What do they want? To LARP that they are in Selma 60 years ago. To vent that Kamala lost. To resist Trump.
To imagine themselves as the heroic star of their own Lifetime movie.
There is no there there policy-wise aside from wanting to maintain open borders.
I also question how much this matters politically. I suspect it will ramp up the vote in deep blue areas, but I don't think this is spilling much beer in Texas or Florida.
This isn't a noble struggle over segregation. It is about the left wanting to keep all the illegals it let in over the past 4 years.
I've always said one of the differences between liberals and conservatives is the former imagines themselves in the Civil Rights Movement, and the latter imagines D-Day.
Mind you they always make it out fine and suffer no real consequences. I also understand the second one had way worse odds, but hey it's the fantasy.
Also, as Tricia notes it's for votes. That includes future from demographic change, current through sympathy and fraud, and electoral since illegals are counted in the census.
It really isn't about ICE, and only partially about TRUMP.
They want to turn back time.
They want to be in the ascendence again. They want to be winning. They want to be heroes. And that all changed in 2016. They were told, quite forcefully, that a huge chunk of the country and world DNGAF about them, about their climate policies, abut their pronouns, about all of their shibboleths. And they hate that, and want it too stop.
And when they're shown surveys that prove a plurality of the US population wants the foreigners out, they claim, "Oh they're just stupid hicks who've swallowed too much fascist propaganda, their wishes don't count, we progressives are the only ones who really have the working class's interests at heart, *democracy* means only leftists are allowed to vote!"
I think this is the nub of it. Democrats spent 20 years convincing themselves that the “coalition of the ascendant” was just an election or two away from giving them permanent majorities.
Their hubris has met its nemesis in the form of Trump, which makes it especially hard for them to discard their old worldview. Sometime in the next decade we’ll have another, less abrasive populist President, at which point Democrats will give themselves permission to quietly pretend the 2010’s never happened.
The irony is, is that coulda happened. Easily. Instead, they chose the identity politics route with metastized into looney tunes wokeism, and now they're bulk of that 'ascendant coalition' has rejected the bullshit. Oh well....
One of the better pieces I've read on the subject. Most people don't want chaos in the streets but the far right does, and Trump apparently only caters to them now. But people also do not want open borders, and the far left does. Or they want a level of enforcement so toothless it amounts to the same thing. Clinton and Obama deported many people, as was their job. Popular, two term presidents. If the Democrats cannot come back to the sane center on this, we're just gonna keep getting kicked in the balls. Figure it out.
I'm left and do not want open borders. But many of the people being detained here DO have proper paperwork, and are being roughed up and detained anyway. I know someone, who fled hell in Libya, who WENT TO ICE in October, showed his paperwork and said i'm good right? they said yup no problem, you're good. fast forward to January and wham detained. Literally all of my friends are democrats and all want immigration reform. We also don't want a toddler for President - signed former republican
Leaders? End of the United States? AntiFa? Are you serious?
I want Ellis Island style borders, to grant amnesty and a rapid path to citizenship for every immigrant without violent misdemeanors or felonies, to stop revoking legal status from those who came here with it (and yes, it absolutely is targeting black and brown folks; they are denying visas to Nigerians, among the highest achieving immigrants! Plus JD and the Haitians...), to have a quota of 5 million legal migrants a year, and prioritize the people from the poorest or most authoritarian countries who get the most utility out of joining our society.
I am fine with limiting immigration from persons who have authoritarian or fascist or religious supremacist ideas incompatible with our nation-as-idea. Any religion, any ethno-authoritarians, etc..
The U.S. is an idea. JD and Miller lost when the Confederacy lost, and it is worth dying to fight for the liberal democratic idea of maximum thriving and maximum freedom and real democracy.
Any privilege of birth or blood or soil besides the 14th Amendment grant of citizenship (as the baseline) is the enemy. But the goal should be maximizing immigration and social welfare and radically compressing wealth inequality even as we extend the collective benefits of our national wealth and utility to as many equally real human lives as our own.
If the "undercurrent" issue is the immigration process, well, yes, we could do a lot to a) make it more robust while simultaneously b) make it less onerous. A 20-25 year backlog to immigrate from Mexico? I defecate thou negatory. That has to go.
Newt Gingrich (yes, that Newt) said that if a bank can approve you for a credit card in minutes, it shouldn't take that much longer to do immigration. Days or weeks instead of months or years.
And, yes, we need to keep out (or kick out) the bad hombres y mujeres. But not everyone who wants to come in by hook or crook fits in that bucket. And we need a path for the abuela who has been here for 30 years and not caused an issue to get right with Uncle Sam. Maybe fines, maybe a delay in the citizenship process, maybe a work and/or benefits ban for a time so we don't provide bad incentives for others. We can figure that out--we're 'Mericans, for crying out loud.
Meanwhile, if you commit a felony or a violent misdemeanor, out you go.
It's not hard!
Unfortunately, ICE can't change any of that. But We The People can! I mentioned accountability earlier. MOAR accountability!
Why do we need to allow more people in, and why is it a problem to remove someone who has been living here illegally? You say emphatically that 'that has to go' and 'we need a path'. Please now make an argument for those positions.
There's no reason to have a 20+ year waiting list. These aren't tickets to the Masters. It's not even the waiting list for UCLA or Cal-Berkeley or Georgia Tech. Tell people if they are in or out already.
Making the process gratuitously onerous encourages people to come in through the backdoor, which makes enforcement more difficult. Trump said the same himself. Everyone comes through the front door with a big welcome mat, who is eligible, and behaves themselves. Then you can really seal the border, and while some will still whine some BS about "no human being is illegal", it will only be the unqualified and criminal who will try to come illegally and can be handled accordingly.
Oh, and let's get serious about not allowing immigrants without means of support, and ban them from public benefits for a period of time. If they're going to starve, go home and starve where the food is cheap.
While I don't like an "amnesty", here we are. It's cruel and bad optics to deport people who have been here for a while, settled in, been productive, and otherwise been law-abiding, and pleading lawnorder only goes so far. Slap their hands if we must, but don't bring a productive plan down in the court of public opinion by being a stickler over the law. You don't have to like what the public at large thinks, but it's reality.
The waiting list exists because we only let in so many people a year. Do you just want to make people reapply every year? I think that 10M legal immigrants a year is still far too high, so even if every illegal came back legally in a year or two, that's not satisfying.
Pale who have existed here for years have done so by fraud. There's no 'otherwise law abiding'.
Net immigration has never been anywhere near 10 million, but that's not an entirely unreasonable number given how much wealth we have and how we could radically improve human wellbeing by letting that many people in. Literally every immigrant has done more to ethically earn their citizenship than those of us who have this bounty of wealth and opportunity through no earning or dessert of our own. Regardless of method.
And, no, the difficulty of you immigrating to some poor backwater is in no way comparable to the immense privilege of being born in the wealthiest country in human history through no choice of your own.
The estimates across various administrations for the last 20 years is 10+M illegal, undocumented persons living in the US.
The basis of the Republic is to preserve the rights, liberties, and property of citizens, not to spread the wealth we have created for ourselves. A person earns their citizenship by complying with the laws, and adopting the culture, of our nation. If you can't do that bare minimum, you haven't earned anything.
Your last paragraph is a non sequiter so I'm not going to respond to it.
Yeah, so 10 million per year was wrong, then. Not even close. You didn't even mea culpa, despite 20 years and 1 year being grossly unequal.
500k net per year is nothing. We should be targeting 3-5 million per year in net growth. Considering the stagnant population growth outside of immigration,
The second part I totally disagree with and find morally repugnant. There is no "ourselves" as there is only people and one race, all of humanity. The only reason to have a society at all is to maximize wealth redistribution and freedom by negating all unearned inequalities and sharing that wealth with as many people in need who are willing to join our project. Everyone who agrees with the U.S. idea is already an American - and I mean this as an explicit embrace of the universalist idea JD Vance mocks - the only question is how many people can we logistically absorb at the margins.
And no, the third part is very important because people who justify anything but maximally open borders are implying that we should engage in needless and shocking cruelty here by pointing to the limits of citizenship in other nations. I don't care about them.
You don’t get it. Coming to America is not a right. The 1924 Immigration Act put a stop to this for a reason, the frontier was closed and the factories were full. We had an American ethos that is being rapidly undermined by mass migration , that’s not needed or helpful. The point is America voted to STOP immigration with small exceptions, not to rubber stamp everyone who wants to come. The fact that America at one point was a nation of immigrants doesn’t necessitate or justify it staying that way forever.
In practical application, you do. The border is just a formality to keep out criminals, everyone else can become citizens with little effort. This mass citizenship meaningless.
You have less than zero understanding of our immigration system or the justifications they are using to push people out of the immigration process, if you believe "Everyone else can become citizens with little effort." That's ludicrous. Our system is expensive and complicated and arbitrary.
Ellis Island pre-1918 rules, but without the racist filtering, is the minimum acceptable system. How is citizenship by the utterly unearned quality of ancestry or birth location meaningful, but people who adhere to our founding ideals and move here by choice are somehow less deserving? They are far more worthy even with minimal processing than any of us born here, having done far more to earn it than we have.
The only thing of value is maximizing human thriving and freedom, and our citizenship should expand rapidly, always, to ensure that is done, and raise taxes dramatically enough to ensure it improves an enormous number of lives.
I am done tolerating the tribal selfishness. Either everyone can come here on demand or our citizenship has no more ethical basis than caste systems or hereditary nobility.
Anyone who illegally crossed the border in the last 6 years should be deported. We can look at amnesty on a case by case basis for those with good jobs, no criminal records and a willingness to pay for their naturalization.
Deportations occurred under President Obama - in greater numbers according to what I read. And the lists of people I see arrested and detained for deportation have deportation orders that often go back years - usually because of criminal activity. Tell me how abolishing ICE or banning ICE from a state is advantageous to ANYBODY? I really cannot understand this. Can it really only be about Donald Trump? How long will people cut off their own noses to spite HIS face, which never actually works.
"Deportations occurred under President Obama - in greater numbers according to what I read. "
This is correct-but-not-really. The Obama administration classified turnaways at the border as deportations, so the numbers look high, but they did little enforcement in the interior. The flow to the border fell pretty dramatically under Trump (one wonders why) so Obama has higher deportation numbers while doing dramatically less of what we think of when we see the word "deportation."
The “protesters” (there really should be another name for them because they aren’t protesting) are protecting people with deportation orders who have committed heinous crimes. Little Miss Social Justice Rambo died to save these people. Look up what some of these men did and tell me these guys are worth all of this hate and chaos.
Thank you for that. Have not read that anywhere. I do think that whatever removal they did do in the past was facilitated and supported by local law enforcement. It’s ironic that immigration enforcement has only become an issue after millions came in without screening for criminality, health risks or anything else. Doesn’t it seem like people might see it as prudent after four years of having essentially no border? But that would be … a kind of LOGIC? None of this makes any sense to a thinking person.
Americans want lower taxes and more social spending while keeping the deficit down and no inflation. They say so in every poll!
And they often punish incumbents who don’t deliver on that promise at the ballot box.
It’s the same with immigration. They don’t like it, but they don’t want to be called racist! They want to secure the border and deport illegals, but not if it means like enforcing the law on actual people rather than as an abstract concept.
And they are prepared to punish incumbents who can’t deliver the results of enforcement without enforcement!
What you see is a ping pong effect. Americans ask for a set of impossible results. They throw the incumbent out because they can’t get those results. Then they throw out the new incumbent when they fail.
The 6% figure isn’t a good measure for this situation. While the percentage depends on how you ask the question, a majority of Americans don’t want to deport law-abiding people who have been here for years.
Then, you have all of the cases of people who arrived under Biden with weak asylum claims but technically did it “legally.” Like someone who claims it’s not safe to be queer in his home country, and got denied five times, but was permitted to stay for the sixth appeal. Or someone who received temporary status that Trump revoked. Democrats are portraying this as deportation of “legal” immigrants, with some success.
Then consider all of the people who despise Trump, are horrified and offended by him every day, and think everything he does is inherently illegitimate because he’s Trump. If Trump tells you this guy with gang tattoos and an arrest record is Tren de Aragua, it’s probably lies. And even if it’s not, he can’t win.
So it is absolutely the position of mainstream Democrats that Trump should stop enforcing immigration law.
Just saw the paper. In my (highly integrated) town, where the best homes are owned by African Americans, there was a "Renee Good" protest. NONE of the faces were black. NO ONE was familiar. I think they were 90% female. Some non-profit no one knows about did it. And the description of the organizers indicated that they were all liberal arts grads whose professional job is "Caring" through poetry activism, writing activism, protest activism, art activism....basically, they have a whole economic subculture of "Changing our society" that keeps them "afloat", sort of. And if they didn't have Renee Good and whatever the next person is they are going to use, they'd have no grants, get not funding, have no crowds at their performance venues, and convince no one to buy their art/craft/poetry.
I think if they had a salaried job at a newspaper or literary journal, none of them would ever hold a sign again. But that industry has shriveled, and this is what we get in its wake.
Quite an epiphany for me. And it hit too close to home (literally)
Who has the time to get in a group in the cold and hold a sign, and chant? Not working people! Unless this IS their work. (Oh, and college students getting college credit - or a grade, to "Fight the man" from their professors)
we've been living in a feminized utopia where these things are all just cartoons. They're not real. And then they become real, because they weren't real until physical things happened.
It was supposed to be Greta Thunberg.
There's so many videos out there now of the anti-misogyny army physically assaulting large 6'3" dudes.. and getting knocked on their asses.
to sum:
"omg!! why did you have to use REAL bullets?"
and to paraphrase a couple of presumably straight pussies (that like pussy, but they ARE pussies): Jacob Frey and Tim Walz:
"Go out and hit ICE officers over the head!"
(we didn't SAY that though. we said code-words for that instead)
And then that happens (only in progressive districts). ICE is performing deportations in sane districts with co-operation and literally nothing is happening besides the voted-for agenda of the administration (I mean, Reichstag).
And it happens. And then:
"omg we don't want the chaos!! fuck ICE and attack them but omg NO CHAOS!!"
"go out and make chaos, but omg now that there's CHAOs, NO MORE CHAOS!!"
How exactly would those who characterize all ICE agents as “thugs” go about enforcing our nation’s immigration laws? Or would they? Most of those being deported claimed falsely that they were seeking political asylum and then never attended any hearings to prove their case or when they were adjudged to not be here legally and ordered to leave simply ignored that ruling. The fact that they may or may not have broken other of our laws such as welfare fraud is simply not relevant. The constant escalation of violence on both sides must end and then settle down to the routine of lawful enforcement of current law. No more and no less. Oh, and how about shifting some enforcement resources towards the employers of the illegals who undermine the wages of our citizens by paying substandard wages to those who can’t complain.
I note that in states where local law enforcement cooperates, ICE has a massively lower profile. Its only in states and localities where local leaders insist that their police and judicial folks do not cooperate with ICE that they are more visibily and aggressively active..
Now the protestors can say they want more immigrants and for all illegals to be granted amnesty, but I don't think they have a majority of the country that agrees with them. Every poll I have seen, plus of course the election, suggest that Americans want fewer immigrants of all stripes and far far fewer - essentially zero - illegal ones.
ICE are enforcing laws passed by congress, the actual fix for stopping ICE is to pass different laws but it seems the protestors would rather LARP and play victim than do something practical like convince their representatives and fellow citizens to change US immigration law.
I also can't help but observe (and I'm not the first to do so) that the states that have the most ICE protests also seem to be the onces with major fraud to do with welfare payments of one sort or another and that the leaders of those states have made little or no attempt to rein it in despite prior warnings. A cynic might wonder whether the ICE protests are intended to distract attention from the frauds.
"The main gripe is that they’re brutal, thuggish, and causing all kinds of chaos on the ground. No arguments there"
I see this all the time. I don't know a whole lot about them, but in the context of severely distorted takes on them in today's media and online, and generally not trusting most of what I hear, I would love a trustworthy source on ICE's perceived awfulness. They are a federal US agency, which my instincts tell me, makes them likely ten times better than an analogous agency in any other country
What do they want? To LARP that they are in Selma 60 years ago. To vent that Kamala lost. To resist Trump.
To imagine themselves as the heroic star of their own Lifetime movie.
There is no there there policy-wise aside from wanting to maintain open borders.
I also question how much this matters politically. I suspect it will ramp up the vote in deep blue areas, but I don't think this is spilling much beer in Texas or Florida.
This isn't a noble struggle over segregation. It is about the left wanting to keep all the illegals it let in over the past 4 years.
I've always said one of the differences between liberals and conservatives is the former imagines themselves in the Civil Rights Movement, and the latter imagines D-Day.
Mind you they always make it out fine and suffer no real consequences. I also understand the second one had way worse odds, but hey it's the fantasy.
Also, as Tricia notes it's for votes. That includes future from demographic change, current through sympathy and fraud, and electoral since illegals are counted in the census.
Because…votes.
It really isn't about ICE, and only partially about TRUMP.
They want to turn back time.
They want to be in the ascendence again. They want to be winning. They want to be heroes. And that all changed in 2016. They were told, quite forcefully, that a huge chunk of the country and world DNGAF about them, about their climate policies, abut their pronouns, about all of their shibboleths. And they hate that, and want it too stop.
They want to turn back time.
And when they're shown surveys that prove a plurality of the US population wants the foreigners out, they claim, "Oh they're just stupid hicks who've swallowed too much fascist propaganda, their wishes don't count, we progressives are the only ones who really have the working class's interests at heart, *democracy* means only leftists are allowed to vote!"
Yes. They love name-calling when there is no rational rejoinder.
I think this is the nub of it. Democrats spent 20 years convincing themselves that the “coalition of the ascendant” was just an election or two away from giving them permanent majorities.
Their hubris has met its nemesis in the form of Trump, which makes it especially hard for them to discard their old worldview. Sometime in the next decade we’ll have another, less abrasive populist President, at which point Democrats will give themselves permission to quietly pretend the 2010’s never happened.
The irony is, is that coulda happened. Easily. Instead, they chose the identity politics route with metastized into looney tunes wokeism, and now they're bulk of that 'ascendant coalition' has rejected the bullshit. Oh well....
Simple!
First, they want ICE (and indeed all police) abolished.
Second, they want borders abolished.
These are coherent ideas, in the sense that they are coherent with their vision of a socialist utopia.
No they dont. I don't know a single democrat that wants this.
https://x.com/AOC/status/1351236031065038848
One of the better pieces I've read on the subject. Most people don't want chaos in the streets but the far right does, and Trump apparently only caters to them now. But people also do not want open borders, and the far left does. Or they want a level of enforcement so toothless it amounts to the same thing. Clinton and Obama deported many people, as was their job. Popular, two term presidents. If the Democrats cannot come back to the sane center on this, we're just gonna keep getting kicked in the balls. Figure it out.
I'm left and do not want open borders. But many of the people being detained here DO have proper paperwork, and are being roughed up and detained anyway. I know someone, who fled hell in Libya, who WENT TO ICE in October, showed his paperwork and said i'm good right? they said yup no problem, you're good. fast forward to January and wham detained. Literally all of my friends are democrats and all want immigration reform. We also don't want a toddler for President - signed former republican
The leaders of this stuff want the end of the United States. They state so openly.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=a9zaFWEkwqo
https://substack.com/@karlyn/note/p-182363131?r=heasi&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
The average AWFL only wants to express their outrage that they aren’t being obeyed. Your Dear Liberal White Ladies explains it quite well.
Leaders? End of the United States? AntiFa? Are you serious?
I want Ellis Island style borders, to grant amnesty and a rapid path to citizenship for every immigrant without violent misdemeanors or felonies, to stop revoking legal status from those who came here with it (and yes, it absolutely is targeting black and brown folks; they are denying visas to Nigerians, among the highest achieving immigrants! Plus JD and the Haitians...), to have a quota of 5 million legal migrants a year, and prioritize the people from the poorest or most authoritarian countries who get the most utility out of joining our society.
I am fine with limiting immigration from persons who have authoritarian or fascist or religious supremacist ideas incompatible with our nation-as-idea. Any religion, any ethno-authoritarians, etc..
The U.S. is an idea. JD and Miller lost when the Confederacy lost, and it is worth dying to fight for the liberal democratic idea of maximum thriving and maximum freedom and real democracy.
Any privilege of birth or blood or soil besides the 14th Amendment grant of citizenship (as the baseline) is the enemy. But the goal should be maximizing immigration and social welfare and radically compressing wealth inequality even as we extend the collective benefits of our national wealth and utility to as many equally real human lives as our own.
This post is about ICE and immigration. Wtf are you talking about?
I’m sorry, I must have missed it. When did federal law change with regard to illegal immigration and/or interfering with federal law enforcement?
Does that translate as you don’t know? Aren’t interested in finding out? Don’t care?
For the record I’m neither sweet nor summer.
I’m talking about the topic of the post. What are you talking about?
If the "undercurrent" issue is the immigration process, well, yes, we could do a lot to a) make it more robust while simultaneously b) make it less onerous. A 20-25 year backlog to immigrate from Mexico? I defecate thou negatory. That has to go.
Newt Gingrich (yes, that Newt) said that if a bank can approve you for a credit card in minutes, it shouldn't take that much longer to do immigration. Days or weeks instead of months or years.
And, yes, we need to keep out (or kick out) the bad hombres y mujeres. But not everyone who wants to come in by hook or crook fits in that bucket. And we need a path for the abuela who has been here for 30 years and not caused an issue to get right with Uncle Sam. Maybe fines, maybe a delay in the citizenship process, maybe a work and/or benefits ban for a time so we don't provide bad incentives for others. We can figure that out--we're 'Mericans, for crying out loud.
Meanwhile, if you commit a felony or a violent misdemeanor, out you go.
It's not hard!
Unfortunately, ICE can't change any of that. But We The People can! I mentioned accountability earlier. MOAR accountability!
Why do we need to allow more people in, and why is it a problem to remove someone who has been living here illegally? You say emphatically that 'that has to go' and 'we need a path'. Please now make an argument for those positions.
There's no reason to have a 20+ year waiting list. These aren't tickets to the Masters. It's not even the waiting list for UCLA or Cal-Berkeley or Georgia Tech. Tell people if they are in or out already.
Making the process gratuitously onerous encourages people to come in through the backdoor, which makes enforcement more difficult. Trump said the same himself. Everyone comes through the front door with a big welcome mat, who is eligible, and behaves themselves. Then you can really seal the border, and while some will still whine some BS about "no human being is illegal", it will only be the unqualified and criminal who will try to come illegally and can be handled accordingly.
Oh, and let's get serious about not allowing immigrants without means of support, and ban them from public benefits for a period of time. If they're going to starve, go home and starve where the food is cheap.
While I don't like an "amnesty", here we are. It's cruel and bad optics to deport people who have been here for a while, settled in, been productive, and otherwise been law-abiding, and pleading lawnorder only goes so far. Slap their hands if we must, but don't bring a productive plan down in the court of public opinion by being a stickler over the law. You don't have to like what the public at large thinks, but it's reality.
The waiting list exists because we only let in so many people a year. Do you just want to make people reapply every year? I think that 10M legal immigrants a year is still far too high, so even if every illegal came back legally in a year or two, that's not satisfying.
Pale who have existed here for years have done so by fraud. There's no 'otherwise law abiding'.
Net immigration has never been anywhere near 10 million, but that's not an entirely unreasonable number given how much wealth we have and how we could radically improve human wellbeing by letting that many people in. Literally every immigrant has done more to ethically earn their citizenship than those of us who have this bounty of wealth and opportunity through no earning or dessert of our own. Regardless of method.
And, no, the difficulty of you immigrating to some poor backwater is in no way comparable to the immense privilege of being born in the wealthiest country in human history through no choice of your own.
The estimates across various administrations for the last 20 years is 10+M illegal, undocumented persons living in the US.
The basis of the Republic is to preserve the rights, liberties, and property of citizens, not to spread the wealth we have created for ourselves. A person earns their citizenship by complying with the laws, and adopting the culture, of our nation. If you can't do that bare minimum, you haven't earned anything.
Your last paragraph is a non sequiter so I'm not going to respond to it.
Yeah, so 10 million per year was wrong, then. Not even close. You didn't even mea culpa, despite 20 years and 1 year being grossly unequal.
500k net per year is nothing. We should be targeting 3-5 million per year in net growth. Considering the stagnant population growth outside of immigration,
The second part I totally disagree with and find morally repugnant. There is no "ourselves" as there is only people and one race, all of humanity. The only reason to have a society at all is to maximize wealth redistribution and freedom by negating all unearned inequalities and sharing that wealth with as many people in need who are willing to join our project. Everyone who agrees with the U.S. idea is already an American - and I mean this as an explicit embrace of the universalist idea JD Vance mocks - the only question is how many people can we logistically absorb at the margins.
And no, the third part is very important because people who justify anything but maximally open borders are implying that we should engage in needless and shocking cruelty here by pointing to the limits of citizenship in other nations. I don't care about them.
You don’t get it. Coming to America is not a right. The 1924 Immigration Act put a stop to this for a reason, the frontier was closed and the factories were full. We had an American ethos that is being rapidly undermined by mass migration , that’s not needed or helpful. The point is America voted to STOP immigration with small exceptions, not to rubber stamp everyone who wants to come. The fact that America at one point was a nation of immigrants doesn’t necessitate or justify it staying that way forever.
I get it and I disagree with you.
You disagree with fundamental civics, IE having a border at all.
No I don't.
Your logical fallacy is a false dilemma.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
In practical application, you do. The border is just a formality to keep out criminals, everyone else can become citizens with little effort. This mass citizenship meaningless.
You have less than zero understanding of our immigration system or the justifications they are using to push people out of the immigration process, if you believe "Everyone else can become citizens with little effort." That's ludicrous. Our system is expensive and complicated and arbitrary.
Ellis Island pre-1918 rules, but without the racist filtering, is the minimum acceptable system. How is citizenship by the utterly unearned quality of ancestry or birth location meaningful, but people who adhere to our founding ideals and move here by choice are somehow less deserving? They are far more worthy even with minimal processing than any of us born here, having done far more to earn it than we have.
The only thing of value is maximizing human thriving and freedom, and our citizenship should expand rapidly, always, to ensure that is done, and raise taxes dramatically enough to ensure it improves an enormous number of lives.
I am done tolerating the tribal selfishness. Either everyone can come here on demand or our citizenship has no more ethical basis than caste systems or hereditary nobility.
Anyone who illegally crossed the border in the last 6 years should be deported. We can look at amnesty on a case by case basis for those with good jobs, no criminal records and a willingness to pay for their naturalization.
That's not a bad plan at all.
Be honest though. What % of democrats would sign on for that?
Not enough. But it would be a great talking point for the GOP--we offered a humane, sensible plan...but nooo!
How does one prove the date of illegal entry?
Rent, utility and bank statements.
Failing that, deportation
Deportations occurred under President Obama - in greater numbers according to what I read. And the lists of people I see arrested and detained for deportation have deportation orders that often go back years - usually because of criminal activity. Tell me how abolishing ICE or banning ICE from a state is advantageous to ANYBODY? I really cannot understand this. Can it really only be about Donald Trump? How long will people cut off their own noses to spite HIS face, which never actually works.
"Deportations occurred under President Obama - in greater numbers according to what I read. "
This is correct-but-not-really. The Obama administration classified turnaways at the border as deportations, so the numbers look high, but they did little enforcement in the interior. The flow to the border fell pretty dramatically under Trump (one wonders why) so Obama has higher deportation numbers while doing dramatically less of what we think of when we see the word "deportation."
The “protesters” (there really should be another name for them because they aren’t protesting) are protecting people with deportation orders who have committed heinous crimes. Little Miss Social Justice Rambo died to save these people. Look up what some of these men did and tell me these guys are worth all of this hate and chaos.
Thank you for that. Have not read that anywhere. I do think that whatever removal they did do in the past was facilitated and supported by local law enforcement. It’s ironic that immigration enforcement has only become an issue after millions came in without screening for criminality, health risks or anything else. Doesn’t it seem like people might see it as prudent after four years of having essentially no border? But that would be … a kind of LOGIC? None of this makes any sense to a thinking person.
This what TDS is. It is all about Trump plus some revolutionary larpers.
Americans want lower taxes and more social spending while keeping the deficit down and no inflation. They say so in every poll!
And they often punish incumbents who don’t deliver on that promise at the ballot box.
It’s the same with immigration. They don’t like it, but they don’t want to be called racist! They want to secure the border and deport illegals, but not if it means like enforcing the law on actual people rather than as an abstract concept.
And they are prepared to punish incumbents who can’t deliver the results of enforcement without enforcement!
What you see is a ping pong effect. Americans ask for a set of impossible results. They throw the incumbent out because they can’t get those results. Then they throw out the new incumbent when they fail.
Polls have been so wrong for so long, I completely ignore them. The sausage is contaminated with E. coli.
The truth lies in what actually happens. Agree or not, Trump explicitly stated Mass Deportations and voters said yes.
The 6% figure isn’t a good measure for this situation. While the percentage depends on how you ask the question, a majority of Americans don’t want to deport law-abiding people who have been here for years.
Then, you have all of the cases of people who arrived under Biden with weak asylum claims but technically did it “legally.” Like someone who claims it’s not safe to be queer in his home country, and got denied five times, but was permitted to stay for the sixth appeal. Or someone who received temporary status that Trump revoked. Democrats are portraying this as deportation of “legal” immigrants, with some success.
Then consider all of the people who despise Trump, are horrified and offended by him every day, and think everything he does is inherently illegitimate because he’s Trump. If Trump tells you this guy with gang tattoos and an arrest record is Tren de Aragua, it’s probably lies. And even if it’s not, he can’t win.
So it is absolutely the position of mainstream Democrats that Trump should stop enforcing immigration law.
Hey, Dennison.
Just saw the paper. In my (highly integrated) town, where the best homes are owned by African Americans, there was a "Renee Good" protest. NONE of the faces were black. NO ONE was familiar. I think they were 90% female. Some non-profit no one knows about did it. And the description of the organizers indicated that they were all liberal arts grads whose professional job is "Caring" through poetry activism, writing activism, protest activism, art activism....basically, they have a whole economic subculture of "Changing our society" that keeps them "afloat", sort of. And if they didn't have Renee Good and whatever the next person is they are going to use, they'd have no grants, get not funding, have no crowds at their performance venues, and convince no one to buy their art/craft/poetry.
I think if they had a salaried job at a newspaper or literary journal, none of them would ever hold a sign again. But that industry has shriveled, and this is what we get in its wake.
Quite an epiphany for me. And it hit too close to home (literally)
Who has the time to get in a group in the cold and hold a sign, and chant? Not working people! Unless this IS their work. (Oh, and college students getting college credit - or a grade, to "Fight the man" from their professors)
we've been living in a feminized utopia where these things are all just cartoons. They're not real. And then they become real, because they weren't real until physical things happened.
It was supposed to be Greta Thunberg.
There's so many videos out there now of the anti-misogyny army physically assaulting large 6'3" dudes.. and getting knocked on their asses.
to sum:
"omg!! why did you have to use REAL bullets?"
and to paraphrase a couple of presumably straight pussies (that like pussy, but they ARE pussies): Jacob Frey and Tim Walz:
"Go out and hit ICE officers over the head!"
(we didn't SAY that though. we said code-words for that instead)
And then that happens (only in progressive districts). ICE is performing deportations in sane districts with co-operation and literally nothing is happening besides the voted-for agenda of the administration (I mean, Reichstag).
And it happens. And then:
"omg we don't want the chaos!! fuck ICE and attack them but omg NO CHAOS!!"
"go out and make chaos, but omg now that there's CHAOs, NO MORE CHAOS!!"
How exactly would those who characterize all ICE agents as “thugs” go about enforcing our nation’s immigration laws? Or would they? Most of those being deported claimed falsely that they were seeking political asylum and then never attended any hearings to prove their case or when they were adjudged to not be here legally and ordered to leave simply ignored that ruling. The fact that they may or may not have broken other of our laws such as welfare fraud is simply not relevant. The constant escalation of violence on both sides must end and then settle down to the routine of lawful enforcement of current law. No more and no less. Oh, and how about shifting some enforcement resources towards the employers of the illegals who undermine the wages of our citizens by paying substandard wages to those who can’t complain.
I note that in states where local law enforcement cooperates, ICE has a massively lower profile. Its only in states and localities where local leaders insist that their police and judicial folks do not cooperate with ICE that they are more visibily and aggressively active..
Now the protestors can say they want more immigrants and for all illegals to be granted amnesty, but I don't think they have a majority of the country that agrees with them. Every poll I have seen, plus of course the election, suggest that Americans want fewer immigrants of all stripes and far far fewer - essentially zero - illegal ones.
ICE are enforcing laws passed by congress, the actual fix for stopping ICE is to pass different laws but it seems the protestors would rather LARP and play victim than do something practical like convince their representatives and fellow citizens to change US immigration law.
I also can't help but observe (and I'm not the first to do so) that the states that have the most ICE protests also seem to be the onces with major fraud to do with welfare payments of one sort or another and that the leaders of those states have made little or no attempt to rein it in despite prior warnings. A cynic might wonder whether the ICE protests are intended to distract attention from the frauds.
It’s all the adrenaline hit. It’s all the satisfying self righteous high.
You give too much credit to the protesters.
"The main gripe is that they’re brutal, thuggish, and causing all kinds of chaos on the ground. No arguments there"
I see this all the time. I don't know a whole lot about them, but in the context of severely distorted takes on them in today's media and online, and generally not trusting most of what I hear, I would love a trustworthy source on ICE's perceived awfulness. They are a federal US agency, which my instincts tell me, makes them likely ten times better than an analogous agency in any other country