I think it's more like: the US is the most generous country in the world regarding immigration, funding global health, funding global defence, funding global aid, but Europeans and others (including a lot of the young American left) talk about it as though it's the worst country in the world. So why bother, when you can just spend your money on your own citizens the way most countries do and fund loads of internal benefits?
Because I think we've been generous because we recognize the benefits that come to us for being so generous. Proper generosity recognizes that the other's well-being relates to our well-being.
For example, giving funding to USAID to try to stop the spread of Ebola helps people in DRC, Uganda, and other countries directly affected, but can also help the US not have Ebola spread here.
Helping Mexico improve their economy can help people in Mexico not immigrate to the US.
I believe our generosity also benefits us much more than we can see when our perspective collapses and we see life from fewer and fewer dimensions. And I think we can collapse into the "us vs them" mindset that so many others have collapsed into or we can go the other direction and realize it's "us with them" and then we look at generosity differently.
It's unfortunate, by and large the republican voters seem to have looked at the wreckage of the USSR and the continual looting and decline in quality of life that countries like Russia are enjoying under a kleptocratic regime, and they took their fingers out of their collective noses for just long enough to say "yeah I want that for here!".
Not really, voters didn't want this, and they hate it when they are told what's happening. The media silently accepted Trump's lie at face value when he said he knew nothing about Project 2025, despite anybody with half a brain realizing it was a lie. Reporters acted like they had less than half a brain, so that they wouldn't get bopped on their nose by their editors, who in turn were already bowing down to Trump.
The "faction" lied about their intentions in order to be elected. That in itself isn't uncommon, but what is uncommon is the degree to which it lied. Most Republican voters, when told about the actual policies being implemented by elected Republicans, don't believe the reports, and assume that nobody would be enacting such stupid policy. Yet the voters keep voting for them.
"1. SEAL THE BORDER, AND STOP THE MIGRANT INVASION"
"2. CARRY OUT THE LARGEST DEPORTATION OPERATION IN AMERICAN HISTORY"
You're acting like Trump's immigration policy was buried in some "Project 2025" whitepaper nobody has ever read.
Also, his immigration policy remains popular. According to Harvard-Harris, "Deporting all immigrants who are here illegally" remains above water at 55% support (including 33% of Democrats), 45% oppose: https://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/HHP... (p. 26)
Yes they did. Of course they didn't want to be targeted themselves, but the rhetoric was very explicit about what would happen, and they already had a preview of it in 2016 and voted even more favorably for this regime this time around.
> The media silently accepted Trump's lie at face value when he said he knew nothing about Project 2025
Not true. The media was very vocal about it, and it was obvious that he was on board with it.
> Most Republican voters, when told about the actual policies being implemented by elected Republicans, don't believe the reports, and assume that nobody would be enacting such stupid policy.
This isn't true. The recent ouster of Thomas Massie is a clear example of this. However, even if that were true, Republican voters still overwhelmingly prefer this to the alternative (Democrats), and polls show this today.
> Yet the voters keep voting for them.
Indeed. Not sure how you can acknowledge this but somehow believe it's not what the voters want.
There is no contradiction between the points made so far. His base loves it and the majority of americans do not. He won by a marginal victory just like in 2016. The current system favors the Rs and the Rs have worked to gerrymander every state they've controlled since 2010, and they've used everything in their power since the obama years to make sure they control the courts. Poll after poll shows americans don't like Trump (or Biden for that matter or the Democrats) but because of the moment in 2024, Trump took a marginal victory and consolidated power, which Democrats never could do and never wanted to do.
The simple statement that none of this is what voters want if we're talking about a majority of them is just true. To say otherwise is to be ignorant of history since the 90s and the Rs under Newt Gingrich to this day, and how effectively as a party they've consolidated power in America. I'm not really saying it's evil or smart or anything (I do think it was smart and bold). But, polls do consistently show a majority of Americans have never been so pessimistic about the country and their leadership in both parties.
First, you're making a big logical error by replacing "voters" with "Republican voters" or the even more narrow, extreme, and unrepresentative group of "Republican primary voters".
If people knew they were voting for Project 2025, why would Trump disavow any connection to it during the campaign? It doesn't make any sense.
> Republican voters still overwhelmingly prefer this to the alternative (Democrats), and polls show this today.
Republican voters care less about policy than about the team. Take key Democratic policies, and present them in polls without the Democratic label, and Republicans support them. Add in the label and they don't support them.
It's not hard to understand that politics is mostly treated as sports-team affiliation these days.
Republicans don't vote for Republicans because of policies, they vote for Republicans because they identify as Republicans.
And, claiming that the Massie vote, of just the extreme primary voters, represents the public's will? That's ridiculous. Massie still got something like 45% of the vote, among that extreme and unrepresentative bloc of voters, after Trump going hard after Massie for trying to release the Epstein files.
The Massie vote is about extremist Republican's subservience to Trump, not about whether anybody actually likes policies. People despise Trump's Epstein coverup.
Because the industrialization of America is over, and has been for decades. USA doesn't need low-wage, immigrant workers anymore. The railroads have already been built, the fields have been plowed, and now that's all done by big automated machines. Everything that cheap workers used to do that was valuable is now automated.
Who does the farming? Who does the cleaning? Who builds the buildings? Who are the line cooks? That should be obvious.
But it should be just as obvious that there are plenty of immigrants who are also necessary because they bring new ideas, their education, their incredible work ethic, to fill in the gaps that the US clearly has.
There is one thing that unites all of us (and I do mean us, as I am one of them). We all dream of a society where our hard work can become prosperity for ourselves and for everyone else, a plot of fertile soil that is worth sowing. We all come here with a dream.
And I personally don't mind so much that I'm uplifting people that don't agree with my existence. I just wish that they could stay out of our way so we could all benefit.
I think there are many jobs Americans have decided the just don’t want to do - at a large scale. That said many do.
There is a completely different dynamic with job shops like wipro and others sponsoring “high skilled visas” which are only used to undercut certain labor markets.
I'm not against tightening up the constraints to prevent what becomes indentured servitude dressed up in red, white, and blue. That doesn't help the American people or those who carry within them the American dream. But fixing that is not everyone's actual intent, and that does really bother me.
Whoa there. What's wrong with "undercutting labor markets"? Last I heard, when a profession (e.g. doctors) decides to limit the number of practicioners in order to charge a higher price to the public, that's a bad thing. It benefits the people currently employed in that profession now, but it hurts others who wants to join, and it hurts the public who wants to get the service (e.g. healthcare). The sum of hurt is greater than the sum of help. Cartels are harmful; they don't stop being harmful just because there are borders involved.
I mean, it's one thing if you think immigrants commit more crimes or use more taxpayer money. These are both false, but at least the argument could hypothetically work. But if you say that even perfectly law-abiding, non-welfare-using, good-work-performing hypothetical immigrants shouldn't be allowed in because they would "undercut labor markets", that's plain nonsense. Such nice hypothetical immigrants should be invited in large numbers and everyone would win from it.
Without immigration an imminent depopulation crisis is on its way to America.
We are actually blessed to be in demand as an immigration destination as well as a culture and infrastructure uniquely set up for it.
Squandering that advantage to satisfy xenophobic ideology is yet another demonstration of the Republican Party’s lack of fiscal responsibility. See also: completely random war in Iran, ICE budget increases spent on kicking out taxpayers/customers, tax cuts for billionaires, the current record high budget deficit, $1.8 billion fund for Trump brownshirts, etc.
You're putting the cart in front of the horse. If the US economy didn't need low-wage immigrant workers, we wouldn't be complaining about them in the first place, because they would've gone somewhere else where the jobs are.
The fact they're coming the US literally means its economy needs them.
Of course we could all wax philosophical and say "Nobody needs a Frappuccino every other day, we just want it," but then nobody needs to live in a prosperous economy anyway.
There's always work available if someone is asking for a low enough wage, that should be self-evident. How does this prove that the population at large benefits from more people being willing to work for low wages?
Classical economics would argue that higher population tends to increase productivity (economies of scale and specialization) while lowering wages, increasing land value, and improving returns on capital. Free trade has a very similar effect. You can find this analysis in all standard texts (Smith, Riccardo, etc) and even progressive works such as Progress and Poverty by Henry George.
Different groups are free to have different opinions of this tradeoff. Big landowners benefit immensely while working class renters only suffer.
> The fact they're coming the US literally means its economy needs them.
Not necessarily. As just one example, it could mean one of their family immigrated for a well paying job, and now they want their parents, or other family, to join them and they don’t have skills in a high paying industry.
The presence of low income wage earners does not, by force of nature nor economics, require them.
Having said that, I tend to against minimum wage policy.
I wish i could ill find the video, the farms in CA certainly do need labor. In the 90s when there was another - people south of the border are taking jobs bs - an interview er asked people waiting for for support at a welfare office in Salinas (lots of farms) offering jobs in the fields. Unanimous nope.
They are needed and often do more than those that are citizens.
Remove, or at least tighten the requirements, for welfare.
Your argument seems to be the equivalent of: if the (illegal? surely some of them) immigrants could get welfare they also wouldn’t do those jobs.
As welfare increases to the point where it starts to competes with jobs, it seems sensible to expect welfare will compete with jobs. Especially when you take in to consideration the expenses welfare recipients don’t incur as a result of not having to attend the workplace nor dress for such.
Nah, there was just more economic activity to draw people in. By every other measure it’s been more hostile than average.
But you are right that it is ending, just wrong about what: it’s the high economic activity that attracted people which is disappearing thanks to the same people that hate migrants.
> By every other measure it’s been more hostile than average.
I'm not sure there's a "just" here: compared to peer countries, the US is either middle-of-the-pack[1] or significantly more accepting of immigrants[2] depending on which number you pick.
(This isn't to somehow imply that the US isn't hostile to its immigrants, because it is. But the question is whether it's more hostile.)
The parent post says it’s the high economic activity that attracted people even though the US has been more hostile than average by every other measure.
So it's as if the US was a honeypot with a flyswatter.
By the way, your [2] is useless to prove your point: you can't compare absolute numbers (for instance Iceland vs the US).
I don’t think I agree that it’s hostile by every other measure. The US’s immigration system is cruel and capricious, but assimilating into the US seems to be a lot easier than, for example, France or Germany. The US is unusual among its peer countries in not requiring immigrants to speak the “official” language fluently, in accepting public displays of ethnic or religious background that aren’t ambiently European Christian, etc.
(Again, I must emphasize that this does not make the US good. Only that the bar is perhaps lower than people who are assimilated into any particular country may realize.)
I would suggest that the proper metric is not the number of immigrants, which after all the parent commentator implied would be the case because of higher economics drawing them in, but a combination of the following
1. the amount of violence directed against immigrants legally allowed in by governmental forces.
2. the chance of legally allowed in immigrants will have immigration status changed without due process.
3. what percentage of Immigrants fear that 1 or 2 will happen to them.
I believe these two conditions seem to exist in the United States currently, although not sure how many immigrants it affects.
I am unsure if there are other countries that have a similar situation, I would expect if there are they must be relatively few in number.
The closest type of situation would be, I suppose, racial oppression focused on particular groups that have become undesirable according to a country's government.