Political Roundtable Part VIII

[DCZards]

And this is what I don't understand. Can't we agree on at least some semblance of objective standards of what we want in immigrants? Don't we want immigrant groups who do well in school and prosper economically? Don't we want immigrants who rarely wind up in jail or committing crimes or on welfare? Don't we want immigrant groups who tend to agree with our constitution and our general cultural outlook on women's rights, gay rights, individual liberty, etc.? Do we want immigrant groups who actively disagree with those principles based on a deep-rooted, religious viewpoint?

While I'm probably (proudly) in the minority, I don't agree with most of your points. I'm not interested in telling those immigrant groups whose kids have performed well in school that they're welcome in the US...and telling those whose kids have struggled in school that they are not welcome. I want the struggling kids to have just as good a shot at the so-called American Dream as high-performing kids. I'm more interested in a kid's character than their test score.

I'm not overly concerned about whether immigrants are in lockstep with our constitution or culture, especially since we Americans aren't even in agreement on issues like healthcare reform, abortion, women's rights, gay rights, voting rights...and various aspects of our culture.

And immigrants (as well as the rest of us) have the right to "actively disagree" with those principles...as long as they are not violent or break the law doing it. The end of slavery, the women's right to vote, civil rights laws and other positive changes to our nation's "principles" were the direct result of people actively disagreeing with the status quo.

[nate33]

Fine then, Nate. Who do you consider as an immigrant then? Is it strictly non-U.S. born citizens? Are their children considered as immigrants? How about the children's children? Are you going to look at your O'Quinns. Hannitys, Bukowskis, or just non-European immigrants? Many important people, including the President, are children of immigrants, so where does your line stop?

I think the Natural Born Citizen clause has it pretty well laid out. U.S. Citizens are people born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof. If you are born here and your parents are citizens or legally immigrated here, you are a citizen. Also, if you are born to parents who are legal U.S. Citizens but not residing within the U.S. at the time of birth, you are still a U.S. Citizen.

If you don't fall in the above criteria, you are an alien. An immigrant is an alien that is legally sanctioned by the government to live here.

[nate33]

And this is what I don't understand. Can't we agree on at least some semblance of objective standards of what we want in immigrants? Don't we want immigrant groups who do well in school and prosper economically? Don't we want immigrants who rarely wind up in jail or committing crimes or on welfare? Don't we want immigrant groups who tend to agree with our constitution and our general cultural outlook on women's rights, gay rights, individual liberty, etc.? Do we want immigrant groups who actively disagree with those principles based on a deep-rooted, religious viewpoint?

While I'm probably (proudly) in the minority, I don't agree with most of your points. I'm not interested in telling those immigrant groups whose kids have performed well in school that they're welcome in the US...and telling those whose kids have struggled in school that they are not welcome. I want the struggling kids to have just as a good a shot at the so-called American Dream as high-performing kids. I'm more interested in a kid's character than their test score.

Well then, I submit that if you were running immigration policy, it would rapidly lead to bankruptcy of the government and the end of our country as we know it. There are approximately 1 billion people from the Third World who would immigrate here if given the chance. I guess you would let them all in. That would turn us into a Third World nation. You might be happy with the outcome, but I submit that most Americans wouldn't be.

[nate33]

I guess it can be read into "until we figure out what's going on" part. But, the statement is vague in the details, but very specific about the target. He doesn't say America needs to review its immigration policies -- which would be fine. I don't even think I'd do more than raise an eyebrow if he included a specific mention of Muslims and the specter of terrorists gaining easy access to the US. Honestly, if he even included a LINK to one of his policy papers indicating that this specific call was part of a larger review of immigration policy, I think I'd be okay with it. It bothers me to recognize that he and his staff are smart enough, skilled enough and savvy enough to know everything I just mentioned and still put this out as written.

Fair points. All of them.

[dckingsfan]

One thing I will say is that Trump is actually trying to come up with a policy - I might not like it but it is a policy - just don't let them in.

I see Obama flailing with the gun ownership issue as a distraction to NOT having a policy. Locking down gun ownership doesn't stop terrorism (see the Boston Marathon bombing).

At TGW - so what is the Liberal Policy? I don't see one.

As a side note TGW, the stop and frisk policy was very effective in NY at reducing gun related crimes in NY. It is a policy at reducing gun violence.

[TGW]

Fine then, Nate. Who do you consider as an immigrant then? Is it strictly non-U.S. born citizens? Are their children considered as immigrants? How about the children's children? Are you going to look at your O'Quinns. Hannitys, Bukowskis, or just non-European immigrants? Many important people, including the President, are children of immigrants, so where does your line stop?

I think the Natural Born Citizen clause has it pretty well laid out. U.S. Citizens are people born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof. If you are born here and your parents are citizens or legally immigrated here, you are a citizen. Also, if you are born to parents who are legal U.S. Citizens but not residing within the U.S. at the time of birth, you are still a U.S. Citizen.

If you don't fall in the above criteria, you are an alien. An immigrant is an alien that is legally sanctioned by the government to live here.

I'm simply questioning your own question. From your original post, it doesn't sound like you were using the legal definition of an immigrant:

What has been the track record of immigrants in America? Does it vary by region where the immigration came from? How are they doing economically? How are the second and third generation immigrants doing? How are they assimilating? How are they performing in schools? What is their violent crime rate? How has it changed our culture? What cultural changes can be expected in the future as their percentage of the population increases? Are additional immigrants even needed based on our current economic conditions?

Since you weren't clear with how far you wanted to go back in time, you left grey area in your question. "Second and third generation immigrants" suggests that f your grand-parents are immigrants, YOU'RE AN IMMIGRANT even if you're US born...does it not? Using your criteria, that study would have to go way back.

And FYI If you want to use the whole "crime-data"/education/economic argument as a base for your anti-immigration policy, well Muslim immigrants are some of the most well-educated, least criminalized, and economically wealthy groups in America. Guess we can't really use them in your "immigrants are the source of everything bad" narrative.

[popper]

How CBO Estimates the Effects of the Affordable
Care Act on the Labor Market


Abstract

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) will make the labor supply, measured as the total compensation paid to
workers, 0.86 percent smaller in 2025 than it would have been in the absence of that law, the
Congressional Budget Office estimates. Three-quarters of that decline will occur because of health
insurance expansions, which raise effective tax rates on earnings from labor—for instance, by phasing out
health insurance subsidies as people’s income rises—and thus reduce the amount of labor that workers
choose to supply. The labor force is projected to be about 2 million full-time-equivalent workers smaller
in 2025 under the ACA than it would have been otherwise. Those estimates were based mainly on CBO’s
calculations of the effects of the law’s major components on marginal and average tax rates and on the
agency’s analysis of research about the change in the labor supply resulting from a change in tax rates.
For components of the law that were difficult to express in terms of changes in tax rates, CBO based its
estimates on a review of the available literature about similar policy changes.

https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-2016/workingpaper/51065-ACA_Labor_Market_Effects_WP.pdf

[nuposse04]

So the jist of this xenophobia is that we are scared muslim immigrants will murder US citizens if we continue letting them in yah? I'd be curious to see the murder rate IN the US for immigrants by nationality and compare them to the norm here.

If immigrants from north africa/middle east/ south asia had a significantly higher murder rate when they come to the US then the national average I guess I could understand why one would be xenophobic towards people of said ilk.

I will say though, I do agree with the notion that as a country you should want to accept immigrants with skills and ability to help make our country better. There should still be a "humanitarian" component in it, but overall you want to add productive members to society.

[nate33]

Fine then, Nate. Who do you consider as an immigrant then? Is it strictly non-U.S. born citizens? Are their children considered as immigrants? How about the children's children? Are you going to look at your O'Quinns. Hannitys, Bukowskis, or just non-European immigrants? Many important people, including the President, are children of immigrants, so where does your line stop?

I think the Natural Born Citizen clause has it pretty well laid out. U.S. Citizens are people born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof. If you are born here and your parents are citizens or legally immigrated here, you are a citizen. Also, if you are born to parents who are legal U.S. Citizens but not residing within the U.S. at the time of birth, you are still a U.S. Citizen.

If you don't fall in the above criteria, you are an alien. An immigrant is an alien that is legally sanctioned by the government to live here.

I'm simply questioning your own question. From your original post, it doesn't sound like you were using the legal definition of an immigrant:

What has been the track record of immigrants in America? Does it vary by region where the immigration came from? How are they doing economically? How are the second and third generation immigrants doing? How are they assimilating? How are they performing in schools? What is their violent crime rate? How has it changed our culture? What cultural changes can be expected in the future as their percentage of the population increases? Are additional immigrants even needed based on our current economic conditions?

Since you weren't clear with how far you wanted to go back in time, you left grey area in your question. "Second and third generation immigrants" suggests that f your grand-parents are immigrants, YOU'RE AN IMMIGRANT even if you're US born...does it not? Using your criteria, that study would have to go way back.

Apologies. I can see how that was confusing.

By second or third generation immigrants, I meant U.S. citizens of parents and grandparents who were immigrants. I am in no way suggesting that we should ever treat a second generation or third generation immigrant in any way other than as an American citizen, but I do think it would be informative on our future immigration policy to measure how well second and third generation immigrants have succeeded over the past 50 years.

For example, studies have shown that immigrants from Mexico and Latin America haven't done too well, but their children do better. Unfortunately, there is a disturbing pattern that their grandchildren and great grandchildren do much worse. It's a well-understood phenomenon of some immigrant groups. Explanations vary.

[nate33]

So the jist of this xenophobia is that we are scared muslim immigrants will murder US citizens if we continue letting them in yah? I'd be curious to see the murder rate IN the US for immigrants by nationality and compare them to the norm here.

If immigrants from north africa/middle east/ south asia had a significantly higher murder rate when they come to the US then the national average I guess I could understand why one would be xenophobic towards people of said ilk.

I would like to see some data too. As of now, it's not tracked to my knowledge. Middle Easterners are typically considered "white", or sometimes "other". The best we can do is try and survey representative samples of populations. The data on North African and Middle Eastern immigrants to Europe indicates that their violent crime rate is 2 to 4 times higher, but there could be other factors such as age and income disparity that influence those numbers.

[AFM]

Damn my boy Donny T needs to cool it with this talk fam, I'm trying to see his daughter on TV every day for the next 8 years. That bish is smokin' hot. I know CCJ agrees with me.

[nuposse04]

So the jist of this xenophobia is that we are scared muslim immigrants will murder US citizens if we continue letting them in yah? I'd be curious to see the murder rate IN the US for immigrants by nationality and compare them to the norm here.

If immigrants from north africa/middle east/ south asia had a significantly higher murder rate when they come to the US then the national average I guess I could understand why one would be xenophobic towards people of said ilk.

I would like to see some data too. As of now, it's not tracked to my knowledge. Middle Easterners are typically considered "white", or sometimes "other". The best we can do is try and surveys representative samples of populations. The data on North African and Middle Eastern immigrants to Europe indicates that their violent crime rate is 2 to 4 times higher, but there could be other factors such as age and income disparity that influence those numbers.

I would guess the economically disenfranchised from any country would be more likely to commit a violent crime. But I'm more curious as to "their" murder rate when they are in the US. Would also be interesting to compare murder rates of nationalities in the US compared to their birthplace's current rates.

[DCZards]

As a side note TGW, the stop and frisk policy was very effective in NY at reducing gun related crimes in NY. It is a policy at reducing gun violence.

The stop-and-frisk policy was also very biased...and victimized many innocent people, particularly people of color. And there's very little evidence that it had much of an impact on reducing gun-related crimes.

Edit to add:

This is from the NY ACLU website:

"An analysis by the NYCLU revealed that innocent New Yorkers have been subjected to police stops and street interrogations more than 5 million times since 2002, and that black and Latino communities continue to be the overwhelming target of these tactics. Nearly nine out of 10 stopped-and-frisked New Yorkers have been completely innocent, according to the NYPD’s own report."

[dckingsfan]

As a side note TGW, the stop and frisk policy was very effective in NY at reducing gun related crimes in NY. It is a policy at reducing gun violence.

The stop-and-frisk policy was also very biased...and victimized many innocent people, particularly people of color. And there's very little evidence that it had much of an impact on reducing gun-related crimes.

Edit to add:

This is from the NY ACLU website:

"An analysis by the NYCLU revealed that innocent New Yorkers have been subjected to police stops and street interrogations more than 5 million times since 2002, and that black and Latino communities continue to be the overwhelming target of these tactics. Nearly nine out of 10 stopped-and-frisked New Yorkers have been completely innocent, according to the NYPD’s own report."

Not saying it wasn't biased or effective (although I think it hard to prove it didn't have some effect). But the point is it was a tactic.

So, what is the strategy and correlating tactics to fight terrorism from the liberal perspective.

It is pretty easy to eviscerate others proposals when you don't have to defend a proposal...

[TheSecretWeapon]

How CBO Estimates the Effects of the Affordable
Care Act on the Labor Market


Abstract

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) will make the labor supply, measured as the total compensation paid to
workers, 0.86 percent smaller in 2025 than it would have been in the absence of that law, the
Congressional Budget Office estimates. Three-quarters of that decline will occur because of health
insurance expansions, which raise effective tax rates on earnings from labor—for instance, by phasing out
health insurance subsidies as people’s income rises—and thus reduce the amount of labor that workers
choose to supply. The labor force is projected to be about 2 million full-time-equivalent workers smaller
in 2025 under the ACA than it would have been otherwise. Those estimates were based mainly on CBO’s
calculations of the effects of the law’s major components on marginal and average tax rates and on the
agency’s analysis of research about the change in the labor supply resulting from a change in tax rates.
For components of the law that were difficult to express in terms of changes in tax rates, CBO based its
estimates on a review of the available literature about similar policy changes.

https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-2016/workingpaper/51065-ACA_Labor_Market_Effects_WP.pdf

Seems like a good argument for detaching healthcare from employment and going to a single payer system.

[TheSecretWeapon]

As a side note TGW, the stop and frisk policy was very effective in NY at reducing gun related crimes in NY. It is a policy at reducing gun violence.

This is HIGHLY debatable. There was a study that came out last year that found no evidence to support the idea that misdemeanor arrests (like those coming from stop & frisk) reduced violent crime. Felony arrests helped some with robberies, but the effect was pretty small. Most of the decline in New York's crime rate was attributed to other factors.

And then there's that whole pesky thing with stop & frisk being racist in application, and unconstitutional.

[popper]

How CBO Estimates the Effects of the Affordable
Care Act on the Labor Market


Abstract

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) will make the labor supply, measured as the total compensation paid to
workers, 0.86 percent smaller in 2025 than it would have been in the absence of that law, the
Congressional Budget Office estimates. Three-quarters of that decline will occur because of health
insurance expansions, which raise effective tax rates on earnings from labor—for instance, by phasing out
health insurance subsidies as people’s income rises—and thus reduce the amount of labor that workers
choose to supply. The labor force is projected to be about 2 million full-time-equivalent workers smaller
in 2025 under the ACA than it would have been otherwise. Those estimates were based mainly on CBO’s
calculations of the effects of the law’s major components on marginal and average tax rates and on the
agency’s analysis of research about the change in the labor supply resulting from a change in tax rates.
For components of the law that were difficult to express in terms of changes in tax rates, CBO based its
estimates on a review of the available literature about similar policy changes.

https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-2016/workingpaper/51065-ACA_Labor_Market_Effects_WP.pdf

Seems like a good argument for detaching healthcare from employment and going to a single payer system.

I’m not sure the govt. run single-payer VA health system is something that most Americans would be happy with. I could be wrong though.


Top VA Watchdog Resigned After Being Caught Masturbating On The Job

http://dailycaller.com/2015/12/06/va-cop-chose-the-wrong-beat/

Vet's mom forced to sell Obama letter to cover VA failures he promised to fix
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2577854

[TheSecretWeapon]

How CBO Estimates the Effects of the Affordable
Care Act on the Labor Market


Abstract

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) will make the labor supply, measured as the total compensation paid to
workers, 0.86 percent smaller in 2025 than it would have been in the absence of that law, the
Congressional Budget Office estimates. Three-quarters of that decline will occur because of health
insurance expansions, which raise effective tax rates on earnings from labor—for instance, by phasing out
health insurance subsidies as people’s income rises—and thus reduce the amount of labor that workers
choose to supply. The labor force is projected to be about 2 million full-time-equivalent workers smaller
in 2025 under the ACA than it would have been otherwise. Those estimates were based mainly on CBO’s
calculations of the effects of the law’s major components on marginal and average tax rates and on the
agency’s analysis of research about the change in the labor supply resulting from a change in tax rates.
For components of the law that were difficult to express in terms of changes in tax rates, CBO based its
estimates on a review of the available literature about similar policy changes.

https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-2016/workingpaper/51065-ACA_Labor_Market_Effects_WP.pdf

Seems like a good argument for detaching healthcare from employment and going to a single payer system.

I’m not sure the govt. run single-payer VA health system is something that most Americans would be happy with. I could be wrong though.


Top VA Watchdog Resigned After Being Caught Masturbating On The Job

http://dailycaller.com/2015/12/06/va-cop-chose-the-wrong-beat/

Vet's mom forced to sell Obama letter to cover VA failures he promised to fix
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2577854

Since that's the only possible way single-payer healthcare could be run, you have an excellent point.

[Induveca]

As a side note TGW, the stop and frisk policy was very effective in NY at reducing gun related crimes in NY. It is a policy at reducing gun violence.

This is HIGHLY debatable. There was a study that came out last year that found no evidence to support the idea that misdemeanor arrests (like those coming from stop & frisk) reduced violent crime. Felony arrests helped some with robberies, but the effect was pretty small. Most of the decline in New York's crime rate was attributed to other factors.

And then there's that whole pesky thing with stop & frisk being racist in application, and unconstitutional.

Stop and frisk was done in high crime areas, areas which were black/Latino. I know because I lived in uptown Manhattan during this period. That's not racism, it's just the high crime areas in NYC happen to be black/Latino.

Guys who I knew carried weapons in the 90s, stopped completely with the new initiative. Stop and frisk scared *everyone* uptown, criminal or not. But when you say 90% were "innocent", the reason many weren't carrying a weapon was the policy to begin with.

It works, scared a lot of my friends straight. However under DeBlasio things are getting worse again. A lot more sporadic violence. They should bring it back, it improved the neighborhood immensely.

[TGW]

This is HIGHLY debatable. There was a study that came out last year that found no evidence to support the idea that misdemeanor arrests (like those coming from stop & frisk) reduced violent crime. Felony arrests helped some with robberies, but the effect was pretty small. Most of the decline in New York's crime rate was attributed to other factors.

And then there's that whole pesky thing with stop & frisk being racist in application, and unconstitutional.

Stop and frisk was done in high crime areas, areas which were black/Latino. I know because I lived in uptown Manhattan during this period. That's not racism, it's just the high crime areas in NYC happen to be black/Latino.

Guys who I knew carried weapons in the 90s, stopped completely with the new initiative. Stop and frisk scared *everyone* uptown, criminal or not. But when you say 90% were "innocent", the reason many weren't carrying a weapon was the policy to begin with.

It works, scared a lot of my friends straight. However under DeBlasio things are getting worse again. A lot more sporadic violence. They should bring it back, it improved the neighborhood immensely.

Wrong...the most crime ridden area (garment and mid-town districts in manhattan) in NYC are majority white areas according to NYC crime map for 2014 and 2015:

http://maps.nyc.gov/crime/

yet, those 2 areas (precinct 14 and 18) only have a handful of stop and frisk stops per month. Precinct 18, despite being a very high crime area, only had 62 stop and frisks from Jan 1 to March 31 despite being a high crime area. Precinct 106 (predominantly black and latino), for example, had 443 stops in that same time frame, despite being a low-risk crime area. So to make the conclusion that stop and frisk is done in black and latino areas because it's a high crime area is completely fallacious. The most dangerous parts of New York are predominantly white areas, yet S&F is practiced sparingly in those areas....that suggests to me overt racism.

Stop being an uncle tom.