The Demands of Occupy Wall Street

[WinePusher]

People at occupy wall street have released unofficial lists of demands here and there. There are apparently many out there and they don't seem to correspond to eachtother, but here's one unofficial list of demands:

-Demand 1: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending Freetrade by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr.
-Demand 2: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market as their only effect on the health of patients is to take money away from doctors, nurses and hospitals preventing them from doing their jobs and hand that money to wall st. investors.
-Demand 3: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.
-Demand 4: Free college education.
-Demand 5: Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an end while at the same bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy demand.
-Demand 6: One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now.
-Demand 7: One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of Americas nuclear power plants.
-Demand 8: Racial and gender equal rights amendment.
-Demand 9: Open borders migration. anyone can travel anywhere to work and live.
-Demand 10: Bring American elections up to international standards of a paper ballot precinct counted and recounted in front of an independent and party observers system.
-Demand 11: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the Books. World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the Books. And I dont mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.
-Demand 12: Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.
-Demand 13: Allow all workers to sign a ballot at any time during a union organizing campaign or at any time that represents their yeah or nay to having a union represent them in collective bargaining or to form a union.

http://toddkinsey.com/blog/2011/10/08/o ... f-demands/

1) What do you make of these demands? Are they reasonable or unreasonable?
2) In a list of demands seperate from this list, OWS protestors have expressed disapproval towards the ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commision. Do you agree or disagree with the ruling?
3) Although absent from the list of demands, OWS have expressed disdainment towards what they percieve to be a growing gap between the top 1% of society and the remaining 99% of society. What is the truth regarding wealth and income inequality?

[East of Eden]

Hard to get people to work when they can make as much on unemployment.

I would agree with you to an extent, except this is a different topic all together. Jobs are still difficult to come by, and the lines forming for good paying jobs can be long indeed. Unemployment wages being comparable to farm labor is only a partial explanation of the situation in that for most people unemployment benefits are limited in nature. However, the situation with farmers only being able to hire immigrants has been true for decades. It has only become obvious to the average American due to recent anti-immigrant legislation that has brought some issues to light.

I am in favor of the AL law, but they need to provide for guest workers.

I would agree that they needed to provide for guest workers - but they probably should of had a solution for the illegal ones as well (seeing as how they were just as needed). I think the law is an excellent example of a knee jerk reaction with not a lot of forethought about the consequences. This is a classic case of what happens when we demonize a whole population.

Maybe we need to cut back on union compensation to be more competitive.

The overall problem is inflation in American Wages. Legislation, inflation of the dollar, the national deficit, possibly an overall inflation of our own self worth - and yes, from union involvement in setting labor wages as well - are all contributing factors to the fact that we have a monstrous trade deficit and have trouble competing in a lot of product markets.

Just a comment. Germany tried the "guest worker" solution more than 50 years ago and the "guests" are still there, many of them refusing to integrate or send their children to German schools. While drawing German welfare, they reproduce much faster than the ethnic Germans and claim German citizenship for their children. They maintain alien and offensive religious customs in public, such as forcing their women to wear veils, while their young display increasingly belligerent and offensive behavior on the streets. This situation is causing increasing unrest among the German population and, naturally, an increase in Neo-Nazi violence, while the liberal politicians wring their hands and do nothing.

If you accept "guest workers," make sure they know when to go home.

John

Agreed, it seems many Muslims in Europe are more interested in domination than assimilation, hence the car fires in France and the areas in Malmo, Sweden for instance where the police will not enter.

[East of Eden]

Edit - Incidentally, one liberal volunteer German instructor on the internet forum vehemently denies that there is any immigrant problem at all in Germany.

John

Of course, it would go against their PC myth that all religions and cultures are the same.

[East of Eden]

I would agree with you to an extent, except this is a different topic all together. Jobs are still difficult to come by, and the lines forming for good paying jobs can be long indeed. Unemployment wages being comparable to farm labor is only a partial explanation of the situation in that for most people unemployment benefits are limited in nature. However, the situation with farmers only being able to hire immigrants has been true for decades. It has only become obvious to the average American due to recent anti-immigrant legislation that has brought some issues to light.

Please be truthful here, it is an anti-illegal immigrant movement. There are 6,000,000,000 people in the world, do they all have a right come here? As Milton Friedman said, you cannot have both open borders and a welfare state. IMHO the illegals cost us far more than they benefit. For example something like one third of the CA prison population is illegals. The very fact they come here illegally shows a propensity to law-breaking. It would be cheaper if the government subsidized $10 an hour more to hire US farm workers.

I would agree that they needed to provide for guest workers - but they probably should of had a solution for the illegal ones as well (seeing as how they were just as needed). I think the law is an excellent example of a knee jerk reaction with not a lot of forethought about the consequences. This is a classic case of what happens when we demonize a whole population.

Its called enforcing the law, not demonizing a whole population. If you think we should have open borders, change the law. Demonizing a whole population is what Obama does against successful, job-creating Americans.

[chris_brown207]

Please be truthful here, it is an anti-illegal immigrant movement. There are 6,000,000,000 people in the world, do they all have a right come here? As Milton Friedman said, you cannot have both open borders and a welfare state. IMHO the illegals cost us far more than they benefit. For example something like one third of the CA prison population is illegals. The very fact they come here illegally shows a propensity to law-breaking. It would be cheaper if the government subsidized $10 an hour more to hire US farm workers.

Please be honest with yourself about this issue. No one has the right to be here unless they were invited to be here - and all the people that are here were invited to be here, either overtly or under our breaths by all of us. You yourself are a supporter of "illegal" immigration - if you buy beef, pork, chicken, fish, fresh vegetables and fruit, frozen vegetables and fruit, a house built within the last 40 years, or work within a building constructed in the last 40 years, then you are a supporter of illegal immigration. The great majority of those products are heavily subsidized by illegal immigration. (Heck, even some of the stuff that has "Made In America" written on the side of it. I know machine shops here in Boise which are made up almost exclusively of immigrant laborers, and citizen supervisors who make products for the DOT, and for the agricultural industry among others)

And it is anti-immigration. I have family in Mexico on my mother's side. They have been been waiting for permission to come across the border for going on 3 decades. They are honest, hard working people - one family owns their own business and are relatively wealthy. However, the system is so broken it cannot meet the current demand for Mexican labor. The legal system that we created, and purport to support, is not realistic to the actual demand for immigrant labor that each of us create. So, the issue is not about illegal immigration - because the system is not even close to being realistic to the demands for legal immigration that we have created.

Blaming immigrants for coming here illegally, all the while enjoying the fruits of their labors, is hypocritical. Trying to fix a symptom without dealing with the problem itself is counter-productive and will do nothing more then spin our wheels and pander to those who think that illegal immigration is the problem.

And if your solution is to subsidize farm labor - to hear such a socialist recommendation from someone who is so staunchly against socialism is astounding.

Its called enforcing the law, not demonizing a whole population. If you think we should have open borders, change the law. Demonizing a whole population is what Obama does against successful, job-creating Americans.

Blaming immigrants for putting a burden on the economy, and for security issues is demonizing a whole population. Immigrants are just a symptom of the problem. They wouldn't be here if we didn't open the door and invite them in (even if it was a side door under the cover of darkness). And then to blame them after they are already here is ridiculous. As I said before, you can't complain when you are one of the one's enjoying the fruits of illegal immigration and supporting their presence. It is hard to hear you standing on a soapbox about this issues while you are also benefiting from them being here. It is exactly the same as Perry's arguments about Romney in the past having an illegal immigrant working in his residence (even if it was inadvertent). It is hard to be tough on immigration when you are one of the one's getting fat off their work.

And since we are talking about Germany (in which I lived for 2.5 years), then I can tell you that Germany is a great example of what isolationist policies can lead to. When the wall came down and East Germany was reunited with the West, it was like the East was frozen in the 1950's. I remember watching as the East Germans crossed over. Their cars, their clothes, their technology were all frozen in that era. So, sure, we can build up walls, we can enforce illegal immigration laws, we can block foreign imports, and we can force a stoppage in the exporting of jobs... but those are all just dealing with symptoms of the problem. And isolating ourselves from the rest of the world will do nothing more then make us look more and more like the nations we have vehemently opposed in the past.

[dianaiad]

Blaming immigrants for putting a burden on the economy, and for security issues is demonizing a whole population.

No. it is 'demonizing' only the population that is actually causing the problem; ILLEGAL immigrants.

And don't tell me that illegal immigrants aren't bankrupting the states in which they live, because they are. Californis, for instance, would not be IN debt at all if the illegal immigrants who are using services they don't pay for would go home.

That is not me being racist, or anti-immigrant. IT's fact. Cold, hard, economic fact. I'm sorry that it is fact, but it isn't arguable.

I do have one question:

Why are the rights of those who are born in the USA, or are here legally, or who have achieved citizenship through legal means, so much less than the 'rights' of those who are breaking our laws simply by being here?

You tell use about your mother's people, who are waiting to come here legally.

Has it occurred to you, as it has to those who have actually made it here legally, that the illegals are the people making it impossible for those who want to come legally to do so in any sort of timely manner?

Illegal aliens are, at the very least, 'cutters in line.'

As to agricultural workers, give me a break. When I was young I lived in Idaho. During the summer all the high school kids worked in the fields. When we started school, we went for about three weeks, and then we took three weeks OFF in order to handle the potato and other harvests. Teenagers. you know, the "Americans who won't do the job?"

My mother did this every summer from the time she was fourteen. She earned enough money to buy her school supplies and clothes, as well as spending money for 'fun.' She worked hard. So did my father. So did I.

............and those farmers at the time didn't have a single illegal immigrant doing those jobs.

People find a way. Cut the illegals off; that will leave room for your mother's folks to come in.

[chris_brown207]

No. it is 'demonizing' only the population that is actually causing the problem; ILLEGAL immigrants.

And don't tell me that illegal immigrants aren't bankrupting the states in which they live, because they are. Californis, for instance, would not be IN debt at all if the illegal immigrants who are using services they don't pay for would go home.

I am not arguing that illegal immigrants aren't a burden on the system... but they didn't just appear by magic. They are hear because we created the environment ripe for them to be here. We are all supporting illegal immigration. Unless you are buying locally, from farmers whom you have verified are using only local labor... then guess what - you support illegal immigration.

Why are the rights of those who are born in the USA, or are here legally, or who have achieved citizenship through legal means, so much less than the 'rights' of those who are breaking our laws simply by being here?

You are asking the wrong person. I am am not supporting the rights of illegal immigration over US citizens. All I am saying is that it is very two faced of us to on the one hand enjoy the fruits of the labor, and on the other hand poo-poo them being here illegally. And it is disconcerting to see all this wasted emphasis on a matter which is just a symptom of the overall problem... the declining competitiveness of American labor on a global scale.

You tell use about your mother's people, who are waiting to come here legally.

Has it occurred to you, as it has to those who have actually made it here legally, that the illegals are the people making it impossible for those who want to come legally to do so in any sort of timely manner?

Illegal aliens are, at the very least, 'cutters in line.'

Agreed. And when those "cutters in line" are continually seeing the benefits of their policies from all of us Americans, who could blame others from wanting to do the same. At some point, we have all been in a similar situation where a guy walks up and forms his own line. And it pisses the rest of us off that had been waiting patiently. However, when more and more people start joining him - then at some point he is no longer a "cutter", he is just a guy standing at the front of a freshly authenticated line.

As to agricultural workers, give me a break. When I was young I lived in Idaho. During the summer all the high school kids worked in the fields. When we started school, we went for about three weeks, and then we took three weeks OFF in order to handle the potato and other harvests. Teenagers. you know, the "Americans who won't do the job?"

My mother did this every summer from the time she was fourteen. She earned enough money to buy her school supplies and clothes, as well as spending money for 'fun.' She worked hard. So did my father. So did I.

............and those farmers at the time didn't have a single illegal immigrant doing those jobs.

People find a way. Cut the illegals off; that will leave room for your mother's folks to come in.

I don't know when you were a teenager living in Idaho, but I am talking about the Idaho of today. I drive by many of those farms on my way to work every day. I buy produce locally, every summer. And I see firsthand the fact that immigrant labor heavily outweigh citizen labor (even during summer time when kids are off school). It is not high school kids I see out in the fields picking crops - it is immigrants. I drive by the local meat plants... and guess who I see filling the cars at the end of the work day? I drive by cheese plants, and the same thing goes.

I can fully believe that the Idaho of yesteryear was full of citizen labor out happily fulfilling their fair share. However, that picture does not contrast with the reality of today.

And cut the labor off (which is what Alabama did) and the US will be faced with one of two things - the vastly increased cost of produce across the board (at a critical economic time) or make way for more and more cheaper foreign produce (and the failing of more US farmers). Or we can just do as East Of Eden recommends, and create a welfare state for farmers, above and beyond what we already do. Not exactly the American way - but heck, we have all looked the other way all this time, why not just expand upon it.

[East of Eden]

Please be honest with yourself about this issue. No one has the right to be here unless they were invited to be here - and all the people that are here were invited to be here, either overtly or under our breaths by all of us. You yourself are a supporter of "illegal" immigration - if you buy beef, pork, chicken, fish, fresh vegetables and fruit, frozen vegetables and fruit, a house built within the last 40 years, or work within a building constructed in the last 40 years, then you are a supporter of illegal immigration. The great majority of those products are heavily subsidized by illegal immigration. (Heck, even some of the stuff that has "Made In America" written on the side of it. I know machine shops here in Boise which are made up almost exclusively of immigrant laborers, and citizen supervisors who make products for the DOT, and for the agricultural industry among others)

If I don't have a choice it is not hypocritical. Your examples pale in comparison to the estimated $113,000,000,000 illegals cost us, or $1,117 per household. Americans citizens get stuck with the bill for illegals in prison, schools, and hospitals. My mother in CA is suffering from late-stage Alztheimers and when my dad applied for MediCal for her, it took over a year to be approved. That is a crazy situation when US citizens have to wait at the same time illegals are getting free education and medical.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/07/02/im ... ts-reform/

And it is anti-immigration. I have family in Mexico on my mother's side. They have been been waiting for permission to come across the border for going on 3 decades. They are honest, hard working people - one family owns their own business and are relatively wealthy. However, the system is so broken it cannot meet the current demand for Mexican labor. The legal system that we created, and purport to support, is not realistic to the actual demand for immigrant labor that each of us create. So, the issue is not about illegal immigration - because the system is not even close to being realistic to the demands for legal immigration that we have created.

We have a system for coming here, the illegals are skipping to the front of the line. The guest worker system need changing, we don't need to ignore the law. My grandparents came here from Puerto Rico in 1917, legally, and without expecting anyone to speak English to them.

I also think the people who we let in should be able to benefit the US as far as education and assets, and of course they should be checked for disease, something that was done at Ellis Island and is not being done with the illegals. I heard once in order immigrate to Switzerland, you need to prove $1,000,000 in assets. A bit extreme as far as the amount, but I like the idea. Instead many illegals are sending money back to Mexico. The really hypocritical thing is how brutal Mexico is to illegals who enter its southern border.

And if your solution is to subsidize farm labor - to hear such a socialist recommendation from someone who is so staunchly against socialism is astounding.

If you don't like that idea how about this: Deny unemployment benefits to US citizens while there are farm jobs paying a comparable income in the area.

Blaming immigrants for putting a burden on the economy, and for security issues is demonizing a whole population. Immigrants are just a symptom of the problem. They wouldn't be here if we didn't open the door and invite them in (even if it was a side door under the cover of darkness). And then to blame them after they are already here is ridiculous. As I said before, you can't complain when you are one of the one's enjoying the fruits of illegal immigration and supporting their presence. It is hard to hear you standing on a soapbox about this issues while you are also benefiting from them being here. It is exactly the same as Perry's arguments about Romney in the past having an illegal immigrant working in his residence (even if it was inadvertent). It is hard to be tough on immigration when you are one of the one's getting fat off their work.

You really think Romney's wealth is due to illegals?

And since we are talking about Germany (in which I lived for 2.5 years), then I can tell you that Germany is a great example of what isolationist policies can lead to. When the wall came down and East Germany was reunited with the West, it was like the East was frozen in the 1950's. I remember watching as the East Germans crossed over. Their cars, their clothes, their technology were all frozen in that era. So, sure, we can build up walls, we can enforce illegal immigration laws, we can block foreign imports, and we can force a stoppage in the exporting of jobs... but those are all just dealing with symptoms of the problem. And isolating ourselves from the rest of the world will do nothing more then make us look more and more like the nations we have vehemently opposed in the past.

East Germany was poor because of socialism, not because they didn't have open borders.

Speaking of Germany, why not bring our troops home from there and put them on the border, along with a secure fence? What would stop a Jihadist from entering the US today?

[dianaiad]

I don't know when you were a teenager living in Idaho, but I am talking about the Idaho of today. I drive by many of those farms on my way to work every day. I buy produce locally, every summer. And I see firsthand the fact that immigrant labor heavily outweigh citizen labor (even during summer time when kids are off school). It is not high school kids I see out in the fields picking crops - it is immigrants. I drive by the local meat plants... and guess who I see filling the cars at the end of the work day? I drive by cheese plants, and the same thing goes.

I can fully believe that the Idaho of yesteryear was full of citizen labor out happily fulfilling their fair share. However, that picture does not contrast with the reality of today.

And cut the labor off (which is what Alabama did) and the US will be faced with one of two things - the vastly increased cost of produce across the board (at a critical economic time) or make way for more and more cheaper foreign produce (and the failing of more US farmers). Or we can just do as East Of Eden recommends, and create a welfare state for farmers, above and beyond what we already do. Not exactly the American way - but heck, we have all looked the other way all this time, why not just expand upon it.

This is, as you have shown us, a circle; we want cheap stuff, the producers want to make a profit, so they don't want to pay reasonable wages in order to provide the goods and foods that the rest of us want to buy. We don't want to do the work at the wages the producers are willing to pay...and illegal immigrants are. THEY can't argue, or bargain; they are a permanent serf underclass now.

So illegal immigration is bad for everybody...and mostly for the illegal immigrants. There's this thing about a vicious circle, or indeed any circle. In order to solve the problem, that circle needs to be cut...and it doesn't really matter WHERE. The only reasonable, 'doable' place to cut this one is at the border. That would force all the other parts to fix their problems. The producers would have to pay reasonable rates. Legal workers would work. People MIGHT pay more--but perhaps some genius will come up with more and better ways of doing these things, so that we can send all those farm workers to school.

[chris_brown207]

I don't know when you were a teenager living in Idaho, but I am talking about the Idaho of today. I drive by many of those farms on my way to work every day. I buy produce locally, every summer. And I see firsthand the fact that immigrant labor heavily outweigh citizen labor (even during summer time when kids are off school). It is not high school kids I see out in the fields picking crops - it is immigrants. I drive by the local meat plants... and guess who I see filling the cars at the end of the work day? I drive by cheese plants, and the same thing goes.

I can fully believe that the Idaho of yesteryear was full of citizen labor out happily fulfilling their fair share. However, that picture does not contrast with the reality of today.

And cut the labor off (which is what Alabama did) and the US will be faced with one of two things - the vastly increased cost of produce across the board (at a critical economic time) or make way for more and more cheaper foreign produce (and the failing of more US farmers). Or we can just do as East Of Eden recommends, and create a welfare state for farmers, above and beyond what we already do. Not exactly the American way - but heck, we have all looked the other way all this time, why not just expand upon it.

This is, as you have shown us, a circle; we want cheap stuff, the producers want to make a profit, so they don't want to pay reasonable wages in order to provide the goods and foods that the rest of us want to buy. We don't want to do the work at the wages the producers are willing to pay...and illegal immigrants are. THEY can't argue, or bargain; they are a permanent serf underclass now.

So illegal immigration is bad for everybody...and mostly for the illegal immigrants. There's this thing about a vicious circle, or indeed any circle. In order to solve the problem, that circle needs to be cut...and it doesn't really matter WHERE. The only reasonable, 'doable' place to cut this one is at the border. That would force all the other parts to fix their problems. The producers would have to pay reasonable rates. Legal workers would work. People MIGHT pay more--but perhaps some genius will come up with more and better ways of doing these things, so that we can send all those farm workers to school.

I disagree wholeheartedly about cutting off the border being the solution - this would be the furthering of American Isolationism. As I said before, I lived two years in Germany. I was fortunate enough to be there as the wall was coming down. It gave me a unique perspective of the results of extreme isolationist policies on a nation. East Germany was such a shadow, a ghost of the West. We would be doing ourselves no favors by further limiting our exposure to competition, and the global market. Cheap foreign labor is a reality. Matter of fact, much of that cheap foreign labor is more educated with better scores in science and math. Building up walls to prevent it would be doing nothing more then "sticking our heads in the sand" as East of Eden so eloquently put it.

And, after all, how successful have isolationist policies been on the War on Drugs? Sure glad we don't have a drug problem anymore, now that we have erected fences, spent billions on our drug force, outlawed the use and possession of drugs, erected massive prisons to house all those users and dealers, and even cut off ties with governments that support the flow of drugs.

[dianaiad]

I don't know when you were a teenager living in Idaho, but I am talking about the Idaho of today. I drive by many of those farms on my way to work every day. I buy produce locally, every summer. And I see firsthand the fact that immigrant labor heavily outweigh citizen labor (even during summer time when kids are off school). It is not high school kids I see out in the fields picking crops - it is immigrants. I drive by the local meat plants... and guess who I see filling the cars at the end of the work day? I drive by cheese plants, and the same thing goes.

I can fully believe that the Idaho of yesteryear was full of citizen labor out happily fulfilling their fair share. However, that picture does not contrast with the reality of today.

And cut the labor off (which is what Alabama did) and the US will be faced with one of two things - the vastly increased cost of produce across the board (at a critical economic time) or make way for more and more cheaper foreign produce (and the failing of more US farmers). Or we can just do as East Of Eden recommends, and create a welfare state for farmers, above and beyond what we already do. Not exactly the American way - but heck, we have all looked the other way all this time, why not just expand upon it.

This is, as you have shown us, a circle; we want cheap stuff, the producers want to make a profit, so they don't want to pay reasonable wages in order to provide the goods and foods that the rest of us want to buy. We don't want to do the work at the wages the producers are willing to pay...and illegal immigrants are. THEY can't argue, or bargain; they are a permanent serf underclass now.

So illegal immigration is bad for everybody...and mostly for the illegal immigrants. There's this thing about a vicious circle, or indeed any circle. In order to solve the problem, that circle needs to be cut...and it doesn't really matter WHERE. The only reasonable, 'doable' place to cut this one is at the border. That would force all the other parts to fix their problems. The producers would have to pay reasonable rates. Legal workers would work. People MIGHT pay more--but perhaps some genius will come up with more and better ways of doing these things, so that we can send all those farm workers to school.

I disagree wholeheartedly about cutting off the border being the solution - this would be the furthering of American Isolationism. As I said before, I lived two years in Germany. I was fortunate enough to be there as the wall was coming down. It gave me a unique perspective of the results of extreme isolationist policies on a nation. East Germany was such a shadow, a ghost of the West. We would be doing ourselves no favors by further limiting our exposure to competition, and the global market. Cheap foreign labor is a reality. Matter of fact, much of that cheap foreign labor is more educated with better scores in science and math. Building up walls to prevent it would be doing nothing more then "sticking our heads in the sand" as East of Eden so eloquently put it.

And, after all, how successful have isolationist policies been on the War on Drugs? Sure glad we don't have a drug problem anymore, now that we have erected fences, spent billions on our drug force, outlawed the use and possession of drugs, erected massive prisons to house all those users and dealers, and even cut off ties with governments that support the flow of drugs.

There is a big difference between isolationist...and resisting invasion....and frankly, that's what is happening. If all those illegal immigrants were banded together and put in uniform, nobody would argue that it was an invasion.

Consider:
in-va-sion/invZHn/
Noun:

An instance of invading a country or region with an armed force.
An incursion by a large number of people or things into a place or sphere of activity.

I would call what's happening here an official invasion. We have huge numbers of people...more per year than many nations have in their armed services...coming across our borders against our will, against our interests, and for their own gain. Once here, they form groups that insist that they be treated better than the folks who are here legally.

WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO PROTECT OUR BORDERS. That's not isolationism. We are quite happy to let in those who come here legally, and frankly, I'm tired unto weeping with the world demanding that the USA either solve their problems, or blaming us for their problems, or sending us their problems, or all three at once.

As well, given today's technology, the isolationism you fear simply isn't possible. Can't happen.

Wish we could have a little of it, though.