Christian Persecution vs Persecuted Christians

[Umbran]

Maybe other countries. Here in America a great many create anchor babies and get welfare for them.

As has been noted by Danny, "anchor babies" are largely a myth.

The only "anchor" they provide is that, 21 years after they are born, they can sponsor the legal immigration of family members. But, to act as a sponsor, they themselves have to meet minimum income requirements, and have responsibilities to provide financial support for the immigrant(s). The sponsor exists so that the immigrant *won't* be a burden on society.

But, as noted, you have to be 21 to be a sponsor. That's a *long* anchor chain.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-myth-of-the-anchor-baby-deportation-defense/

 

[Kramodlog]

I only went through two pages of anti-semitic junk and conspiracy theories when I googles Zionist attacks in the USA. Not one even semi-reputable source had anything at all. Are you including 9/11 in those 18?

The Jewish Defense League are nice folks. Last year, two members were found guilty of placing a bomb in a journalist's car in France. They involved two minors when placing that bomb. The JDL recently tried to intimidate AFP journalists and attacked a Buzzfeed journalists. Even Buzzfeed doesn't deserve that. http://www.theguardian.com/media/20...rnalist-attacked-paris-david-perrotin-ldj-afp

Strangely, no one is saying that Israelis should be banned from entering France or Europe.

 

[El Mahdi]

Maybe other countries. Here in America a great many create anchor babies and get welfare for them

Re: "anchor-babies"

Up until September or so, I personally used that term to describe children of illegal immigrants born in the USA. I stopped.

The reason why I stopped is because, if nothing else, the term is wholly inaccurate and leads to false narratives. "Anchor-babies" anchor no one. Children's status as natural born US citizens is irrelevant in Immigration/Naturalization court deportation hearings: if their parents are to be deported, the kids must either be deported along with their parents, or the parents must find someone to care for them in the US until they can be reunited.

All true, and not to mention that the purpose of most so-called "anchor-babies" has almost nothing to do with immediate immigration legitimacy or seeking welfare benefits. First, a so-called "anchor-baby" can't sponsor immigration for family members until they turn 21 - that's a rather long time to wait when there are far faster means. And second, the majority of today's so-called "anchor-babies" (as opposed to those from a few decades ago) are actually children of affluent foreigners - mostly Chinese - trying to get around the "one-child" policy or setting up future access to elite colleges for their children. They don't necessarily want to immigrate to the US, they just want to be able to send their kids to Harvard and Yale.

 

[El Mahdi]

My great grandparents came from Russia after the revolution and subsequent turn towards communism. 7 of them anyway. The last was from Romania. They came through normal legal immigration, though, and not from a country with many people who wanted to come kill us.

Oh how quickly we forget history.

Maybe there weren't a lot of people in Russia and Eastern Europe that wanted to kill us at that time...

...but we certainly believed there were.

It was called the First Red Scare, and was predicated upon exactly the 1919 Wall Street Bombing, among other events. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Red_Scare


In the minds of most Americans of that time, Bolsheviks and Anarchists were considered one and the same, regardless of country of origin - they were all "Communists."

They said Bolsheviks and Anarchists were hiding among those claiming to escape the revolution. (Today, it's Islamic terrorists hiding among Syrian refugees.)

They said Bolsheviks and Anarchists were hiding among worker unions and trying to subvert our country to establish a Communist Government. (Today, it's Muslims trying to establish Sharia Law in the US.)

If Americans of that day had fully given in to the fear that many tried to promote (especially Attorney General of the United States A._Mitchell_Palmer), you could very well be speaking Russian right now - or not exist at all.


Not to mention that coming to America as refugees is "Legal Immigration"...

 

[Ryujin]

And now we have Donald Trump calling for the 'tagging' of Muslims. Amazing, isn't it, how history is simply a repeating cycle?

 

[Kramodlog]

He is also saying he saw thousands Muslims or Arabs celebrate in Jersey City when the Towers fell on 9/11. When a Black Lives Matter protester got beaten up this week at one of his rally, he said that maybe the protester needed to be roughed up. The man is becoming increasingly dangerous.

It is even more worrisome when you consider that a new ABC poll gives him 32% of support and an NBC poll that came out two days ago gives him 28%. Both show an increase in his support.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

And now we have Donald Trump calling for the 'tagging' of Muslims. Amazing, isn't it, how history is simply a repeating cycle?

Well, given his praise of both Eisenhower's "Operation Wetback" and the Caucasian attendees who roughed up a black protester at one of his events, are you surprised?

 

[Ryujin]

Well, given his praise of both Eisenhower's "Operation Wetback" and the Caucasian attendees who roughed up a black protester at one of his events, are you surprised?

Not really. I just like to point out the obvious, every now and then.

 

[Maxperson]

You may not be aware, but dealing with refugees has two basic stages. The first is immediate, and generally encompasses setting them up in tent cities, with at best the basics of life - food, sanitation, and the like. The second is resettlement into someplace they can actually make a life. You cannot throw short-term money at the second to have it succeed, as it is the process of them having a real life, getting a job, and so on, integrated into the nation around them. The UN is in the business of helping spread these folks around, because you cannot dump them all into the local economies, which are already disrupted by the problems that created the refugees, and not create even more problems.

The UN needs to be abolished. It does more harm than good these days.

Except that's what you're doing by saying they can't live here in the US.

No I'm not. My saying they can't live here is not deciding where they live. It's deciding one place that they can't live. There is a difference, even if you don't want to see it.

Only some of it is a desert. Much of Syria is historically a Mediterranean climate.

From 2006 to 2011, Syria suffered a major drought - a killing 85% of the livestock kind of drought. A million or so farmers lost their lands. Asad's regime, which was used to handing out benefits along political lines, was not capable of managing the issues as these folks crowded into the cities looking to get by. This led to unrest, which Assad dealt with in even worse fashion, which led to civil war, ISIS getting a foothold, and so on.

So the rest of the world is on the hook for placing everyone who lives there? No. People don't care when other countries refuse refugees. It's only the U.S. that gets a bad wrap. We want to close our southern borders and we're racist jerks. Never mind that Mexico has far stricter border laws and enforcement than we ever will.

At this point, Syria is on track to lose another 50% of its agricultural productivity in the next 35 years. This, on top of the infrastructure they've lost in years of war, and the country simply will not be able to handle the same number of people for some time to come - those refugees need to go somewhere else, as Syria can't support them.

Send them to Russia. Lots of room there and Putin is responsible for keeping Assad in power. Let's see Putin's response to the UN deciding that's where refugees should go. Oh, wait. We already know it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...2/Russia-refuses-to-help-Syrian-refugees.html

None of the 12 arrested were brought up on domestic terrorism charges - three were arrested for trying to assist actions intended to take place in the Middle East. The reasons the others were arrested (not convicted, just arrested) has not otherwise been specified. None of them were Syrian. And those are *all* of them since 9/11, out of 750,000+ refugees we've taken in over that time. That's 0.0016% or so.

Really? You know for a fact that those were the only 12? We're really sure we have 100% of all those refugees with terrorist ties have been caught? Of for none of them being Syrian, that's really not relevant. The Syrian crisis is new, so now is the time that those Syrian terrorists will be coming.

Meanwhile, in that time, there have been on average 337 home grown terrorist attacks in the US each year. This in a population of about 100 million adult men. That's 0.0033%

Home grown is a different problem. You also don't make a situation better by adding fuels to the fire. It's not okay to let terrorists in just because we already have home grown ones here.

Which means that refugees are *less* likely to be terrorists than our male citizens. A male US citizen is *TWICE AS LIKELY* to be a terrorist! Statistically, the refugees are safer than your neighbors.

No it doesn't. That only means that the ones we know of are less common that home grown ones. It does not mean that they are less likely to be terrorists as we don't know just how many unknown refugee terrorists there are.

Nobody said it was in and of itself a solution - except in the sense that it gives tens of thousands of people a life when they had none to speak of. Whether or not it solves any major world problem, it is still the right thing to do.

However, it is *part* of a solution to a very complex problem. In the process, it can generate large amounts of goodwill in the moderate Muslim community (which we really, really want to have).

Tens of thousands? We have homeless people here that need to be taken care of. Once we solve our own issues, then we can worry about the issues of others. Every dollar spent on a refugee is better spent on the homeless veterans and people with mental issues that are out on our streets. I'm really tired of the U.S. treating the people of other countries better than we treat our own.

 

[Maxperson]

Why are you using the idea that illegal immigrants are already here to object to legally allowing more refugees and other immigrants who are not already here to come here and earn and spend money here? The illegal immigrants in the U.S. are entirely irrelevant to that discussion.

However, let's talk illegal immigrants and legalization for a moment. Most illegal immigrants get paid "under-the-table," and in doing so get paid substantially less than a legal worker would be paid, and don't have any withholding from their pay. Legalization would allow them to get jobs for at least minimum wage, which is usually a step up from under-the-table pay rates, and it would see them paying into the social security and medicare funds through withholding.

Now, some illegal immigrants actually use false documents to get jobs, and some of them even pay their taxes every year. The ones who have false documents and who get paid with checks do have withholding. Legalizing them won't automatically lead to more withholding, but it might allow them to legally pursue higher paying jobs that they couldn't go after before because of background check concerns. Ultimately though, I don't have an issue with legalizing illegals who not criminals, who are gainfully employed, and especially not those who are so civic-minded that they file tax returns.

Legalizing them will not only not fix the problem, because they won't be paying enough with their minimum wage jobs, but will compound the problem by adding millions of people to the system who will be entitled social security later. We need to fix the problem, not make it worse.

Then you brought up welfare, which is paid out of different funds and is irrelevant to the social security discussion, but you did it anyway (presumably to try to confuse the issue).

I brought up welfare for a few reasons, none of which was confusion. First, they drain resources better spent elsewhere, like shoring up the legal citizens retirement. Second, you don't contribute to social security when you are on welfare, so the millions of illegals who will be on welfare the minute they are legally able, will only be sucking from the U.S., not contributing anything.

Now, while I will admit that I missed the fact that you said "illegals," which I likely missed because illegal immigration had absolutely nothing to do with what we were discussing at the time and was probably just a derailment attempt, I then reminded you that individual taxpayers don't cover their own social security and medicare costs, that the system was designed so that each generation pays for the previous one (I assume you already knew that's how it works). And I said that an inflow of cash into those funds certainly wouldn't hurt.

The system is now unsustainable. Your ideas will just make the situation worse.

That's when you brought up immigrants being on welfare. And that's where your logic is circling back around to things that you have already said are irrelevant. Welfare does not come out of the social security fund. If GE and off-shore sheltering of income from taxation can be excluded as being irrelevant because those revenues don't pay into social security and medicare, then any expenses that don't get paid out of those same funds can be excluded for the same reason. Hence the "have your cake and eat it too" comment.

First, currently we are not fixing the social security problem even though we need to. Taxes could help, but our politicians don't seem inclined to either fix the tax issues, or use money outside of social security on social security. It would be nice if both happened, and that's a far better solution than your idea to make the problem worse, but I doubt it will happen.