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Comment by kelnos | Hacker News Reader

> why is is the job of America to hold every displaced guy on two continents?

Because of this:

"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

It's the inscription on the Statue of Liberty. The US decided, long ago, that we'd be a haven for people of other countries who are being persecuted or who otherwise want a better life.

If we don't want to do that anymore, I suggest we tear down the Statue and replace it with a closed gate.

Besides that, we've been meddling in the affairs of Central and South America for decades with mostly-disastrous effect on their economies and political systems. Accepting refugees would be a small step toward acknowledging and working to right that wrong.

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>It's the inscription on the Statue of Liberty. The US decided, long ago

The US absolutely never decided that, and certainly not at that time. That inscription was put there by wealthy New York liberals, and it certainly did not reflect the feelings of the majority of the people at the time. In fact in the decades that followed, the people of the United States instituted strong immigration restrictions, which by the way were specifically designed until 1965 so that they would not alter the national origin demographics of the country, so the American people at the time obviously did not want tens of millions of people from poor third world countries pouring in.

>Besides that, we've been meddling in the affairs of Central and South America for decades with mostly-disastrous effect on their economies and political systems.

Their ancestors before them went to war against other groups and took their land and resources. Something tells me they didn't feel particularly bad about it.

> Their ancestors before them went to war against other groups and took their land and resources. Something tells me they didn't feel particularly bad about it.

That's... not really relevant to the point being made.

At the end of the day, I'm tired of trying to advocate for the idea that you should care about other people. Especially if it doesn't cost you anything! Which, as it turns out, is actually the case for most kinds of immigration, despite what loads of unsupported FUD would like people to believe.

>That's... not really relevant to the point being made.

Of course it is. We don't owe them anything any more than they owe the victims of their ancestors' pillaging, which is nothing.

>At the end of the day, I'm tired of trying to advocate for the idea that you should care about other people.

Presumably you are discovering that people have their own problems to deal with, and don't always feel like being lectured about how they should put the problems of the rest of the world first.

>Which, as it turns out, is actually the case for most kinds of immigration, despite what loads of unsupported FUD would like people to believe.

It's actually not the case if you're a tax payer. More than 60% of households headed by an immigrant use some form of welfare.

That's money those taxpayers could otherwise have used to pay for their own children, and maybe could've afforded to have more.

It's also not the case if you're a low or medium skilled worker.

It is the case if you're a wealthy business owner who benefits from cheap labor or a highly skilled worker in a field that's not greatly affected by an influx in labor.

I agree with you in principle one-hundred percent. However, at the time that was written, there was one key difference: entitlements. Once the government started taking on the burden of providing a safety net, we lost the ability to admit every one. This was somewhat mitigated in the twentieth century by the sponsor system, but this is gone now, too.

I wish we could let every one come here and make himself successful, but I don't foresee entitlement spending ever gong any where but down. I don't take the position of limiting immigration for idealistic reasons, but because there is a limit on how many resources we have.

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