Just saying it's that doesn't make it that, but okay.
> immigration has just been a non-issue. It's only been to our advantage.
Unfortunately for you, there is a significant plurality of Americans for whom uncontrolled immigration has been to their disadvantage. It distorts the labor market. Not for white-collar jobs like yours. For low-wage jobs.
It also changes the culture, which is something that every country except the USA and the UK is allowed to be quite cranky about -- think of how prickly Quebecers get about people not speaking French, or people who don't like American tourists being annoying in Rome, or Mexico not allowing non-citizens to own property.
And the notion that we just open the borders and walk away with our fingers in our ears -- which is what logically must happen when you "abolish" the only people who are supposed to send people back when they show up, unvetted and uninvited -- is not a winning argument. That's one of the main reasons Clinton and Harris lost, because that's what their rhetoric sounds like.
So, you can of course keep on arguing that unlimited, unvetted immigration (which without any enforcement is the only kind we'll get) is an indisputable boon to our society, but you'll keep losing elections.
The reality is people are stupid, and will believe whatever it is they want to believe. People just want to believe immigration is harming them because they are being harmed - by shit fiscal policy. The GOP pretty much exclusively writes the worst fiscal policy imaginable.
But it's very easy to tell people that it's not them, it's these brown people with a different culture. And the solution is simple, just build a wall or something equally braindead.
Does that solution work? Of course not. But it doesn't matter. That's populism. People have high confidence in solutions that are simple, because they can wrap their minds around it. And people love hearing that some other group that is distinct from their own is causing all their problems.
The truth is that it's truly trivial for the Republicans to stamp out illegal immigration for good. Just start throwing business owners in prison who hire undocumented people. But they won't do this, and they never will. They will, instead, implement showy, but worthless, non-solutions. Like walls and grabbing people off the street one at a time.
Why? Because most red states are economically defunct, and of the few that aren't, they all rely directly on immigration to have a viable economy. They can't hurt their constituency like that, and if they did, then the populism facade crumbles as people realize - oh wait, getting rid of immigration did not solve all our problems.
So they need to have a constant machine to keep up their rhetoric, and as such, they will never do anything that actually works.
From an election point of view, this strategy works. Populism works, and really well. That doesn't mean it's good.
Just saying it's that doesn't make it that, but okay.
> immigration has just been a non-issue. It's only been to our advantage.
Unfortunately for you, there is a significant plurality of Americans for whom uncontrolled immigration has been to their disadvantage. It distorts the labor market. Not for white-collar jobs like yours. For low-wage jobs.
It also changes the culture, which is something that every country except the USA and the UK is allowed to be quite cranky about -- think of how prickly Quebecers get about people not speaking French, or people who don't like American tourists being annoying in Rome, or Mexico not allowing non-citizens to own property.
And the notion that we just open the borders and walk away with our fingers in our ears -- which is what logically must happen when you "abolish" the only people who are supposed to send people back when they show up, unvetted and uninvited -- is not a winning argument. That's one of the main reasons Clinton and Harris lost, because that's what their rhetoric sounds like.
So, you can of course keep on arguing that unlimited, unvetted immigration (which without any enforcement is the only kind we'll get) is an indisputable boon to our society, but you'll keep losing elections.