I understand what you're saying, I was particularly moved by the story of the Vietnamese woman who lost her son crossing a river. It's heartbreaking.

For some of these people it's better odds. Particularly I'm sympathetic to people living in places like Venezuela or central Africa. But for the rest, people from places like Vietnam or China or Chile, their situations are most certainly not worth the risk. They were either sold propaganda that it was easy, or they are risking their family's lives irresponsibly for the prospect of financial gain on the idea that they can become sensationally rich in the US. I've personally known people from both of those sets, and I've been to some places in the world (and not as a military person or something like that) and seen things about as horrendous as are outlined in this article.

Losing your job during covid is not a solid motivator for a rational person to decide to do this. It takes intense desperation, delusion about the danger, or the idea that it will be incredibly worth the risk. Only people in the first circumstance can justify doing something like this when it's all said and done. The rest, they'll be traumatized in the best case scenario and then wind up in the same situation they were in back home, living in crime riddled ghettos paying too much in rent and working dead end shit jobs to barely scrape by. For many that's a worse existence than they left. There's a siren on the shores of the US, and it's song is "the land of opportunity." I've had people tell me that they literally believed the streets here were paved in gold until they arrived. The truth is, in most of the countries where these people come from, day to day life is pretty comparable, and your chances of hitting it big are about the same.

The only real benefit to those but the truly desperate is arbitraging the labor markets between countries using remittances. You can send money home to your family and they can move up and then when they're set you can return and have a higher class life. I don't believe it's moral to risk the lives of your small children for something like that.

Its a difficult challenge to try to define for someone else what their balance of risk and reward should be. I can say that it is hard for me to imagine deciding to risk this journey, but I wouldn't tell someone else they shouldn't.

The problem, as I see it, has nothing to do with whether people should make this journey or how much immigration is "enough" immigration. The underlying problem is the imbalance between entitlement programs and immigration. Entitlement programs create an incentive to be inside the country's borders that doesn't otherwise exist.

Both politicians and most media outlets have done a great job focusing discussion and debate on symptoms rather than root cause, that may have been intentional or unintentional. We can run in circles debating who and how many we want to allow to immigrate legally. That debate will never end when its based entirely on personal opinion.

A country with any entitlement programs has to control their borders at limit immigration. An interesting question is what to do when borders and immigration can't be controlled effectively. In that scenario, can the country continue to have entitlement programs without government debt spiralling out of control?

Yeah I'm 100% with you on the cause. I will tell someone they shouldn't if they have little kids with them. Risking your own life is fine, making changes for your family necessarily comes with risk, but carrying a small child through this jungle is downright irresponsible unless your child is going to starve or be harmed living in the place you left.

> Remember that these are people just like you and I

I read/hear this argument a lot in Europe to justify mass immigration, and it's very tiring. Yes, technically they are people, from the same species. Then about anything else is different.

One might say that difference in culture isn't that big deal. Except culture governs basically every social interactions. If your culture values women rights, personal freedom, non-violence, a different culture necessarily means differences one some or all of those points. So yes, other people are humans too, but do you really want to live with people that think women should have no rights, for which violence is normal behavior, which think personal freedom is nothing in comparison to their ideology or religion ? I personally don't and I would rather live with like-minded individuals.

>>I read/hear this argument a lot in Europe to justify mass immigration

I don't really see it as a justification of mass migration, but I do see it as an argument for treating migrants as human beings not cattle(or worse). There are enough politicians and people in general who think that the boats and people at the borders should be just shot at, that will stop them from coming surely /s. You see this sentiment everywhere, and the "Remember that these are people just like you and I" thought process is missing.

Yeah, the whole "they're 'savages'" argument feels like a justification of why "we" (westerners living in relative luxury) are allowed to deny them the basic neccessities for life (food, housing, freedom from falling bombs).

To throw more fuel to the flamewar, just look at the Israeli treatment of Gazans...

For a longer essay of the idea of "refugees welcome", from an Iranian refugee who with her parents got asylum in the US after asking many embassies: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/04/dina-nayeri-un...

> But what America did was a basic human obligation. It is the obligation of every person born in a safer room to open the door when someone in danger knocks. It is your duty to answer us, even if we don’t give you sugary success stories. Even if we remain a bunch of ordinary Iranians, sometimes bitter or confused. Even if the country gets overcrowded and you have to give up your luxuries, and we set up ugly little lives around the corner, marring your view. If we need a lot of help and local services, if your taxes rise and your street begins to look and feel strange and everything smells like turmeric and tamarind paste, and your favourite shop is replaced by a halal butcher, your schoolyard chatter becoming ching-chongese and phlegmy “kh”s and “gh”s, and even if, after all that, we don’t spend the rest of our days in grateful ecstasy, atoning for our need.

That was an incredible read. Even though I don't think I entirely agree with the author(I am an immigrant myself and do feel grateful for my new home), it was still a worthwhile read.

There's a bit where she said she could sense the Americans wanting to hear her mother repeat her story of their journey from "oppresive Iran" to "free America", but seemingly wanting to hear it (again and again) to feel good about "their" generosity. And she is grateful, but she doesn't like this expectation of the "rescuing" community that refugees are only allowed to feel joy and gratefulness.

> Yes, technically they are people, from the same species. Then about anything else is different.

They are people, without technicalities. And we have a lot in common. There are a lot of differences inside a country too. In my country far-right doesn't value women right, personal freedom and non-violence while most migrants I've met do.

Do far-left value freedom rights in your country?

Always worth reminding that the political axes tend to be horseshoe shaped rather than linear. Extremists on both sides are more similar to each other in many ways than they are to more average people. But of course each side projects their own vices onto the other and usually are incapable of seeing it in themselves.

Always worth reminding that far-right is just a name left gives to center.

Well that's not an easy one to answer, we have so many different far-lefts, some do, some don't. I would say most do.

Also the very definition of "valuing freedom" can be debated with widely different answers depending on the country or the political group.

Hi OP here - this is not an argument for or against anything. Rather just a reminder that whichever side you are on, or whatever you are advocating for, just to remember we are talking about humans. That’s the only point I was making.

You may be fighting an uphill battle to advocate humanism here. Comments like "Yes, technically they are people" send a shudder down my spine.

I am not sure if there are any confirming studies but dehumanisation [0] seems characteristically enhanced in people whose focus is primarily on technology - on things rather than people. Moral disengagement [1] also seems to be a prevalent reaction to existential threat, which I think we all feel to some degree.

[0] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-web-violence/201...

[1] https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/3/7/14456154/deh...

If you look for differences, you’ll find them. If you look for common ground, you’ll find that too.

> or which violence is normal behaviour

I hope the irony is not lost on you that dehumanisation correlates very strongly with a propensity to violence.

I say this from personal experience in medicine - many of them come here under highly auspicious circumstances e.g. "I claimed asylum because XYZ, and XYZ just so happened to be at the time I was 8.9 months pregnant, which circumstantially will just so happen to make my child a US citizen and thus qualify me for welfare, WIC, and free food, vis a vis my citizen-child, of which I definitely won't have 10 more of once I'm here"

The issue isn't asylum or american dream, both are fine. The issue is 10-20 million people milking the housing, welfare, and medical systems -really hard-. In the clinics, some days, 100% of patients were Spanish only speaking i.e. recently arrived here or not-so-recently arrived here and never bothered to learn english. Which is a cost to the public coffers. Not the baseline medical cost, a Spanish interpreter is legally required according to another medical related law, an additional cost.

That's to say, let's eradicate all financial governmental "free money" type motivations +/- "free citizenship to anchor babies" motivations as to why a person would come here. People wistfully point to Ellis Island as the spirit of America, in that spirit, let these immigrants make their way on their two feet with their two hands, without support, as those of Ellis Island, as those before, did.

The big pain of it is many of these people come from collapsed socialist countries, but maintain some degree of socialist ideals, so they try very hard to extract socialist benefits in the US. It's like guy, why did you think you country collapsed? Oh sorry, you don't speak English, el guy-o, el-why-o el country-o el collapso?