3 ms·

It's not an either or. We can absorb a lot more refugees than we are taking now (which is basically none) and we can also have better foreign policy than we hav

by ebbv 10y ago

It's not an either or. We can absorb a lot more refugees than we are taking now (which is basically none) and we can also have better foreign policy than we have had for the last 20 years.

cookiecaper 10y ago
But why would we? Because it's the polite thing to do? That's fine to an extent, but when there are active state-sponsored terrorist populations trying to sneak in operatives from the very region affected, why is that a risk that's wise for us to take? The "state-sponsored terrorism" boogeyman used to be a mostly-imaginary thing with reference to Iran, but who can argue now that ISIS, a literal terrorist state, controls large sections of Iraq and Afghanistan? Culturally, we have very little in common with Middle Eastern refugees, and I don't just mean "they go to a weird looking church". We don't share similar cultural values. It's a big culture shock in both directions. There are other nations nearby that are much more similar and that the majority would be much more comfortable in. Geographically, we're nowhere near the affected areas, and we already have a burgeoning refugee crisis on our southern border. Why do we need to import Syrian or other Middle Eastern refugees, specifically? We have taken them in some limited quantities, and that alone is risky enough, is it not? I sympathize with wanting to be nice, but we need to be smart about it. There's more to life than tingly feelings, and there are plenty of opportunists out there who'd be happy to exploit our kindness. I love being nice, but I also love being smart. We should do both.
- ebbv 10y ago
  Because it's the morally right thing to do and immigrants enrich our country. Read some history.
  - cookiecaper 10y ago
    OK, so you're suggesting that we discard practicalities due to the purity of your ideology. I don't believe that giving refuge to anyone who asks/wants it is automatically the right thing to do. In an ideal world, that would work fine, as would a lot of other naive solutions to social ills. But we don't live in an ideal world. Immigrants enrich our country under the right circumstances. This is typically accepted as an implicit truth and it's the theory that underpins all immigration policy and visa restrictions; it's hardly anything new, and such restrictions are so self-evidently necessary that they're universal. Every country has entry requirements, and many of them are quite significant; not something that your average Joe could qualify for without years of work. If we let in anyone who asks or anyone who poses as a refugee, we are being reckless with our own resources and safety. Not everyone in the world is acting in good faith.
    - ebbv 10y ago
      > OK, so you're suggesting that we discard practicalities due to the purity of your ideology. No, I'm not. I'm suggesting we abandon your unfounded fears in the face of historical evidence that bringing in immigrants has only ever done good things for our country and the reality of what is right (helping to relieve human suffering) and wrong (refusing to help when you are able to do so at no real cost to yourself.) This will be my last reply to you since you are just clinging to right wing xenophobia.
      - cookiecaper 10y ago
        Again you're casting this in hard ideological terms. I'm not a hard ideologue. It's possible for someone to disagree with you without "clinging to right-wing xenophobia", and, also again, stringent migration restrictions are not only normal but universal. "Bringing in immigrants has only ever done good things" is an inherently subjective statement, so pretending like we can just open a history textbook and have the virtue of unlimited immigration smack us in the face is easy to dismiss without further argument. Even if someone does subjectively agree with this conclusion (and the topic is far too wide for such a broad generalization to hold), they'd point out that the stringent immigration restrictions that have always existed have played a large role in that success. It's disappointing that rather than discussing the issue, you've chosen to apply a derisive and incorrect label, which you feel enables you to dismiss the argument without analyzing or discussing it. We're never going to get anywhere if, after two polite statements from someone, you're ready to label them with [what you feel] is a mean label and state that their opinion is invalid in light of the label you've just assigned. This is, simply and frankly, an extremely immature level of discourse, and sadly, many of us lack the moral backbone to stand up to it and we just comply with whoever is bullying the hardest/loudest. Many of our contemporary problems have this lack of moral backbone at their root. Personally, I have great respect for Islam and Muslims in general. I think they're a net force for good, especially in modern secular nations that seriously need more influence from religious people. Though I haven't had the opportunity to travel abroad extensively, I'd like to some day, and I've seriously considered relocating outside of the United States to countries with very different cultural perspectives, including Muslim nations. My grandparents are immigrants who arrived at Ellis Island in the aftermath of World War 2, and they speak non-English at home, which I don't find at all upsetting or threatening. By any objective measure, I'm not a "xenophobe" ("a person unduly fearful of what is foreign and especially of people of foreign origin"), but because you don't like my conclusion that some restrictions on refugee immigration from terror-prone regions are reasonable, you've chosen to label, shame, and ignore instead of politely agreeing to disagree. Such dismissive ignorance and self-righteousness is exactly why the blue-collar hoi polloi are rejecting this tyranny of the rising nerd bourgeoisie. Do you offer a room to every homeless guy you've ever met? I'm sure you could fit a lot of them in sleeping bags in your living room if you were so inclined. Why don't you do that? Hasn't history proven that people are good, and that "relieving human suffering" is good, and that it comes at "no real cost to yourself"? Perhaps we just disagree about the costs and risks involved in accepting refugees from nations with substantial terrorist activity. That's fine, and it doesn't warrant petty labeling from either side. That's just called a "disagreement" and they happen all the time. Maybe we can work on learning how to disagree better? There is nothing wrong with considering either the safety of American nationals or the cultural compatibility and willingness/likelihood of assimilation of foreign nationals into the American mainstream before we admit them to our country. Every country has a responsibility to make these determinations when accepting new migrants, which is why every country has nation-of-origin-based visa rules and other universal immigration controls. In fact, the rules for the US are much less stringent than those of many of our first-world peers. The fact is that your shame-based suicide cult is simply not sticking. Please come out of the bubble. Is Trump's win not enough to wake you from the echo chamber?

by ebbv 10y ago

It's not an either or. We can absorb a lot more refugees than we are taking now (which is basically none) and we can also have better foreign policy than we have had for the last 20 years.

cookiecaper 10y ago

But why would we? Because it's the polite thing to do? That's fine to an extent, but when there are active state-sponsored terrorist populations trying to sneak in operatives from the very region affected, why is that a risk that's wise for us to take? The "state-sponsored terrorism" boogeyman used to be a mostly-imaginary thing with reference to Iran, but who can argue now that ISIS, a literal terrorist state, controls large sections of Iraq and Afghanistan? Culturally, we have very little in common with Middle Eastern refugees, and I don't just mean "they go to a weird looking church". We don't share similar cultural values. It's a big culture shock in both directions. There are other nations nearby that are much more similar and that the majority would be much more comfortable in. Geographically, we're nowhere near the affected areas, and we already have a burgeoning refugee crisis on our southern border. Why do we need to import Syrian or other Middle Eastern refugees, specifically? We have taken them in some limited quantities, and that alone is risky enough, is it not? I sympathize with wanting to be nice, but we need to be smart about it. There's more to life than tingly feelings, and there are plenty of opportunists out there who'd be happy to exploit our kindness. I love being nice, but I also love being smart. We should do both.

ebbv 10y ago
Because it's the morally right thing to do and immigrants enrich our country. Read some history.
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  OK, so you're suggesting that we discard practicalities due to the purity of your ideology. I don't believe that giving refuge to anyone who asks/wants it is automatically the right thing to do. In an ideal world, that would work fine, as would a lot of other naive solutions to social ills. But we don't live in an ideal world. Immigrants enrich our country under the right circumstances. This is typically accepted as an implicit truth and it's the theory that underpins all immigration policy and visa restrictions; it's hardly anything new, and such restrictions are so self-evidently necessary that they're universal. Every country has entry requirements, and many of them are quite significant; not something that your average Joe could qualify for without years of work. If we let in anyone who asks or anyone who poses as a refugee, we are being reckless with our own resources and safety. Not everyone in the world is acting in good faith.
  - ebbv 10y ago
    > OK, so you're suggesting that we discard practicalities due to the purity of your ideology. No, I'm not. I'm suggesting we abandon your unfounded fears in the face of historical evidence that bringing in immigrants has only ever done good things for our country and the reality of what is right (helping to relieve human suffering) and wrong (refusing to help when you are able to do so at no real cost to yourself.) This will be my last reply to you since you are just clinging to right wing xenophobia.
    - cookiecaper 10y ago
      Again you're casting this in hard ideological terms. I'm not a hard ideologue. It's possible for someone to disagree with you without "clinging to right-wing xenophobia", and, also again, stringent migration restrictions are not only normal but universal. "Bringing in immigrants has only ever done good things" is an inherently subjective statement, so pretending like we can just open a history textbook and have the virtue of unlimited immigration smack us in the face is easy to dismiss without further argument. Even if someone does subjectively agree with this conclusion (and the topic is far too wide for such a broad generalization to hold), they'd point out that the stringent immigration restrictions that have always existed have played a large role in that success. It's disappointing that rather than discussing the issue, you've chosen to apply a derisive and incorrect label, which you feel enables you to dismiss the argument without analyzing or discussing it. We're never going to get anywhere if, after two polite statements from someone, you're ready to label them with [what you feel] is a mean label and state that their opinion is invalid in light of the label you've just assigned. This is, simply and frankly, an extremely immature level of discourse, and sadly, many of us lack the moral backbone to stand up to it and we just comply with whoever is bullying the hardest/loudest. Many of our contemporary problems have this lack of moral backbone at their root. Personally, I have great respect for Islam and Muslims in general. I think they're a net force for good, especially in modern secular nations that seriously need more influence from religious people. Though I haven't had the opportunity to travel abroad extensively, I'd like to some day, and I've seriously considered relocating outside of the United States to countries with very different cultural perspectives, including Muslim nations. My grandparents are immigrants who arrived at Ellis Island in the aftermath of World War 2, and they speak non-English at home, which I don't find at all upsetting or threatening. By any objective measure, I'm not a "xenophobe" ("a person unduly fearful of what is foreign and especially of people of foreign origin"), but because you don't like my conclusion that some restrictions on refugee immigration from terror-prone regions are reasonable, you've chosen to label, shame, and ignore instead of politely agreeing to disagree. Such dismissive ignorance and self-righteousness is exactly why the blue-collar hoi polloi are rejecting this tyranny of the rising nerd bourgeoisie. Do you offer a room to every homeless guy you've ever met? I'm sure you could fit a lot of them in sleeping bags in your living room if you were so inclined. Why don't you do that? Hasn't history proven that people are good, and that "relieving human suffering" is good, and that it comes at "no real cost to yourself"? Perhaps we just disagree about the costs and risks involved in accepting refugees from nations with substantial terrorist activity. That's fine, and it doesn't warrant petty labeling from either side. That's just called a "disagreement" and they happen all the time. Maybe we can work on learning how to disagree better? There is nothing wrong with considering either the safety of American nationals or the cultural compatibility and willingness/likelihood of assimilation of foreign nationals into the American mainstream before we admit them to our country. Every country has a responsibility to make these determinations when accepting new migrants, which is why every country has nation-of-origin-based visa rules and other universal immigration controls. In fact, the rules for the US are much less stringent than those of many of our first-world peers. The fact is that your shame-based suicide cult is simply not sticking. Please come out of the bubble. Is Trump's win not enough to wake you from the echo chamber?