.
…what hope is there for sanity and rational discourse in the near future?
I am distraught. The meme above was posted with approval by a elite college history professor I have known for 50 years. I know he’s smarter than this, wildly so, and that he would flunk any student exercising such poor critical thinking skills in an essay or thesis. So how did he come to post such obvious crap, and how can he be helped?
I’ll insult your intelligence for the nonce by not doing a Ken White and spouting a generality without specifics: I say that because what’s wrong with the meme ought to be evident to anyone older than 15 with an IQ over 80. All of those Presidential quotes involve legal immigration in general, which President Trump has not impugned in any way. Quoting Eisenhower is amusing, because Ike oversaw the last major deportation of illegals, “Operation Wetback,” which sent an estimated 1.3 million people back to Mexico. But the point is, as always, to attack and denigrate Trump regardless of facts, not to be fair or accurate.
Meanwhile, the Trump quote was not about immigration generally or even illegal immigration. That typically off-the-cuff remark expressed, crudely and inaccurately (as usual), a legitimate problem when immigrants from a third world nation with a culture antithetical to ours arrive en masse to a single locale, creating a relatively large population within a town or small city that cannot be assimilated in the municipality involved. Trump was talking about the wave of Haitians that descended on Springfield, Ohio. largely because of social media. General comments from decades ago cannot be used to rebut specific statements, or the reasoning behind them, about a current problem.
What was my freind trying to do? Convince stupid people? I truly don’t understand.
Shortly thereafter, I saw this, posted by another good friend, a retired law partner and a very thoughtful man:
The post didn’t even make me want to post a rebuttal. It just made me sad. This fine man is a sophisticated, careful thinker. How could he think this diatribe is responsible, never mind minimally respectful to those who are uninfected?
Ethics Alarms 
I’m not a cult member. I supported and voted for Trump because we needed someone who was going to take charge and lead, not cater to every special interest group or sympathize with law breakers. I cannot imagine what kind of situation we’d be in right now if Harris had won. I suspect that whoever ran the White House while a demented Biden was president would still be calling the shots.
Of course I don’t like everything Trump does and I wish he’d be more Presidential in his demeanor. Trump is leading the country and doing what he thinks needs to be done. I reiterate, President Trump is leading the country.
Everything is mischaracterized. I remember during his first term the media reported that Tax refunds were lower under Trump. People are generally ignorant about taxes. A lower tax refund doesn’t mean you paid more taxes. It means that the withholding was more accurate. The current tax changes that were just passed help lower income families and seniors. Sure, it helps rich people too but it seems the media only focuses on that. I saw and MSNBC article that said the 1% would save an average of $66,000. They cited someone making more than 917,000 dollars in income. Why don’t they run the numbers for an average family. If you have a lower income of course your benefit from reduced taxes will be smaller but in line with your income.
I prepare tax returns for a living, and the software I use provides a year over year comparison for my client’s tax return.
Most of the people I prepare returns for are low to middle income. I can state to you that virtually all of these people saw their taxes go down after the 2017 TCJA came into effect. Looking at the current and prior year’s returns make it fairly obvious.
What I can also state is that many of those same people got a similar refund year over year. The reason for that was that their withholding went down along with their tax liability. If your sole benchmark is how much your tax refund is, then it might seem that not much changed. But you’re ignoring the fact that you paycheck was bigger all year long.
I’d rather not be thinking the nasty thought that just now comes into my mind on this subject — that the people at IRS did that deliberately with the withholding tables to minimize the perceived impact of the tax cuts. I don’t think that that is the case, but it’s an opaque black box area of the Internal Revenue Code.
Regardless, my main point stands — almost everyone got a tax cut in 2018.
As for the post by the very thoughtful man which Jack displayed as an image…
Does anyone else experience the visual phenomenon that the lines of text alternate between bold and unfold depending on which you look at?
If I look at a line of text, it appears unbold and the lines before and after appear bold with every other line repeating this pattern. When I shift my focus to the next line, it becomes unbold with the surrounding line bolded
Not exactly as you describe but yeah, the line I’m focusing on does seem a little different to those in my peripheral vision.
“Tax cuts at the expense of the poor and needy”
Does somebody need to explain to this person the way taxes work? The money belongs to the people who earned it, the taxes are at their expense. Poor people aren’t paying for tax cuts because the money was never theirs. Nothing is at their expense because they’re not the ones paying. Everything is being paid for by the people paying taxes, everything is at their expense.
This is such an old, moldy talking point that its amazing that it still has currency. People who pay no taxes have a right to your money. I’ve been hearing it my whole life.
By “people who pay no taxes” I infer that you mean “people who pay no federal income tax.” Hard to find anyone in this country who pays ZERO tax, unless they own no property (no property taxes) live in a state with no sales tax (Oregon is one of only five) don’t drive (and hence don’t pay gas taxes)…. aren’t self-employed (self-employment tax), or otherwise required to pay Social Security (apparently members of a few religious orders such as the Amish who also waive all rights to Social Security and Medicare and have taken care of their own dependents continuously since 1950). The Amish have waived all rights to “your” money. So basically, “people who pay NO taxes” = children who don’t have jobs and don’t buy anything unless they are in a no-sales-tax state. Parasites!
“General comments from decades ago cannot be used to rebut specific statements, or the reasoning behind them, about a current problem.” Yes. Agree. I see the meme as more of a contrast about presidential style and tone. A much better executed (and hilarious) such contrast is the video mashup of Obama and Trump talking about Bin Laden and al Baghdadi. Have you seen it? Never fails to entertain me…
On the substance of contrasting views of different presidents about immigration:
On Reagan, see The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which legalized most undocumented immigrants who had arrived in the country prior to January 1, 1982.
On Ford, “Under President Gerald Ford, the U.S. House of Representatives launched the Domestic Council Committee on Illegal Aliens, and introduced a bill providing amnesty for workers currently in the United States.”
Haven’t dug into the others but I wouldn’t be completely surprised if they were ALL guilty of thinking about illegal immigrants with somewhat less horror than what is apparently now de riguer in some circles?
So maybe you can feel a LITTLE less distraught about the college history professor and the impending doom you fear his posting of this meme portends (!). Perhaps he’s familiar with some history that you perhaps overlooked when checking into these presidents’ words and actions on immigration?
No.
1. You seem to forget—quickly!—that I pointed out that Eisenhower took on the illegals problem aggressively and was barely criticized for it, because Democrat sin those days were not insane, and also because Ike had such currency with the public that what he decided to do was nearly automatically accepted as wise, whereas the news media and the Trump Deranged now assumes that if Trump supports it, then a policy must be wrong.
2. I ran a scholarly study for the US Chamber of Commerce on illegal immigration that was used as part of the Chamber’s conversations with the White House and its lobbying with Congress before the 1986 Act. I hosted a luncheon where I sat next to Sen. Simpson, the sponsor of the bill in the Senate, and he told me that much as he hated the idea of amnesty, it was the only way to fix what he thought was a huge problem, but it was a fix to draw a line, have a clean slate, and start controlling immigration. [PS. The Amnesty didn’t work, in part because the US lost its credibility involving border enforcement.
3. I also ran a larger study over two years of Hispanic business in the U.S. The Cubans, Mexican , Puerto Ricans and South American didn’t agree with much, but they agreed that illegal immigration undermined their acceptance as legitimate and trustworthy business leaders.
4. How could YOU forget that Bush II tried to use his temporary popularity to put through a program to give illegals some options. The Democrats opposed it because Bush was a Republican, and the conservatives rejected it with a cry of “No amnesty!”
5. You expose your bias by using the term “undocumented immigrant”(to be fair, only once, but still..) which is deceit. They aren’t “undocumented,” they are illegal. This is one of the many ways the Left tries to gull the public into believing being here illegally is some kind of paperwork problem.
6. None of which changes the fact that my history professor friend attacks Trump’s ILLEGAL immigration policies by quoting general Presidential dicta about LEGAL immigrants. That is horrible: it’s intellectually dishonest, or unforgivably sloppy for a scholar, or worse, a deliberate distortion.
7. The meme and the post involved the meme, and the meme was about the contrasting quotes, so I 1) didn’t need to check the varying POTUS policies on illegals 2) already have a rather extensive knowledge of the topic without checking and 3) pointed out the historian’s apparent negligence (or hypocrisy) regarding Ike.
8. I’m a lawyer and US government ethics expert. There is no excuse for not enforcing any law (if the law is wrong, repeal, amend or replace it), and this immigration laws are very important—crucial— laws that effect national security, business, elections, the census, the economy, and public respect for the rule of law. The advocates for open borders have no excuses or valid justifications for their positions, just lies or “Imagine” utopian nonsense. People trying to rationalize examples like this one as excusable make me more “distraught,” not less.
Oh no! Even more distraught! So so sorry. Hope your day improves…
You know, I find it kind of humorous to switch from reading another site in which liberal minded folk are terribly distraught about the decline and fall of civilization (also based on the stubborn refusal of other people to agree with them) to this one in which conservative minded folk…. seem to agree with the distraught liberals on this point, at least!
All is lost! Different administrations and political parties keep pursuing DIFFERENT policies, based on DIFFERENT perspectives! Over and over! The future is grim…
Just distraught that an intelligent commenter would stoop to blatant spin. This site never laments that teh end is near—to the contrary, since I know my US history, I also know that the nation has overcome far worse, and many times, sometimes with luck, sometimes with deft leadership.
However, anyone who regards enforcing the law as “autocracy,” “fascism,” or a threat to democracy is either a liar or an idiot—or both. I can’t imagine why you would hang out at such websites.
“I can’t imagine why you would hang out at such websites.”
Same reason I am here. As long as there’s some signal in the noise (and these days it is hard to find ANY site discussing politics and policy in the US that doesn’t have a fair amount of noise) I can usually learn something about how people are seeing things and what values and assumptions are motivating their perspective. You know, the kind of thing that used to happen in the Senate in the past, when Senators who disagreed about all kinds of things were still interested in learning more about the underlying thinking and priorities of the other parties, in the belief that there might be some common ground and EVEN the basis for bipartisan legislation. I’m old enough that I remember those days!
Do I observe many idiocies, here, there and elsewhere? Yes I do! The idiocies of the left and the idiocies of the right are sometimes different, and sometimes (ironically) almost identical but with different “others” cast as the enemy.
I do understand that people with a strong allegiance to a particular political identity prefer to hang out with one another. Homophily is a powerful force among humans. It can also create reinforcing loops that push views that originally formed around a kernel of sound reasoning into positions… that I see as far from reasonable.
I have no such allegiance. Sometimes I am registered Republican (currently the case) sometimes I am registered Democrat, but this is purely strategic based on which primary I want to participate in (primaries aren’t “open” in my state). I see lots of problems with the two-major-party system. And the primaries of minor parties are generally meaningless, so no point registering with them.
My interest in learning more about people with different perspectives is likely a result of my upbringing living as a foreigner as we moved from country to country (but not in little American bubbles like bases). I got really comfortable being an outsider, and good at observing and extracting information about widely varying norms and values that was be useful in navigating the social space. I learned a lot this way and developed an affinity for observing humans without rushing to judgment (deployed during my many years as a research psychologist, and also just fun and interesting to do!).
I find the humans here, who seem to be mostly conservative but with some variety, interesting. I find the humans in liberal and progressive bubbles interesting too. None of them seem to make me distraught — I guess I’m just not prone to it!
Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) (1986) – Immigration History
Before we start saying Reagan was a supporter of amnesty and the history of being far more accepting of the illegal aliens we need to remember the Immigration Reform Act of 1986 was a compromise solution to a much smaller problem. At that time, the act was estimated to cover fewer that 3 million long term residents who could prove they had arrived before 1982. Today that number is upwards of ten fold. During the signing ceremony Reagan said this “Future generations of Americans will be thankful for our efforts to humanely regain control of our borders and thereby preserve the value of one of the most sacred possessions of our people, American citizenship,”. Reagan’s statement understood that citizenship is something worth protecting and not diluted with unfettered migration of people seeking “a better life”. He went on to say ”Our objective is only to establish a reasonable, fair, orderly and secure system of immigration into this country and not to discriminate in any way against particular nations or people.”
That act made only certain persons eligible for amnesty. In return for granting amnesty Congress was to do pass other legislation which that would create penalties of hiring illegal aliens and bolster border security which never happened and the laws penalizing employers were rarely enforced. The very groups who would monitor enforcement of the provisions were those who lobby for continued open borders and claim that any enforcement is racist. They are the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the National Council of La Raza, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union and the United States Catholic Conference.
We tried the humane way and it failed to prevent the stream of migrants. The very rationale that Reagan accepted that giving legal status would prevent illegals from being exploited by criminals and unscrupulous employers is the same one being used today. Trump understands the history better than most and is choosing not to make the same mistake twice. We provided a humane transition for illegal aliens in 1986 subject to the proviso that all future migration will orderly and fair to all. That did not occur so there is no reason to believe that an orderly and fair immigration process will come from another amnesty.
From the link above.
Title I: Control of Illegal Immigration – Part A: Employment – Amends the Immigration and Nationality Act to make it unlawful for a person or other entity to: (1) hire (including through subcontractors), recruit, or refer for a fee for U.S. employment any alien knowing that such person is unauthorized to work, or any person without verifying his or her work status; or (2) continue to employ an alien knowing of such person’s unauthorized work status . . . .
Establishes an employment verification system. Requires: (1) the employer to attest, on a form developed by the Attorney General, that the employee’s work status has been verified by examination of a passport, birth certificate, social security card, alien documentation papers, or other proof; (2) the worker to similarly attest that he or she is a U.S. citizen or national, or authorized alien; and (3) the employer to keep such records for three years in the case of referral or recruitment, or the later of three years or one year after employment termination in the case of hiring . . . .
Sets forth employer sanction provisions. Provides for a six-month period of public education during which no employment violation penalties shall be imposed . . . .
Makes it an unfair immigration-related employment practice for an employer of three or more persons to discriminate against any individual (other than an unauthorized alien) with respect to hiring, recruitment, firing, or referral for fee, because of such individual’s origin or citizenship (or intended citizenship) status . . . .
Part B: Improvement of Enforcement and Services – States that essential elements of the immigration control and reform program established by this Act are increased enforcement and administrative activities of the Border Patrol, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), and other appropriate Federal agencies . . . .
Title II: Legalization – Directs the Attorney General to adjust to temporary resident status those aliens who: (1) apply within 18 months; (2) establish that they entered the United States before January 1, 1982, and have resided here continuously in an unlawful status (including Cuban/Haitian entrants) since such date; and (3) are otherwise admissible. Authorizes similar status adjustment for specified aliens who entered legally as nonimmigrants but whose period of authorized stay ended before January 1, 1982. (States that in the case of exchange visitors the two-year foreign residence requirement must have been met or waived.) . . . .
Makes legalized aliens (other than Cuban/Haitian entrants) ineligible for Federal financial assistance, Medicaid (with certain exceptions), or food stamps for five years following a grant of temporary resident status and for five years following a grant of permanent resident status (permits aid to the aged, blind, or disabled) . . . .
Title III: Reform of Legal Immigration – Part A: Temporary Agricultural Workers – Separates temporary agricultural labor from other temporary labor for purposes of nonimmigrant (H-2A visa) worker provisions.
Requires an employer H-2A visa petition to certify that: (1) there are not enough local U.S. workers for the job; and (2) similarly employed U.S. workers’ wages and working conditions will not be adversely affected. Authorizes the Secretary of Labor to charge application fees . . . .
Establishes a special agricultural worker adjustment program. Provides for permanent resident adjustment for aliens who: (1) apply during a specified 18-month period; (2) have performed at least 90 man-days of seasonal agricultural work during the 12-month period ending May 1, 1986; and (3) are admissible as immigrants. Sets forth adjustment dates based upon periods of work performed in the United States. Authorizes travel and employment during such temporary residence period . . . .
Thanks for sharing this! It highlights a key issue in the modern history of immigration issues: “In return for granting amnesty Congress was to do pass other legislation which that would create penalties of hiring illegal aliens and bolster border security which never happened and the laws penalizing employers were rarely enforced.” Does the bill just passed focus on penalizing employers, do you know? Any sign that the ICE brigades are arresting employers? A core dynamic seems to be that in theory, people want “illegals” arrested, just not “our illegals” — you know, the ones that keep dairy farms running and the construction and landscaping business sectors and Ohio factories and California field crop and Florida hospitality industries humming along. How many people actually want to pay the economic costs of losing all these workers in their own communities?
Holly, you asked a couple of questions
Does the bill just passed focus on penalizing employers, do you know? Any sign that the ICE brigades are arresting employers?
The answer is yes. From https://www.visaverge.com/news/ice-arrests-over-1000-undocumented-workers-in-record-worksite-sweep/
• ICE arrested over 1,000 undocumented workers since January 20, 2025 during record-setting worksite enforcement.
• Around 1,200 businesses were subpoenaed, with nearly $1 million in proposed fines for hiring undocumented workers.
• Employers face fines up to $5,724 per unauthorized hire and potential jail sentences for repeat or intentional violations.
It is unlikely that dairy farms employ illegal aliens as virtually all dairy farms of scale are automated and do not require significant numbers of unskilled laborers.
Trump did choose to deprioritize some in the farming sector and hospitality to minimize disruption in those sectors. It should be pointed out that while illegals should fear deportation lobbyists and NGO’s conflate legal and illegal immigration and instill fear in low skill legal immigrants by suggesting ICE is coming for them. The vast majority of migrant workers are legal ones and have nothing to fear – but fear drives policy.
The agricultural sector has many legal migrant workers who would not be subject to arrest. By instilling fear into them the NGO advocates create the potential for economic disruption. The same is true in the hospitality sector. Both of these industries rely on marginally skilled labor and by scaring both legal and illegal migrants away from work because the advocates do not differentiate between the two it became necessary to deprioritize enforcement efforts there. Should the enterprise have to shut down because of the lack of workforce consumers are harmed, shareholders are harmed and legal migrant workers are harmed. I would like to point out that that is exactly the argument made by advocacy groups for why enforcement should never take place and these people should be given a path to citizenship. Deprioritizing those sectors but putting employers on notice means that employers will start scrutinizing eligibility more carefully and replacing employees with legal ones in an orderly manner. Landscaping and construction jobs are not subject to the prioritization order.
Coming back to your question are employers being arrested any prosecution of an employer will require that the employer knowingly violated the law. If an employer uses E-verify and the applicant is using another’s identity that has been stolen and sold to the applicant then E-verify cannot distinguish between the actual person and the applicant with the stolen identity. As a result a successful prosecution will not occur if the employer has acted in good faith but was duped by fake documents. A photo ID could help but demanding one is racist despite the fact that we know that illegals regularly use stolen or counterfeit documents to fool the unwary and circumvent the law. China was found to have been sending tens of thousands of fake driver’s licenses to Chinese nationals and an identity theft ring was recently busted by the Feds.
Conversely, If an employer argue that ICE raids are preventing his employees from coming to work out of fear he should terminate their employment to avoid being charged. Logic would dictate that if an employer makes such a claim and does nothing he could then be prosecuted because such a claim indicates a new belief that the employee is not authorized to work in the U.S. Otherwise he is lying to his legal migrant employees for the purpose of exploiting their naivete’.
Finally you ask “How many people actually want to pay the economic costs of losing all these workers in their own communities?” That answer is hard to tell. I would suggest the better question to be asked is how many people believe it is acceptable to employ a class of people who distort the local labor market and drive down wages for legal workers. I would be interested in knowing how many believe their desire for cheaper products outweighs the potential exploitation of a class of worker who has few legal options available to defend them themselves against other criminals or unscrupulous employers.
In 1986 the goal was to once and for all avoid the very problem we are facing now. Some ask is it fair to suddenly enforce a law that has been ignored by past presidents. The answer is yes. Simply because past administrations did not faithfully execute the laws of the United States does not mean they can never be faithfully executed by future presidents. Anyone with a brain knows that temporary deferral of action does not mean it is permanent.
Bingo…Bingo…Bingo…Bingo…Bingo…Bingo!
Thanks for all the info! Just checked on the dairy industry and apparently half of the workforce are immigrants (article by https://en.edairynews.com). Now if they are all legal AND REMAIN SO and the employer has all their paperwork in order, should be okay. One problem is that the current administration is also removing or cancelling legal status (for example for all Haitian immigrants). If the immigrants in a particular factory or farm are from a random mix of origin countries, impact would be relatively small. However, immigrants tend not to be randomly distributed. Communities develop, families migrate to locations where they know others from their home country, etc.
Perhaps after taking lots of problematic approaches (and all approaches have been problematic in the past four decades while Congress failed to follow through on the 1986 expectations you detailed) citizens and Congress will actually find the political will to revamp the whole system so that there is an orderly process to gaining legal status without years of delay, a mountain of paperwork, and the associated expense. For those with access to ample resources (my nephew’s wife from Argentina for example, with financial and legal help from my well-off sister who employed an immigration lawyer), the process can be smooth. However, for many it is not at all smooth, and they face the choice of either overstaying their visa or moving on to another country (which can also be expensive) or trying to return to a country that may be seriously dangerous and offers few prospects for employment (Haiti, Venezuela).
I.E., after trying lots of suboptimal approaches, maybe we will eventually get around to taking a sensible coherent approach that rapidly clears the backlog and offers refugees and immigrants without a criminal background a feasible path toward legal status. Maybe? I’m an optimist by nature, and that is what I am hoping for.
Regarding Haitians, Temporary Protected Status does not make them legal residents. It doesn’t even automatically grant work authorization, although they can request it. It’s effectively decriminalization. It’s a temporary refusal to enforce on humanitarian grounds, with some
Thanks for clarification.
It just dawned on me that the illegal alien issue is much like the issue of hoarders. No family members want to address the problem or they take minimal steps to adapt to it until it becomes so large that indifference is no longer possible because it threatens the well being of others.