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The Trump administration is expected to issue a proposal in coming weeks that would make it harder for legal immigrants to become citizens or get green cards if they have ever used a range of popular public welfare programs, including Obamacare, four sources with knowledge of the plan told NBC News.
The move, which would not need congressional approval, is part of White House senior adviser Stephen Miller's plan to limit the number of migrants who obtain legal status in the U.S. each year.
[...] Though its effects could be far-reaching, the proposal to limit citizenship to immigrants who have not used public assistance does not appear to need congressional approval. As the Clinton administration did in 1999, the Trump administration would be redefining the term "public charge," which first emerged in immigration law in the 1800s in order to shield the U.S. from burdening too many immigrants who could not contribute to society.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday August 16 2018, @05:53PM (8 children)
You should look into this thing called "history."
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday August 16 2018, @06:26PM (7 children)
Seriously dude, you're claiming Mexico would be just like Iraq because one third of Mexico is Sunni, one third Shiite and one third Kurd all who hate each other and only the actions of the hyper violent strongman dictator was keeping the peace?
Mexico under USA control would probably look like a somewhat poorer version of New Mexico.
The Chiapas region would take some careful handling. I wonder if it would settle down if we took over Mexico City and simply stopped advancing south at the border of Chiapas. Wait a generation until blood cools down then much later on we would "git merge" the Chiapas branch into the Greater American Union or the God Emperors Province or whatever we'd end up calling it.
An interesting side issue is the local narco terrorist type organizations. I suspect a couple hellfire missiles would clean them up rather quickly.
An intelligent way to invade and annex Mexico would be to chop off the head of the insurgency BEFORE fighting the legacy government ground troops. Interesting to think of the narco trucks getting hellfired into oblivion before our tanks and APCs cross the border and start fighting the legacy government. Probably with 20:20 hindsight this is how "we" should have handled the Gulf War invasions. Some known ultra-extremist iman would in retrospect have been a much better cruise missile target in 2001 than some mere government telephone exchange building or the other shit they targeted as if middle eastern armies are "real opponents". Ine the long run Mr "Death to the Great Satan USA" is a much harder target to neutralize than some rando opfor battalion commander or some rando T-72 tank platoon, the lesson of the GWOT is we neutralized the targets in the wrong order...
I mean, even if we pull back and don't invade on land with tanks and APCs, just the prep work of literally vaporizing the narcos in the sense of wiping out what could become a future insurgency would be kind of a gift to civilization right there, regardless if the actual land invasion were called off later.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Friday August 17 2018, @12:37AM (6 children)
Mexico would be probably be very much like Afghanistan. Afghanistan is easy to conquer. Just about everyone has done it, at one time or another. And everyone that's done it has come to regret it. Taking territory is one thing - holding it is something very different. Attempting to hold Mexico would destroy everything left of the USA.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday August 17 2018, @03:02AM (5 children)
Doubtless the drug cartels and the corrupt gov't would resist, but (speaking from long observation of SoCal's first-generation immigrants) the average Mexican would just shrug and life would go on as before.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Friday August 17 2018, @03:24AM (4 children)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday August 17 2018, @04:35PM (3 children)
"In the longer term, every injustice, every problem, every insult would be blamed on the occupying power, justly or not."
Yeah, but if the average Mexican hasn't risen up and done something against the current corrupt mess, what makes you think they'll be any more ambitious when life gets generally better/easier under U.S. rule?
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Friday August 17 2018, @09:25PM (2 children)
Of course, another prediction that failed to come true was that it would make them better off. Wars don't really work that way. Blowing stuff up is not a constructive action. Yes, occasional, carefully planned demolition is required - but warfare brings demolition with neither quality, and it destroys wealth, it doesn't build it. So how do you propose to see an *actual* improvement in conditions for them to theoretically be grateful for? Pouring in billions of dollars in infrastructure investments? Worked real well in Iraq, Afghanistan. Oh the money will get spent, and it will benefit someone.
But it has pretty much *never* worked out the way y'all imagine here.
The chances of forming an effective North American Union that didn't just tear itself apart with internal conflict would be much higher were it to be assembled consensually. Of course there's no instant gratification there; and I'd be opposed to instant gratification on it, even consensual union with Mexico would probably be fatal at the moment, in my opinion. But it's not at all inconceivable that such an outcome could be decades, perhaps even years, down the road; given the right policies and developments in each country of course.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday August 17 2018, @10:29PM
Iraq is a very different situation, tho, even ignoring the complication of Islam and that it is based in concepts of a warrior class superior to everyone else, and the fundamental inferiority of all kaffir (factors Mexico lacks). Further, Iraq isn't smack up against our southern border and entangled in local trade agreements, both being where we're forced to pay attention to it. (We could mostly ignore Iraq and be none the worse.)
Mexico is really a nation of native Indians subjugated by a mostly-purebred-Spaniard ruling class, and it's so to this day. And it hasn't exactly risen up and thrown off that ruling class. Boss Man is in charge and who that is doesn't seem to concern villagers much. Mexican nationalism is mostly a myth promulgated by La Raza socialists. (I'd guess were it determined by a vote, most Mexicans would vote for their state to join the U.S., with all the benefits thereto.)
I expect the only official resistance would come from that ruling class. And at this point that's rather fragmented. Probably more unofficially from the drug cartels, which are hardly a majority of the population, nor are they a lawful government, but they do presently have most of the guns.
Meanwhile, what happens when Mexico tips wholly into being a failed state? Cuz if the cartels continue to run things as they please, that's where it's headed. I've heard reports that the central gov't has lost all control over most of the country. If resistance was in the cards, Mexicans would already be resisting this. But nope, they do nothing to preserve their own country. Fear rules, and peasants keep their heads down.
And at some point that's going to become our concern, if only because it's spilling over into our territory, the U.S. drug trade being the cash cow that keeps those Mexican cartels going.
I don't want the burden of administering Mexico, either benevolently or as an overlord; we don't need Puerto Rico's giant cousin sucking at the federal tit, and there's some benefit in having a very large buffer state between us and the rest of Latin America. But I think at some point we'll be forced into taking it on, and that would be better done on our terms than on terms thrust upon us.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday August 19 2018, @01:18PM
Here we are circling back around to my position.
The natives don't care in either the north or south. Nobody likes gang rule in the south except the gangs and they are small enough to be eliminated. A huge fraction of the south sees moving north either for themselves or their relatives to be a great idea. One political party in the north is trying to eliminate the concept of borders.
We're talking about the border between north and south Dakota, not east and west Berlin. A handful of criminal gangs and legacy politicians will fight to the death and the military can take care of it. The rest of the population is like "whatevs".
Now there would be no benefit to merging north and south Dakota, but I think there would be financial benefits the population would enjoy to merging N.A. or whatever the annexation of Mexico would be called.