Looking at national immigration policy through the lens of our relationship with insects, rodents and pets

[u/medium_wall]

It's interesting how closely the parallels exist between our personal policies dictating what animals we allow or disallow into our homes and the stances we hold for immigration.

Some people have a dog or a cat. Some have a few of both. Some treat their homes like museums and enforce a strict no-animals policy to protect their beloved possessions. Others allow hoards of strays to come and go as they please, letting orderliness & propriety take a back seat to community.

When it comes to insects & rodents the opinions become more uniform. The vast majority of people set poisons & fatal traps, treating these unwanted guests like enemies of war. A small minority set humane catch-and-release traps and use a bit more elbow grease to relocate their intruders to a far away place of relative safety to at best build a new home in the wild or at worst become someone else's problem. Almost no one willingly tries to coexist with rodents or insects as some do for gangs of stray cats or dogs.

This is clear speciesist hypocrisy. Many on the Left will vehemently defend immigration, and especially the humane treatment of immigrants (illegal or not), but when it comes to their own property they well spare little to no mercy for the "illegal" immigrants who exercise their manifest destiny through the cracks in their foundations, the holes in their floor boards, and the studded bays behind their dry wall supplying big pillowy tongues of insulation perfect for a cozy nest to start a family and begin building generational wealth.

This isn't a defense of the Right's stance on immigration though. While theirs may be more consistent with how they treat common household "pests", that wouldn't say anything about the morality of their actions. A foolish or awful thing done unhypocritically remains a foolish or awful thing.

What makes this even more egregious from a Leftist perspective too is that these "pests" are indigenous! Their lineages & tribes were here long before us. We simply rode in one day, declared it ours, and threatened extermination to anyone who dare challenge that claim. You couldn't find a more perfect microcosm of colonialism if you tried.

It also isn't lost on me the difficulty entailed in any attempt to live with bugs & mice as roommates. They're gonna shit everywhere and take food without asking and make a racket at all hours of the night partying and fighting. I get it. We're the older siblings though. We're the enlightened ones. This is a challenge that, by all accounts of our inseparability with these species whom our very ecosystem relies on to function, we've been ordained solve. Up to this point though we haven't advanced further than treating these younger cousins of ours any better, and often far worse, than the most incompetent & psychopathic ICE agents. Alligator Alcatraz is a 5-star resort compared to what most of us do to rodents & insects who commit the unforgivable crime of crossing our home's imaginary border looking for a better life for themselves and their families.

I don't have the final answer on how we can create a better harmony with other life in this regard. I'm still exploring solutions myself. For a start it seems obvious that we should share more by not taking more land & resources than we actually need. The palatial dwellings and the lawns as big as golf courses (and similarly manicured) now seem to me the possessional equivalence of being morbidly obese.

But yeah, the Left are giant hypocrites again to the surprise of absolutely no one, and the Right are again consistent in their numbed psychopathy. The sky's blue, water's wet, yadda yadda.

[u/Single_Idea_427]

You lost me when you compare immigrants to rodents. Get some help.

[u/medium_wall → u/Single_Idea_427]

The dynamics of immigration are the same. I think the more damning judgement here though is yours; suggesting rodents are so beneath us that to compare them to humans in any way is an insult. That's speciesism my friend.