Reactionaries and inconsistency are a match made in heaven

I have a coworker who is vehemently anti-immigrant. One of the reasons she gives for this stance is that they come to this country unvaccinated and spread disease. Guess who is also anti-vax?

THE DUALITY OF MAN, or something
- IS THAT SOME KIND OF SICK JOKE!
- Would never say that in public, he's a private joker.
The venn diagram is a circle.

This one also surprises a lot of people: They pay taxes. Undocumented Immigrants in the USA paid about 11.6Bn USD in taxes in 2019 according to ITEP.

How are they paying though? That requires some kind of identification.
- Their employers pay taxes on their wages through their fake ss numbers. They pay sales tax when they buy things from the store
- https://www.irs.gov/individuals/individual-taxpayer-identification-number
  An Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) is a tax processing number issued by the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS issues ITINs to individuals who are required to have a U.S. taxpayer identification number but who do not have, and are not eligible to obtain, a Social Security number (SSN) from the Social Security Administration (SSA).
- Perhaps not income taxes, but maybe taxes on goods and services, property taxes, etc? Can't say for certain though.
- In my opinion the costs are much higher to not integrate new peoples. Undocumented Immigrants provide a lot of the ingredients but take none of the pie. I'm not going to sit here and say cheap labor is acceptable, but there is a point where you have to admit we wouldn't have nearly as many workers in less desirable employment fields if not for immigrants, even if wages were higher. They are also on average younger than an aging local population.

I have SSI it pays peanuts, if I didn't have a job ontop of it, I'd have nothing.

The rules are overly strict and an absolute poverty trap. I cannot legally have 2000 dollars to my name and anything I earn through ANY means must be reported meaning I CAN'T have a side hustle.

I need to stay on the program because my health insurance is tied to it, if I ever lost it I would be physically and mentally near death within a month.

I'm one of the people they're talking about when they mention Welfare Queens

Definitely need Medicare for All. This is such BS.
- Same with UBI
These are the situations I think it’s fine to fuck the government on. Do an all cash side hustle, keep the cash in a safe deposit box/in your mattress.
Though I suppose there’s the risk you get caught and fucked over by the legal system.
It’s a fucked up situation, and I feel for you. Hopefully things improve.
- Only hope is for legislation to ease the rules a bit so that peopel on SSI can actually escape poverty, until then, it's legally mandated that I live below the poverty line. It's fucked
Whenever I see people talk about "If I could sit on my ass and get paid I would too!" I tell them the same thing -
Do it.
If you can scam your way into it, more power to you. First you'll have to spend your savings down under $2k. If you have two cars, gotta sell one. If you take so much as a few hours of work a week your check is nixed like 75%. All for, even in 2023, like $800/mo.
If you think you can live your best life on $800/mo as the type of person who thinks someone getting 800/mo is the reason you can't get ahead, I support you. 🤷

Right-wing ideology doesn't have to be consistent - it merely has to shift the blame for society's ills away from those who caused them.

So, rich people
- The short answer is - yes.
  The long answer is - also yes.

The anti-immigrant goons don't get the Schrödinger reference.

Who cares what they get?
- I can think of something I'd like them to get.

They shouldn't come here (but they're necessary to run my Florida landscaping business)!

I’m from a country that people wants to immigrate away. Even I do sometimes.

But at the same time I am disturbed by some actions of the minority of the immigrants who come to my country. I am leaning to be an anti-immigrant and because of that I feel hypocritical and xenophobic.

Sometimes I think it is cruel to be against immigrants because people do not choose their place of birth and their family, just like me.

I'm just not sure what is right, and this loop bothers me.

There's good and bad in every group and race. Just out of curiosity what country are you from. In some countries the news media and people in general will just latch onto anything bad done by migrants. Like in my country, Ireland, there's been much ado about a couple of cases where immigrants have committed heinous crimes but there's been very little coverage of the groups that are going around Dublin basically terrorising immigrants.
- I guess you are right. I am from Turkiye and our leader, Erdogan is a pro-immigration. It bothers me to agree with him on something :)
  Normally I believe in human rights but he accepts undocumented refugees from ME in order to bring the Sharia. So his purpose is not to save those people but change average society habits. I think we are different from European countries in this regard. I think Europe accepts immigrants in a more refined way.
For me everything is based on how they get there and how they conduct themselves.
I have been an immigrant to several countries and I still am, but
I had all of the proper paperwork,
I didn't sneak across any borders illegally,
I didn't overstay my visas,
I didn't pay some guy on a boat to bring me there,
I didn't commit any crimes that are worse than jaywalking,
I didn't get clumped together with other people from my country and try to impose my values on the citizens of the country I was in,
I didn't do any under the table work,
I paid all of my taxes.
These are the thing that I expect from others as well.
- That's a lot of words for "I can't (won't?) see past my own privilege and have no compassion for people who don't have the same options I do."
- After having gone through the process of trying to help an Indian trans person find a job in my country in order to allow them to get here legally and having found the requirements being draconic, I don't care about anyone illegally moving to a country as long as they behave respectfully, which they most usually do because conflicts where the police gets involved are more likely to get them deported. Do I want them to pay taxes? Sure, but the extent to which they're able to pay taxes depends on the country deciding to regularize their status.
- The hilarity of half this list being things natives within a country often don’t do themselves, and the other half only because they literally can’t.
  The US for example has Christian nationalists trying to impose their own values on everyone else, there is an entire branch of government which exists because people don’t like to pay taxes, everyone I know has done under the table work at one point or another, and I know plenty of native born shoplifters.
  But somehow those idiots are more deserving to be here than an immigrant who would be denied entry, but snuck across the border 15 years ago and has been contributing more to society than many Americans?
  Get the fuck outta here with that BS.

Mass shootings in the news came up a couple o' days ago at work. It quickly devolved into it's all n-words shooting eachother, because that's what n-words do.

Did you know trump is gonna eliminate the income tax once he's elected?

I hate being in a red corner of a blue state.

People at your work just drop n-bombs in casual conversation? I'm in Georgia, and even the most inbred rednecks here aren't bold enough to do that at work.
And yet the mass shooting record holder is a white guy who was shooting at a country music festival ffs...
"Damn whites always shooting each other, because that's what white people do"

As such lovers of free market capitalism, shouldn't Republicans want immigrants to come here and compete for work so that corporations can get employees for the lowest wages possible?

shouldn’t Republicans want immigrants to come here and compete for work
Yes, they do - which is why they do everything in their power to keep that disempowered labor disempowered by hysterically painting them as an "other" that must be repressed through every means available.
It's just how right-wing ideology has always worked.

Terking all er jerbs!*

FTFY

Derk a derrr!!!

Immigrants aren’t having ‘litters’ of children. That’s a racist stereotype. A 59% of all illegal immigrants don’t have a single child
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/data/unauthorized-immigrant-population/state/US
https://cis.org/Report/Fertility-Among-Immigrants-and-NativeBorn-Americans
Also illegal immigrants don’t collect welfare. You need to be a US a citizen for that.
https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/eligibility/citizen/non-citizen-policy#:~:text=Only%20U.S.%20citizens%20and%20certain,as%20income%20and%20resource%20limits.
Illegal immigrants commit less crime, they grow almost all of our food, immigrants consumed about 27 percent less welfare and entitlement benefits in 2020 than native‐born Americans, they are not the problem
The issue is with capital owners hiring them and the immigrants being forced to work in horrible conditions because they lack the ability to collectively bargain. I do agree that we need a fast, cheap and easy path to citizenship.
This is wrong.
Illegal immigrants pay a lot of taxes. You see, in America, we tax all kinds of goods. How are these people buying gas, groceries, and other but not paying taxes?
We also have stats and estimates for the flow of money. A lot of this money goes right back into local economies. Illegal immigrants can't even send money out of the country without institutions taking a cut.
And people who use fake identifies to earn a check pay taxes. They pay into social security. Most of the time they don't even qualify for the services they are supporting.
You know what I feel, but don't have stats for? People who speak negatively about immigrants / illegal immigrants, in general, have no idea how the world functions. Nor do they properly engage with experts who study these things.
- Oh, fuck off with you.
  I was talking about income tax, and you know it.
  Evading your income tax also helps the business owner evade their half of payroll taxes.
- Illegal immigrants can't even send money out of the country without institutions taking a cut.
  You can still trade bitcoin at a coffee shop, it's just not as convenient as an online exchange.
"Litters of children" like animals amirite? Rational people don't need to dehumanize to make an argument. Dropped your dog whistle, bud.
Also, how do immigrants collect welfare without social security numbers? Is your premise that 100% are frauders?
- I'm child-free.
  I call a gaggle of crotchfruit a litter regardless of age, race, color, creed, or origin.
  Immigrants are one of the worst offending demographics, however, when it comes to rawdogging it constantly.
I mean you're wrong, with an IRS issued ITIN undocumented immigrants pay federal taxes amounting to $6 billion a year...
- This is a well formed counter for my tax argument.
  That said, I question how many illegal immigrants are actually going through these processes as opposed to ones who dont do it because they are afraid of ICE.
  Creating a registry for illegal immigrants isn't a solution.
  Easy and cheap road to citizenship is a solution.

This kind of reasoning is consistent across all forms of bigotry. Having self contradictory believes about a demographic just so nothing they can do will be the right thing for them to do.

It's especially ironic to hear that from Americans lol my house is older than your country, what "immigrants" you are talking about

Sure, we're a "nation of immigrants," but at what point does one stop being an immigrant? How many generations does it take? And if I'm still an immigrant even though my family has been here for generations, then by rights I should have a "home" country that I can easily return to, but I don't. Sure, I could in theory immigrate back to Ireland and the UK where my ancestors came from, but you and I both know that no one would ever consider me "Irish" or "British." I would always still be an "American," which brings us back to the original question of how long it takes people to stop being immigrants.
- I claim: never.
  You are what you are ethnically, that's it. No amount "living in America" will suddenly make you "American".
  It's exactly the same for Russians for example, but in Russian we have 2 words to say "Russian", one of them implies ethnicity and the other one implies citizenship. You obviously can become "xxx citizen", but you never become the ethnicity, unless you already are.
  Because I don't think we can speak of "US ethnicity", hence only "citizenship" remains. As such, anyone who becomes a citizen automatically looses "immigrant" status, even if only after a couple of years.

This is absolutely possible when people receive welfare and simultaneously work without paying tax. I live in a neighborhood where people are doing this and they are quite open about it, too.

The trouble is that people either do A) deny their existence and everyone who claims differently is a Nazi. Or B) become a right winger or demand there shall be no welfare efforts.

There's an estimation done in Germany every year. And the result is always that only around 4% of the the people on welfare abuse it. Compared to the damage that is done to the state by clever tax evasion of super rich people, these are peanuts. But going after these 4% of welfare abusers is of course easier so that's why they put a lot effort into it.
- It is kind of strange how much more of a visceral reaction people have to the idea of poor people cheating the system, compared to rich people cheating the system. Logically, it seems like the latter should get people a lot more riled up, which I guess speaks to the power of their propaganda.
- And how are they supposed to get these statistics?
  As far as I know, they make these estimates on the basis of how many sanctions and repayments the Job Center imposes. But since it's not easy at all to get by these people and the effort isn't worth it, there is no way to say how many people are doing it.
  But if you try to convince people to think smart(er) about the problem, it doesn't help to deny the reality they are actually living in. It would make more sense to show how it's the employer who makes profit from tax evasion.

They move so slowly and lazily that they are invisible to the average human.

Let 👏🏾 in 👏🏾 more 👏🏾 illegal 👏🏾 immigrants 👏🏾

Then they would be legal immigrants right? I agree with you either way lol

Loads of xenophobic idiots laugh at me for this, but I'm noticing a lot of migrations due to climate change. Honestly IMO it will only get worse as time goes on.

I've been thinking we should play on xenophobe's fears to get them to support actions to curb climate change.
At least their bigotry will have some positive result then.
Of course, ideally, they could be convinced that not "all brown people are bad" (sic) and also support climate change action, but we all now how likely that is.

I will not swear off that there has never been any good immigrants. To do that, that would mean to me that I am disregarding all of the brilliant minds in history who have brought the world tremendous things that happened to be an immigrant.

I just feel like though we do get more of the problem ones than the bright ones by a large margin. The ones who I feel like, just take up space. The ones who aren't any different than your average lazy American, it's the same thing but just a different background. That's what I feel we don't really need more of. And I have to put up with a handful of these people everytime at where I work and it is infuriating.

And we can see the bad ones a mile away before the good ones.

"I just feel"
Yeah we know. If there was actually data to support your feelings you'd post that instead. But you're just a full of shit bigot who fell for the right wing rage bait
- Aren't you an adorable little one?
  Do you not know what experiences are? Do you ever like, look around or have gone around town and have seen or experienced things? Sorry that I didn't have my god damn notebook ready to jot down everything so that one day, I would miraculously run into someone by the likes of you that relies on every response to be backed by some data-source. Fucking excuse me, you little shithead nerd.
  I work at wal-mart. I work around the people I am talking about. What are the chances that you don't and you want to come here to sound all PC and shit? You know nothing. Absolutely nothing but to sound righteous. Go fuck yourself, trash.
  You want bigotry by the way? You sound like all of the people that open endorse companies like wal-mart to hire immigrants if it means cheap labor and not about them supporting themselves on their two feet. It's bigotry in a positive sense but still bigotry, you fucking dumbass bigot. Hypocrite.
  And if you want to accuse me of being hooked on some GOP bait? Bitch, I've voted Democrat since 2016. Oh, what now? Think the world is all black and white? Stupid fat nerd that you are.

Zelda