That list is totally not cherry picked to serve a very specific agenda (/s). Actual safety for regular citizens is affected by events that are occurring today (instead of decades ago), as the result of actions by individuals (rather than state-sanctioned violence). As such, the grandparent is 100% correct: letting violent people into your country will raise the overal level of violence that people encounter.
Violent crime by all measures are at generational lows. It's just the truth.
I was being hyperbolic because OP was being ridiculous too. To say "your country opened the doors to rapists and violent murderers" is a very specific right wing scare mongering talking point that is easily debunked by any semi-serious human that can read an x,y plot of the data.
Also, events that are occurring today indeed are interdependent with events of the past [1] -- the crimes of genocide and slavery affect all humans that descend from it [2], and those humans interact with all of us in the here and now. And we are all of course affected by events that are occurring today. Both are true.
It's not that hard to see when you open your mind and look a little deeply. Or in the words of a great sage, "free your mind and your ass will follow". [3]
Are there any human tribes around that haven't at one point or another experienced a negative event at the hands of others?
What should we all be given, and more importantly by whom, just to make up for the endless parade of historic injustices? Does dwelling on them for all eternity make for a good future?
Acknowledging is not the same as dwelling. We must acknowledge because it is reality and it is our duty to look reality in it's face. And because it is a reality that others in this present day experience the effects of, it affects all of us.
By acknowledging and understanding the suffering of others, we touch the suffering within ourselves, and vice versa. As my meditation teacher [1] often says in closing, "just as the right hand helps the left without thinking "I'm helping other", when we sincerely take care of others, we take care of ourselves. When we sincerely take care of ourselves, we take care of others".
It's your reality. _You_ choose to dwell on racial issues. _You_ dedicate your life to "correcting" people, and break in on discussions that have absolutely nothing to do with race, just so you can slap them in the face with a "WHITE MAN BAD!". That is a delusion, and the rest of us have absolutely no "duty" to go along with it.
Buddhism, above anything else, teaches to let go, to _not_ get stuck in the temporary sorrows of the earthly plane. If anything, you should have learned that it doesn't matter, and to not make it the core of your identity.
You blame the White man for genocide, but conveniently leave out that much of that 'genocide' was caused by disease, long before anyone even knew what caused it. You also conveniently ignore that the native Americans happily waged war on each other whenever they had the chance.
You blame the White man for slavery, but conveniently leave out that absolutely everyone practiced slavery, and that it was the White man who abolished it. You also conveniently leave out that more slaves are kept in just India _today_ than were taken by all European nations throughout history.
You blame the White man for lynching, but conveniently leave out that 'necklacing' is practiced today, in South Africa, on White people. Your viewpoint is extremely one-sided, and always to the detriment of a single race.
I can go on, but I think you can see my point: you assign blame to a single race, and are blind to the reality that nobody here are angels. You scapegoat one group based on their skin color, while willfully ignoring that pretty much everybody did the worst they could, whenever they had the opportunity.
If you'll inspect the names of the posters, you will quickly realize that it was not _my_ claim. I'm also not quite certain how a list of centuries-old atrocities serves as an 'evidence-based counter' to the claim that illegal immigrants in modern America have a high crime rate. If that was indeed fabricated, it could be trivially disproved by posting a link to a current-day statistical database.
Instead he tried his best to make this about race. At best that is whataboutism, and at worst he's just a racist f*ck.
