Civil Immigration Enforcement: Priorities for the Apprehension, Detention, and Removal of Aliens

[Used to be broken 147]

This is not a nation of immigrants. The vast majority of people in the USA are not immigrants.

If you knew the history of American immigration policy you would know that from the 1920's to the 1970's immigration was reduced significantly and America was actually a low immigration country for decades. It was the ill conceived 1965 immigration legislation that opened the flood gates and created the fiasco we have today.

I do know the history of American Immigration Policy, and if you want to split hairs on this so be it. The Vast majority of Americans are Immigrants or descendants of Immigrants.

What fiasco, the building of the greatest nation on earth?

[peejay 327]

I do know the history of American Immigration Policy, and if you want to split hairs on this so be it. The Vast majority of Americans are Immigrants or descendants of Immigrants.

What fiasco, the building of the greatest nation on earth?

Your ancestors were immigrants?

OK, yes, my ancestors came from somewhere other than North America. So did yours. So did everyone else's ancestors, including the ancestors of the Native Americans.

No matter where you live in the world you have an ancestor from somewhere else.

In other words, every nation is a "nation of immigrants;" the slogan is meaningless and certainly no basis for sound public policy.

That my ancestors were immigrants is irrelevant to the formation of a prudent modern public policy today; just because a policy was appropriate in the past does not mean it is necessarily eternally good forever.

If my ancestors were pioneers, am I constrained to advocate expansionism forever?

We are a nation of immigrants?

If you are discussing immigration, you are likely to hear the gem: "this is a nation of immigrants." The fact is eighty-five percent of the residents of the United States were born here.

How could that preponderance of home-grown Americans justify us being called a "nation of immigrants"?

Certainly we are descendants of immigrants (as is everyone in the world), but that is not the same thing as being an immigrant.

Anyway, such a statement is no justification for continued mindless mass immigration. The inference that "We are a nation of immigrants and, therefore, we must not limit immigration" is a classic example of circular argument.

What is says is this: Because we are a nation of immigrants, we have to allow for perpetual mass immigration which, in turn, makes us a nation of immigrants. Hence its circularity.

Circular arguments are invalid in the logical sense by virtue of how they are structured. They lead to faulty (and, therefore, useless) reasoning in which the thesis (the very thing which is to be proved) is used as a premise in its proof.

And circular arguments certainly do not form a good basis on which to formulate sound public policy.

Immigrants Built This Country?

Actually, Americans built this country. Immigration averaged only 235,000 persons per year prior to the ill conceived 1965 Immigration Act that brought us to our present fiasco. That's only 47 million immigrants over the entire course of our nation's history.

Compared to our current population of nearly 300+ million, that's not much. And then, if we add all the people who have lived before in the United States, we are approaching a billion total Americans who live now or who have lived in this country—all of them, or at least most of them, busy "building" it.

So immigrants only built 4.5% of America while Americans built the remaining 95.5% of the "Greatest Nation on Earth".

[Used to be broken 147]

Your ancestors were immigrants?

Anyway, such a statement is no justification for continued mindless mass immigration. The inference that "We are a nation of immigrants and, therefore, we must not limit immigration" is a classic example of circular argument.

I didn't say we should not limit immigration, I don't believe that scapegoating immigrants will solve our current economic crisis, and further feel the "immigration problem" or "fiasco" as you called it is not the most pressing issue of our times and is pretty far down the list.

Because we are a nation of immigrants, we have to allow for perpetual mass immigration which, ...

I don't believe in open borders or perpetual mass immigration. I also don't think the current enforcement only mentality will solve the problem without other reform initiatives and is causing other problems which have not been well thought out by the knee jerk reactionary enforcement only crowd. evidence for this is the current backlog in the court system that you were posting about the other day.

Circular arguments are invalid in the logical sense by virtue of how they are structured. They lead to faulty (and, therefore, useless) reasoning in which the thesis (the very thing which is to be proved) is used as a premise in its proof. And circular arguments certainly do not form a good basis on which to formulate sound public policy.

I went to college too, but thanks for the refresher course on logic and debate

I don't agree that flushing billions of taxpayer dollars down the toilet is the best way to deal with the undocumented immigrant problem. I think we can reduce the flow less expensively by tweeking unskilled worker VISA's, reforming waiver's and farm subsidies. I also don't think there is anything "sound" about a public policy that disrupts nuclear families that contain US Citizens, deports college students who through no fault of their own were "trafficked" here by their parents or attempts to tinker with birth right citizenship.

Immigrants Built This Country?

So immigrants only built 4.5% of America while Americans built the remaining 95.5% of the "Greatest Nation on Earth".

So my grandparents came here and had a family a very large family and a very successful family that provides fuel for the economic engine that is America. I see this as a good thing.. and for some reason you see this as a fiasco. The immigrants came here, multiplied and built the country.. yes it is a "circular argument" .. the chicken an the egg thing. First came Immigrants than came growth and prosperity. We have had ups and downs but mostly ups. I see my life enhanced and enriched by the immigrant experience you see a fiasco.

Content analysis of writings about immigrants in magazines over the past century well before the first polls--in the 19th

century and even earlier--and continuing into the 20th century shows that the same viewpoint has been popularly expressed in all

periods. R. Simon characterizes American public opinion throughout the century as, "The people who came here in earlier

times were good folks, but the people who are coming now are purely scum" (see also Douglas 1919)

Edited October 25, 2010 by brokenfamily