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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   30024 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024

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...not really the point, but also, nope, having massive numbers of unwilling immigrants whose intended support network was in Texas bussed in at once is inconvenient, especially for them, but they're still going to make us richer and safer in the medium term

In what way are the bussed migrants "unwilling"? I thought it was pretty clear that Texas is bussing volunteers.

What was the "intended support network" in Texas, and why is it better than that of self-declared "sanctuary cities" like New York? My understanding is that absurdly massive numbers of illegal immigrants have been flooding into small Texas towns with poor infrastructure for quite some time now.

Texas is bussing in people who wanted to be in Texas, were captured and detained, and then they let them out and had a man with a gun offer them a free bus ticket to NYC without being too specific about what the alternative was, right? That is volunteering in a certain very specific sense.

Their intended support network is other immigrants they know, obviously, that's how it works here too. But if you can't handle the volume, then sure, please send us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, just don't be a dick about it. I'd recommend "git gud" (and/or "git more federal funding to help you git gud") because more people is more better, but you do you.

Do you have any evidence for the claim that the illegal immigrants in question specifically wanted to live in Texas, as opposed to "somewhere in the US where there are jobs"?

You can google "stories from people who were bussed out of Texas" as well as I can, or just infer from the fact that they're humans who just did a dangerous and difficult thing that they had a plan, or note that if immigrants are showing up in inconveniently large clumps in some towns it's probably because they know each other. (Texas does actually try to send people to cities they wanted to go to anyway, I think, which I'm all for.)

or just infer from the fact that they're humans who just did a dangerous and difficult thing that they had a plan

What on earth is this meant to mean? "These migrants just made the dangerous and difficult journey to the US, obviously they fully intended to stay in Texas indefinitely"? How does the former in any way imply the latter? If they were planning to stay in New York, Massachusetts, Florida etc. they would almost certainly have had to go through Texas on their way, right?

Indeed, the claim that the migrants wanted specifically to live in places like eagle pass and Uvalde is A) implausible and B) clearly false.

You can criticize Abbott for things like dumping them in Denver and Chicago without checking the weather first, but the claim that migrants are being forced not to live in tiny, rural towns on the southern border where border security is the main employer doesn’t pass the sniff test or comport with what those migrants themselves tell us.

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