[quote=@Jotunn Draugr]
I think you misunderstood me. I'm not saying fucking Nazi Germany. You say you want to "stem the flow" of immigrants. That's all I'm saying. I never said anything about stopping it completely. And as for integration, I'm just talking about mandatory language/culture classes, and maybe restrictions on how much non-American/non-English media is allowed to be produced by one body of people. There wouldn't need to be any roadblocks, door-to-door knocking, or any other Left-wing paranoid fever-dreams, because the government already has a record of information on everyone who legally immigrates to the country. No need to search, they're right there. 

This just sounds like the same old left-wing propaganda machine, screaming "police state" and "racist", every time someone suggests even the mildest vetting process for immigration/naturalized-citizenship applications. 
[/quote]

It sounds like Nazi-accusation because we already do the other things for the most part. We don't have an open border policy, there is actually a pretty hefty system in place for flow-stemming (Cit: Born in East L.A. Dir. Cheech Marin). Which is why people suspect police-state ideas when this gets bandied about: because the plans are always suspiciously vague, or involve ideas that recall police-state imagery like walls and shit. 

And I'd actually be pretty cool with mandatory English classes. I feel we might have tried that before though... but I can't be certain. Because here is the thing about mandatory: for something this huge, it suggests a probationary structure in place that can locate and track the immigrants and make sure they take their classes. But if we actually had a structure of that magnitude in place, we wouldn't have an immigration issue. It reminds me way back when I was doing work study in college in the computer lab of a subsidized housing project. They wanted to do mandatory computer classes, so they just sort of called them mandatory for anybody who wanted to use the computers and sent out the fliers. Nobody showed. So I suggested they give out free bus passes to anybody that shows up. And that worked, they had a decent handful come in. You can't just call something required. Gotta incentivize. Make sure English language classes are fucking easy to get into. Free classes in community colleges, maybe even government even foots the bill for bus rides to and from community colleges. That sort of thing. Hell, maybe pay people to take the classes. Whatever gets them in the door. It sounds expensive, but it'd be cheaper to do it that way then to create a hit-and-miss probationary system to handle it. 

	[quote]Yes, both parties have been in a position to crack down on it, and haven't, because their wealthy campaign contributors demand the cheap exploitable labour. Saying that something is illegal, and therefor we're already doing as much as we can, is just inaccurate. Smoking pot and jaywalking are both illegal in Canada, but neither are enforced. No one goes to jail for either. Meanwhile, illegal immigrants, who sneak into the country over and over again, and even are caught stealing and trespassing, are just caught and released like fish. If you actually build a blockade solid enough that Mexicans can't get across it so easily, and then establish a REAL punishment for illegal entry, you'll start to see this problem go away.[/quote]

I honestly don't think the cheap labor lobby is really the reason it isn't being handled. That sounds a whole lot like a political line of its own (remember, Trump is a political snake-oil salesman too, don't drink the election-time kool-aide). Because the cheap labor being exploited is primarily being exploited by local contractors and shit like that. They aren't they heavy hitters economically speaking, because immigrants mostly get stuck with unskilled labor, which is already easy to exploit as it is. You don't need illegal immigrants to keep Wal-Mart wages poor. When I think of all the busts I have ever heard about personally, it has always been shit like tree farms and construction sites. 

If you want to handle the exploitative part, you gotta ask who you go after: the exploited, or the exploiters? There are a whole lot of ways to do this. Now, if I were made dictator of the United States and got to just decide, I'd give free citizenship to any illegal immigrant who could show his boss was breaking labor laws (beside just hiring an illegal I guess), and then the person or persons found guilty of the exploitation would get life in prison and all their property confiscated automatically. That's impractical for several legal reasons too, albeit it is far more practical than the alternatives. Still, more symbolic of where my political tendencies lay. 

So yes, it's difficult to fix, and anybody telling you otherwise is selling something. 

[quote]Hahaha. Oh gawd, I seriously hope your joking. "The culinary health of the nation". Are you actually employed by Hillary Clinton?[/quote]

Is that like her line or something? "Hillary Clinton supports good tamales?" Because if liking burritos makes me a Blue Dog, then god help me i'm a Blue Dog. And if Hillary Clinton wants to pay me to like burritos, then fuck it, I'll sell out. One thing I like better than burritos is paychecks. (seriously hillary, pm me pls. sorry i voted for bernie.)


[quote]Mexico recently announced plans for their own border wall, with Guatemala, to keep those filthy illegal south-american immigrants out. Hmmmm, starting to sound like maybe a wall is a good idea.[/quote]

We going to start taking advice from [i]Mexico[/i] on how to govern a country? Also, how much wall are they going to build when they don't even have a handle on half their border with Guatemala? I'd think being able to govern more than half of your country would take priority to building a wall in the middle of the rainforest. Shit, theirs sounds like a much worse idea than ours. Trump's is just a waste of money to make us look bad, the Mexican one is completely nonsensical. 

[quote]I've known a couple Turks. They were wonderful, western people, looking to make their mark on the Canadian business-world. Likewise, the Russians I've known were just normal Canadian rednecks, who occasionally spoke to each other in Russian.

And alright, that's interesting that there's an Eastern Bloc Market in Missouri, of all places (one day I'd love to go there, and see what I can find), but nonetheless the eastern bloc isn't contributing to a crime/drug epidemic, an explosion of completely non-English material, the formation of eastern bloc ghettos, and isn't openly aggressive to American citizens passing through. Did the people at the shops, for example, speak intelligible English, and were they welcoming enough that you were able to complete your purchases without trouble? If you had a conversation with one, did they seem knowledgeable of American pop-culture? Was the place tolerably sanitary? Did they have functioning bathrooms? Did anyone try to sell you hard drugs, or accost you for money?[/quote]

Well no, but I've also not had those experiences in the Mexican parts of any of the places I live either (gotta go down there to get the real chorizo). I have no doubt that East LA is a fucking nightmare, but not every Hispanic neighborhood looks like that automatically. If I want to get accosted about hard drugs, I don't even have to go downtown, there is a good white trash meth-head neighborhood just a mile from here. The sort you don't pull into driveways because some nervous fuck might hop out of his trailer with a shot gun to protect his lab. 

Which is not to disparage my own people, but rather to point out that my experiences do not mesh with this particular "The Immigrants did it" line of easy-fixism. Shit's not that simple. I believe Trump can fix the immigration problem just as much as I believe Hillary Clinton can fix poverty.