As most people on here know, I am a 'more the merrier' kind of guy. I think the best way to fix illegal immigration is to make legal immigration very fast, very easy, and as close to free as possible. I think we should support and help with people fleeing war. I thought the Trump Travel ban was the height of absurdity. In no small part because limiting the admittance of people from 7 out of nearly 200 countries for a whopping 3 months won't make the tiniest dent in any challenges we face here. It was 100% window dressing from the very beginning.
But I also try to be open minded and make an effort to understand a different view point. This is something I recommitted to after getting the fucking shock of my life in the most recent presidential election. It did not change any of my beliefs, but clearly I was missing something somewhere.
Then I saw this video. If you can put aside the gentlemans appearance for the moment (though he is excatly what a bad-ass MOFO protecting our country should look like) and sit through it all, what he has to say is remarkably lucid.
I have thought about what he said a lot. And while he did not change my mind, he went a long way to helping me understand why a great many people feel differently about this than I do.
While we are doing some awful things in some places in the world I don't think we have any business being, we are also treating people that hate us with great kindness a lot of the time. We are welcoming people into our country that would not welcome us into theirs. And this is not just a 'middle east' thing. This is across much of the globe. Outside of Western Europe, Canada, Australia/New Zealand, and Scandanavia, most of the planet would not be very welcoming of Americans moving in. Even places we consider allies are guilty of this. And though we could treat the ones coming here better a lot of the time, there is little doubt that we would be treated far worse if the situation were reversed. And though this could also be said of some other countries, England in particular, I think it is most true of the US.
The one-sidedness of this arrangement, the hypocrisy inherent in it, and the fact that we welcome people from countries that are not only unwelcoming to us, be to pretty much anyone else, is a fundamental imbalance that many just can not reconcile. And though I do not think we should change our openness regardless of what others do, indeed I think we should be more open as we once were, I can at least say I understand the source of the insular tone that seems to be gaining momentum.
Now, here is why I feel we should be even more open in the face of this fundamental inequity.
1) We live in a capitalist system. A rapidly aging capitalist system. A rapidly aging capitalist system with a low native birth rate. Even with wage pressures and the other challenges, immigration can only help us.
2) For the world to truly evolve and make maximum use of it's resources, tribalism is going to have to end at some point.
3) Most importantly, I do truly believe that if you put a person in a free, tolerant society, they will come to appreciate it more than an oppressed, intolerant one. It may take a generation or so, but those principles are always going to win the day.