You guessed it! Those Rohingya Boat People are coming to the US!

Emma Lazarus said it better than I ever could:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Have we all become so self centered as all that?

No one should be given a hand out, but there's nothing wrong with a hand up.

Brush 'em off. Dress their wounds, and point them in the right direction. The vast majority will make their own way happily enough. The rest? Deal with 'em as necessary.

ETA: Neglected to link it in. A New Collosus.

originally posted by: starviego

www.nytimes.com...
The United States is willing to take in Rohingya refugees as part of international efforts to cope with Southeast Asia's stranded boat people, the State Department said Wednesday.
Spokeswoman Marie Harf said that the U.S. is prepared to take a leading role in any multicountry effort, organized by the United Nations refugee agency, to resettle the most vulnerable refugees.

Bend over, here it comes again!!

As official UN refugees, they will be eligible for instant, taxpayer paid housing and welfare money, even as our own homeless get to sleep on concrete. And being illiterate and without skills, they will likely be on welfare for decades.

Now get ready for a flood of more Bangladeshi boat people, who smell an opportunity.

They smell an opportunity?
How ignorant can you be?

These people are fleeing war zones, they are leaving their relatives, their friends, their home lands, because they want to SURVIVE, and you think they're coming to steal your money?

Of all the things wrong in your country, with massive waste of money and massive corporate corruption, spending a little money on helping people fleeing mass poverty and war should be something you feel PROUD about.

The utter ignorance and simple-mindedness of xenophobic people who only seem to see "evil brown people coming to steal from us" is something I will never understand. These are your fellow HUMANS, do you have no damn sense of empathy? Is the $1 a year (actually less) you will be paying to support these people really so horrific a notion?

[SNIP]

a reply to: Rocker2013

The utter indifference towards human life on this thread is alarming.

................then people wonder "what's wrong with the world." I suggest, in the words of Michael Jackson, they start their dialogue with
"the man in the mirror".

a reply to: ladyinwaiting

It's not so much that as lack of immediacy.

If it were people in their lives, the reaction would be all you could possibly want.

We are all like that to a certain degree.

Inferring they don't care about life? No real need for that. Make the cause more immediate, and you'll get a better response.

If it were people in their lives, the reaction would be all you could possibly want.

And this implies "me and mine"? Other humans are not quite as human as "me and mine". There is something inherently troubling about this. A xenophobic aversion to, and antipathy towards "the other". Multiply by tens when someone believes their money might be involved. (Has anyone noticed that monies now, are numbers inside a computer for the most part? You can kick your computer down the hill and set it on fire..... but the numbers remain.)

We are all like that to a certain degree.

Of course, and as well we should be, but the truth is we are able to do both. To take care of those in our immediate reality, and provide assistance to those who are not. A few thousand people on a boat? Who need to be rescued and fed and sheltered until it can be determined where to go from there? We can absolutely do that without it causing a ripple in our daily lives.

Inferring they don't care about life? No real need for that. Make the cause more immediate, and you'll get a better response.

Most certainly not everyone on this board is in favor of letting them drown. But some are. I see typically because of money, or fear of somehow being overtaken by them, which is ludicrous.

By making the cause "more immediate", do you mean by saying "they are drowning right now", would bring a more generous response or by "immediate" do you mean "immediate family?"

We talk a great deal on ATS about the ability to 'think outside the box". A person's family is inside their box. This same cliché can be applied here. Ya know, a human being by any other name is still a human being, and whether people want to moan and groan, or whatever, jump up and down and say we don't have the means to help a few thousand people in a boat.......... we do. We absolutely do. And we should.

originally posted by: soulpowertothendegree
a reply to: starviego

Hope you never find yourself stranded on a boat starving and need a place to go, remember those words on the statue....give us your tired...poor...refuges....you should be ashamed of yourself and anyone that starred this pathetic crap

Yep. We need to change that inscription to "GET OFF MY LAWN"!

a reply to: starviego

sounds exiciting, OP...thanks for posting.

I can't wait to see the first Rohingya. candidate for POTUS...sure, it'll take a few centuries but when it does, i'll follow their Twitter feed.

originally posted by: Subaeruginosa

originally posted by: hutch622
a reply to: starviego

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has ruled out resettling any of the thousands of refugees stranded at sea amid the Southeast Asia asylum seeker crisis.

"Nope, nope, nope," Mr Abbott told reporters on Thursday, saying the prospect of resettlement in Western countries would encourage more people to risk their lives on leaky boats.

"If you want to start a new life, you come through the front door, not through the back door," he said.

His view is at odds with the United States, which has vowed to help countries in the region bear the burden and will consider resettlement requests.

Now we cant let them die at sea , but we can put them straight on a boat and send them back .

Some of those humane charitable values that those so called Christians with a sense of self entitlement tend to have. Screw those UN treaties and responsibilities, right? Just shut the borders down and let the rest of the world deal with it.

Tony Abbots a dimwitted bigot!

How many will you be housing personally?

originally posted by: enlightenedservant

originally posted by: purplemer
a reply to: starviego

I guess most of you have forgotton that your families too where on boats once traveling to a new land. What the hell is the difference...

They haven't forgotten. They just don't care. It's the "I got mine so screw you" mentality. None of the American settlers were invited by the Natives and none of them assimilated with the Natives.

Many of the loudest anti-immigration advocates are only 3rd, 4th, or 5th generation Americans, and can proudly tell you their family history in other countries. And they literally don't see the double standard, even though these Rohingya people would be coming here as legal immigrants.

The Natives, as my part Native husband will tell you, did not have or enforce a coherent immigration policy. They made no attempt until it was far too late.

See where it got them? Why do you expect it to work out any differently now?

I am all for helping a measured number, but we cannot just open the door, ring the dinner bell, and invite in every single poor person on the face of the earth. No matter how rich you seem to think this country is, it cannot feed, clothe, and house all the very poor people that live on the face of the earth. Nor is it our fault they are poor.

a reply to: ketsuko

yes...I can.

that's why the Statue of Liberty hasn't been taken down yet.

a reply to: seagull

But this is a little like going to the local dog pound to get a new dog or cat in that you see so many cages full of desperate animals, all of whom need homes, but you know that you personally can only take home one or maybe two. You would love to take them all and help them, but we've all seen the results of for the people who try that.

Why does anyone think that nations are any different?

We would all love to help the poor people from other nations. We all know they live in crap conditions with crap for education and opportunity. We would love to fix it for them. But, we, as a people, only have so many resources. We already have our own poor we are taking care of, and that only leaves so much for more.

originally posted by: michaelbrux
a reply to: ketsuko

yes...I can.

that's why the Statue of Liberty hasn't been taken down yet.

The population you are talking about is billions v. 350 million of us where that 350 million has significant numbers already living off the aid of their fellows.

How many more can sit at your table and eat?

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: seagull

But this is a little like going to the local dog pound to get a new dog or cat in that you see so many cages full of desperate animals, all of whom need homes, but you know that you personally can only take home one or maybe two. You would love to take them all and help them, but we've all seen the results of for the people who try that.

Why does anyone think that nations are any different?

We would all love to help the poor people from other nations. We all know they live in crap conditions with crap for education and opportunity. We would love to fix it for them. But, we, as a people, only have so many resources. We already have our own poor we are taking care of, and that only leaves so much for more.

what you described is a cornerstone business the Untited States is into...the poor huddled masses are welcome and they will receive all the benefits of citizenship...no matter what the cost.

those that came before them received similar benefits when they came desperate and hungry and are more than happy to pay it back, i'm certain.

a reply to: ketsuko

we'll bring out a table and chairs from storage so they can eat and be comfortable.

a reply to: michaelbrux

*SIgh*

But you can't bring them home all at once.

You have to bring home the ones you can help. Get them on their feet and independent so they are self-supporting or contributing. THEN, you bring home more and repeat the process.

If you do the work well, you have an ever bigger population of prosperous people, so you can expand the population you bring in the next batch.

But right now, we have ever expanding populations of poorly educated people who need to be supported for a long time, maybe their whole lives, and we are bringing them to a broken education system that won't teach their children much of anything. And we haven't recovered enough to get our own citizenry back on its feet after the crash.

We are inviting disaster. We have to stop pretending to be what we aren't.

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: michaelbrux

*SIgh*

But you can't bring them home all at once.

You have to bring home the ones you can help. Get them on their feet and independent so they are self-supporting or contributing. THEN, you bring home more and repeat the process.

If you do the work well, you have an ever bigger population of prosperous people, so you can expand the population you bring in the next batch.

But right now, we have ever expanding populations of poorly educated people who need to be supported for a long time, maybe their whole lives, and we are bringing them to a broken education system that won't teach their children much of anything. And we haven't recovered enough to get our own citizenry back on its feet after the crash.

We are inviting disaster. We have to stop pretending to be what we aren't.

i disagree...bringing them all at once is the best solution. its clear that the approach to problem solving of gradual engagement has been proven ineffective...

...look at Iraq and Afghanistan or ISIS...

...remove the problem and get started as quickly as possible and quit playing around.

i don't know what you are, but I'm exactly what I think I am...look how you turned out.

you're no longer an uneducated immigrant and you live with confidence and opinions and imagine that you could build and preserve something like the United States.

originally posted by: ladyinwaiting
... few thousand people in a boat......

A few thousand? We've taken them in by the TENS OF MILLIONS in the last couple of decades, and there are HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS more who want to come.

I am amazed and chagrined by all the bleeding hearts who want to give their children's future to the children of a foreign land.

a reply to: starviego

...and I'm sure that was said about your ancestors at some point.

...and maybe someone ignored those mutters, and helped that ancestor. Not with a hand out, but with a hand up, a grubstake, and pointed him or her in the right direction. After that, it's up to them...as it should be.

There's an old saying that is very appropriate:

"Cast thy bread upon the waters for you shall find it after many days."

We, as a nation, have opened our lands, hearts, and hands to many in this sort of need, and our nation prospered for it.

If we can't see that, maybe we're in worse trouble than I think we are.

a reply to: ketsuko

We, as a nation, supposedly represent something different. Something better. We hear it all the time. We even believe it.

Is that only words to be mouthed on July fourth? Or is it what we are?

Many of my ancestors were those huddled masses yearning to be free. Why did they come here? Out of all the world they could have gone, they came here...

Why? Because we are, or is it were, something different, something better... Wasn't it?

We, who have so much, would it hurt us to give a little bit of it, that little bit that would mean so very much.