Not everyone thinks this, but I know an extreme right-winger who thinks this. He is also a conspiracy theorist who thinks non-white people are out to get white people so, yeah, odd.

Not every immigrant is illegal or bad. I know a girl who didn’t speak English for 3 years when her family legally immigrated, so of course she’s been told this.

  • ronflex@lemmy.world
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    21 minutes ago

    I think it’s as simple as this: people need an enemy, some person or group they feel is against them. Conservatives get off on having a victim complex, and will straight up make shit up against their opposition just to make themselves look like a helpless little child. “Oh no, what am I gonna do? Me or my granddaughter needs a job and I heard in the news they’re all being taken up by immigrants” meanwhile, the same person is being fed this information from the comfort of their couch.

    “The immigrants are taking our jobs” is a sentiment that I have seen at least in my part of the country go down in the last several years and im in a very conservative area. Simple fact is immigrant workers work cheaper and faster than others and they often do better work, people are realizing that.

  • SloppyPuppy@lemmy.world
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    1 hour ago

    I dont think they assume all immigrants are illegal. They talk about illegal immigrants. As in those that entered clandestinely without visa or entering permit or those that have their visa / permit expired. Correct me if im wrong.

  • thezeesystem@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    5 hours ago

    American fascism doesn’t care what’s true or what’s right. It cares only to kill and enslave people who are “undesirable”

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    5 hours ago

    Remember, everyone is a hypocrite. The USA is a melting pot of so many different peoples with about 250 years of history as a nation. My working theory is that has led to a nation-wide identity crisis: who and what am I. They are intensely occupied with their origins because the only people who have been on the continent for millennia (Native Americans) were brutally reduced and are the only ones who know their roots with higher certainty.
    It’s why many USAians will gladly call themselves “Italian”, “Indonesian”, or “African” without ever having set a foot in that country/continent, knowing next to nothing about it, being unable to speak or even identity a language from there, nor locate it on the map.

    Factor in their education system, “winner takes all” vote counting system which leads to tribalism, and media influence, human inability to think long term, and you end up with a large swathe of people who cannot reason logically about these things.

  • Limonene@lemmy.world
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    9 hours ago

    A lot of people are influenced by alt-right news (Fox News, Newsmax, OAN) who keep repeating the false claim that undocumented immigrants are mostly gangsters and violent criminals. In truth, undocumented immigrants are way less likely to commit a violent crime than an average American citizen.

    Trump said, regarding the first deportation flight:

    Three hundred people sitting on a plane. Every single one of them is either a murderer, a drug lord, a kingpin, the head of the mob, or a gang member

    Yet none of those deportees had any criminal conviction in either country (according to Newsweek, a slightly-right news source).

    • 100@fedia.io
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      9 hours ago

      remember: oligarchs are the real criminal enemy, not your fellow 99.9%

  • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.net
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    10 hours ago

    someone called my Ukrainian coworker a wetback.

    i just… want you to think about that and what it says about how dumb bigots are

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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      10 hours ago

      I feel both superior and stupid at the same time in this moment. I don’t know what a “wetback” is. Based on context I’m going to guess it’s some kind of racist remark that doesn’t apply to Ukrainains. But for the life of me, I can’t think of what it would even be saying.

      So I feel stupid for not knowing…but also like I’m probably the better person for NOT knowing.

        • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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          8 hours ago

          A thousand guesses, and I would have eventually landed on it being against Latinos (necause there’s only so many races). But I never would have correctly guessed the Rio Grande part.

          That’s some very very specific racism right there.

          • atro_city@fedia.io
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            5 hours ago

            Biologically, there are no multiple human races. There is a single human species. Socially, there are an infinite number of races.

            The concept of race is foundational to racism, the belief that humans can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another.

            wiki

            The use of races to distinguish people socially is playing right into the racists’ playbook by forcing you to play on their turf, where reason is out of the window.

      • TootSweet@lemmy.world
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        9 hours ago

        Unfortunately I’m familiar with the term. It refers to Latin people immigrating into the U.S. without documentation by swimming across the Rio Grande river which forms part of the border between the U.S. and Mexico.

    • ABCDE@lemmy.world
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      10 hours ago

      So… looking at the context and the intent, is it pure racism even if they didn’t come up from the south? It’s bigoted, I guess?

  • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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    Because they’re stupid, bigoted cunts. I IT in construction (somehow still, whew thats another story) and I talk to these troglodytes on a daily basis. The minute one of these homunculus shambles in and has a minute to flap their lip skins racist ass, stupid ass shit flows out. Meanwhile, every gentleman that is of Mexican descent can at least hold their cool, or outright flipoff the trump cutout my boss has up in our office. Not saying they aren’t imperfect humans either, but for some fucken reason white dudes can’t help but drop the mask to other white dudes. All I gotta do is have one Trump trinket near me to work magic on anyone conversing with me. The trick is, a lot of the immigrant dudes didnt start flipping Trump off until he actually began this deportation shit. Even when he was saying he’d do it they were saying he’d fix stuff. Its a people thing man idk. Education in the western hemisphere is just utterly failing most. If you aren’t a knowledge seeker, if you dont have the tools to combat propaganda and falsehoods, and sometimes even if you do, this place will eat you.

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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      10 hours ago

      Because they’re stupid, bigoted cunts.

      I feel like you could have said just this. Not saying the rest of your post is invalid in anyway. I’m just saying that first sentence sums it up completely.

  • N0body@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    10 hours ago

    The US is an immigrant nation built on the genocide of natives. Anti-immigration sentiment is based on an ignorance of history and the modern workforce of the country.

    Crackdowns on undocumented workers will destroy the local agricultural industry. The US and its food supply are completely dependent on migrant labor.

    And yes, it’s deeply hypocritical to genocide a population, steal their land, then act like people who came from elsewhere a few generations later to work are an existential problem.

  • gwilikers@lemmy.ml
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    9 hours ago

    There was a 19th century political party that rose in opposition to the arrival of Irish Catholic immigrants. They had the audacity to call themselves the Native American Party. Also, known as the Know Nothings. They’re the gang that Bill the Butcher (Daniel Day Lewis) leads in Gangs of New York.