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Refuting the Most Common Arguments Against Immigration

Refuting the Most Common Arguments Against Immigration

Last updated on: July 6, 2018 at 4:53 pm by Andy Gill

Refuting the Most Common Arguments Against Immigration 2018-07-06T16:53:07-05:00 Andy Gill

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“Immigrants are criminals.”

The thing with politics is that it’s very Machiavellian; in that the ends somehow justify their means. So, misdirection, disinformation, emotionally manipulative rhetoric, etc. are “fine.” In this case, in order to get “we the people” on board there needed to be a level of fear instilled and, a process of dehumanizing people by creating a narrative that separates “us” from “them.” But, the idea was to deport criminals and terrorists but, Alex Nowrasteh paints us a different picture shining light on the myth of immigrants being criminals:

“This myth has been around for over a century. It wasn’t true in 1896, 1909, 1931, 1994, and more recently. Immigrants are less likely to be incarcerated for violent and property crimes and cities with more immigrants and their descendants are more peaceful. Some immigrants do commit violent and property crimes but, on the whole, immigrants are less likely to cause crime[3].”

And, with the aforementioned quota ICE has to meet, on top of the 203% increase in illegal immigrants entering our country… we’ve seen, in the end, not just 1,500 minors go “unaccounted for” but, noncriminals and terrorists that [seemingly] are no harm to our country but rather helpful to our overall US economy.

Along similar lines post-9/11 has instilled xenophobic levels of fear and irrational paranoia…

“Immigrants pose a unique risk because of terrorism.”

Again, fear is a very powerful tool; by now it should be no secret that politicians, corporations and the overall mainstream media (MSM) utilize fear in order to get whatever it is they want… fear has been leveraged for many reasons, in this case, as a means of keeping refugees, immigrants, and “illegal aliens” out of our country. The thing is immigrants do not pose a “unique risk today because of terrorism”:

“For instance, the chance of an American being killed in a terrorist attack committed on U.S. soil by a refugee was one in 3.6 billion from 1975 to 2015. For all foreign-born terrorists on U.S. soil, the chance of being murdered in a terrorist attack is one in 3.6 million during the same period of time. Almost 99 percent of those murders occurred on 9/11 and were committed by foreigners on tourist visas and one student visa, not immigrants[4].”

Concluding thoughts…

By now we should all know that there are more than enough resources in our world for everyone to subsist and survive.

We’ve also read the research that shows greed is typically empty of joy; it might lead to a temporal elation but, in the end, it shows itself to be vacant of meaning. My point is that what media or marketing companies won’t tell us is that you’ll be okay if you don’t purchase more stuff.

You don’t have to be a millionaire to be a philanthropist. Just Google, “What percentage of the world is impoverished.”

I’m honestly unsure as to what exactly “the end goal” is that somehow justifies these political means of dehumanizing deporation. If Nowrasteh’s research is true then it begs the questions as to whether or not Trump has our countries best interests in mind?

Furthermore, we must remember that these borders are mainly just imaginary lines, man has drawn to dictate what belongs to whom; when in reality none of this belongs to any of us. At best, we’re just individuals temporarily given the responsibility of stewardship over this ball spinning a thousand miles per hour around floating fire that’s 1.3 million times the size of our planet.

[Until next time, hit me up on Facebook to follow along with future content of mine]

[1]I’d be remiss if I didn’t point everyone to Alex Nowrasteh’s writing and research highlighted in this post in which these main points were all addressed by and from him (https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/edb17.pdf)

[2]https://fee.org/articles/15-common-arguments-against-immigration-addressed/

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

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