Which is more cruel: Sending a refugee back to their origin? Or letting a refugee in but forcing them to get sterilized?

What the fuck is wrong with you?

Sending them back. They can deal with not being able to have children (like the world needs MORE people! HA!).
And I don’t think the issue is about not having enough room as much as it’s about not having enough resources and infrastructure (power, water, lumber, etc.).

There isn’t a lack of room or resources or infrastructure in the United States.

There is a lack of intelligent management of room, resources, and infrastructure by increasingly, obscenely wealthy white men.

@canidmajor Twenty five GAs for that one.

WTH?!

What sort of a sick mind would force a person to be sterilized? Hitler thought it was a good idea. That tells me something about where the OP gets his ideas.

The US has lots of room, that’s not the issue. As @canidmajor said – our issues are political, not demographic. The whole immigration thing is a made-up, invented crisis.

^^^^^^^infinite eye roll loop.

Okay, then, send them back.

Why do they have to be sent back to their country of origin?

Mexico sends them (Central Americans) to us. Why not railroad them through the U.S. and into Canada.

Mexico doesn’t “send” them to us, but MX is either letting them in, or has a border problem too.

We should fix our laws to allow more working permits. Let people come in legally, and at the same time work on the border. This is nuts. People DIE trying to come here. They pay thousands for transport across the border. Why not have them pay the US government for papers instead. Maybe it would be a money maker for us. I don’t mean charging thousands, but reasonable fees that would be a win win.

Well, I agree totally. I think we ALL agree that LEGAL immigration should be safe and available to all. Really, who WOULDN’T want that?

I do still hold that we need to know who is attempting to enter. I think the drug cartels and gangs, although far from rare, are still nonetheless a very small percentage

To quote my MIL, “Americans take drugs, that’s why there is a drug problem.” We really should take some responsibility for our drug problem.

This emphasis on the drug cartel is blown way out of proportion. The gangs are a problem, I agree with that, but that’s a crime problem and not an immigration problem in my opinion. We need to address crime, drugs, and gangs regardless of whether the people are illegal, or any type of legal.

Either one is OK.

^Of course you would feel that way.

I will continue to say I agree with you @JLeslie , but from what I have heard, the border is far more dangerous and violent than you think.

Entire towns and ranches have been decimated by drug cartels, human traffickers and para-military gangs. Its not a war zone, but to call it a war zone isn’t much of a stretch. And yet there are people who say that our border patrol and our ICE agents, who save people trafficked in trailers or rescue people attempting to cross to freedom in airless, waterless trailers, are the bad guys in this volatile area,

I would like to see a wall and more control, but be relatively easy to gain entry for those who truly seek a better life, and become a legal citizen and get established as a working non-citizen or a legal citizen.

If they agreed to the sterilization, what the hell??

Lets throw in sexual reassignment surgery. Just as effective as sterilization as far as reproduction is concerned, Transgenders will be willing and the rest of us its just plain kinky.

And while we’re at it we could conduct science experiments on the kids we detain. Sound familiar? ~

….......

Empathy.
Give it a try.

But, don’t you think it would be kinky? I mean, if you crossed a border illegally, say into Canada or Switzerland or Russia, and they apprehended you and said they would release you into the population if you agreed to sexual reassignment surgery. Otherwise you’d have to stay in the clink indefinitely.

@Yellowdog My parents live in Maryland, nowhere near the border. My mom has voted for Republicans on the local level, because of the gangs, the Latino gangs are part of that. She is a life long Democrat, and in many ways a progressive. She has friends from all over the world. My husband and one of my ex boyfriend’s is/was Hispanic. She has no problem with people from any country, her minor in college was in sociology, if anything she has an interest in other cultures. Still, she is disgusted, and it’s scary too, the presence of gangs, and yes MS13, in the metro DC area.

She also wants more control over immigration, but she definitely would never call illegal immigrants “criminals” just for crossing the border, and she would never assume mal intent of anyone, especially not based on how they look, unless they had done something to show a reason to think that.

My mom also has a problem with children being born here and getting benefits, but she does realize that once they have been raised here you can’t throw them out of the country.

The Republicans are using horrible language, and generalizations, and a part of the Republican population is interpreting it in a way that is quite honestly terrifying.

I’m guilty of generalizing myself as a shorthand, but my impression the people saying immigrants are criminals associate a 35 year old woman trying to have a better life as the same as an immigrant who kills a woman in San Francisco’s. It’s not the same.

How are Democrats going to feel like they can work with Republicans on immigration when Republicans sound like they HATE those immigrants, and Democrats sound like they want to let anyone in who wants to come in. My guess is most politicians are not at those extremes, but they sound like it.

Wow.

Ironic that a percentage of the religious right drone on about Planned Parenthood being founded by Margaret Sanger, who they clame was a eugenicist trying to limit the births of an inferior race, but then the right wing is ok with sterilizing immigrants?

There are Democrats who want to pay for birth control and “sterilization” for poor people who want it, and usually the republicans won’t pay for it. Don’t want to be a part of paying for BC pills or condoms. WTH?

Seriously?! The hypocrisy is stunning.

I know there are people on this thread who are republicans who are not ok with sterilizing people, I’m just talking in generalities.

(1) Margret Sanger WAS a eugenicist. Planned Parenthood began as a program to sterilize and abort blacks and immigrants children,

(2) If there are any groups supporting sterilization that are supported by Republicans, this information is very deeply hidden in their agenda. The Republican platform is border security, and some who support the president are for building a wall.

Oh bullshit @Yellowdog! Planned Parenthood did not start that way. Do you just believe every nonsense thing you read? It was created to help women have some damn control over their own bodies, at a time when they weren’t even allowed to tell their husbands “No.” At a time when it wasn’t illegal to rape your wife. At a time when birth control wasn’t even legal! Women were pretty much forced to have baby after baby after baby until it killed them
Do some Research, man.

I don’t think Margaret Sanger’s history was even that whitewashed until the 1980s.

She was actually quite vocal about sterilization of the black race.

“We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members,” she wrote. It was, as the Washington Post called it, an “inartfully written” sentence, but one that, in context, describes the sort of preposterous allegations she feared — not her actual mission. The irony is that it has been used to propagate those very allegations. Cruz’s letter to the director of the National Portrait Gallery, for example, quotes only the first half of the sentence.

At least the quote is still in this Time magazine article. October 14 2016
http://time.com/4081760/margaret-sanger-history-eugenics/

”“We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members,” she wrote. It was, as the Washington Post called it, an “inartfully written” sentence, but one that, in context, describes the sort of preposterous allegations she feared — not her actual mission. The irony is that it has been used to propagate those very allegations. Cruz’s letter to the director of the National Portrait Gallery, for example, quotes only the first half of the sentence.

Repeat: ”...describes the sort of preposterous allegations she feared (when opening clinics in the south,) not her actual mission._ Read your stuff, @Yellowdog.

How is it, @Yellowdog, that you can post a rebuttal to your own argument, and not realize it?

Part of the quote is there. Time Magazine published this article

I’ve seen quite a few Sanger quotes. She, like many of her time, was adamant that civilization would only move forward when genetically inferior races were exterminated. Her sterilization efforts were voluntary so she’s not exactly Hitler, but she was definitely a part of the Race Betterment movement.

^^ It’s also possible for people to have bad ideas and good ones at the same time. I think the legacy of Margaret Sanger is neither entirely black nor white as it were. I’ve read some of her writings and she definitely had compassion for poor immigrant women who were having troubles with too many pregnancies. The eugenics ideas she held have also come out but I don’t think her motivation was strictly white supremacy.

I also have to say that I haven’t heard anything from Republicans about sterilization of immigrants except for on this post so I’m not sure where the OP was coming from with that idea.

Agree with @janbb. The purpose of starting Planned Parenthood was to make birth control available at a time when it wasn’t. It was to educate women (mostly) so they could have some control over having babies. It has never been to provide abortions.

Margaret Sanger is probably the best known name in American Eugenics.

The ethics of this, and Margaret Sanger specifically, and the history of Planned Parenthood, I studied in High School sociology and in college sociology and ethics in the 1980s.

Her mission was betterment of the human race—not through killing off but as sort of selective breeding of the human gene pool. Sterilize or abort (illegal in her lifetime) or prevent from breeding the elements we don’t want in the human gene pool. For instance, the mentally deficient should not reproduce and be sterilized. And we need to control the reproduction of offspring in poor communities where population explosion of undesirable elements is common.

I don’t doubt the GOOD things she did making birth control available to the poor—but what this was a by-product of seems to has been whitewashed and sanitized in recent years, There’s no longer a lot of information except in 25+ year old textbooks.

Ah, Conservative talking points, I should have known. And used to attack Planned Parenthood.

Here’s a much more balanced assessment of her legacy and the history of the controversy, including the fact that Martin Luther King, Jr. praised her work. From Time Magazine – not an arm of the liberal left.

Funny how a little research can dilute the Kool-Aid.

At this point it doesn’t matter if Sanger was a racist eugenicist (I’m not saying I agree she was, I’m only saying it doesn’t matter). The PP services are open to all races. No one is forced to do anything at PP. Germany was full of people who believed in eugenics, but most people are now willing to travel to Germany, and see the country as overall past that point in their history. Henry Ford owned and published a periodical that was blatantly anti-Semitic, and yet today Jews buy Ford cars and trucks.

Even I think if someone is poor they should control their fertility to some extent. In America, especially in the past, but still now, that can appear racist since minorities were disproportionately poor.

Here’s the thing, the middle class does generally control their fertility, so it’s nothing against poor people or people with darker skin, it’s a statement, or even a judgment, I put out there for all, I’d say it if I had children of my own who were of child bearing age. Some people might want to take it as an affront towards minorities and the poor, but it’s not, it’s more an expectation I have for all people, and how they do behave regarding bringing a new life into this society. You can say that’s ethnocentric and xenophobic, but I’m only saying it, because I think it’s better for the individual, for society, and for the children.

Having said all of that, I would never be in favor of forced sterilization. I would never think everyone has to agree with my outlook on having children and affording them. Moreover, I will always be in favor of educating all children, and making sure they have basic needs met, even if it costs me money to take care of other people’s kids via tax dollars. What I would hope is that we educate people to have control over their choices, including becoming a parent, and that they are provided information.

Lastly, in a society where we don’t pay people a decent wage, we can’t ask all poor people to give up what I think is basically a natural right to have children just because they are poor. I find it inhumane, and I’d probably use the word immoral too. Boxing someone in financially so they are not able to care for their own children is the same as sterilizing them practically.

If you look around the world one of the best ways to control fertility without forcing anyone against their will is to raise them to the middle class. Prosporous societies with low poverty levels have lower birth rates generally. Religion plays a part too. Some religions encourage lots of children.

She couldn’t possible prevent any one group of people from procreating, all by herself, even if that was her own personal intent, which it wasn’t.

I really think the Sanger talking point was developed to try to attract black people to the Republican Party.

@janbb that’s the same article that @Yellowdog used to prove his point, that she wanted to kill black people! He didn’t realize that the article actually refuted his argument.

@JLeslie If it even mattered which party black folks were a part of (which it wouldn’t since they weren’t allowed to vote at the time) they’d probably be Republican, since it was the Republicans who fought to end slavery.

@JLeslie If you read the article, the current attack is much more current by Ted Cruz and others who want to delegitimize Planned Parenthood.

@Dutchess_III I mean the Sanger talking point in the last ten years. In the Bible Belt many African Americans are religious and pro-life anyway. Telling them PP is an abortion factory trying to eliminate the black race supposedly should cause blacks to vote for pro-lifers who want to cut off funding to PP.

@janbb I just read it. Thanks. A portion of the “white” religious right likes to think they are the least racist of all people and so protecting black people from PP is supposedly helping them demonstrate how much they care about all people.

After reading your article I can’t heko but think about a friend of mine who volunteered at a prison. The prisoners were 90% African Americans. He was there to educate about AIDS. Anyway, he said he was supposed to find out how much distrust that group of people had for the medical community, and harkened it back to the Tuskegee experiments. That WAS a crime against the black population, but my point is this distrust does sway their behavior. Creating distrust of PP is very deliberate in my mind.

If Republicans are so anti-immigrant and racist, shouldn’t they WANT Planned Parenthood and Abortion on Demand?

@Yellowdog It seems a few do want to sterilize people, but I’m not saying the majority do. Evangelical Christians from what gather are ok with preventing pregnancy. It’s the Catholic Church that’s against it in every which way. I’m doubting Molly up above is a Democrat.

You make my point about the irony of those who are saying Sanger was promoting eugenics, and then they turn around and complain about minorities having too many babies. Plenty of republicans do complain about that. They just don’t believe in abortion, they just want all those minority people to stop having sex or to get birth control. They do want to limit births. I admitted above I want to limit births, my peers do limit the amount of babies they have. For me it has nothing to do with race.

Well, if they want them to get on birth control they need to point them to Planned Parenthood! That’s what they’re all about. I think Republicans just confuse them hell out of themselves.

@Dutchess_III You are assuming they think poor people are entitled to have sex. :-)

Poor people aren’t entitled to have ANYTHING! They can’t even go to the public pool. They don’t deserve to have sex or go to the pool.

^^ Let alone have sex in the pool!

That is WAAAYYY too much fun for poor people!