Saturday, January 28, 2017

Trump, Immigration and Media Lies.

USA Today - Experts question legality of Trump's ban on Muslim countries.  The title of the article alone is dubious. While many on the right would call America a "Christian" country, it is not. Iran can be called a Muslim country as it is a theocracy; but, that is not true of Syria which is a socialist democracy.

The truth is that the ban is legal whether you agree with it or not. There are seven countries which we are not allowing people in from, Iran, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. In fact, we have prohibited visitors from Iran before under Jimmy Carter during the 1980s Iran hostage crisis. We have a history of prohibiting people coming here from other countries and case law supporting it. What is particularly ironic is that President Obama, as he was leaving the White House, passed a rule that said we would no longer accept people from Cuba automatically if they reached America by boat. That didn't get a lot of discussion except in Florida.

The Washington Post - Countries where Trump does business are not hit by new travel restrictions.  This is another piece of propaganda. It implies that Trump only banned people from countries where he does not do business; but, in fact, there are a lot of countries where he does not do business, like Russia. He has no businesses in Russia and never has. Trump does have a golf course in Scotland, I guess he could have barred people from the United Kingdom from coming here. People from Lebanon can still come and that is a Muslim country that he doesn't do business in. I believe the only Arab country with a Trump property is Dubai, a Muslim nation. I cannot imagine why people would be surprised that Trump did not build a luxury hotel in Iraq or Syria during a civil war. So what do these seven countries have in common, oh wait, we have bombed them all or fomented civil war and that was under Obama. If we can bomb a country, refusing to let them send people here is certainly less offensive.

People are free to have an opinion on the validity of the ban; but, the media's hypocrisy and outright deceit in reporting the facts is disgusting. I thought they were worried about fake news, no wait, I know they have been printing fake news regularly since the consolidation of the media under Bill Clinton.

UPDATE:

I just can't get enough of misleading headlines that turn out to be untrue.

MSN - Washington Post - Judge halts deportations as refugee ban causes worldwide furor.  Read the article, the judge did NOT ban "deportations" as a whole. In fact he did not BAN deportations at all, he merely issued an order to delay the deportations of people who had left for this country from the seven banned countries at Dulles airport. These people had been flying here legally and the rule was instituted after they left. Here is a line from further down the article, "Donnelly noted that those detained were suffering mostly from the bad fortune of traveling while the ban went into effect. “Our own government presumably approved their entry to the country,” she said at one point, noting that, had it been two days prior, those detained would have been granted admission without question."

Why did the Washington Post lie, er, I mean misstate the facts or misrepresent the facts or just fail to be truthful? We have a corporate media, owned by six multinational corporations that controls 90% of the media. They represent corporate interests. The media is now more about selling ideas than products, they are into propaganda. It is not government propaganda, it is corporate propaganda.

One of the biggest media giants is Disney. They own ABC and many other media groups. They even bought out George Lucas and now own Star Wars. This is a company that had American tech people train their Indian replacements. Disney has a big stake in bringing in foreign tech people and paying them less than the Americans they replaced. By the way, that is supposed to be against the law.

I am constantly writing about the media, the purpose is to show you what to look for and not always about what they are discussing. Learn how the media manipulates the message and you can understand how to find the grains of truth in what anyone writes, even me.

UPDATE 2:

Seth J. Frantzman - Obama’s administration made the “Muslim ban” possible and the media won’t tell you. The article goes over how the Obama administration was responsible for choosing the seven nations involved in the ban in 2015.

Lets Honestly Discuss Immigration

President Trump has instituted a ban on immigrants from certain countries for 90 days while the issue of vetting (approving) them is discussed and a new criteria is established. The media basically calls for open borders while Trump calls for limited immigration. What is the approach we should take?

The first question is simple, should we allow unrestricted movement between countries? I think most would say no. Should we allow criminals from other countries to come here? I think most would say no; but, we have before. We allowed unvetted people from Cuba to come here, think the movie "Scarface".

Let me ask the question another way. Should we allow any immigration? Well, many immigrants come here on educational visas to attend college. Should we allow that? Should we allow immigration from countries that don't allow Americans to immigrate into their nations? Should it be reciprocal?

Working class people want to ban the poor from other countries coming here because it lowers wages and they take jobs that Americans will do that do not require an education. Tech companies want immigration by tech workers from India and China in order to lower wages in those industries. Is that good for Americans? Many Christians want immigration from Muslim dominated countries for their Christians who they see as persecuted. Which persecutions matter, what about allowing in gays from countries where they are persecuted?

America and Australia are nations of immigrants. Australia was a nation of convicts, should they now be a nation that allows convicts from other countries in? I have heard and read many times that Trump wants to ban 1.3 billion Muslims from coming here, should we allow 1.3 billion people to come here. Do we need to increase our population that much?

Lets get back to the simple questions, how many people should be allowed to come here a year? The problem is not really who should be allowed to move here, the question is how many. Should we concern ourselves with the impact on society of immigration? Cultural society? These are all valid questions; but, I don't have the answers and from what I can tell neither does anybody else.

I disagree with Trump very strongly about Mexican immigration. I agree that we have the right as a nation to determine who comes here, the same as any other nation; but, the vast majority of Mexican immigrants, legal and illegal, are a net positive on the country. The truth is that Mexican immigrants fit in quite well with the existing Mexican populations and they are willing to turn in criminals.

This post is not about the answers, it is about the questions. You cannot vet a person's soul, it is not for man to do. You can however limit numbers, that is achievable. We currently have around 330 million people in the United States, we could afford to take in 500,000 people a year without seriously challenging our society. The same cannot be said for Scandinavian countries which only have a couple of million people living there to begin with. If we don't address the question of how many we can never honestly address the question of who.