this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2024
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[–] [email protected] 171 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (13 children)

i remember as a kid it being banged into my head how america was great because it was a giant melting pot.. bring us your poor, tired, etc. the numbers bear out that first generation immigrants work harder, cause less crime than 'natural' citizens.

and its true, immigrants made this country. it is a country of immigrants.. cuz, ya know, mass native population genocide and all.

but here we are.. these conservative fuckwads have somehow convinced everyone the opposite is true.

if youre anti-immigration, youre just racist. thats it.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 11 months ago (3 children)

It changed around 2002. It's interesting to me because that was when my "free thinking" parents changed their views.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 11 months ago (2 children)

No it didn't. The US barred Asians from entering for multiple decades. This country has been anti immigrant(anti anyone not white moving here) since it's inception

[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Non-white people moved here in droves. It looked like this

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Wow, and that’s after “regulations” 😳

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

This country has been anti immigrant(anti anyone not white moving here) since it's inception

Nah, until 1882, there was literally no restrictions for anyone moving to the US. If you could afford the journey or even successfully stow away on a ship or train or whatever, they'd let you in and let you stay.

When it came to CITIZENSHIP, though, you're right about the criteria being super racist from day one.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

I went to the museum at Ellis island last year. It was surreal because here was a purpose built facility for processing immigrants, meanwhile Venezuelans were lined up on the streets in Manhattan waiting to be processed. There were a number of exhibits showing the racist attitudes of the Americans in the 1870s to 1880s demanding a curb on immigration. Was an educational experience.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Right after Sept 11th, 2001, huh

Yeah that makes sense

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

9/11 was a system shock to a lot of folks.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It's wild how different it is now. Even the people who raised me with those same values (in this case, my parents) are now Trump supporters. Like what the fuck happened to you? YOU MADE MY LIKE THIS!

It's a massive bummer.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Honestly, this is a reason that I am glad, in a fucked up kind of way, that my father died when I was young. He was intelligent but I've seen a lot of intelligent people go off the rails in the last decade as well as from a very religious family. I don't know that I'd have coped as well as folks like yourself.

I hope that your parents come to their senses and own up to their mistakes.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Sadly, likely.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago

What first world country isn't the country of immigrants? Look at any successful country in Europe. UK and Ireland especially, would sink to the bottom if not for the cheap labour it got in the 2000s.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

From where I'm sitting, the USA was always a massive piece of shit on racial and gender prejudice issues. I guess some of us must have been more fortunate with the Independent School District Lottery.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Ever see Gangs of New York?

Yeah...

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[–] [email protected] 88 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Federal Law has not changed in the US. Cannabis is illegal in all 50 States. The current system of not enforcing the laws did a lot to relieve social pressure on Congress or the DEA without the need for them to actually effect any change. Honestly, we need to stop talking about cannabis as if it were legal and remind people that the situation is actually a mess, so that there is some incentive to get pressure back on the Federal Government to fix this mess. As long as cannabis is in legal limbo, the Federal Bureaucracy is going to keep grinding people up in its gears when they slip into one of the cracks.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago

Yeah, I had almost forgotten how much of a mess it is, until I asked my newly adult son about it …..

All he ever knew is that pot is legal where we live. He knew to be wary of crossing state lines but had no idea about federal laws, or banking restrictions

[–] [email protected] 51 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

The best time to de-schedule cannabis was 10 years ago

The second-best time to do it is now

Unfortunately, the War on Drugs is just Jim Crow 2.0, enacted shortly after the end of Jim Crow 1.0 (fun fact, Jim Crow laws remained in force until 1965, the War on Drugs started in 1971). In the end it was just a massive expansion of police discretionary authority, and in the beginning it was explicitly intended to give police the ability to crack down on political enemies of the Nixon administration- that is, black people and the anti-war left.

The GOP will never let cannabis be de-scheduled; they understand that without it more minorities won't be convicted felons and will be able to vote against them (and never forget that convicts are slave labor and there's a lot of money in that)

[–] [email protected] 34 points 11 months ago

What a shitty future we inherited.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago (1 children)

this sucks and I feel for her. But it also falls into one of those "duh" type things. How someone working in the field not know that it is federally illegal?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (13 children)

One thing, victim blaming, second thing, probably because the pot industry keeps literally telling everyone it's legal when it's actually just unenforceable by federal agencies. As in a federal agent can't hunt you down and arrest you just for the weed, but they can deny banking services, deny licenses, citizenship, etc.

Do you see dispensaries saying that in their ads? I don't.

Shit, I get ads on fucking YouTube trying to sell me "totally legal" mail weed that will absolutely get me arrested by my state, even if the Post Service doesn't narc.

Fun Fact:

Many of the dispensaries in California operate without licenses, which they certainly don't tell their employees, and the state doesn't offer a resource to check even if you know this little fact, so California absolutely can and will arrest you for working in a "legal" weed shop.

And, finally, just get fucking real?

They're not "working in the industry" unless they're a grower or an owner. They're a retail employee selling plants.

Now, sure, she, specifically, seems to be in a small business with her husband but even that doesn't mean she should know the minutiae of federal immigration law in regards to cannabis.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I mean, what did she expect? Marijuana is still schedule 1 under the US Controlled Substances Act, and it's a federal crime, regardless of whether or not a state legalized it. This is a known problem for anyone in the marijuana business; they often have serious problems with banking because they're "drug traffickers" under federal law. Anyone that's tried to buy a gun in the last few years has seen that on form 4473, 21.e: "Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana [emphasis added] or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance? Warning: The use or possession of marijuana remains unlawful under Federal law regardless of whether it has been legalized or decriminalized for medical or recreational purposes in the state where you reside."

This is a known issue. Anyone that works in a state-legal marijuana business would have to be intentionally ignorant to not know that it's still a federal crime, and that it's still prosecuted at a federal level. So why would someone ever think that they're going to be able to be obtain citizenship when they work in a business that makes them a federal felon?

Obviously the Controlled Substances Act needs to be repealed or amended, but it until it is, maybe don't do shit like this if you aren't a citizen and want to be?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (10 children)

It's one of those when you think about it after the fact you guess that can make sense. But when you get the job, give them your SSN, and pay federal income tax on your wage, yeah you might not think boy this is a felony and will prevent me from getting citizenship.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Together, she and her husband managed to open [emphasis added] a small storefront in Ephrata [...]

This wasn't a case of her 'getting a job'; she and her husband literally started the business. There's no fucking way you can reasonably start and run a marijuana business and not know that it's still federally illegal. There's no reasonable way to plead ignorance on this.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Nor do you expect that operating a lawful business might affect immigration process

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Anyone that’s tried to buy a gun in the last few years has seen that on form 4473, 21.e: “Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana [emphasis added] or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance? Warning: The use or possession of marijuana remains unlawful under Federal law regardless of whether it has been legalized or decriminalized for medical or recreational purposes in the state where you reside.”

This was ruled unconstitutional ~~earlier this year~~ last year ( https://www.reuters.com/legal/drug-user-cannot-be-barred-owning-guns-us-court-rules-2023-08-10/ )

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

I believe that case is being appealed. But it's still not clear that this will be a binding precedent, given that one of the charges against Hunter Biden is that he bought a gun (which he then disposed of very badly) while he was a drug addict. (And if the prosecutor doesn't drop those charges, it will put Hunter's legal team in the unenviable position of legally challenging his father's political policy.)

But, even so, it's still on form 4473, so seeing that should at least make anyone involved in marijuana business at any level pause for a second.

Again: I'm not saying that I think that it's right that marijuana is schedule 1. I absolutely support decriminalization of marijuana. But that's still current federal law, and you aren't going to get citizenship if you're knowingly committing federal felonies.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Yeah, I mean, that kind of thing is going to happen when cannabis is Schedule I.

“We didn’t think about the consequences of getting involved, or how the federal law was going to affect us,” Reimers said.

When you want US citizenship, it's a federal level thing. You should maybe think about how federal law is going to affect you. I'm not saying that the laws around cannabis at the federal level are right, but they are the laws that exist.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

I wonder if they had an immigration attorney or if they were doing it themselves. And if they had one, I wonder if the attorney was aware of this possible issue.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (2 children)

The "legal" marijuana industry only benefits people in the investment class. It's traded on the stock market, it's sold in so many states over the counter and yet people sit in jail for it. Biden's pardons aren't even close to halfway there but the entire media had a field day with it like we were in some golden era of legalization. People's rights are still subjugated on behalf of the war on drugs, specifically the war on smelling cannabis burning. None of the workers ever benefit from the runaway profits with certain companies earning six figures a week in revenue for a single state.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Things could be better, for sure, but it is pretty awesome for the average person in a legal state (or country) to be able to buy and grow weed legally. Give it time for the "war on drugs" generation to die out and things will be even better.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I'd say the problem is how some states have manipulated the market to only benefit big players.

Illinois, for example, has given out the fewest licenses to grow and made it illegal to grow for personal use.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

that is what the last generation said

have a story passed down through two generations of a woman in the 20s putting a towel under the door so the smell did not get into the hallway

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

and they were right. they grew up in an era where cannabis was completely illegal at all levels and the cultural push was to increase penalties. Now it's legal in some form in the majority of states with others getting on board pretty quickly and the push as the federal level is to deregulate entirely and leave it up to the states. I think it will be legal for adults everywhere in the US at the state and federal levels in our lifetimes.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Even if weed was federally full up legal, it's going to take time to readjust the rules and regulations, and directives to make it all fine. The Devil is always in the details and seldom can be sorted at the snap of a finger.

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