I wouldn’t have guess the Irish, but the Irish would notice.
“Has anybody ever seen the movie ‘Gangs of New York’? ” Vance queried at a press conference held at the Milwaukee Police Association. “That’s what I’m talking about.
“We know that when we have these massive ethnic enclaves forming in our country, it can sometimes lead to higher crime rates,” Vance stated. “What we want is an American immigration policy that promotes assimilation.”
This is what happens when you base your policy on what movie you’ve seen. The facts are a bit different, though.
However, studies have indicated that migrants are no more likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans. The fictional film is set in 19th-century New York and centers around a feud between rival gangs of different backgrounds. The protagonist is an Irish immigrant seeking revenge for his father’s murder, reports the Journal Sentinel.
The Danes better watch out if he ever watches The Salvation.
Or maybe he’ll center immigration policy on a viewing of Alien: Romulus.
drksky says
No jobs for facehuggers!!!
Hemidactylus says
Get him to watch and ruminate on Scarface so he alienates some solid south Florida Republicans.
astringer says
Or maybe he’ll centre immigration policy on a viewing of : The Piano.
Woman who doesn’t talk back, has a kid, no cats, dumps her misogynist husband for Harvey Keitel… oh wait…
astringer says
Or maybe he’ll centre immigration policy on a viewing of : The Piano.
Woman who doesn’t talk back, has a kid, no cats, dumps her misogynist husband for Harvey Keitel… oh wait…
Reginald Selkirk says
Hear! Hear!
Next question: why are we not holding this conversation in Cree?
raven says
I seem to have seen this plot before.
.1. Wasn’t this the plot of West Side Story, the Broadway show and movie?
.2. Wasn’t this also the plot of Romeo and Juliet that play by an English guy, Will Shakespeare?
.3. And also the plot of Men in Black?
What any of this has to do with immigrants and immigration policy is not clear. It seems to be irrelevant.
That JD Vance is unable to tell fiction from reality is not a good reason to vote for him.
For a Yale graduate with a law degree, he doesn’t seem very bright.
tomh says
Just following his leader, who often references the “late, great, Hannibal Lecter.”
birgerjohansson says
Maybe he is talking down to his audience, assuming they cannot get it unless he uses films aa methapors. It worked for Reagan.
And Reagan was not all that reality-adjusted. The difference is Reagan had decades of experience in interacting with people as actor to get the emotional response he wanted.
birgerjohansson says
Salvation? Mads Mikkelsen aka Hannibal Lecter? But Trump likes Lecter so the Danes are not in danger.
Raging Bee says
“What we want is an American immigration policy that promotes assimilation.”
This just proves Vance is a moron who doesn’t even understand how assimilation works at all.
Assimilation is what happens — or fails to happen — AFTER the immigrants have immigrated. So “immigration policy” cannot promote or hinder assimilation.
So what policies promote assimilation?
First, EDUCATION: immigrants and their children need to learn their new country’s language, laws, customs, and whatever other skills they’ll need to function responsibly in our society AS EQUALS.
Second, LAW AND ORDER: immigrant communities need to be responsibly policed on an equal basis with neighboring communities, so that a) they benefit from peaceful orderly neighborhoods, and b) they don’t default to misrule by ethnic gangs who then isolate their respective neighborhoods from each other and make them into “no-go areas” for outsiders. (This was the central problem in both “Gangs of New York” and real-life immigrant communities, where real-life organized crime originated.)
Third, SOCIAL SERVICES: immigrants need lots of different kinds of social services, from education to healthcare to mental-health-care to legal advice to housing and job assistance, to enable as many of them as possible to get jobs as quickly as possible.
So…how to Republicans feel about education, decent policing of non-rich communities, and social services? Oh yeah…THEY HATES IT! THEY HATES IT!! THEY HATES IT FOREVER!!!
So if you really want promote assimilation, the first thing we have to do is get rid of the Gollum Caucus.
birgerjohansson says
In the 1920s Irish and Sicilian immigrants were in the crossfire between local gangsters and utterly corrupt police.
The police did not crack down on the gangsters that paid them so the criminal networks could fester and grow, nor were politicians interested in marginalised immigrants who hardly spoke English.
This made the gangs well prepared to expand beyobd the ethnic ghettos and use the opportunities provided by Prohibtion.
The lesson is, if corruption is tolerated, crime will spread.
Reginald Selkirk says
I wonder if Vance plans to deport his in-laws along with Melania.
Usha Vance as an “anchor baby”?
Pierce R. Butler says
“Bloc”
Pierce R. Butler says
Vance at the time said:
He really should have run that last line past somebody, anybody, whose skin is nominally black or red.
Walter Solomon says
He seemed to have forgotten the central conflict of Gangs of New York; namely the Irish immigrants formed gangs to defend themselves from the nativist gangs that were quite plentiful in every major American city at that time.
Between that and the violence committed by the Irish immigrants, despite being persecuted themselves, against the innocent Black population of the Five Points during the Draft Riots, the film is a cautionary tale of the inevitable destructiveness of racism and xenophobia.
seversky says
If Vance is looking at an assimilation model for immigration then he should consider the Borg, with golden boy Elon supplying all the prosthetic implants,
Reginald Selkirk says
DeSanctimonious joins in
Ron DeSantis-backed law barring Chinese from owning land in Florida galvanizes Asian Americans
weylguy says
“Studies have shown…” and “The facts indicate…” It all goes to show that in GOP world personal opinions are facts, and facts are liberal garbage invented to enslave Americans. God help us.
Raging Bee says
Reginald: Did he sign any legislation prohibiting RUSSIAN nationals from owning property in Florida?
birgerjohansson says
Reginald Selkirk @ 17
While Florida is no longer a swing state, and Harris is unlikely to catch up with Trump here the top Republicans seem determined to shoot themselves in the foot.
DeSantis will remain governor for two more years, it will be fun to see if he has ruined the GOP chances for the 2026 midterms. Is there any chance of DeSantis and Boris Johnson being related?
phillipbrown says
America has a long history of what happens when a bunch of immigrants creates an enclave and won’t assimilate…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plymouth_Colony
garydargan says
Now there’s the reason for stopping immigration. Their criminals will piss of our criminals because they took away their jobs. Or we can’t be bringing in all those Middle Easterners and Africans because the Mafia and the cartels will get upset.
chrislawson says
Pierce@14–
Agree completely, but it doesn’t even take different skin colour. The very white, very Christian Mayflower Pilgrims left Europe to escape violence from their very white, very Christian countries.
rietpluim says
When I hear the phrase “native-born Americans” I imagine indigenous people, not a white guy in a suit.
nikolai says
To be fair, he was hired by a guy who arguably also forms his policy based on movies.
(There is speculation that his oft-repeated claims about women bound with “blue tape”, electrical tape, or duct tape being smuggled across the border is based on his viewing of “The Sicario”. People working for immigration services, when interviewed, have said that they have no idea where he got this idea, since it doesn’t match any reality that they know about.)
muttpupdad says
Since when did intelligence have anything to do with getting a degree from the Ivyies.