needs to be a more comprehensive solution.
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You are going out of your way to misunderstand what was said, and it does no credit to your argument.
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Just want to point out that overstaying a Visa is not a criminal charge. If you enter legally, itâs generally not a crime to remain past the allowable time period.
So while, by definition, people who overstay visas are not law abiding citizens, neither is someone who jay-walksâŚ
Also, someone who entered without going through the appropriate procedures isnât a criminal until theyâre convicted. And because most of these violations are handled in immigration (civil) courts, they are rarely even charged with a crime.
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You keep making a fairly ridiculous comparison between taking an action of direct harm to others (breaking in and stealing) with actions that put a person on no more harmful footing than any other worker in this country (i.e. presumably your gripe is that they are taking a job).
It is absurd.
Also, you are directly proving my point that âthe lawâ, and its successful enforcement, does NOT dictate âgoodâ or âbadâ, with your ridiculous hoop jumping example.
Being convicted of a criminal offense does not make one âbadâ or âgoodâ, absent the context of the specific law that was broken.
Neither does avoiding a conviction.
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Are you being serious?
You are really leaping through issues here to escalate from the concept of âillegal immigrationâ making a person inherently unable to be âa good personâ, to jump into the issue of potential welfare fraud.
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Iâm not an immigration or criminal attorney. My guess is that while hiring someone without authorization to work is probably a crime, Iâm not sure that actually working without authorization would be a criminal charge. That said, if they have to provide documents to get the work (Iâd imagine this is most, but I have no idea on the statistics), Iâd imagine providing or creating false documents would be a criminal charge.
The crux of your argument is well taken and I agree with you. As archangel said, being a âcriminalâ does not equate to being a âgood personâ as you define it (I wouldnât use that term to characterize someone in this context). That said, if you broke into my house, youâd be caught by my dog ;).
I would argue those technicalities all day long and as a true believer in the system, I think the distinctions are incredibly important. That said, again, I understand your argument, and I generally agree with you.
Bottom line, I think most can agree on the following: (1) allowing people to enter the US without going through the proper channels is not a good thing, (2) allowing employers to hire/employ those without work authorization, and allowing people without work authorization to work is not a good thing, and (3) people disagree about how important it is to enforce these rules.
We definitely need immigration to fulfill employersâ needs in the US - almost everyone agrees with this. Allowing people to enter illegally causes problems in the US - almost everyone agrees with this. Now we just need to determine how to increase immigration (and no, not just for highly-skilled labor) to fill employer needs, while also decreasing illegal entries and employment of those not authorized to work.
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