I think it's fair to say the US is better on resettling refugees than a great number of other nations. I'd fall short of saying the US has done "more than its fair share". In my opinion, the US still falls short of its fair share, it just comes a great deal closer than many other nations. A fair share is not gauged on what others contribute. If you split the bill at a restaurant and owe $10 but only pay $5 you've still come up short of what you owe, even if everyone else chips in nothing and leaves one poor sod with the full bill. If everyone matched the US's effort of 17,000 people resettled per 328 million citizens, it would take 400 years to resettle the number of refugees in camps today. Again I'd stress I don't think it's right to judge a person or a nation for being selfish on an issue like this when there's more immediate and obvious issues closer to home - but let's make sure we're still being honest about our selfishness. Let's be open in acknowledging how little we all do to solve this monumental crisis we have done the most to cause, even those of us from the three biggest resettlement countries, instead of offloading the responsibility on those who do even less.
Oh also, in case it needs to be said, most immigrants crossing the mexican border are not refugees by the commonly understood definition - I'm not addressing that part of this thread with my responses. That doesn't mean economic migrants are not also worthy of compassion, but I think there's a different level of duty to resettle someone in poverty, compared to someone who is running for their lives from a government that wants to execute them for their faith, whose family support network had their village blown up by Western drone strikes.
We're on pace to have probably more than 1,000,000 immigrants enter our country illegally this year. In addition, we'll probably give 'lawful permanent resident' status to a half million more. That's not enough?? How can we be expected to admit more refugees when we have a crisis on our hands? We're being flooded! I don't see where we owe a "duty" to welcome anybody else!
According to DHS, the US resettled 29,916 refugees here in fiscal year 2019. Another 46,508 people were granted asylum. (I'm not sure if 2020 numbers are available yet.) If you ask me those are pretty good numbers. 76,424 people in one year. The US has been like a sponge, soaking up people in need and in search of a better life. But at some point, every sponge becomes saturated. And right now this particular sponge is being poured upon faster than it can absorb.
My post was to separate the two issues, my arguments don't apply to the sort of immigration you're talking about. I don't think prosperous countries have a duty to all immigrants, but I think we do have a duty to genuine refugees. My arguments don't apply to those crossing the Mexican border due to poverty, but they do apply to those fleeing death and terror. On that basis, the 17,112 humanitarian refugees the US resettled in 2018 is not a 'fair share'. To stretch the split bill analogy to its breaking point, if you and all your friends skip the bill at dinner this week and leave your friend to pay for the full table, that you went to a dinner with a different group last week and they left you with the full bill doesn't clear you of the obligation to pay your fair share this week. It's a different group of friends, a different bill. All countries have a duty to help resettle those they have displaced. Even if it was not our direct actions that displaced them, on compassionate and humanitarian grounds we all have a duty to help resettle those who have been displaced. According to the UNHCR the US resettled 21,159 in the 2019 calendar year. Perhaps it's also true the US resettled 29,916 refugees in the 2018-2019 fiscal year. The US resettled 6,740 people in 2020, but because of border closures and health considerations due to COVID, I wouldn't try to use 2020 or 2021 numbers to illustrate anything useful. The US's numbers are better than many other countries, but I don't think there's any way to spin them as good. For example, just because we're already talking about Mexico, in the past 20 years Mexico has resettled 1 refugee. When compared to that, the US is carrying the globe. But, when we look at Canada, that resettled 132,282 refugees over the same time span, they resettle around double the US figure per capita. If every country on Earth followed Mexico's pace it will take around 2.4 million years to resettle today's refugees. If every country on Earth followed the US's pace it will take around 400 years to resettle today's refugees. If every country on Earth followed Canada's pace it will take around 200 years to resettle today's refugees. No matter how we look at it, no one is doing good. We're effectively saying that those in refugee camps will need to remain stateless for 10 generations before they're all out - and that's assuming no new wars create new refugees. They're trapped in a cage and no one wants them. That's abhorrent. My point isn't to judge each other, I'm just saying let's be open and honest about how short we're falling. Do you think God will believe us when we look at those stats and say with a straight face "That was the best I could do"? As Christians we're taught to acknowledge we are flawed and imperfect and beg for forgiveness, not to refuse to confess because we've done nothing wrong. On this issue not one nation on Earth is good. Not one.
I found these numbers on the Refugee Council for Australia Website. I think the 2019 the stats should have been published in 2020. Sadly I suspect that our attention was diverted from this problem and the stats for 2020 will not make any sense I suspect. The problem we have is that 1% of the global population is now refugee, asylum seeker, or Internally Displaced. This is a massive problem, and clearly we need better solutions. By Grouping, if they were a nation it would be the 20th largest population on the planet. The other question you have is the question of how many refugees you can absorb without disrupting social cohesion and national identity. We need solutions which address both head and heart. Of course one wonders what the Covid19 crisis looks like in these communities, however I don't see many want to talk about that.
It is particularly important that the figures and statistics are true and proven to be accurate though. This is because genuine refugees due to disaster or persecution are equivalents to the man who fell among theives, and governments are equivalent to either Caring Samaritans or religious types who cross over and pass by on the other side of the road rather than get involved in other's troubles. Refugeees are predominantly 'neighbours' in distress. You truly have a 'Titanic' problem that needs urgent attention, but the situation is the product of successive political administrations, not just the present one. Any country is like a lifeboat. It depends on the capacity of the boat, its actual occupancy and the number of people in the water needing to be lifted into the boat, whether rescue is actually, wisely, possible. If the boat can only carry 60 people without itself sinking, then if it has 60 people aboard already it can't take any more. This is why lifeboats have grab lines round the gunwhales, to support those who must stay in the water or would otherwise threaten the buoyancy of the boat. If it has only 30 people it can take only 30 more. If it only has the captain of the stricken vessel and his wife, there is room for 58 from the water. This is the pragmatic assessment of the situation. What you have going on over there currently though is the refugee situation being used as a political football. Interested parties will use the situation to gain advantage simply to obtain more influence and control over entirely other aspects of the nation's social and economic life. The party political struggle carried on at the expense of the refugees. They being merely only pawns in the game. Some know they're in a 60 capacity lifeboat with only 20 bedraggled, rescued passengers, but still fending off others with a boathook, yelling "We're full up, find another boat". That's pure dishonesty. Some have been told they're are in a 60 capacity lifeboat but really have only 20 bedraggled, rescued passengers, but are dutifully fending of others with a boathook, yelling "We're full up", but they're actually not. Just because they have been told to. That's either stupid or selfish. Some have actually counted their passengers and know they're in a 60 capacity lifeboat with 58 bedraggled, rescued passengers, and fending of others with a boathook, yelling "We're full up", because they can't risk getting those two others into the boat for it being swamped by all those who are with them who also want to be rescued. The threat of being swamped will condemn those two to drown simply because they are closely accompanied by hundreds of other 'drowners'. That's sensibly looking to the safety of the 58 passengers already in a nearly full to capacity boat. Meanwhile the ship owners are well aware that the lack of lifeboats and therefore the responsibility for the entire situation, is because of their cheese-pairing meanness in not providing the stricken ship with adequate life boats because they wanted greater profits from carying excess passengers, that they knew beforehand could not be saved from drowning, in any future emergency. (These are the 'White Star Line' politicians etc. who devise the immigration control laws, implement them, and use the fear that uncontrolled immigration can enduce in the electorate, to enhance their chances of election or re-election and enrich themselves, regardless of the nation's needs or the welfare of others). .
The 2019 stats have been published, as have the 2020 stats. The UNHCR updates the stats every month with a two month delay, this is the link. The refugee crisis is dire, but 1% of the world is not looking to emigrate from their crisis regions. There may be 70 million displaced people, depending on who you ask and how you count it, the Red Cross says there is 80 million, but not all displaced people are in need of resettlement in foreign countries. Internally displaced people are not an immigration issue. They are people that have lost their homes, but have no interest in leaving their country. Some of these people are displaced due to war, others due to natural disasters. They are not in immediate fear for their lives any longer. Those people still need humanitarian aid, but the support those people need is food, water, temporary shelter (as in tents, not shelter in foreign countries). The immigration issue is the asylum seekers (specifically those seeking permanent resettlement, not temporary asylum). For the first time in history refugees can no longer show up on a neighbours doorstep unannounced and start a new city. We can destroy their homes, and then lock the gate to keep them out, and there is literally nowhere on this planet left for them to go. Their options are death, imprisonment or a multi-generational long limbo begging for a wealthy and empty country to let them in. Of that group there are currently 1.4 million refugees already assessed as in need of permanent resettlement waiting in queue. Before Covid it was going to take the world 15 years to resettle those already assessed. Some years we created more refugees then we settled. Most estimates say when all of the refugees in the world are assessed, around 23-26 million will be in need of resettlement. Not quite 1% of the globe, but still a serious challenge. Not an impossible one, but one the world currently has absolutely no interest in tackling.
I always get a feeling that there is a kind of 'I'm alright Jack' attitude to immigration in the USA. It is a country of immigrants. The indigenous peoples only represent a small fraction of its population. Most Americans are the descendants of immigrants who went to the USA for a better life. I find it ironic they now do not want other immigrants coming in.
My point is that the two issues can't be separated, since the flood of immigrants entering our southern border has a drastic effect on our capacity to resettle more refugees. The situation also testifies to the fact that we Christians in the US have lost much of our ability to influence the government to do what is right. The US did not displace anyone from Myanmar or Africa or whatnot. The US as a nation has zero duty to those people. Please do not confuse a Christian's individual duty to 'love his neighbor' with a nation's duty to protect its citizens; the nation is not mandated to provide for every poor Tom, Dick, and Harry halfway around the globe, especially when the reason those people are in trouble is that their own nation is controlled by evil, greedy, power-hungry, hateful people. If the US had any duty toward those people, the proper way to fulfill that duty would be to mount an invasion, throw out the evildoers, and annex the country as a US territory. Sorry, the US is not the world's policeman. The US as a nation does not owe a duty to take and resettle even one refugee! The duty of the US is to its own citizens. This whole "we have a duty" argument does not apply to nations; it only applies to individual Christians. The fact is, the US government has a duty under our Constitution to protect each and every state from invasion. Right now the government is failing to fulfill its duty to the four states along the Mexican border, and those states are being invaded. Even though the invaders don't wear uniforms of some nation's army, they are causing major havoc and substantially endangering the lives of citizens. Until we can get the government to do its duty and protect its own citizens, we can't be bothered with feeble arguments that our nation has a "duty" toward some folks who live in faraway countries where their government has failed in its duty to them, too. We have to concentrate on getting our own house in order. After security is restored, perhaps then we Christians can write our congressmen and ask them to take action to admit more refugees; but even then, we Christians are not in a position to "force it to happen," so how can anyone say it is our duty to do what is not in our power to do? Characterizing this issue as a matter of duty is completely wrong. If we get a chance to influence decision-makers to do what is right, just, and loving, that's great; other than that (currently very unlikely) chance, letting in more refugees is out of our hands even if we could handle them right now. Honestly, I don't give a rip what the UN says about anything; they are one of the most corrupted, evil, globalist-oriented organizations in existence. DHS is the United States' Department of Homeland Security, and I pulled the numbers directly from their report, so those are 'directly from the horse's mouth'. As for Canada, we shouldn't look at this as a 'per capita' thing. Canada has much more land and wide open space where people can live, and they obviously know they can handle the numbers, so let them have the extra people. If you like what Canada is doing, perhaps you should send them a check and a note that says, "This is for more refugees, keep up the good work." Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Our government has become corrupted, no doubt about it. It's going in the same direction that most other governments have already gone: down the toilet. In a perfect world, everyone in government offices around the globe would be loving and kind-hearted, and all the refugees would be taken in within weeks (if there would even be any refugees in such a nicey-nice world!). But we live in a fallen world, and there is only one thing of real, lasting effect that any of us can do to combat that: spread the Gospel. Therein lies our true duty as Christians, for each and every one of us is called to help fulfill the Great Commission and to be Jesus' hands, feet, eyes, ears, and mouths on this earth. Changing people's life-circumstances is temporary; changed hearts are permanent and eternal.
The issue has never been with immigration, but rather, illegal immigration. We’ll take those who come abiding by our laws and honoring our institutions. Instead we have these “migrant caravans” composed of thousands of people, pumped with marxist “reconquista” ideology, who storm the US borders like from out of a zombie apocalypse movie. This is why a wall was needed. Look at this madness: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...-caravan-prepares-enter-Mexico-Guatemala.html
That's totally wrong. For a country that allegedly does not want other immigrants coming in, the US has always allowed large numbers of immigrants. We just want them to come in legally, properly, and in reasonable numbers. Oh, and we also want to weed out the criminals and such. Is that so wrong? I understand that the corrupt mainstream media has caused you to believe malarky about US citizens, so I take your comments with a grain of salt. It isn't your fault.
Frankly I think that is a little harsh on Canada. A lot of the 'land and open space' you refer to may well be permafrost and genuinely uninhabitable. We here this kind of thing said about Australia, however a great part of our land is actually desert. I recognise that land borders are deucedly more permeable than that ocean fronts. The Australian National anthem says at one point 'We've boundless plains to share' and at another point says 'Our home is girt by sea'. Of course most migrants don't want to live in rural and remote areas, but rather in cities and the bustle of economic prosperity. I certainly share some of your cynicism of the UN, however I am not ready to write off the whole organisation just yet. The constitution of the US enshrines in legislation rights that much of us in the rest of the world like to imagine we have, yet for many of us we will look for the UN Declaration of Human Rights to support of claim. The refugee convention is an important document in the area. The contemporary 'woke' term 'economic refugee' is a status not envisaged and not covered by the refugee convention. One of the sad realities is that many in our world would have more rights as refugees than they do as citizens of their own countries. This is a point I wholly concur with. There must be an opportunity for the host nation to review any application for asylum/residency. If the fear of persecution transpires to be the fear of a judicial process on a criminal charge then it is more complex. Some things that are crimes in one place may well be legal/or nearly legal in another. At the end of the day these matters almost always have to be case by case.
I am a lowly observer of all of this wealth of information disseminated so far. I do have my personal observations. I am the son of an immigrant family. My father and his family came to the USA from Austro-Hungary (now Slovakia) at the onset of WWI. They came here and worked in the Carnegie program of basically indentured servitude in Pennsylvania, South Braddock, to be precise. My wife is an immigrant from Thailand. She came here because of marriage to me from my being in Thailand during the Vietnam War. ALL of my family, and my wife, assimilated, learned the language and became US citizens. They became a part of the fabric of America. What I see now is not at all like this. I see marches in the streets with flags from foreign nations and those groups demanding aid and assistance from the US government. Enclaves in cities have areas where no one desires to learn English or assimilate. They wish to create their own version of where they fled from here in the USA. We have NO obligation to support them in doing so. I know people will counter with years past have had their "Little Italy", "Little Cuba", "Little Munich" and such. Yes, they did, but the majority wished to become a part of America. I am not seeing that now with the current influx of illegal immigrants. Honestly, how can a 10 year-old walk 2,000-miles from South America nations to the USA with new Nikes, a new back-pack and Levis and an iPhone? I see a planned influx by powers wishing to see the demise of our system and our nation. It is my obligation to myself and the nation that allowed my family to come here and become a part of it to fight to slow the flow of these people, wherever they are from.
After posting in post #29 what I felt I had to say, I also made the decision not to post in this thread again. Indeed, I had intended to see if there is a way in Anglican Forums to 'silence' a thread so you receive no more alerts about it. I know it is a very emotive topic and after post #29 I wanted no more involvement in it. However, I had to post an answer to what you wrote because you cited the Daily Mail. Citing the Daily Mail as a source of anything is on a par with trusting your life savings with a man who has just been released after serving 20 years in prison for fraud. If the Daily Mail told me today is Tuesday (it is) I would check the calendar. If you want to cite a British newspaper I would recommend The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian or The Times.
Therein lies one of the difficulties. Different publications have different biases, and those biases appeal to different groups of people. One man's reliable news source is the next man's birdcage liner, and vice versa. However, a picture is worth a thousand words, so I hope you took a look at all those wonderful photos in the linked story. Feel free to ignore the written text, of course, but please see the pictures. England is fortunate in some respects to be surrounded by water.
Let’s at least be sure that we’re dealing with the same set of facts, and that they are actual facts, not conspiracy theories or ravings of elected demagogues and self-appointed pundits. https://www.politifact.com/border-security/
Politifact, the site that said it's false to describe a person by their biological sex if they identify with another sex. The site that labeled as "a debunked conspiracy theory" stories that said Covid-19 likely came from a lab in Wuhan. The site that misrepresents its own subjective opinions as "fact checks." Give me a break! A decent fact-checker should not be left-biased (like Politifact) any more than it should be right-biased. A problematic situation occurs when an individual completely rejects everything from a particular source because that individual has mentally/emotionally tried and convicted the source. Such a person will reject absolute, 100% provable facts simply because he has an aversion to the publication or medium. That is logically speaking an unwise and untenable position, but it is a position that is being adhered to by many, many people. Here's a pertinent quote from https://blog.thefactual.com/what-are-the-best-nonpartisan-news-sources : Now that we know the best centrist sources, we can ignore everything else, right? In short, no. Despite having a target audience, politically-leaning sources still contain valid takes and, when conveyed in a credible manner, can inform and challenge our beliefs. The danger is in solely relying on a specific source to inform our understanding. For example, I was talking to a friend recently who told me that they rely on the New York Times and NPR for all of their information. They would never trust anything that came from Breitbart or Fox News. Prior to my time at The Factual, I would probably say the same. However, the following article, recently featured in our newsletter, from Breitbart’s Frances Martel, “Missile Attack Hits U.S. Embassy in Baghdad,” scored 76%, making it the top-read on the subject. Had I acted on my biases and avoided this article, I never would have learned about the non-violent protests Baghdad facilitated to remove U.S. troops from the region. Loyalty to one narrative can inhibit us from receiving the best news out there, and in such a saturated news space, there is no reason to read anything but the very best. And even if we hate to admit it, sometimes the best-quality article is from a source whose political leaning differs from our own. (emphasis added) Since nearly all (if not all) of the popular so-called 'fact checkers' are controlled by left-leaning individuals and are utilized by left-leaning individuals, they are of questionable value at best because they almost exclusively serve to validate the left-leaning opinions of those who refer to them. It's far better to listen to the evidence on both sides and make up one's own mind, than to default to the 'fact-check' opinions of some self-anointed 'experts'; the latter is little more than letting someone else 'do the thinking for you.'
It is illegal in Australia to describe someone by their birth/biological gender if they identify with another gender. Very few people believe that the Covid19 Virus was manufactured in a lab in Wuhan. We have identified Wuhan as ground zero for the virus, and the most generally accepted point of transmission was in the wet markets of Wuhan, most probably from bats. I am not so convinced that it is skewed that far to the left, and it has certainly called out left wing politicians. https://www.politifact.com/personalities/joe-biden/ https://www.politifact.com/personalities/kamala-harris/ I agree with the principle, however I also acknowledge that objectivity is a subjective possibility. I despair of opinioned news services on the left and the right who have given up any attempt to be objective, or even to disguise their bias. An effective freedom of the press carries the responsibility for the press to do want it can to be accurate, timely, relevant, and unbiased.