| ▲ | TMWNN 4 hours ago |
| Every single person who came through Ellis Island <https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-brooklyn-daily-eagle-...> * was a legal immigrant * had passed a medical inspection * had proof of having enough resources to pay for their upkeep in the US, or a US financial sponsor guaranteeing same * was turned away if failing any of the above tests, with no possibility of appeal Shipping liner companies were charged to return ineligible passengers to their origin (the same is true with airlines today), so they had every incentive to verify ahead of time that they could enter the destination country. The "only 2% of immigrants were rejected at Ellis Island" statistic often bandied-about by the pro-open borders side elides the restrictions that caused the rate to be so low in the first place. I, for one, am very much in favor of reinstating such barriers to entering the US. |
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| ▲ | rayiner 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Also don’t forget: 1) Only 12 million immigrants came through Ellis Island in 60 years. 2) 30-40% returned home 3) The U.S. strictly restricted immigration for more than 40 years to assimilate the immigrants. 4) Even after all that, the U.S. paid a heavy price. It took until the 1980s to clean up the Italian mafia in New York. And immigrant political machines were the origin of the corrupt political structures in cities like New York and Chicago today. |
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| ▲ | Hizonner an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | > Only 12 million immigrants came through Ellis Island in 60 years. About ten and a half million of those in 15 years, from 1900 to 1914. Against a 1900 US population of about 76 million. > The U.S. strictly restricted immigration for more than 40 years to assimilate the immigrants. Or, you know, because the political wind changed. > Even after all that, the U.S. paid a heavy price. It took until the 1980s to clean up the Italian mafia in New York. Right. Because nobody else would've filled that niche. > And immigrant political machines were the origin of the corrupt political structures in cities like New York The Tammany Hall machine was founded in 1789, was basically running New York by the 1850s, and was in the thick of New York corruption well past the relevance of Ellis Island. > and Chicago today. Chicago Democrats were immigrants around the relevant time. Chicago Republicans were from older stock. Both were corrupt. | |
| ▲ | rendang 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Would be nice if the people downvoting this tried to make an argument instead | | |
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| ▲ | hyperpape 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > was a legal immigrant Technically true, extremely misleading. The law placed vastly fewer restrictions on who was a legal immigrant for much of that period. Of course, it is true starting in 1921, and 1924, legislation was put in place to limit immigration by "undesirables" such as Asians, Italians and Slavs. Curious...which one of those regimes do you want to bring back? |
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| ▲ | 0xDEAFBEAD 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | I'm not sure people should be forced to live with those they feel xenophobia towards, even if one grants that the feelings of xenophobia have no basis in reality. | | |
| ▲ | hyperpape 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Alright, how do I get rid of you? | |
| ▲ | 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | whatshisface 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Before I read your comment, can I see your papers? | |
| ▲ | habinero 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | They are free to move somewhere else. I don't see why you need to coddle that sort. | | |
| ▲ | 0xDEAFBEAD 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | OK, so considering Sweden, if Sweden is flooded with immigrants, where should the Swedes who just want to live with other Swedes go? Australia?? Also you do realize that your preferred migration policy will lead to microaggressions (and possibly macroaggressions) against immigrants? If people don't have democratic means to keep out disliked foreigners, they may be tempted to try alternatives. The ballot box is ultimately an alternative to violence. | | |
| ▲ | TheOtherHobbes 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Race-hate is a syndrome, not an entitlement. | | |
| ▲ | rayiner 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Are you suggesting that all the immigrants in Sweden are acting and thinking exactly like Swedish people, and differ only in "race?" You think the Swedes are jealous about the people who don't need as much sunscreen? Otherwise, your comment is simply irrelevant. |
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| ▲ | usernomdeguerre 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Your preferred policy also leads to microagressions, where the mere presence of someone who doesn't 'look' swedish would set these 'people' off. It seems more like 'xenophobia' is the real culprit here, and should be tackled directly instead of 'granting' it as a preference that doesn't need to be interrogated. |
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| ▲ | anigbrowl 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Now do a realistic summary of what it took to pass these checks, eg how details of a medical inspection or what level of resources (inflation adjusted) were required. Equating past practices with current standards is a bait-and-switch. |
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| ▲ | Hizonner an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > was a legal immigrant ... as determined by an on-the-spot interview. Which was admittedly done in a very bigoted way. > had passed a medical inspection ... which took about one minute to check for red flags. If you had red flags, they diverted you to quarantine. They were mostly looking for TB and some eye disease. > had proof of having enough resources to pay for their upkeep in the US, or a US financial sponsor guaranteeing same ... by which they meant having as much as $25 on hand (call it $1000 in 2026, though that's a bit high), and convincing the interviewer that you could probably get a job. That convincing step did include claiming, in a way the interviewer found credible, to have skills beyond the "day laborer" level. But only just beyond. > I, for one, am very much in favor of reinstating such barriers to entering the US. Good news: the medical requirements now are equivalent, the financial/self-support requirements are now much, much higher, and the vetting is vastly more thorough. |
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| ▲ | dgellow 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Why? The US doesn’t have a problem of too many people „draining“ the country resources. |
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| ▲ | cdot2 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Something like two thirds of the US federal budget is spent on some form of welfare. Assuming you want to keep that ratio you could spend more per person with fewer people withdrawing from that system. | | |
| ▲ | hyperpape 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Completely wrong, except possibly if you're defining Social Security as welfare, in which case honesty would compel you to note that no one draws Social Security except based on having previously made contributions via dedicated taxation for social security. | | |
| ▲ | jleyank 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Just a reminder... Social Security requires 40 quarters (ie, 10 years) of income to even qualify for a pension. And the pension is based on what you earn, which is what you pay into the system. | | |
| ▲ | PorciiVorbesc an hour ago | parent [-] | | Only 10 years? Damn, here in many EU countries you need to contribute much longer than that to qualify for receiving a pension. And supposedly we're the "socialist" ones. |
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| ▲ | aero_code 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I agree that Social Security is not plain welfare, but it has significant welfare components. Simplifying some, you get back something like 90% of the first $15,432 income per year but only 32% of income above that up to $92,988. (And above that, it's 15%.) Only getting 32% back of what you pay in so that the rest can be redistributed to others who made less could be considered partly welfare. Also, if you die too young, you don't get the money back, nor can you give it to your children. It's redistributed to other people. I'm not saying it's bad (I think it's probably good overall), but I can see how it's partly welfare. |
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| ▲ | dgellow 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The US doesn’t lack the capital for welfare. The country decides to instead waste its resources fighting wars, fighting its allies, fighting its trade partners. The money is here, there is no will to allocate it to welfare. You could reduce the number of people on welfare by a massive amount and none of the savings from that would get distributed to the remaining recipient | | |
| ▲ | 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | voidfunc 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Those wars are essential to protecting our economic interests. An isolationist US is impossible. We're pretty much a modern imperial power. | | |
| ▲ | 0xDEAFBEAD 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The US economy did great prior to 1900 or so. During this period, we did not have significant military action outside of the Americas, and we avoided peacetime alliances. From 1820-1900 the US economy exploded from about 40% the size of the UK economy to about 200% the size of the UK economy. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-maddison-project-data... Switzerland has a per capita GDP exceeding the US while pursuing isolationist foreign policy. They are the world's most popular country in opinion polls. | | |
| ▲ | voidfunc 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I hate to break it to you, but the world of pre-1900 has been dead and gone for a solid 120+ years, it was killed off by Europe getting itself into two stupid wars that the Americans had to come over and save them from. Nothing works the same anymore. All those European countries get to invest in those nice social programs and isolationism because the US has at least up until now acted as world police and handled their foreign affairs for the most part. | | |
| ▲ | 0xDEAFBEAD 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Why shouldn't we let Europe do the world policing for a while? They're always complaining about whatever we do. |
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| ▲ | FpUser 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >"Those wars are essential to protecting our economic interests" Translation - we bomb people for money. well thanks for being frank anyways. otherwise it is sick to hear all that moralizing about "us being a good guys" | |
| ▲ | kmeisthax 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | No, they're essential to protecting Benjamin Netanyahu's ass. No more and no less. Less vindictively, the only economic interest the US has in the Middle East is oil. Relying on oil for your energy needs is, in 2026, a choice and not a requirement. Wind, solar, and the batteries you need to store them are continuously getting cheaper. And for the people who are net consumers of energy - primarily the US, Europe, and China - renewables are better for everything, but especially they're better for energy independence! The only things that require oil are airplanes, plastics, and industrial chemical processes (like we make asphalt out of oil and certain inks out of naphtha). Eliminating most of the energy demand for oil would mean a significantly reduced dependence on foreign oil, and more specifically, the political dependence on low gas prices. America rebuilt all its cities in the image of the car and, as a result, made gasoline/petrol a necessary ingredient of urban mobility. This was, again, a choice - we absolutely could have retained and grown our dense urban cores and we can still rebuild what was destroyed. But this requires an entire governing body at every level that is not a corpse paraded by the ghosts of Tammany Hall, Standard Oil, and Hitler. The primary crisis in America that is driving these wars is a fundamental lack of political will for alternatives. | | |
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| ▲ | lokar 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | On average, foreign born US residents use less public assistance then native born. | | |
| ▲ | Aurornis 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | This is a statistic that is technically true but has some hidden nuance. Depending on what gets counted, "public assistance" stats like this usually include medicare and social security. (Social security gets debated because of how it's paid-in, but I'm not here to argue that. The fact is, it gets included in these stats). Those two make up the dominant consumption of public assistance to the point that things we hear about in the media like food stamps are kind of a rounding error. Medicare and social security are collected primarily by older people. Foreign born populations have much lower numbers of people in that age bracket than the general popualtion. Combine those two facts and it's not surprising that when you look at charts of foreign born vs native born, the foreign born population uses less public assistance. It's a statistic that is more about age distribution than anything. Like when you one of those bad maps trying to prove a point but really just showing population density of big cities. | | | |
| ▲ | zdragnar 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I'd love to see some source for this, because from what I've seen, 59% of undocumented immigrants receive some form of welfare (the state of California spends roughly $10 billion a year alone on this) and documented migrants are at roughly the same rate, double the native born population's rate of 28%. | | |
| ▲ | mullingitover 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > I'd love to see some source for this [proceeds to throw out a bunch of source-free numbers] I looked up the source for these numbers. It's the Center for Immigration Studies, and they are notorious for being a right-wing think tank used to dress up up anti-immigration policy using misleading statistics. How notorious are they? Well, they are listed as a hate group with the Southern Poverty Law Center[1]. The numbers you're citing aren't 'welfare,' the biggest thing is using the education system. The thing that, long term, makes they into productive taxpayers. CIS doesn't figure the long-term benefits into their numbers because that would destroy their thesis. [1] https://www.splcenter.org/resources/extremist-files/center-i... | | |
| ▲ | zdragnar 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The HUD secretary mentioned the number, and the number was also included in a Congressional report, though it ended up being through testimony, also from that same source, which I hadn't realized. I'd been under the impression the one claim was independently sourced from actual federal data, rather being from CIS. In any case, none of this amounts to immigrants using less welfare than native born residents, which is what I was asking sources for. | |
| ▲ | 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | lokar 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Not hard to find, here is a right wing, anti-immigrant anti-service source: https://www.cato.org/blog/immigrants-still-use-much-less-wel... |
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