Immigration: Righteous “Christian” Culmination, or Rights Humiliation?
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When I complain about something my country is doing, I have been called a self-hating white person. These are damaging accusations. My feelings are easily hurt. A tear wells up, and…
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I realize my situation is good compared to many, so someone calling me names, does not and should not phase me. Of course, they are incorrect about one thing, just looking at my sleeves they should see I suffer from Catholic guilt, and how long my purgatory sentence will be, not self hating. Yet, I have always thought that self hating, or guilt suffering is better than lacking an ethical framework, humanitarian values, or a moral backbone.
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If I hear or read about another xenophobic white-christian-splaining the reason we should ban or harm immigrants, I will remind them of their horrible other-hating. Something Christ did not do a lot of. Except for screaming “You damn do-gooder” at the Samaritan, Jesus was about loving your neighbor as yourself, or guilt ridden, purgatory sentenced-self, or self-hating-self.
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Yes, the United States cannot house every person in the world on our tiny little land mass of two billion acres, but we could do more, do it better, or do more better. Instead we do less more, and worse, worser. Americans First and no one else second, is a sentiment I could understand. That is if I was a narcissistic, white supremacist, other hating American, follower of Jesus.
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When I was taught about Jesus in Catholic catechism classes, I do not remember nuns telling me about how the Lamb of God savaged and smote brown people who were searching for a better life. I believe the Nun Chucks Sisters of Tao and Knuckles Cracking Jackboot Frau, would have rapped my finger bones much harder, if the Prince of Peace was as hateful to immigrants, and threw the same spitting angry fits about immigration, as the average conservative whitey does today.
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What does this anger do? Well, first, it costs taxpayers a ton of green.
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The INS of 1990 was only 0.12% of the federal budget compared to the three 2019 complementary DHS immigration service bureaus that accounted for 0.68% of the US Federal budget, a six fold increase. In addition, see individual breakdowns (below), and chart of 2020 budget increase of 22%, from $75B to $92B, a $17B increase!
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Since 1993, the number of U.S. Border Patrol agents has grown from 4,139 to 19,555: with average salary and benefits of $90K, or a $1.8B total cost*.
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The number of ICE agents devoted to enforcement and removal operations increased from 2,710 in 2003 to nearly 8,000 in 2018: *basically the same package above, or a $720M total cost.
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In 1990 the US Federal Budget was $1.032T with a GDP of 21.9%, and the INS budget was $1.2 billion that included Immigration, Border, Customs, Naturalization, or 0.12% of federal budget — just over a tenth of a percent.
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2019 US Budget: $4.407 trillion; 21% of GDP, 3 DHS services total: $30B, or 0.68% of the overall budget. The 2019 budget breakdown: for Customs and Border Protection $16.5B, Immigration and Customs Enforcement $9B, And Immigration Citizenship and Services $4.5B.
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With a nearly five fold increase in the number of guards on the border since 1993, nearly a three-fold increase in ICE agents monitoring migrants, and enforcing immigration laws since 2003, and a six fold increase in their overall budgets, you would think that almost no new undocumented migrants were getting through. Clearly that is not the case (see below). More importantly, what happens when the numbers do approach zero? What will the public-private partnership prisons, and detention centers do about their lack of profits? What do all those enforcement officers do with their extra time? WWJD, keep finding different ways to imprison people for their escape from rape, murder, starvation, and poverty?
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This is tantamount to a police state, especially at our southern border. Both migrants and American citizens with tan shades of melanin are hassled, and their rights infringed, due to our police state militarism. The rise in suspicion has set up a dangerous predicament, which nearly every white person ignores, and most will be totally oblivious to. This is where whites are color blind; when it suits their purposes of ignorance and intolerance to the suffering of others.
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Additionally, with too much time on its hands; the police state’s reach can take more insidious turns. We have created thousands of angry, militarized, steroided agents, who may soon get laid off from their great paying jobs due to overstaffing and fewer crossings. Who do you think they will take out their reduced-livelihood frustrations and anger on? Peace be with you says the lord of scapegoats. Vengeance is ours says the unemployed agent horde.
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We have a tendency to shrug off the problems in other countries, but that is merely one element of white-unconsciousness privilege. There is no place in this nation where most whites do not ignore, in some way, the plight of others. To someextent, it is not our fault. As individuals and even large charitable entities, solving most big and deep set problems is impossible due to inconsistent, or never more than middling funding.
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That said, it is our discounting of a positive government response that puts us in so many binds. The only type of government involvement some can envision is one with police powers, or military responses, and almost nothing else. Of course, that harsh response should never be directed at them to any large extent, and them is white people. There is nothing so sickening as a white person with their disregard for people not like them.
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Think Granny Elly-Mae Lauren Boebert sitting atop the rickety hillbilly Clampett car with her shotgun at the ready to threaten the next caravan. Her addled mind swivels, and her Klaus Barbie head bobbles on what looks like a white supremacist rusted carcass; yet Republicans still listen to demagogues using the same platform, putting millions of immigrants, documented and undocumented, in desperate predicaments.
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The skewed view on our government is typified by the Clampett’s fear of, and anger at, federal revenuers taxing their moonshine. Many Americans still think Social Security, unemployment insurance, Medicaid and Medicare, should never have been implemented, and now ended, with nothing to replace them. A collective effort of any kind turns every American into Stalin, or one of the Marx Brothers, and our nation into a dictatorial economic asylum, and a eugenics day spa, and Soylent Green, corporate farming operation. These crazy ultra-conservative fears run deep.
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My mother came from the hills of Kentucky, where she, her father and brothers raised tobacco. Her father plowed row after row using mighty horses, with hooves the size of large sedan hubcaps, until the late 1970s. Neither my mom, her parents, nor one of her 9 brothers and sisters, ever exhibited the scattershot or scattered brained antics of Boebert. After holding onto the reins of those huge Belgian or Clydesdale horses for decades, granddad could have bent both Granny, or Boebert’s guns into plowshares with his bare hands, and easily swatted away the one shot she may have gotten off. He would have also swatted away the Hatfield-McCoy neighbor hate, and harming our community hillbilly, she exudes.
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Whether from the hills, plains, or America’s urban areas, you can look towards the better democratic elements of our society and history, or a ridiculously dumbed-down ideology of the alt-right. We may see government as the enemy, or see it in a more positive light. What we ultimately seize as our ideology often has to do with how far our personality swings right, or left on the political spectrum rather than from our overall intellect. Our personality is influenced by family experiences during childhood, and our genetic lineage. That means it is very difficult to save ourselves from psychologically and religiously inculcated depravities like lashing out at immigrants, and our distrust of government to do positive things
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While all of us have a little conservative in our liberal, or vice versa, most of us will never nearly deplete one side, and almost fully inflate the other, after learning more about the opposite side. The most intellect will do is help us solidify our policy positions, and views on candidates, not change our politics. This does not bode well for major immigration policy improvements this decade. Many non-christians might not know, but the concept of saving souls by crushing the human spirit can be found in the text from the Sermon on the Mount.
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Lauren Granny E. M. Boebert, Ben Saintly-My-Ass Sasse, Tommy Jethro Tubberville, and Thom White Honkytonk Tillis are Republicans who register at various levels of ignorance, neighborly hate, and xenophobic policy prescriptions. They are grandstanders on the lives of real people; getting and staying elected by working on the fears of either ignorant and — or vile Americans. Merely because a person is not a documented citizen, they get the impression that discounting the value of brown and black neighbors is all sanctioned by their Lord of Glory, who demands a hellish long stay in purgatory.
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There continue to be studies that show undocumented immigrants are much less likely than American citizens to commit crimes, and acts of violence in the United States. However, even if the data was similar or somewhat higher, many of our policies just do not seem anywhere near a supposed Christian nation’s level of virtue, or caring for the downtrodden. Instead our godly country is severely retributive and vindictive, smiting all brown and black people. This soulless policy prescription is suffocating our future.
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The scope of our hate and harm is significant. If your god is good, your government should also treat all peoples the same, with fairness and solace. A government should not give in to sadism, and human sacrifice as ours has. Government must not merely sit on the outside, allowing mercy, and comfort to fall prey to avarice and callousness. That is why these vengeance-filled christians will never get their prayer-in-schools or more church-in-state. The love and caring they have for one another only goes as far as the end of their spiteful noses. Before looking to god in heaven, first, you must do no harm here on earth.
This Bill Has Experts Worried the Pennsylvania GOP Could Gerrymander Judicial Districts Capitol Police Can Sue the…slate.com
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While the worst of it may be over with Biden and Harris in office, we cannot allow Republicans to hold us in their ideology of cruel and unrestrained treatment of immigrants including by for-profit institutions still in business, particularly their crimes against women and children. Their goal should be to end private contracts, greatly reduce the number of detentions, and process more immigrants for asylum, and citizenship. Our government does not need to be as cruel as Caesar merely because the Bible mentions him.
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“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.” — Matthew 5:1–15.
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The state of our (capitol) hill house and senate is fully under the weather. That soul illness has been snuffing out what little light we had, and the lives of thousands seeking our light, even before Trump. We must reinvigorate our light with a stronger, better, and higher moral flame.
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by Richard The Chwalek
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Essay inspired by The Death And Life of Aida Hernandez, by Aaron Bobrow-Strain, 2019.
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Solving immigration is possible via my WTP System. To get a fuller explanation of the system, get my ebook: Our Democracy Requires An Update: A Transformational We The People System.
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