Why do some people in the USA assume all immigrants are illegal and should "go back to where they came from"? Shouldn't that logic apply to all non-Native Americans?
Not everyone thinks this, but I know an extreme right-winger who thinks this. He is also a conspiracy theorist who thinks non-white people are out to get white people so, yeah, odd.
Not every immigrant is illegal or bad. I know a girl who didn't speak English for 3 years when her family legally immigrated, so of course she's been told this.
Id say about 90% of folks that push for this dont understand how our immigration/asylum system works other 10% would be hateful racist. In my experience, if you reply with yeah this is a problem we need to change how it works so people arent forced to do illegal things, they will tell they just dont want them here. Its not about coming in illegally its about non white people coming here. We really need reform. Your friend is on very sad and dangerous path.
Eh I feel like its harder to find a racist than it is to find a dummy. Most people just dont understand why they are doing so bad at life so they need someone to blame
Yesterday, at a park, I saw some Patriot Front (a neonazi group) posters on two adjacent polls. One was something about the "American spirit" descending from "European blood". The other said "America is for Americans". Without a hint of irony.
As if Europeans didn't immigrate but just popped out of the ground here, or something?
Racists aren't known for their critical thinking skills.
those people are looking for something to hate. This is also why those kind of people are deadend for humanity. If they get rid of all immigrants they will find some other group to hate and after getting rid of those they will find another again until there are only 2 people that want to kill eachother, if you excuse the hyperbole.
Short answer is "propaganda". News agencies against immigration will pretty regularly swap between "illegal immigrants", "immigrants", and <insert current target race here> as if they're practically interchangable to build whatever narrative they want, and also to slowly build an association between 'people of <insert race>', 'being a drain on society', and 'being here illegally' to get the average person to side with them.
Whats worse is that the current administration has stated that native Americans are not US citizens and indigenous communities are being hassled hard by ICE right now. I don't know what their plan for native people eventually is but it won't be good and it won't be to just leave them out of this.
So are the vast majority of most Mexicans. Mexico is mostly a Native American country that has been a bit acculturated to Spanish culture. Their genes are mostly native, their food is mostly native, their name is native, and they even have a native Virgin Mary called the Virgin of Guadalupe that wears Mexican-style clothes. South Park did a bit on this where the women of South Park were getting "wise" advice from Native Americans, so it was highly regarded and sought out. Towards the end of the episode, the women of South Park found out that the advice was coming fro two Mexicans, so they got upset and disregarded it as crap.
Fun fact: What is now the Southwestern US used to be part of Mexico which is why a lot of places there have Spanish names. It became US territory at the end of the Mexican-American War via the Treaty of Guadalupe.
Fun fact 2: BBQ is Native American. The word comes from the Taino word barabicu.
I feel both superior and stupid at the same time in this moment. I don't know what a "wetback" is. Based on context I'm going to guess it's some kind of racist remark that doesn't apply to Ukrainains. But for the life of me, I can't think of what it would even be saying.
So I feel stupid for not knowing.....but also like I'm probably the better person for NOT knowing.
Unfortunately I'm familiar with the term. It refers to Latin people immigrating into the U.S. without documentation by swimming across the Rio Grande river which forms part of the border between the U.S. and Mexico.
LOL reminds me about the bigot during the first Trump administration harassing Puerto Ricans because he claimed they are aren't American citizens. Get ready for even more of this nonsense in the next 4 years, ugh.
A lot of people are influenced by alt-right news (Fox News, Newsmax, OAN) who keep repeating the false claim that undocumented immigrants are mostly gangsters and violent criminals. In truth, undocumented immigrants are way less likely to commit a violent crime than an average American citizen.
Trump said, regarding the first deportation flight:
Three hundred people sitting on a plane. Every single one of them is either a murderer, a drug lord, a kingpin, the head of the mob, or a gang member
Yet none of those deportees had any criminal conviction in either country (according to Newsweek, a slightly-right news source).
I think it's as simple as this: people need an enemy, some person or group they feel is against them. Conservatives get off on having a victim complex, and will straight up make shit up against their opposition just to make themselves look like a helpless little child. "Oh no, what am I gonna do? Me or my granddaughter needs a job and I heard in the news they're all being taken up by immigrants" meanwhile, the same person is being fed this information from the comfort of their couch.
"The immigrants are taking our jobs" is a sentiment that I have seen at least in my part of the country go down in the last several years and im in a very conservative area. Simple fact is immigrant workers work cheaper and faster than others and they often do better work, people are realizing that.
The White House made it so that all inmigrants are criminals by default because they entered the country illegally. Turning innocent until proven guilty on its head. Now everyone is guilty by association.
Well, they aren't talking about the huge number of "illegals" who are here on expired visas because that would mean a lot of white people would get rounded up in this bullshit.
Remember, everyone is a hypocrite. The USA is a melting pot of so many different peoples with about 250 years of history as a nation. My working theory is that has led to a nation-wide identity crisis: who and what am I. They are intensely occupied with their origins because the only people who have been on the continent for millennia (Native Americans) were brutally reduced and are the only ones who know their roots with higher certainty.
It's why many USAians will gladly call themselves "Italian", "Indonesian", or "African" without ever having set a foot in that country/continent, knowing next to nothing about it, being unable to speak or even identity a language from there, nor locate it on the map.
Factor in their education system, "winner takes all" vote counting system which leads to tribalism, and media influence, human inability to think long term, and you end up with a large swathe of people who cannot reason logically about these things.
Because they're stupid, bigoted cunts. I IT in construction (somehow still, whew thats another story) and I talk to these troglodytes on a daily basis. The minute one of these homunculus shambles in and has a minute to flap their lip skins racist ass, stupid ass shit flows out. Meanwhile, every gentleman that is of Mexican descent can at least hold their cool, or outright flipoff the trump cutout my boss has up in our office. Not saying they aren't imperfect humans either, but for some fucken reason white dudes can't help but drop the mask to other white dudes. All I gotta do is have one Trump trinket near me to work magic on anyone conversing with me. The trick is, a lot of the immigrant dudes didnt start flipping Trump off until he actually began this deportation shit. Even when he was saying he'd do it they were saying he'd fix stuff. Its a people thing man idk. Education in the western hemisphere is just utterly failing most. If you aren't a knowledge seeker, if you dont have the tools to combat propaganda and falsehoods, and sometimes even if you do, this place will eat you.
I feel like you could have said just this. Not saying the rest of your post is invalid in anyway. I'm just saying that first sentence sums it up completely.
It's origins (and current day continuation) are in white nativism which of course intersects with the white supremacist and American exceptionalism sentiments that has been around since the origins of the US
For some reason it seems like human nature to treat everybody in a recognizable group like they're the same person, and that person is either good or bad depending on your background and attitudes - immigrants, trans people, cops, boomers, tech nerds, hot women, republicans, democrats, musicians... there are probably stereotypes you have broad opinions about which you will spend all day defending/rationalizing because a) "it's true" and/or b) "I'm not bigoted!" We're all bigots, just do it in different ways. And no, that's not a defense for any particular bigotry or saying they're all equal.
So people are programmed to be biased towards their own self interest, it’s not as malicious as it sounds, it’s unfortunately human nature.
So naturally they would think that the new world conquest was justified for whatever reason (maybe cause there was no flag?).
And conversely, naturally they would think of new people coming here as less justified, after all, we live in a modern world with borders now.
What I’ve learned from politics in the last few years, especially during the pandemic, is to never trust someone’s opinion when there is conflict of interest.
We're also heavily biased towards our own group. Humans are so tribal it's kinda wild if you think on it.
Get a bunch of Ford and Chevy people in the same room, see what happens. And we divide ourselves along 100,000 other lines.
Lemmings look down on redditors.
"But I'm on the right side! The others clearly are not!"
In college there were 3 restaurants owned by the same guy, all very popular and everyone wanted a job at one. When we would all get together for Christmas or other event, we would self segregate and snob the other employees. Our restaurant was the cool one.
Yeah we better start coming up with some paperwork that our great great grandparents were legal. At this point I'd be pretty happy to be deported to Germany.
Oh if you aren't brown you're ok. White places like Germany are the immigrants that are ok. Haven't you heard "If it's brown flush it down. If it's yellow let it mellow."? A lot of people think that refers to bathroom business but really it's gop immigration policy.
The US is an immigrant nation built on the genocide of natives. Anti-immigration sentiment is based on an ignorance of history and the modern workforce of the country.
Crackdowns on undocumented workers will destroy the local agricultural industry. The US and its food supply are completely dependent on migrant labor.
And yes, it’s deeply hypocritical to genocide a population, steal their land, then act like people who came from elsewhere a few generations later to work are an existential problem.
You can't tell if someone is "legally" in the U.S. by looking at them. You can't tell if someone was born here by looking at them. You would think racism would be separate from the immigration panic because there is no way to tie looks to immigration status, but instead the logic is thrown out the window.
My friend told me once "when a guys life goes to shit he looks for someone to blame.". These particular guys have blamed some nebulous idea of "illegal immigrants" instead of women, or communists or whatever.
There was a 19th century political party that rose in opposition to the arrival of Irish Catholic immigrants. They had the audacity to call themselves the Native American Party. Also, known as the Know Nothings. They're the gang that Bill the Butcher (Daniel Day Lewis) leads in Gangs of New York.
See, back then, there used to be this thing called 'an education' that every functioning member of society was expected to have. Basic reasoning skills, the ability to reason and all that - it was meant to separate sapient species from animals and solve problems by means of discourse, debate and, worked well for a while. Then this group started shouting really loud, and the other group thought not to engage in uncivilised behaviour, hoping good sense would prevail and restrain what was largely seen as an anomaly. Only the shouting didn't end. Instead it turned to screaming, then hollering, and started to drown out reason and logic and everything we had developed as a society up til that point. And it worked, so more people started screaming their basal instincts, until the voice of reason was eventually drowned out, then silenced. And here we are today.
That's just bad logic saying that all Americans all are immigrants. It implies that land is bound by blood and every modern immigrant everwhere would never be integrated into society, since they weren't the original people there. Every society that has migrated would also receive this immigrant label, like the Hungarians and Bulgarians. There comes a point where the people who conquer lands become the people living there and not just immigrants.
These kinds of bad gotchas aren't proving anything unless you seriously think they are only going for immigrants. They are racists. They use the term immigrant to refer to non-white people.
I dont think they assume all immigrants are illegal. They talk about illegal immigrants. As in those that entered clandestinely without visa or entering permit
or those that have their visa / permit expired. Correct me if im wrong.
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
-Wilhoit’s Law
That’s it. That’s all. They want an out-group to abuse. And they have to justify people being in that out-group, so they make them lesser somehow: they’re ‘stupider, crueler, useless to society’, unlike the Amazing and Super Perfect people in the in-group.
It's inherent feature of human reasoning across the board. Everyone does broad generalizations about other people based on more or less unrelated information about them. Just yesterday someone here was getting upvoted for implying people driving lifted trucks are racists. It's the same logic at work there. It's othering. Us vs. them and so on. It may have been useful when we still lived in tribes but doesn't quite work with how society is today.