"Illegal Immigrants" in the United States of America

For some reason, I've seen the topic come up a lot recently.  Specifically there's this stupid image I've seen floating around on Facebook...

Just to re-iterate the text in the image...

How can the Federal Government ask U.S. Citizens To Pay Student Loans Back When Illegal Immigrants are Getting A Free Education?

My first thought is that whoever created that image could probably benefit with some education around grammar.  But that's not important here.  What is important is the logical fallacy of comparing two unrelated things, and the inhumane idea that our tax money is worth more than human lives.

To begin with, I'm not aware of the federal government asking me to help pay back student loans.  I haven't gotten that letter or email.  But if I had, I'd gladly say: "Yes.  Please use some of the money we pay in taxes to pay back student loan debt, and set up a government body to handle paying for college education for any citizen that qualifies by merit for that education."

You see, you already have to qualify by merit to be accepted into a college.  If you don't have good enough grades or test scores, colleges will exclude you.  It's not based on whether you can pay for it.  So, if instead of screwing over our children when they qualify for college but don't have enough money to pay for it, I am happy to help those kids enter the work force without being in debt to some super rich loan company.  I have no desire for the doctors in our country to be saddled with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt when they enter the work force.  How does it help me for them to have drastic monetary needs?  Might I end up paying more for medical service?  Probably.  And really... when my kids are old enough to go to college, I don't want them to have to start their adult lives in the real world at a negative.  I don't understand why so many adults now are so upset about the idea of tax money being used to help our kids.

What we should be upset about is that corporations seem to be able to hide ridiculous sums of money from the government that should be taxed, and which would cover a huge amount of government programs that would help us poor folk that didn't have the benefit of being born super rich.  I can tell you I'm pissed off by the selfish behaviors of our super rich over-lords.

One more thing about taxes being used to pay for college education: Why would we want to make it into a financial decision about whether or not a kid can go to college?  What about those kids from poor neighborhoods that might not normally have the option of going to college?  What if that kid is actually pretty smart, and they could find a cure for cancer, or a much cheaper way to get us into space so we could start making more use of the resources we can find up there?  How many kids with potential haven't had any opportunity to get help with education because they couldn't afford to go to college?  And how much have we as a country missed out on because of that?  I very much want to take money out of that equation, and I'm quite happy for my tax money to be spent that way.

Anyway, now that I've talked about the issue of paying back student loans and the idea that we shouldn't punish our children for wanting more education... that bit about "illegal aliens" or "illegal immigrants"...

There are a lot of things I want to say, but the first is: They're human beings!  Sweet Jebus they're human beings!

The image I have in my head of an "illegal immigrant" is the one of a poor family that is escaping horrid conditions I'll never understand truly, in hopes of surviving and making a life for themselves.  And then there are stories in the news now about people that have living here for a long time contributing to our economy who get deported...

same man... but a variety of news sources...
https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/16/us/detroit-man-deported-after-30-years-cuomo-prime-time-cnntv/index.html
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/01/15/deported-after-30-years/1034668001/
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/16/us/man-deported-jorge-garcia.html

different man...
https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/abroad/irish-man-brought-to-us-as-child-to-be-deported-from-boston-1.3365980

longer article, that includes individual story of a woman that filed for asylum in 2012...
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-mothers-being-deported-by-trump

You can search for your own articles, but the idea is that we have human beings here who are just trying to live their lives.  We're not talking about criminals.  We're talking about people who work here and contribute.  We're talking about people that want to be citizens, but are faced with our ridiculous immigration policies.

It shocks me that religious conservatives ignore the teachings of their religion when it comes to tax money.  Didn't Jesus teach to help the poor?  To rid yourself of earthly belongings to be rich in Heaven or something like that?  What hypocrites.  And what terrible people regardless of religion.

We need to stop referring to human beings as "illegals".  Do so makes it far to easy to forget that they're just people.  Like us.  Who deserve a chance at happy life.

And we need to stop thinking our money is worth more than other people's lives.  Again: we SHOULD just be trying to get those rich assholes at the top stop dodging taxes.  And to pay their employees better.  The rich people running this country really are the problem at the root of all of this.

Trump's Band of Evil

Trump's Band of Evil...

Mike Pence

This guy is the price we have to pay to get Trump out of office.  He's a religious zealot that has worked in government to attack women's rights and LGBTQ rights.  He's an awful human being.

Rex Tillerson 

Here we have an Exxon/Mobil executive with billions of dollars and business ties to Russia in charge of our foreign affairs.  I'm not totally comfortable calling him outright evil just yet, but that might be a familiarity issue.  I'm skeptical of him because he's another business man with billions of dollars.  I don't trust him to have the interests of the people of the United States at heart when he makes decisions.  I expect him to act in the interest of big business (especially big-oil) whenever possible.  I suppose there's an outside chance he won't turn out to be evil... but a very slim outside chance.

Steven Mnuchin

Here's another fun one.  Take a Goldman Sachs employee and hedge fund manager, and put him charge of the finances of the country.  So we have a guy that is super-rich, and loves making more money for the super-rich, and put him in charge of everyone?  Maybe if we had some assurance he wasn't going to screw us all over, it would be good to have someone that understands money that way at the helm.  But he's part of the problem.  He's part of the context that has been ruining our economy.  This guy is definitely evil.

Jeff Sessions

I found some denial of his racism online, but I also found gobs of quotes of his that are scary.  The man seems to dislike black people, is loved by the KKK (even if he doesn't say he likes them back).  He's also in strong support of "one-man-one-woman" marriage laws, which makes him a bigot.  I'm tired of people discriminating against the LGBTQ community.  They're human beings.  Like all the rest of us.  Sessions is evil.

Ben Carson 

This guy is a terrible role model.  He firmly stands up and says that evolution is a lie, and then points to his being a surgeon to support his stance.  There are people out there that will believe him because of his supposed scientific literacy, but the problem is that he's wrong.  He's provably flat-out wrong.  And the job he was given... what in his past qualifies him to help with Housing and Urban Development?  Ugh... might not be evil, but his influence certainly is.

Betsy DeVos

Religion is separate from Government for a very good reason.  Religion is not universal.  We don't all agree on it.  For government to be fair to all the citizens it represents, it CANNOT pay any heed or favoritism to any religion.  Period.  It shouldn't be in our courtrooms; it shouldn't be on our money; it shouldn't be in the pledge of allegiance; and it should never ever ever be part of the education system that our taxes pay for.  Sure, there can easily be academic classes to teach students about religions and their history, but a school should never suggest that any particular religion is correct.  And Betsy DeVos has publicly stated that she wants to put her God into schools.  This infuriates me.  And even beyond her offensive intentions, why did she get the job of Secretary of Education?  She has zero background in education.  She doesn't know anything about it.  I'm a software engineer.  If I apply for a job as a physician's assistant at a hospital, I expect to be looked at like I'm crazy and then told to leave.  I don't think she thinks she's evil, but like Ben Carson, her influence definitely is.

Scott Pruitt

I think he infuriates me as much as DeVos.  In the past he's sued the EPA to try get around protections for the environment, for his business interests.  He actively opposes the EPA.  And now he's in charge of it?  What the fuck is that?  And he denies human influenced climate change?  He's either stupid or greedy enough to deny it for business interest.  Yeah I'm getting worked up sitting here typing this.  I hate this guy.  I hate sitting here knowing that our government is actively working against the best interest of the citizens of this country; of the people of the world; of the environment and every living thing that depends on it.

Trump - Leader of the group

Selfish greedy asshole that is dismantling any limitations on business so that the super-rich can get richer, at the cost of the environment and citizens of the United States that are not super-rich; Lies to us despite video evidence on national television that he's lying.  Obviously evil.  Blatantly obviously evil.  He's a petulant waste of a human being that should never have been given any kind of power.  Someone needs to put him in his place and make him start working for the people instead of his business interests.  Someone needs to make him give up his stake in his businesses too.

I hate Trump.  I hate the world he's trying to make... not the one he says he's trying to make... the one he's actually making.  I want people to have jobs too... but unemployment is super low right now (thanks to Obama).  I want immigration reform so that people that want to come here have options to do it legally without waiting for 5 years.  I don't want a stupid expensive ineffective wall.  I don't want the LGBTQ community to suffer because some self-centered assholes think they know what some divine being wants (and I think which is in opposition to the teachings of Jesus which include being good to everyone).  I don't want our children to grow up thinking that creationism has as much validity as the big-bang, abiogenesis, and evolution.  I don't want our children to continue to fall behind the rest of the world in education.  I don't want the super-rich to be able to hold on to the power they've taken from us.

Jebus our country is a Plutocracy.  And that has to change.  We have to get the band of evil out of power.  We have to do something to fix the wage gap in this country.  We have to give power back to the EPA.  This country is falling apart, and Trump with his merry band of assholes is to blame.