More straw-man arguments
I’m not sure how I got on the distribution list of people I know who are upset about illegal immigration, but there I am, frequently getting misinformed screeds against illegals.
Here’s the first of two I recently received (and please do read it):
Recently large demonstrations have taken place across the country protesting the fact that Congress is finally addressing the issue of illegal immigration.
Certain people are angry that the US might protect its own borders, might make it harder to sneak into this country and, once here, to stay indefinitely. Let me see if I correctly understand the thinking behind these protests.
Let’s say I break into your house.
Let’s say that when you discover me in your house, you insist that I leave.
But I say, “No! I like it here. It’s better than my house. I’ve made all the beds and washed the dishes and did the laundry and swept the floors. I’ve
done all the things you don’t like to do. I’m hard-working and honest (except for when I broke into your house).”According to the protesters:
You are Required to let me stay in your house
You are Required to feed me
You are Required to add me to your family’s insurance plan
You are Required to Educate my kids
You are Required to Provide other benefits to me & to my family
(my husband will do all of your yard work because
he is also hard-working and honest, except for that
breaking in part).If you try to call the police or force me out, I will call my friends who will picket your house carrying signs that proclaim my RIGHT to be there.
It’s only fair, after all, because you have a nicer house than I do, and I’m just trying to better myself. I’m a hard-working and honest, person, except for well, you know, I did break into your house.
And what a deal it is for me!!!
I live in your house, contributing only a fraction of the cost of my keep, and there is nothing you can do about it without being accused of cold, uncaring, selfish, prejudiced, and bigoted behavior.Oh yeah, I DEMAND that you learn MY LANGUAGE!!! so you can communicate with me.
Why can’t people see how ridiculous this is?! Only in America if you agree, pass it on (in English ).
Share it if you see the value of it.If not blow it off………
along with your future Social Security
funds, and a lot of other things.
If, like me, you receive lots of variations on this, you’ll note the consistent symptomatology:
- Nameless opponents — in this case, “certain people.” Me, I’m always suspicious of “certain people” who use the phrase “certain people.”
- Bad metaphor. No, breaking into a house and then refusing to leave is not like slipping across the border. The former is a home invasion, and police take it very seriously; if they get a clear shot at someone who takes hostages, they take it. They have not been known to shoot women, children, and men who cross the border, legally or not.
- The supposed threat to Social Security — which I will address in a moment.
- The “demand” that English speakers learn Spanish. In actuality, of its own accord, it goes the other way. Here are the facts: 1/3 of Latinos in the U.S. are Spanish-dominant, yes; but that means that 2/3 AREN’T — half are English-dominant, and half are fully bilingual. For second and third generation Spanish speakers, English becomes dominant.
- Misrepresentations and outright lies, such as these: “Recently large demonstrations have taken place across the country protesting the fact that Congress is finally addressing the issue of illegal immigration. Certain people are angry that the US might protect its own borders….” No one protested that Congress was addressing illegal immigration — they were protesting what they took to be proposed measures. From what I understand, almost everyone wants something done, they just don’t know what. As for being angry that “the US might protect its own borders,” again, I haven’t heard of anyone being angry about protecting the borders. I want the borders and the insides protected from all sorts of things, as long as we can retain some sanity about it.
But my real beef with this email is that the wrong people are being targeted. Why go after the iron filings drawn to the magnet, when the magnet is larger and easier to locate? Here was my response:
Let’s try this a different way.
Let’s say you want your house cleaned and painted and your lawn mowed. And you don’t want to pay $20/an hour. So nobody wants to do it. So you and the rest of the neighborhood invite people from far away to come do it for $5/an hour. But then you complain that there aren’t enough $20/an hour jobs to go around, and you try to wall off the neighborhood. Even though you go right on offering $5/ an hour to everybody who somehow gets over the wall.
Now who’s to blame?
I sent that to the entire distribution list and never received a reply.
This next one deals with the perceived threat to Social Security presented by illegal aliens. It helpfully includes a petition so that everyone involved can keep spreading misinformation and forwarding it around the entire internet.
SOCIAL SECURITY CHANGES
It does not matter if you personally like or dislike Bush. You need to sign this petition and flood his e-mail box with e-mails that tell him that, even if the House passes this bill, he needs to veto it. It is already impossible to live on Social Security alone. If the government gives benefits to ‘illegal’ aliens who have never contributed, where does that leave those of us who have paid into Social Security all our working lives?
As stated below, the Senate voted this week to allow ‘illegal’ aliens access to Social Security benefits.
Attached is an opportunity to sign a petition that requires citizenship for eligibility to that social service.Instructions are below. If you don’t forward the petition and just stop it, we will lose all these names.
If you do not want to sign it, please just forward it to everyone you know.
Thank you!
To add your name, click on ‘forward’. Address it to all of your email correspondents, add your name to the list and send it on.
When the petition hits 1,000, send it to comment@whitehouse.gov
PETITION for President Bush:
Dear Mr President:
We, the undersigned, protest the bill that the Senate voted on recently which would allow illegal aliens to access our Social Security. We demand that you and all Congressional representatives require citizenship as a pre-requisite for social services in the United States.We further demand that there not be any amnesty given to illegals, NO free services, no funding, no payments to and for illegal immigrants.
We are fed up with the lack of action about this matter and are tired of paying for services to illegals.
There were just under 1000 names on the one I received. Some of them were names of people I know. I understand the seeming appeal of the argument, but it requires believing the facts presented (which I rarely do), and the conclusions drawn (which I almost never do). Here was my response:
According to Snopes.com, this thing has been floating around the internet since 2006. I can’t find any record of Congress (or even “the House”) passing this bill, which would of course require Senate passage as well. Moreover, if there were such a bill, I’m sure it would be on the front page of every newspaper in the country and we would have heard of it. Rush Limbaugh would be banking further millions off this topic. Instead, the email furthers the perception that illegals are flooding our borders and stealing our jobs. Although of course we need immigration reform and no one should encourage illegal immigration — including every single one of us who indirectly is supporting illegal immigration, whether directly by unknowingly hiring illegals or indirectly by eating crops picked by illegals who are supported by an economic system that depends upon them — illegals are a net plus for the economy, as every single economic study has shown. We need to welcome these people into the system so that entitlement programs — like Social Security, ironically — can be shored up by the income derived by their children. I say that because, in case no one has noticed, in general well-off white people like probably most of us on this email list are not having enough babies to replace ourselves. Our economic well-being rests in the hands of those little ones with brown faces.
Lee
Again, I replied to the entire distribution list. In this case, I did receive one response:
Hi Lee,
Interesting perspective. It shows what happens when folks don’t have all the facts rights.
Take care.”
No, I’m not in favor of illegal immigration. I’m in favor of recognizing that we’ve got a very large labor force already here, and we in essence invited them here. We can try to keep them as a permanent underclass, keeping their kids out of school and forcing their uninsured into clinics and hospitals, or we can come up with sensible solutions that makes a better system for everyone. Either way, they’re probably not leaving. And the day they stop coming will be the day you know the economy is so bad that even George W. Bush has noticed. I vote for fixing the system in a way that makes the most sense.
Primarily, though, I always vote for using your common sense to sift baseless importunity from logic.
March 20th, 2008 at 10:19 am
I got one of those recently that compared putting out a birdfeeder to helping illegal immigrants. It described how too many birds came, wouldn’t leave, and left droppings everywhere. Then it drew the conclusion that the only solution was to remove the birdfeeder, which translates to doing nothing to help illegals. Besides being another ‘apples and oranges’ comparison, I felt it was simplistic.
I also knew that the sender was Catholic. So I suggested that he, and everyone he sent it to, go to Google and search ‘catholic church immigrants’. I did that because, as a mailman, I’ve seen plenty of headlines when delivering The Catholic Star Herald, about how that church is helping Latino immigrants to come here.
The first hit that search yielded included information about how Cardinal Roger Mahony, in 2006, urged Catholics to defy any bills passed by our government making it a crime to help illegals. Go on helping them even if it’s against the laws of the land.
So if some people want to remove the birdfeeder, they might do better to circulate that news item, rather than stories like the bird one. I also, like Lee, asked for feedback and got none.
March 20th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
I understand the frustration that many people have when they hear of the cost of taking care of an illegal immigrants, such as emergency medicine and other areas.
But I seem to be hearing all of the hate mongering being directed towards Hispanic peoples and not a word about illegal immigrants from European countries. I wonder if this is because European illegals are preferable to Latin Americans to those who scream the loudest.
The U.S. does need to do something to control the illegal immigrant population, what that is I don’t know, it’s up to others better versed in the subject to decide.
As far as passing along out dated or inaccurate information in the form of mass e-mails I find most people who do so don’t question the information presented, they take it at face value and think they are doing something good when they pass it on.
One of the supervisors had forwarded an e-mail a friend had sent her about an Amber alert. There was no date on it and it implored the receiver of the message to send it to everyone he/she knows to help find the child. When I received it I did some checking and found it to have been a hoax (hoaxbusters.com). I sent a reply to the mail list stating that with a little effort the re-senders of the message would have found out it was a hoax and not have clogged their friends e-mails with spam. Needless to say no one replied back. They’ll just keep sending the crap.
Paul
April 28th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
A lawmaker who lives near me said, off the record of course, that illegals paying into the system under false SSNs are what is keeping Social Security going. Social Security, by the way, wouldn’t be in trouble if Congress would use the monies collected through social security tax were allowed only to be used for Social Security, there would be no problem. But, instead, politicans of BOTH party have plifered from it for decades to pay for all kinds of bs, like overestimated construction projects done by generous campaign contributors. And, any demographic of people would like a drain on society if you only looked at the entitlement programs they were enrolled in and not their overall earnings. For example, if you looked at, say, the subsidies and tax breaks our country gives each year to oil companies, not to mention no bid contracts, they would look like a total drain on society. Or, could you imagine if all the farm and ag subsidies were added up without factoring in the farm’s output? As a farmer/rancher, I can tell you we would look like total bums. As it is, there really isn’t harder, more back breaking work than farms and ranches. And, there might be nothing more important than having a domestic food supply. But, if you only looked at that one side, the subsidies, an email could definitely be circulated to make farmers and ranchers look like welfare junkies. Doctors would be the same and Big Pharma would be the absolute worst.
October 17th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Might want to consider the following as posted by Congressman John J. Duncan Jr. of Tennessee
American Generosity
Americans do more to help people in other
countries, by far, than do people in any
other country. Every nation has natural resources
and/or natural beauty that could
produce great wealth, but liberal or leftwing
governments have ruined or held back
the economies in many countries. us,
Newsweek reported that half the people of
the world have to get by on $2.00 or less a
day.ese people are wondering if they are
going to get enough to eat, not what they
are going to buy at the mall. So, you cannot
blame them for wanting to come here.
However, our entire infrastructure—our
schools, roads, hospitals, jails, sewers—just
could not hold the massive influx of people
who would come here if we simply
opened our borders. Robert Rector of the
Heritage Foundation said, “One of the
goofiest things anyone can say is that we
need to bring in more immigrants to take
care of our problems with Social Security.”
“In fact,” he added, “taxes are going to have
to be raised on baby boomers to pay social
security for immigrants.” e Heritage
Foundation study on this situation found
that 50 to 60% of illegal immigrants are
high school dropouts. e findings were
that the average low-skill household would
receive an average of $33,395 annually in
government benefits over taxes paid, for a
lifetime cost of $1,669,750 for each household
headed by an illegal immigrant high
school dropout.
October 17th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Don’t get me wrong, I have many friends that are form Central and South America, but I like to see both sides of the coin.
The problem comes when we look to make a scapegoat for our problems as a country. We need to look at who we are electing to office and let our voices be heard so our representatives have to take accountability for their actions.