Excellent reply! But no, even trying to explain a conservative take on lemmy, even if you don’t personally believe it, is going to get you buried. There’s one guy on here that’s an outspoken conservative, and while I usually disagree, he’s well spoken and often gives me food for thought. Swear to god people follow him around and down vote his posts, no matter how sane. The man can literally post a one-sentence fact and get down voted.

I’m sure we call all agree that the legal paths to immigration are a complete clusterfuck. And we all agree they should become legal residents and workers, or so we say. Conservatives in particular go on and on with, “I just want them to obey the law, come here legally.” No arguments here!

My wife has been in America about 5 years, 2 of those married to another American, seems like she would be good to go. Right now she’s struggling to get her 10-year green card, which in her case should be a rubber stamp, but no. Heard her this morning talking to INS (or some such agency), begging, pleading and arguing to get some action. She very mild mannered, but I heard her complain for a new case worker because she was spinning wheels. The reply was that they don’t have the staffing, more on that later.

Trying to bring her son over from the Philippines should be easy enough. He’s educated, no criminal record, all that. Given that she’s here legally, married to an American and we have a place for him (own our home), this should be easy enough. Don’t even know where we’re at with that, but I expect it to take years and years of waiting and red tape. You mail a form, wait 4-6 months, get forced to do it over because they didn’t like some tiny detail or want information that wasn’t asked for in the first place. Rinse and repeat.

Problem is, we don’t want immigrants here legally so we under fund the services and pile on the obstructions. Illegal immigrants are the modern day answer to slavery. If they were legal, we’d have to pay them real money and several sectors of the economy would collapse, or at best, prices would go through the roof. People most often point to agriculture, but health care and other services would suffer.

Wife supervised a crew of Mexicans at a large beach hotel. None of them were legal, not one, yet they worked through some sketchy service that took a major chunk of their pay. We went kayaking with a Honduran friend of hers. Guy can’t speak English so she related his situation*. Might be off a bit, but he was getting paid something like $17/hr. After fees and other scams, he brought home $12, and had to pay taxes on the $17. Sounds like something out of The Jungle, systemically holding immigrants down.

So what’s the incentive to go with a sane plan such as you outlined? The GOP loses a major talking point if the situation is fixed and the Democrats would get blamed for spiking prices. There are other factors such as whites becoming a minority in the coming decades, freaks some people out, freaked me a bit when I read that in the 90s. For us old folks, we remember very different demographics. (100 comments to follow calling me a racist.) For me anyway, it’s not racism, it’s change that’s a little weird. If that change is a tad uncomfortable for a liberal, consider how a conservative sees it. Rejection of change is a strong emotion in the conservative mind, just how they’re wired.

* And that’s a fucking problem. Love this guy, looking forward to taking him out again, but immigrants like him aren’t doing themselves any favors by refusing to integrate. Ask my wife about her crew at the beach. She said they all refuse to learn English and are highly insular, snotty in fact. Not winning hearts and minds here people.