Obama deported a lot of people and Trump is further expanding the deportations. The problem here is that we need immigration reform, not that we need to stop deporting people who have over stayed visas etc...
Immigrants are self selecting people who want to have a better life. Why the US cannot figure out how to streamline legal immigration has been a failure of the US government for many years. Instead of 10k more officers to implement deportations, a better use of money would have been to use those people to improve/speed up the immigration process.
> Immigrants are self selecting people who want to have a better life.
Being a developer/scientist/entrepreneur whose primary exposure to immigrants is of high-IQ, high-agency, personable people similar to ourselves, it's easy to allow anecdote to obscure the facts.
The facts are that immigrants - both legal and illegal - are far more likely than natives to parasitize the social services of their host country:
The interesting question is not whether poor people use more welfare than rich people but whether poor immigrants are more likely to use more welfare than poor natives. Our research found that poor immigrants are less likely to use welfare than poor natives. The CIS report isn’t very useful because it doesn’t correct for this.
That would be an interesting question if we were answering the purely academic question of "who's a better human being, immigrants or natives?"
I fully agree that on average, the American underclass is terrible and most immigrants are better people. As evidence of this, witness all the left wing types who seem to believe that the American underclass would rather sit around on welfare than do the work that illegal immigrants will no longer be doing.
But that's not the question we're asking. The question we're asking is whether a new immigrant - a person we have the choice of accepting or rejecting - will be a benefit to society or a parasite upon it? Many natives suck, but we're stuck with them. Does that mean we are forever obligated to import more people who suck only slightly less?
(For the record, I think the best solution is to end the welfare state and open our borders. I'm just arguing with bad reasoning.)
>As evidence of this, witness all the left wing types who seem to believe that the American underclass would rather sit around on welfare than do the work that illegal immigrants will no longer be doing.
Also if America were actually such a terrible place for the underclass (because racism, etc) wouldn't the rational left-wing response be to try to get the underclass to emigrate somewhere where they might get "fair" treatment?
> witness all the left wing types who seem to believe that the American underclass would rather sit around on welfare than do the work that illegal immigrants will no longer be doing.
What? Isn't the "welfare queen" a right-wing talking point?
It's a common left wing talking point too: we need to import more Mexicans because "they do jobs that Americans just won't do". See the comment just above mine, for instance. This talking point is correct and I can back it up with Census and BLS stats if you like.
Admittedly, it's only right wingers who bring that talking point up when discussing welfare.
> Why the US cannot figure out how to streamline legal immigration has been a failure of the US government for many years
I hate Trump's immigration policies but he repeatedly promised to streamline the immigration process on the campaign trail (and he used that very word, "streamline", every time, as if to drill it in people's heads). When he first brought up "extreme vetting", he also said he wants to make the process much quicker, and doesn't want people waiting years to get a visa.
This fits the "make a bold first offer, then tone it down before the execution" interpretation of Trump that some people find convincing.
I guess his plan is to be harsher in his vetting in some areas (so, turn away a whole population if even 3% of them could be bad apples) to allow him to be much more lenient in other areas.
> I hate Trump's immigration policies but he repeatedly promised to streamline the immigration process on the campaign trail
Everyone promises that. Sometimes, people even present coherent policies (Trump has not) which make that promise concrete. Those concrete policies don't tend to do much (which is the fault of the proposer) to actually streamline the process, or they tend not to get passed (which may be the fault of other legislative actors).
Promising generalities is very far from delivering an actual actionable plan.
> Why the US cannot figure out how to streamline legal immigration has been a failure of the US government for many years.
The issue is not that the US cannot figure out how to.
The issue is that the US (that is, a sufficient set of those people in positions to make decisions on immigration law) do not want to improve the situation with legal immigration.
Immigrants are self selecting people who want to have a better life. Why the US cannot figure out how to streamline legal immigration has been a failure of the US government for many years. Instead of 10k more officers to implement deportations, a better use of money would have been to use those people to improve/speed up the immigration process.