No one wakes up and decides “Today I’m going to be a fascist.” It’s something people discover about themselves. They see children locked up without beds and they find they’re not upset by it.

Asylum seekers are completely different to immigrants. Not the same queue at all. They should be given precedence because they are fleeing devastation and death (caused largely by the USA). I mean you should let in everyone from india too but that's a different conversation to the ending of the concentration camps.

Why are you farting there? There is a more fundamental question that we, evidently, need to start with: “Should immigrant children be forced to sleep on the floor when they arrive here?” “Should we allow immigrant children to use the bathroom?” “Should we turn the lights off to allow these children to get some sleep?”

Listen pal if you can't name every Belgian who tried to get a visa from 2003-2009 I'm sorry we're just going to keep literally killing children. Those are the two options.

If only the libtards had the data about the daily processing rate at the El Paso point of entry, sure, shut the concentration camps our government is running down. But the libs just don't care enough to look things up, smh.

Other people have already (sarcastically) responded to this pretty adequately, I think, but just to say it plainly: it's not clear at all to me why you've adopted this particular rhetorical strategy in this thread, i.e. all the questions you've asked.

I feel like if you were to try to explain why you've asked those questions, or to make the implicit point in a straightforward way, you would immediately see that it was a non-sequitur as a response to this thread.

For example, what does immigration priority between India and Mexico have to do with whether or not we should hold children in detention under the conditions described above? It sounds like you're trying to argue that unless I can detail a comprehensive immigration reform plan in a forum post that I am disqualified from offering an opinion about the conditions we're holding immigrants and asylum seekers in, but that makes zero sense to me.

I think his questions highlight how interested and committed people are to actually dealing with and resolving the issue vs finger pointing and outrage. You can go over to the reparations thread and see the same thing. The people there have failed to articulate any sort of plan to calculate and distribute reparations and have been asked repeatedly. I think you went the furthest and iirc it was about 3 paragraphs, the first being on point and the rest being very vague and inadequate. Thats far better than what we've seen from anyone else that claims to care but its still extremely underwhelming.

People are claiming outrage and pointing fingers. when asked what they propose as a solution they respond but with zero attempt to address the very real logistical problems. If you are going to scream about the current situation, its only logical to ask what alternative people are proposing. perhaps we could also look at the recent surge of rage on this issue and speculate on peoples secondary motives considering the actual issue itself isn't new.

i can't speak for him but perhaps hes interested in different solutions to a problem at face value. perhaps he's wondering if this is people just finger pointing and being outraged with very little interest in dealing with the logistics of a very difficult situation. so far he's had a very spirited response, none of it actually even attempt to answer any questions relating to all the very real logistical challenges. Housing a growing an unknown number of people humanely with the understanding that money isn't unlimited, is a serious issue. in my world, if you actually cared, you would be willing to think about that. everyones different though

Have you read the last paragraph of the OP? I tried to be clear that my intention was not just finger pointing. Anyway, I'm certainly not trying to stop anyone from discussing different solutions. What I did try to do was suggest that a prerequisite to any solution ought to be the principle that we not treat people inhumanely.

I was referring specifically to the questions he asked and your response in the post i quoted. I could have snipped out the 3rd paragraph from your post

I'm not sure why you are stating a prerequisite be a humane solution, i doubt anyone was questioning you on that and i can't see why you felt the need to express that to me specifically

Ok.

How was this issue handled before the Trump administration?
Genuine question.

Who is the boarder in this scenario?
None.
Lots of savings. It currently costs $750/day to keep a child in a concentration camp. Almost all of these children have family members, including parents, in the United States, who are able to and want to take care of their children. All we need to do is to get these children to their families, and we know that almost all of them will be well cared for, and it will cost the U.S. taxpayer no money to care for these children, because they will be cared for by their parents. After processing fees and airfare, maybe put all those savings towards M4A.
They get jobs and find places to live like everyone else. By the second generation, most immigrant families are middle class and paying taxes that more than make up for the costs of the first generation. If an asylum seeker breaks the law they should face at least the same consequences as a third generation immigrant sitting president who breaks the law.

Because they don't want to live in Mexico.


Again, not sure who this boarder is, but those waiting lists will clear up pretty quickly once the borders are opened.

No, all are equally welcome.
394. Fewer, but most of them are probably old so they'll be retiring soon enough.

It’s probably because he’s not a horrible person.

I think you've taken juan too far out of context with that quote, which makes it look like he's challenging the humaneness of solutions as a prerequisite. But the next bit is "I doubt anyone was questioning you on that," so it seems he was only trying to argue that it was unnecessary for me to state this obvious condition.

I'm not sure I agree with that, and I don't quite follow exactly what juan is talking about, but it seems quite different from arguing that there should be no such prerequisite.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/24/opini...ery/index.html

The stories are just horrifying. We can do better and we must do better.

It’s not our responsibility as citizens to propose plans, wtf are you taking about? I mean, our responsibility outside of voting is almost literally to get outraged and call our government representatives and tell them to do something about stuff we want changed. His questions don’t actually highlight anything useful, they appear more as a weak attempt to delegitimize people’s concerns about the health and well-being of these children and families.

Aside from that, the notion that the humane housing of thousands of migrants is some insurmountable logistical nightmare is dubious at best. There are refugee camps created that Have certainly housed as many people under much more humane conditions under far more difficult circumstances than the Trump administration currently faces. I guess the notion of American Exceptionalism doesn’t cover erecting tents and handing out blankets and toothbrushes?

We also have 500,000 children in the foster care system that face regular abuse, and rape, and mistreatment. there are 500,000 homeless people that don't have clothes, places to sleep, and live in inhumane conditions. We just accepted these statistics as a fact of our society when any number of changes could happen if people were outraged enough. maybe we should call the foster care system the concentration care system and people will get outraged enough to improve the system.

obviously this situation is terrible and what these people are going through is horrible, but it's really not as out of places everyone seems to be pretending

I don't know the scope of the issues in the foster care system, or with homelessness, but I don't really understand the apparent logic of your post. I guess I agree with you that there are in fact a lot of terrible things in the world, and there's no fully coherent explanation for which ones gain attention at which points. This can be interesting to reflect on, and I think I've written something on here in the last couple weeks about the problem of outrage as a driver of politics.

On the other hand, to me it seems likely that the current problem with detaining immigrants and asylum seekers is easier to address than homelessness or foster care problems in general. There is a single entity that is responsible, instead of millions of disparate actors, the scale is smaller, there are some concrete steps that could be taken immediately. I don't think the existence of other terrible problems means that it's somehow wrong, or hypocritical, or whatever, to care about this one.

It's not coincidental that the same people who're adamantly fighting for reducing those types of problems are also the ones drawing attention to the treatment of people in these camps.

Is your argument that they should only choose the highest value issue to champion and ignore everything else?

The foster care system isn't being called a concentration camp because it doesn't come close to fitting the definition in the way that these detainment facilities do. Nobody even disputes that the facilities are by definition concentration camps - they just think it's too inflammatory given the historical context.

The liberal use of concentration camp certainly isn't meant to incite a rational response. Its likely the issues are being blown way out of proportion so people will be outraged about it. If you are outraged about this then there are a few issues that involve actual US citizens getting treated in a similar fashion that you can work to improve.

Most likely a few responses will try to frame me as a terrible person for even suggesting the idea.

I intentionally avoided the phrase "concentration camp" because I don't really care about the semantic debate, although from the reporting linked in the OP the phrase seems accurate enough to me.

What makes you think the reporting is exaggerated?

You want people to come up with a specific, logistical plan as to how to construct housing facilities and levy the budget? The argument is not about the specifics because we're not in a position to actually do anything about it.

If it was actually a matter of people in charge doing their own internal calculus and it was close to the mark of what people thought is reasonable and humane you'd see a steep reduction in the number of dissenting voices. Of course you'd still have some people who're never satisfied, just as you have people like you who, no matter how abysmal the situation is, will always find a way to wave it off and justify why everything is ok.



The issue is that a lot of people in government would not vote on a bill that would increase the budget for these things by even a penny and it's for the same reason that a lot of these people vote for military campaigns that inflict enormous collateral damage on civilian populations in the name of marginally reducing the risk of a once in a lifetime terror attack. It's because their calculus imputes a value on the lives of certain groups people as close to zero. Shocker.

I agree it blows it out of proportion. The actual scope of the problem though does warrant action and making the comparison draws enough attention to make it a relevant issue in the news, pressuring politicians to deal with the situation to appease their electorate.

Looking at the numbers from the reports, exaggerated isn't the right word. They are designed to whip people up into a frenzy over the issue though.

And for the record

Seems accurate enough to me. The word is associated with the worst kind of atrocities committed against man though. Its kind of the same thing when you start throwing around concentration camp.

I can get behind a reasonable stance such as this.

You’re literally taking the position that we shouldn’t get worked up over concentration camps and that eugenics is a great idea, I’m not sure what you expect from us here.