"What Happened When A Trump Supporter Challenged Me About the Wall"

[progressoid]

This is a couple weeks old but still worth a quick read.

Vicky Alvear Shecter
Dec 27, 2018

A conservative challenged liberal Facebook friends to “make a case, not based on emotion” against Trump’s wall. Conservative buddies flooded his post with snide remarks about how this would be impossible for “deluded libs.”

“Okay, I’ll play,” I responded. And in order to avoid being accused of bias, I explained that I would use only conservative sources to prove my point. My primary source was a policy paper by the Cato Institute, a conservative, rightwing think tank, along with other conservative voices (listed at the end of the piece). Here’s why I’m against the wall, I wrote:

1. Walls don’t work. Illegal immigrants have tunneled underneath and/or erected ramps up and down walls to simply drive over them. People find a way. When East Germany erected its wall, it created a military zone, staffed by booted, machine-gun carrying guards ready to shoot to kill. Yet thousands managed to make it to West Germany anyway. More to the point, do we really want to model ourselves after communist East Germany?

2. Most illegal immigrants are “overstayers.” They come to the US legally — for vacations, business, to study, etc. — and then STAY past their visas. By 2012, overstayers accounted for 58% (THE MAJORITY!) of all unauthorized immigrants. A wall is meaningless here!

3. Walls have little impact on drugs being brought in to the US. According to the DEA, almost all drugs come in through legal points of entry, hidden in secret containers and/or among legit goods in tractor-trailers. A wall will have little to no impact on the influx of drugs into our country.

4. It’s environmentally impractical...

more... https://link.medium.com/ALzzI6m7mT

[GusBob]

1. Bookmarked eom

[Turbineguy]

2. On the other hand

it provides a flat surface for trump to put his name on.

[KT2000]

9. +1000

that is what this is about.

[Dem_4_Life]

3. Plus here in SA at least there are A LOT of rich Mexican's that are basically paid to come to the US

They get breaks to "open a small business" by saying they are hiring ___ number of people. Then what they do is bring in their family members to hire as employee's and then they stay. Plus a lot of these people are government or drug families that bring their families here for protection and then they travel to Mexico for "work". Some travel to work on private planes.

These are also the republican mindset Mexican nationals and then when/if they do get their citizenship then they always vote Republican.

[dalton99a]

7. +1. It's the EB-5 visa

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/04/26/wealthy-buy-u-s-citizenship-eb-5-visa-column/549794002/

In simple terms, the EB-5 “immigrant investors” program allows a non-American to make a below-market rate investment of $500,000 in a low-population rural area or an area with a high unemployment rate. This investment is usually a loan, and it’s typically secured by real estate or other collateral. After all, we wouldn’t want wealthy foreigners to risk losing their money.

In exchange for this below-market loan to a grateful developer (who purportedly will create about 10 jobs per lender) and fees collected by grateful middlemen, the U.S. government gives the wealthy foreign lender the chance to apply for a Green Card. This lender can use that Green Card to become a citizen and to bring in a spouse and children. Now, don’t call this "chain migration." When the immigrants are prosperous, it’s "family reunification."

EB-5 are supposed to be made in economically distressed areas. But the boundaries of the distressed areas are decided by the middlemen — lawyers and other professionals organized as Regional Centers. With clever economic gerrymandering, pretty much anything can be made to look like a distressed area. That’s how real estate developers like the Kushners (Trump’s in-laws) can use below-market rate loans from EB-5 investors to build luxury apartment buildings.

Look, market rate loans are for working people who need to borrow to pay for their homes and health care. Someone has to help real estate investors get wealthier — you can’t expect them to figure out how to earn a profit without government help. By some estimates, close to 90% of EB-5’s low interest rate loans are made in areas that may not need the money.

[Dem_4_Life]

10. Thank you!

I never knew the actual name just heard all the local horror stories that give immigrants that need help a bad name in this area.

[RAB910]

4. Easy

Just ask them if this is such a national emergency/crisis why Trump did nothing about this problem when he had fully identified it over 2 years ago.

[snowybirdie]

5. I used this same argument

and my right wing folks dismissed these arguments. Won't believe it!

[progressoid]

8. Sadly, it didn't work with the author either.

So what happened after I posted this conservative-sourced, fact-based list of why the wall is a bad idea?

Silence.

I waited for someone to respond, to engage with me. Where were the angry defenses or rebuttals? But when I searched for the post after a few days, I couldn’t find it.

My FB friend had deleted it. You could say, like Trump with the government, he shut me down rather than deal with the facts.

The ugly genius of Trump is his ability to manipulate deep, primal emotions — namely fear and hate. He, along with Fox News, have convinced his base that they are in “extreme danger” from immigrants and only a wall will make them “safe.”

[Journeyman]

6. Thanks. Good article, well reasoned . . .