I'm worried about tax dollars because I get smoked for an ungodly amount every year.
Again, how my do you think you would be paying personally? Truth is you wouldn't even know or see a difference.
I think the money can be better spent on fixing problems we already have, like homeless vets, homelessness in general, drug treatement facilities, clean water for Flint..U kno the drill... The homelessness and drug problems we have here should be addressed first. I also stand on my opinion that a refugee is better off in his or her own country in a safe zone than on the other side of the planet. Look how fucked up their conditions are in Paris.
There is always going to be shit we need to spend taxes on, shit we need that hasn't been fixed in years, Flint is a perfect example. That will not change, we'll always have problems. But still, not taking in some refugees isn't going to fix our problems. We aren't being asked to either take in refugees or fix our own problems, this isn't a choice where we can only do one and not the other. That's why that argument is severely flawed and flat out wrong.
When Cambodian refugees came to America, do you think everything was peachy in the US? Fuck no, we had tons of problems during that time period. There were very few Cambodian Americans pre-1975. After '75 and the genocide, well over a hundred thousand Cambodians came to the united states, of which 149,000 entered the country as refugees. 75-79 was not a great economic period in this country; we had a long laundry list of problems. Still we took them in because not only were we responsible for creating the shit storm in South East Asia thanks to the Vietnam war, but because it was the right thing to do and we could handle it. Likewise, we are responsible for the clusterfuck in Syria and beyond, we caused that shit. If there is no invasion of Iraq based on a lie, WMDs, which we know 100℅ for fact was a blatant lie by the Bush administration, ISIS does not exist. ISIS only came to be as a direct result of our bullshit war in Iraq.
These people are human beings, they have suffered unimaginable horrors that you nor I can't even begin to fathom. We can still do strict screening and not just let anyone in, no one is saying we take every person who wants to come since that's never the case anyway (except for Cuba, we took their criminals for political reasons). All I'm saying is we can take some of the burden - not the bulk, not the majority but some. We have the resources, we have the ability and it wouldn't cost the average American tons of their tax dollars as you imply.
From the YouTube video description:
-uncontrolled illegal mass immigration
-The migrants have since resettled there, the area looks like before - thousands of Africans live in tents and sleep on mattresses in the middle of the street as of October 16th.
-Tens of thousands of homeless Illegal immigrants, undocumented or waiting for a decision of their asylum application
Etc etc
This isn't what I'm talking about and that would not happen here since the US has a process for immigration and refugees, a process that some European countries do not have or seriously lacked nor were they prepared and in many cases left refugees with absolutely nothing, no place to stay, no food, no water, a complete mess. Some European countries have handled it much better and no surprise, those countries who provided basic fucking shit like food, water and shelter aren't having those kinds of problems. All of those European countries are far smaller than the US, some of them with incredibly small populations compared to the US where a huge immigration will be felt and very noticeable. The US can absorb tens of thousands of people spread across the country and you would hardly notice. Places like LA where the population is bigger than we European countries! Places that have "little Iran", place like Glendale which is all Armenians, etc. It's very easy for a huge country like ours to absorb refugees, since it's not like we would suddenly put 25,000 refugees in ome single spot.
When waves of refugees come to America and go through the process, many of them are sent to locations chosen by the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement and spread out. They are not dumped into the center of a major city and say "good luck assholes!" Again there is a process, there is basic stuff provided as they go through the process (shelter, food, water, etc.) until they are ready.
With that said the process can and should be better. Using Cambodia again as example, while Cambodians can be found in all 50 states and many are successful, it hasn't been easy, not by a long shot. Many are poor, many have joined street gangs among many other problems. This is not uncommon for new immigrants in America, same was true for the Irish and Italians for example who had very difficult times that first generations. The difference here though is Cambodians were escaping genocide. Thousands of pregnant woman, a significant portion witnessed their husbands and children executed before their own eyes, they watched their mothers and sisters raped and killed, they watched their toddlers throats slit. They came here to escape and were given very little and suddenly they were single mothers learning how to be the bread winner. it is they who have had to struggle the hardest to keep themselves and their children alive and support their family on their own with very little to no education, many from farm lands and so many of them suffered from PTSD with no help received to deal with the symptoms. Despite myriad difficulties, Cambodians in the United States are resilient, hard working and loving people. It's hard to imagine what they went through just to get here, none of us lived through a genocide fortunately, none of us had entire families, entire cities we were from wiped off the planet.
We can do better than that though. We can and should provide more for people escaping genocide. And again that is what we're dealing with, genocide. We've taken in a small number, just .004℅. A bit over 10,000 Syrians. Thst is very little. Again, we took in close to 200,000 Cambodians (150,000 were refugees) and that is very similar as I've explained.
It's difficult for me to understand the concept of turning a blind eye to something has horrific as that. Where is the compassion, where is the humanity? This shouldn't be about right vs left, liberal or conservative this should be about basic humanity. To know that kids, 5 year olds, 4 year olds, who've had to watch their mothers raped and murdered in front of them, their father's executed, thousands of them, and to just say ah fuck it, let someone else deal with them their Muslims after all...I don't know man, that just feels incredibly inhumane.
