Because this isn't about that. This is about having a perceived enemy that only you can fight. If it wasn't immigrants (legal or illegal), it would be a different group, within or outside of your borders.
Yeah, the whole platform is about Othering. The greatest trick the rich ever pulled was convincing the middle class that the poor are the cause of all their problems.
This one isn't even about middle class vs. poor. The immigration crackdowns are very popular across the entire (R) electorate, regardless of their wealth. It's all about picking out-groups, making them into enemies, and inflicting cruelty on them. That's what that side really wants out of their government. They have a long list of perceived enemies who they are expecting to be able to deliver cruelty to once they're done with immigrants.
> The immigration crackdowns are very popular across the entire (R) electorate, regardless of their wealth.
Sure. The rich (R) electorate gladly watch how the non-rich (R) electorate has taken the bait and is happy chasing after the newly othered.
They won't be happy if the non-rich republicans start taking their aim at lobbying, unfair tax-breaks for the rich, or any form of taxation that prevents them from keeping their ill-gotten wealth.
This line of thinking seems out of touch with the situation in LA. I'm only watching from a distance, and I can certainly believe that the media has misrepresented the situation, but I think there must be genuine rioting there, because the mayor has declared a curfew.
While the two parties fight about specific measures (as they always do), and don't trust one another at all, they both agree that extreme measures are appropriate in LA right now.
This discussion is about the situation in LA, and not just a generic partisan dispute we could read on any political discussion, right?
The curfew is because the force escalation has inspired more protests. When they called out the national guard, it was at the level of sports fans. The subsequent provocations have caused an escalation, and the mayor’s curfew is an attempt to break that cycle - and it’s still far below the level where a military response would be justified.
Hi. I used to live in Downtown Los Angeles, and would regularly walk a dog to where the protests are. My friends are saying the protests are roughly two blocks in size, in front of the administrative buildings and in the neighboring city park. Outside of that area, life goes on as normal. Inside that area, when the crowd builds up after work, people are playing music and dancing. Yes, some people (visibly different crowd than the protesters) have used that cover for some looting and vandalism. But the pretense of this needing the military is just silly. The most aggressive behavior I've seen is cops throwing flash grenades and shooting rubber bullets directly at people's heads.
Before Trump intervened, LA has had worse Superbowl afterparties than the protest was at that time. This is all very much manufactured rage.
Consider that your news sources are really biased.
Well, then we find ourselves finding each other out of touch!
I think your line of thinking might be either overly naïve, or maliciously turning a blind eye:
First, "both-sides"-ing, for lack of a better word, is — IMHO — a false equivalence that treats the current democratic transgressions of rights and freedoms from the alt-right government to, for example, democrat's normalizing that saying racist stuff is a faux-pas; i.e. some goons are actively harming humans and that isn't the same as racists being butt-hurt that they were banned from some site.
Second, in this particular case — where there is push back against fascists — trying to reduce the scope of the discussion is like trying to censor police-cam footage to just the split-second segments where the cops get scared and shoot, but that leaves out how the trigger-happy cop broke protocol, escalated the situation, and berated confusing orders at the victim. So, no... We need nuance and context.
I really hope people that find themselves what-abouting for fascists are able to escape whatever information bubble they find themselves in so that they may be able to stop willfully looking past other people's humanity before we all find each other on the wrong end of a power-tripping cop that won't even have to come up with a good lie to snuff our lives out.
LAPD are trained and regularly used for crowd control and protest dispersal. The guard isn’t. And for sure the Marines have no clue about policing.
I think LAPD is choosing a 1st amendment violation as the lesser failure than permitting any escalation involving the National Guard. That would quickly turn out badly for the guard, become a pretext for ever more violent authoritarianism in response.
So... I come from a country where police are still mostly respected. They also don't use rubber bullets usually.
From my point of view, this person was disobeying orders from police, which gives them the right to use force. Is a rubber bullet an appropriate amount of force? Probably not, but I don't see this video as a completely one sided interaction with one party being wrong.
The cameraperson or another bystander should have called 911, asked for ambulance (and maybe fire dept) to attend. In addition to medical care, that would at least get some higher degree of paperwork going from an accountability perspective.
"Blue lives" flags are intensely fascist, unpatriotic symbology and an explicit desecration of the American flag, that might be a good place to start your research.
State-sanctioned organized crime by white supremacist terrorists, that's the connection with Republicans. They pardoned the insurrectionists that violently captured the capital building and pay off murderers whose crimes achieve their political goals. It's mostly happening out in the open, brazenly. We're not rational machines, we're easily manipulated and it takes less energy to settle into beliefs others want us to have. "Flood the zone" works but reality is still happening.
I'm confused. I don't recall anyone ever saying that we need to get rid of the poor, but rather that we should try to make conditions better for everyone such that fewer people are poor. Did I miss my scheduled indoctrination message?
Don't focus on words. Focus on actions. For example, the action of deploying the military on Americans does not make conditions better for us. Quite the contrary. The action of having a military parade for the president's birthday is expensive and doesn't benefit us. That money could be going to education, school lunches, Medicaid, building bridges, etc. But it isn't. it is only going to stroke the president's ego. Most of his actions, EO's, deals, bills, etc., fall into this category.
It looks like the military being deployed on rioters
Leaving aside the equivalence of "protesting" with "rioting," the United States has robust Constitutional, common-law and statutory guardrails against the use of the military domestically. The US military cannot, absent an insurrection in which regular legal order cannot be maintained, be deployed against US residents. The use of the military in the past has been limited to what were deemed by federal and state officials full insurrections (e.g., the Whiskey Rebellion), or, in the civil rights era, in response to governors affirmatively refusing to enforce the law regarding an end to segregation and the integration of public institutions. In this case we have state and local officials explicitly stating that the factual predicates of an insurrection aren't being satisfied (the protests cover a few square blocks in a metropolitan area that by itself is larger than Lebanon or Kosovo, in a state larger than Japan or Sweden). While courts traditionally give deference to executive determinations of this sort, they aren't beyond judicial review, and this is (I would argue) clearly pretextual.
What we're seeing here, conversely, is an attempt to sidestep this clear principle through not-particularly-clever tricks and semantic gamesmanship; for example, mobilizing Marines to "protect federal property," but then DHS officially asking DOD to give active duty forces arrest power. This is clearly unconstitutional and illegal, but, as with much we've seen recently, the hope appears to be that if you change the facts on the ground quickly enough, the clear illegality of the actions can be ignored.
In addition, the federalization of a state National Guard against the will of the state is unprecedented; I don't know of any previous example of this happening. In the American system, even though the National Guard is a vestige of the old state militias, it's clear that the states are at least assumed to have plenary authority over their own forces absent an invasion or insurrection.
As is usually the case, did the car burning happen before or after it was declared a riot, and the law enforcement agencies involved started using force? Did the riot start and then the police started using CS gas, rubber bullets, etc, or did the police use force and protesters with little recourse started damaging property out of anger and frustration because they can’t use force back against law enforcement?
This is the lie. At every step, immigration agents and police have instigated the violence. There are no riots. People are protesting and blocking access to vulnerable people. LA is not on fire. These incidents are in very small geographic areas even though media would suggest it’s widespread.
People are pushing back when rubber bullets and tear gas are being used, illegally.
U.S. citizens have a right to protest. This is baked into our constitution.
Since you're not American, a brief overview of our military:
1. We have 5 or 6 branches of military. The important one here is the national guard, ones meant to aid Americans in emergency or crisis.
2. The other branches have huge limits on when the federal government can deploy them domestically The Posse Comitatus Act that came as a result of the US civil war covers this.so having marines being deployed is a huge overreach.
3. The vast majority of the time, the national guard is managed by the state Governor, and Gavin Newsom has explicitly opposed this decision. The federal government taking command of the national guard is an exploit of The Insurrection Act that's been going on for a while.
All thst context being given: Newsom is right. This isn't trying to establish order, this is a meticulous escalation on a conservative president in a liberal city to make a show of force. For reference, there's reportedly some 600 rioters and they sent out 2000 (now 4000) national guard and 709 marines. This is all without including the LAPD which is comprised of over 8000 officers.
The amount of money and resources spent on this is utter overkill. And part of the point. They want an excuse to call martial law so badly.
It is the other way around. The military is being deployed on Americans. Whether they are rioters or not doesn't matter for establishing an authoritarian state.
GP said they don't live in the US, it's possible English isn't even their first language. If they are a non-native speaker and just made a translation/wording mistake, you might feel like a pretty big asshole twisting that to call them a fascist (which word btw, is pretty overloaded and has become essentially meaningless to a large number of people).
It's also quite possible they mean "Americans" in a general sense in that the Marines are not being turned loose on the American public. They are being focused on the rioters specifically.
Obligatory self-declaration since you and many others will probably jump to conclusions about my opinion (as for whatever reason, we seem incapable of nuance even to the point of understanding that not everything in life is completely black or white), even though I've said nothing of it until now: I think Trump's actions are grotesque, authoritarian, and fascist, and it really pisses me off.
I have neither seen nor heard anything that would lead me to believe most of the protesters are non-citizens or non-resident. You are not providing any evidence, just conveniently excusing this overreach by the executive branch by ignoring the rights of the protesters with a facile lie.
I really don't have to. You're arguing your talking points, but not to any verifiable reality. You should have said "if they're all citizens, they are american" which is the same thing you're saying, but without the implication you're adding that those people protesting have no rights. So you should probably say what you mean instead of this mealy-mouthed weaseling you're doing.
I don't know it re-establishes order but rather teaches the populace to up the ante. While I don't condone repeating history, it is instructive to look at history. When this military-type response was done at Waco, Timothy McViegh looked at that (he was there) and took out 10x as many feds as they took out citizens. And it sparked a very long period of militia movements, etc.
You guys have a stark division between the government employees and the not-government-employees. Isn't the US government "for the people, by the people"? Serious question. I'm not disputing what you said, rather I'm trying to understand it.
No feds aren't citizens in the US in any conventional sense. They have qualified immunity and a special kind of sovereign immunity that even state and local police do not have. They can initiate violence whereas citizens cannot. They can shoot a fleeing person as a citizen cannot. They can lie to you freely but if you lie to them (their interpretation of a lie), a felony. They generally can't be held accountable unless they are dumb enough to say the quiet parts out loud, and even then usually not.
They are also effectively impossible to sue, so you'll probably never see any justice in the courts if they act unlawfully. Even if manage to get the lawsuit going they will play fuck-fuck games with jurisdiction until you lose (as I found out when trying to sue feds for stripping me naked, cavity searching me, and executing a fraudulent warrant on a fabricated dog alert -- no one would take my case because they had lost similar cases every time).
> I can understand having the military in the streets, when the news is full of people waving foreign flags while torching vehicles in the streets.
Yes but the news (in the US) is a fully for profit organizations most of which are owned by the right-wing folks. (i.e. Much of the newspapers, CNN, Fox News are run by boards that are right-leaning)
They are intentionally pushing a narrative that the family I have in the area believes is simply a very small number of incidents that are nowhere near as bad as what is presented.
> This does not look like the military being deployed on Americans, rather it looks like the military being deployed on rioters. Whether those rioters are Americans or illegal immigrants really doesn't matter for the purposes of reestablishing order.
I suggest you stop looking at this through the lens of an Israeli and do some research on the US system of laws :)
Deploying the military "on rioters" and whether they are "Americans or illegals" is actually quite important. Using the military as a police force is illegal and the only real open legal question is if using it against "invaders" who are not here legally is technically allowed.
You are acting like these people are Hamas, when in reality, they are nowhere close to even 5% as dangerous.
Correct. But for some reason "flags" and "not white/christian/jewish" somehow makes them the OTHER TRIBE and therefore the laws don't matter to conservatives.
I don't feel particularly safe in the US with the government making lists of people like me based on the medication we are taking.
White/Christian and jewish are absolutely not the same tribe.
I think what we're running into is an issue many empires have run into in the past: once you scale things internationally people just don't get along. For some reason we thought computers and secular science changed that aspect of human nature (the same way Rome thought democracy and military doctrine did) and we're finding out once again people don't work that way.
> White/Christian and jewish are absolutely not the same tribe.
They are similar enough that they are not actively being openly attacked even if hateful people exist.
See: The Israeli ITT agreeing with the American conservative position and making common cause. Etc.
That person would not have made those comments if he thought the American conservative position was jewish == other tribe == bad. Even if it is for a decent chunk of that population of conservatives which is why people I know are confused why they get asked if I'm jewish. Because they don't realize the person that they were talking to is a bigot going off my stereotypically jewish features.
> I think what we're running into is an issue many empires have run into in the past: once you scale things internationally people just don't get along. For some reason we thought computers and secular science changed that aspect of human nature (the same way Rome thought democracy and military doctrine did) and we're finding out once again people don't work that way.
No, that is buying into the framework the Conservatives use that globalism is the failure point.
This is not correct. The failure point is the number of gullible people who take things like waving foreign flags as reason enough to ignore the law.
*EDIT for the response below 'cause I'm lazy and don't feel like waiting and coming back*
No. You are arguing because 'everything fails eventually, failure is inevitable' but that isn't true in human lifetimes. Dozens of generations have existed in multiple empires without seeing the empire's end.
The fact gullible people eventually bring an Empire down just means, yes, thousand year empires do not exist but we've already had 3 generations live, grow old, and die entirely within the globalist period. So...for those people, it never ended.
You just want to be "right" without considering the other person's point of view as equally valid.
So, yes, technically just because something ends does not mean the end during a given lifetime is inevitable.
But yes, excluding misinformation and open deciet from the process of running a Democracy is theoretically the goal I would say. That requires none of the things you state because you seek to bait me into responding into "gotcha" extremist positions that have never been real or needed to achieve a goal.
Simply saying "You cannot intentionally lie and misrepresent a 1 square mile protest as a reason to break the law as the government who upholds the law" should not be a controversial position you feel the need to argue against, yet you do, like the Israeli above precisely because you've been lied to.
>It's not a problem with people, just these people that I happen to want/need to incorporate.
You're arguing my point for me. People are what people do and the fact that people do these things (and consistently do these things throughout history) means that these large scale international empires are impossible to maintain. The problem may very well be conservatives, so what do you do? Exclude them? Put them in concentration camps? Now you're back to agreeing with me again.
EDIT: (for your response)
They don't bring it down "eventually" this happens very quickly. It's been known since ancient times that this happens (ibn Khaldun wrote about these things for example.) The problem is that "conservatives" from different "tribes" look very different (this is obvious if you've spent time trying to understand politics in foreign countries) so once you deal with the majority conservative group you just end up with a new one from the plurality. It's not an eventually thing, it's a critical mass problem. The only way international states work is if there's a single majority that excludes outsiders (like the Arabs used to and sometimes still do for example.)
> They don't bring it down "eventually" this happens very quickly.
You are redefining terms to "win", m8.
Entire lifetimes within the safe confines of an empire is not anyone's definition of "very quickly" in English. Please educate yourself on what you are talking about and do better research.
There is no point in engaging in a one sided conversation with someone who is either being dishonest with himself or truly misunderstanding the topic in question to the point phrases are needed to be redefined to some absurd parameter measured in 60+ year spans as "very quickly".
Please understand you really should learn something on these topics rather than quoting stuff you clearly show a shallow understanding of that is unique to a certain political group and not even the intellectuals in that group would argue as you have.
*EDIT TO REPLY*
> I agree entire lifetimes would not be very quickly. I'm arguing once you have a plurality population these things tend to blow up within a generation.
?? but Americans were Christian white male conservatives as the majority during the generations in question and were arguably more conservative as even people like the Irish and Italian were "outside parties" like you view jews.
Are you arguing the American situation deteriorated multiple times in the 20th century (1900-2000) and somehow resurrected its Empire each time?
This is just a bizarre conversation at this point but I'm morbidly curious.
Btw, the official definition is 1890s to now for the American Empire as you are talking about. So...idk how you square it failing in the ??present day?? and later with multiple generations being born and dying during that time period.
I agree entire lifetimes would not be very quickly. I'm arguing once you have a plurality population (where the populous are all considered peers) these things tend to blow up within a generation.
> Keep calling normal things people like or need fascism and you'll find yourself surrounded by legitimate fascists.
M8, it is hilarious how easy conservatives trying to normalize that stuff in the wild is.
I was just curious since you were trying to play the "I am playing devil's advocate" card when you are clearly a card carrying conservative.
Look, idk how you are concluding this kind of craziness but it _is_ craziness from a fact based point of view. I'm only opposed to conservatives in the US for three reasons:
1) They are against my access to life saving medical care, potentially forcing me to flee the country to where I can afford it.
2) They are very comfortable courting anti-Jewish extremism in the US which is why I have to keep track of which bigoted asshole cares I'm jewish so I know who will try to knife me in the back professionally/personally.
3) They are less fiscally conservative (when it comes to the debt/deficit) than Democrats with their tax giveaways, guaranteeing the eventual failure of the United States financially. Similarly, their economic policies are sprinkling fairy dust and pray the long term consequences away.
As a supporter of Israel (the part that isn't hurting the cooperating palestianians anyway), a fiscal conservative, and so forth, it is bizarre to me I have no party in the United States but the Democratic Party to vote for.
> Once again you argue my point for me. A place for everyone is a place for no one.
And you agree people like me should be removed from the country (even thought we are citizens) based on the kind of solutions the Nazis used before they moved on to camps.
10/10 glad the guy berating people for calling people fascists openly admits he is one.
EDIT:
Just noting for posterity, the guy agrees the above is correct in his current response but "wants to know what solution I have" as his only critique.
I'm done, no point in arguing with an admitted fascist/nazi adjacent type.
> How do you propose the problem is solved? Ban every kind of conservative from all the tribes you'd like to incorporate?
> That would still include you by the way since you'd like to conserve Israel. That's not a moral failure on your part that's just how people work and it's why international states can't work.
I'm just amazed how easy he took the bait to confession pipeline.
How do you propose the problem is solved? Ban every kind of conservative from all the tribes you'd like to incorporate?
That would still include you by the way since you'd like to conserve Israel. That's not a moral failure on your part that's just how people work and it's why international states can't work.
EDIT: Regardless of how you feel about it your proposed policy has a clear contradiction. You can dislike it, you can call me a nazi for pointing it out, but if you don't have an answer to this then your idea simply isn't practical for everyone else to adopt.
> EDIT: Regardless of how you feel about it your proposed policy has a clear contradiction. You can dislike it, you can call me a nazi for pointing it out, but if you don't have an answer to this then your idea simply isn't practical for everyone else to adopt.
You feel I should be exiled from my home country for the same reasons nazis were killing people when that planned failed. That isn't calling you a nazi, that is you being a nazi.
The fact you are in denial isn't my problem, I'm just glad you are dense enough to admit it to people.
EDIT:
It is hilarious the guy who ignored the point repeatedly now freaks out and calls me "emotional" about how _but I'm not a nazi_ when he agreed with Nazi talking points multiple times. When you agree with Nazi talking points but don't like the label, yeah buddy, you are a Nazi.
The only "emotion" I'm feeling is hilarity and how oblivious you are to your own talking points.
Think about things like agreeing people should be forced out due to medical conditions, etc. and obvious basic eugenics shit you agreed with earlier. And ask yourself, why am I suddenly panicking about this when it was fine a few posts ago?
Hint: It is because you know you lost the argument on you being a nazi. Maybe facts will make you realize your feelings are not facts. Maybe not, but it was worth a shot to try to make you see the way the world sees you.
> I really hope you to acknowledge this at least for your sake: your own ideology is not self consistent and ultimately excludes you regardless of what it means for everyone else.
You feel my right to buy reasonably priced (on a national crowd based level for my age) insurance is an ideology and that I should be exiled from my country because of it.
So yeah, buddy, that alone makes you a nazi. I don't need to point out the other talking points so you can't hide later from the truth when you get called out again because you didn't realize how many times you repeated you were a nazi in coded language.
> EDIT: I know it's hard, but you really need to focus and think clearly here, think carefully about the ideas themselves. If you don't things are only going to get worse for both of us.
Huh?
My ability to not die is something I need to think about?
Nice edit but it still points to you being a nazi if you think that is a true statement because my medical conditions make me unprofitable in a for-profit healthcare system.
The hilarious part is you really are just tripling and quadrupuling down on eugenics as a key part of your position. Which makes you a nazi. Congratulations! You win all the prizes!
> EDIT2: I feel like, for your sake, I should add that I stopped caring about how "the world sees me" long ago. I've been called a nazi just for living normally and peacefully with people around me, the word has no meaning to me any more. I'd encourage you to stop getting hung up on it and focus on the practical realities of today not things that happened in another country with other people a hundred years ago.
Yeah but you aren't being truthful here or you'd have stopped responding and trying to deflect the clear pro-nazi/eugenics statements in a public forum.
You can lie to yourself if you want but the truth is when you go to bed, you know deep down, you care. Or you'd have stopped this shit show when it was 50/50 you were a nazi. Instead you kept insisting you weren't while insisting you were right on the basis of eugenics among other reasons.
You didn't even have the sense to claim I wasn't right in calling you out for being pro-eugenics and pro-denial-of-care-for-minorities-to-force-exile. Because it is your belief system and too integral for you to refute until its pointed out to you repeatedly.
> EDIT3: I did acknowledge that. The problem is that insisting on what you're arguing for degenerates rapidly and is not practical. I even tried to steel man your position for you with the idea that maybe you could exclude conservatives (both from the original majority population and the eventual plurality) and pointed out how that would ultimately result in the same mass exile problem you're upset about.
How did you steel man position exactly? How is the fact the majority of the EU can deliver what I say is a critical and life threatening problem or the fact the US currently works that way (but the GOP consistently attacks it and has repeatedly failed by very thin margins to force me out of the country due to medical costs)?
You can lie to yourself all you want but I'm already on 6+ month waiting lists for basic care with private for-profit health insurance. I am better off _today with insurance_ on flying to Mexico or Malaysia or whatever for healthcare. And you want to make it worse for me. When the rest of the world doesn't have this problem. Somehow its magic to you and you insist its not a viable philosophy to have medical care for people like me.
Once again, not being pro-eugenics, is proven to work in the real world. You are a nazi. I'm done because you can't seem to deviate or defend your position in any rational sense beyond "My feelings tell me this isn't true"
> I don't think you're quite cut out for political discussions. You seem to be very hung up on rhetoric and emotion and unable to really think about how things scale. I don't know how to help you with that. Maybe read some philosophy books and spend more time around different people?
All you have is ad hominem m8. It is hilarious as it is sad.
> I actually know people in two countries with public health care: Colombia and Canada. I've watched both of them use it. It's far worse than anything in the US (the way Colombia in particular treats immigrants IMO is absolutely horrifying.) But if you think you'll get better care in a place like that you should go ahead and see for yourself what it's like.
I've gotten medical care in Malaysia, Portugal, England, Germany, and so forth.
I got into these places with something as simple as a broken nose faster than I'd get through the line at any American hospital. And got better and cheaper care.
You can lie to people who don't have real world experience but not me, buddy. Good luck out there but all you seem to do is lie or use fellow conservatives as sources. I'm not sure which is worse.
The sad fact is, I'd actually want to vote for conservatives but just not US ones that are against my access to health care out of self preservation.
You seem to be convinced I'm some ideological foil to conservatives by saying you shouldn't be able to lie and propagandize. You should probably look inward and ask yourself why you need to lie to people to get through the day.
The sad fact is, outside of local ambulance service in places like Malaysia or Colombia, most of these places have private hospitals for a Westerner that is quite affordable. Yet somehow, just allow them to exist adjacent to public care never seems to cross a cosnervative's mind to admit such things exist. (Hint: They benefit from the same economy of scale as country-wide buying of medication and so forth. Combined with lower labor costs for similar nation-wide markets with guaranteed demand, it actually has been shown to lower costs but you wouldn't ever have researched real information to figure that out)
> That's a little wild to hear from someone who's called me a nazi half a dozen times and seemed to think that changed the validity of his argument.
You agree with Nazi talking points. There, does that make you happy?
>Malaysia
They do, its called a golden visa buddy.
>England
> No. They do not have a functioning public health service. I don't know much about the other two states but if you put England in that list it makes me question the validity of the rest of it.
Yeah, buddy, please unplug from conservative outlets.
>The sad fact is, outside of local ambulance service in places like Malaysia or Colombia, most of these places have private hospitals for a Westerner that is quite affordable.
> So you're in favor of private health care? I'm still not even sure why you've even brought all this up. Furthermore if you can afford private health care than why is public health care "a matter of self preservation?"
Are you not understanding I basically have to leave to have affordable access to emergency care if Project 2025 (or even the proposals that failed in 2016) gets their way?
Idk what hole you hide in but that has to contain some amazing powers of self-deception.
Good luck, I'm just done man. You can't be this oblivious without hiding in some conservative bubble that bans all dissent.
>All you have is ad hominem m8. It is hilarious as it is sad.
That's a little wild to hear from someone who's called me a nazi half a dozen times and seemed to think that changed the validity of his argument.
>Malaysia
I forgot Malaysia just lets anyone immigrate and call themselves Malaysian. It's crazy how accepting Asian countries are. They're all such a great example of how you can simultaneously have public health care and open borders.
>England
No. They do not have a functioning public health service. I don't know much about the other two states but if you put England in that list it makes me question the validity of the rest of it.
>The sad fact is, outside of local ambulance service in places like Malaysia or Colombia, most of these places have private hospitals for a Westerner that is quite affordable.
So you're in favor of private health care? I'm still not even sure why you've even brought all this up. Furthermore if you can afford private health care than why is public health care "a matter of self preservation?"
Yes, if we focus on actions, the action of causing public disorder is a glaring example of things we do not want in civil society. We also do not want tanks in our streets. Both seem like bad things, honestly, so I'm wondering how we got here.
It's fine if you personally don't support more extreme actions. Time has shown again and again the most important thing civilians can do is to refuse to condemn other civilians who are acting in the same goals as you. We must focus on why everyone is acting in those goals: we have armed, masked men invading communities, who have made attempts at trafficking children, stolen away elderly women, detained citizens accused of no crime, and are being incredibly disruptive throughout the country.
That article says is that one kid has been trafficked, since the 1980s. That's the most you can use it to demonstrate. It certainly does not support KittenInABox's claim.
These events are not the opposites you're implying. Both are being directly caused by the same person! Trump is needlessly escalating the situation, to create a divisive crisis, for which he will force his "solution" of even more chaos and destruction. This guy turns everything he touches to shit, which should have been strongly apparent to everyone based on his first administration. Too many people were unwilling to put aside their gripes with the government and listen to their fellow citizens telling them this is exactly what would happen.
"dunno" what? There are many causes for why people wrote off their country and turned to Trump. I understand, sympathize, and even agree with many of the frustrations! But the fact remains that people listened to the siren song of a hollow con man instead of their fellow citizens telling them what a disaster his first term was, and his second term would surely be. There are root causes for that too, and they are endlessly debated in threads about social media polarization and the like. But in the context of this topic where American troops are now pointing guns at Americans, it is important to keep the focus on Trump and the need for him to be deposed.
What alternative do you see to the current events? The only one I see is remaining quiet and tacitly supporting fascism.
This guy is not going to stop on his own. He's attuned to operating in a business context where there is some other singular entity who might back down when the damage from the chaos gets too high (or he backs down when the pain is too high for him, like with tariffs). But in a society based on individual liberty, backing down is not on the table until the whole society has been subjugated.
Longer term, if we actually manage to get through this to meaningful elections, one would hope that the abject failure of Trumpism would make enough of the electorate wary of more "strong" man fascists promising easy answers. This should have happened after his first term, but Trump's main skill is deflecting blame and Covid was one heck of an excuse.
And as far as underlying issues driving polarization and disconnect from reality, those are going to be there regardless of my statements.
The top level comment was me wondering how we got here. This has nothing to do with what we should do now. You decide that for yourself, but I see wisdom in looking at how we got here and trying to not do more of that.
There are many directions to come at that from, discussing most of them will end up insanely political and polarized, and they have been discussed quite often in other threads. So it's a bit weird to be throwing that open-ended question out in the discussion of a specific alarming escalation - as if we have just been missing some simple answers that could have been done to pull up from this, or avoid it in the future.
I'd say we are at the point where the people who enabled the fascists just have to accept they were wrong and take their licks for the damage they've caused to our country. Similar to the bits of soul-searching that are going on amongst Democrats about the overbearing DEI groupthink. Will some small reconciliation grow into a trend and create a lasting deescalation, or do we have to continue working to actively reject the extremism? Let's worry about that when the mad king no longer has the reigns of power, lest good-faith attempts hold us back from getting to that state where any of this might matter.
This is a well-understood and popular problem.
I've tried the five-whys on this, and always end up at unnecessary escalation and righteous idealism (not by any particular party or person, just kind of by everyone). But the book Righteous Mind does a better job on this issue than I ever will.
> Clearly if these people torching the cars are waving foreign flags, they are a foreign enemy and thus the military is appropriate, no?
No. Torching cars is already a crime and the city and state were already restoring order. The kind of flag waved while a car is torched does not change the calculus. Critically, a US citizen does not cease to be a US citizen because they waved a foreign flag; we have free speech in the United States, and flag-waving is protected by the first amendment.
Also worth noting that none of this would have happened if the regime didn't deliberately provoke it in the first place.
Honest question: how does this calculus change when the person waiving a foreign flag on a burned out vehicle is actually not a citizen and armed with a weapon.
Liberty or death. If sometimes in this country a non-citizen gets away with burning a car, and the only way to prevent is is drag-net mass gestapo enforcement actions by federal police, then, I choose the country with no gestapo enforcement actions and occasionally burnt cars.
Apparently LA agrees with this fundamentally American idea.
For the most part, the protestors are peaceful, not rioters, and there are plenty of scenes of police and national guard being marshaled against them. In one clip, a couple dozen police officers opened fire on a kid with a skateboard. In another, they open fire on a journalist giving a live report. In another, they're beating back protestors holding signs.
And "reestablishing order" is an obvious farce, because the Trump administration was deliberately provoking this conflict by sending in masked agents to abduct people and at least in one instance, running over a protestor. The administration has been consistently escalating the conflict, which is not something you do to "reestablish order", but it is absolutely a tactic of 20th century authoritarians to acquire emergency powers which they then use to prevent elections, jail political opponents, etc.
> The action of having a military parade for the president's birthday is expensive and doesn't benefit us.
The funds for the "United States Army 250th Anniversary Parade" were allocated before President Trump was elected, during the Biden debacle. The fact that it falls on June 14th is what is called a "coincidence".
Be careful about blindly accepting propaganda as fact.
> The funds for the "United States Army 250th Anniversary Parade" were allocated before President Trump was elected, during the Biden debacle.
Um: "The Army’s 250th birthday celebration has been in the works for two years, Army officials said. But adding a parade was the Trump White House’s idea, so planning for that began only two months ago." (Emphasis added.)
I would agree with your "coincidence" explanation if it weren't for the consistent pattern of "coincidences" in which Trump does something dictator-like and right-wingers rush to his defense with "coincidence". It's just a coincidence that all of these foreign diplomats invest in his meme coin or some family business and then suddenly are granted meetings with the president! It's just a coincidence that Qatar sends him a luxury airliner and his rhetoric about Qatar does a 180 degree flip! It's just a coincidence that he tried to interfere in a presidential election! It's just a coincidence that he consistently claims Article I and Article III powers for himself! It's just a coincidence that he's rounding up people and sending them to foreign prisons!
The date is entirely unimportant. I suppose it's just a coincidence that Trump is following project 2025, step by step, since day one¹. And also a coincidence that many of the people who wrote project 2025 are in the Trump administration²³. It's just a coincidence, but of course trump didn't and doesn't know anything about it. Stop playing stupid.
The date is exactly what was being discussed. I was responding to the mischaracterization of "a military parade for the president's birthday", which is factually inaccurate. Plus, the plan was made during Biden's term.
> I suppose it's just a coincidence that Trump is following project 2025, step by step, since day one
He's following Agenda 47, which was published on his campaign website. He stated he agreed with some of Project 2025, but not all of it.
It's unsurprising that some involved in writing Project 2025 are working for the Trump admin.
"They're eating the dogs. They're eating the cats."
That was the president lying on a nationally televised debate, the purpose of which was to lay the groundwork for exporting poor people who were here legally.
The term "create stories" in this context does not mean made up the story it means create a story out of the report the way journalists create a story out of a news event
Even if Trump was just relaying local racist rumors (he wasn't, it was entirely fabricated), would he be justified in it? There was absolutely zero evidence of it, and there still isn't.
It's just a lie in service of fueling hatred toward the most poorest people in this country. Fascism 101.
The mayor of the town (a Republican) came out and straight up said Trump was lying about his town. The only people reporting it could barely point to the town on a map.
Maybe not "get rid of" but plenty of other fingers are pointed at them. They get "free housing" (which they fill with drugs and kids), they get "free food" (which they use instead to buy alcohol), they get "free cellphones" (which they use to run drug rings), etc.
It's usually about how the poor get Foo for free, which everyone else has to pay for, and also about how they misuse Foo for nefarious reasons. The commons then get riled up, either because "Hey, why do they get free housing when I have to spend tons of money?" or because of all the nefarious things they supposedly do.
If people say the "free Foo" being offered, I wage many would choose to keep buying better quality Foo. These people are not offered luxury. It can barely be considered essentials.
I agree with your point, but food stamps can be used to buy drugs and alcohol... Buyer generally pays ~50% cash value. Very common for addicts to hand the EBT card over to dealer on the 3rd, but the vast majority receiving assistance use it honestly.
When you say "they" are you talking about the local US citizens doing these things, because "they" are doing it too. Comments like yours that word it so that it sounds like all crimes are being committed non-citizens which is such a fallacy it's laughable.
I used the word "they" on purpose, because the target seems to change often. It might be lower class, it might be immigrants (illegal and even legal), it might be $racial_minority, political faction, etc,. As long as it's a group that people can blame, it works.
> we should try to make conditions better for everyone such that fewer people are poor
Explain how work requirements to qualify for Medicaid makes conditions better to ensure there are fewer poor people. Doesn't this just harm people who can't work due to disability, and practically ensure they will never get better enough to work and contribute to society?
Sure saves a lot of money for wealthy people though.
But isn’t Medicaid just healthcare. Being able to go to a doctor when you are sick or injured doesn’t really sound like coddling someone, “able-bodied” or not. Maybe I am misunderstanding and Medicaid is actually some new fancy handbag.
The government isn't subsidizing businesses when it gives low-wage workers welfare. Those workers would be working just as hard without the welfare, if not harder.
Most here aren't arguing it's exceptionally difficult to find some kind of a job or education opportunity to meet the requirements. We're mostly arguing about adding all the additional bureaucracy to add additional requirements that will need to be documented and validated. And arguing that many who should be eligible for exceptions will end up not eligible because of some paperwork or bureaucratic oversight.
There is about the same amount of money allotted to help states stand up new programs to validate these requirements as the federal cost of Trump's birthday party.
The obvious answer is education and vocational training programs to help people develop skills that are needed today. Unfortunately, the people most affected by the changing demands of the modern economy are also people who have been negatively polarized against education.
Ahh, so you fell for the spin. What about the "able bodied" laid off in the economy and no one wants to hire? What about the "able bodied" who just graduated and can't even get an interview because everyone wants 5 years of experience? What about the "able bodied" who can do basic math and realize that $8/hour can no in fact pay for rent that sky rocketed to $1200 a month?
Business and removing jobs and being rewarded with tax breaks while American workers can't find anything. Whose fault is that?
What you just described isn’t spin. The requirement clearly applies only to the able-bodied. You’re saying being able-bodied doesn’t guarantee you can get a job—so you're arguing the requirement is unfair. I completely disagree. In this economy, anyone can get a job. Welfare—whether it’s taxpayer-funded medical care, cash payments, or food stamps—should never be unconditional. It’s funded by people who are compelled under threat of imprisonment to pay taxes. No one is entitled to it.
Putting a burden on people who aren't able bodied is harmful to them, because it means you accept some threshold of fasle negatives -- people who aren't able bodied but who will not qualify for the support. What will they do? They can't work because they aren't able bodied, but they can't qualify for assistance because the government doesn't think they're broken enough. That person will become homeless, and then their existence is essentially criminalized in many places.
For the pragmatic- and not -empathetic-minded, means testing still creates a huge bureaucracy, making useless government jobs and costing money to chase down people whose lives already suck
Costs that will be borne by the state and become unavailable to actually assist and help people.
Bonus points: we'll be able to remove people that should have had eligibility but failed to get the right paperwork in place. And we all know those who are severely disabled and unable to work are always excellent on filing their paperwork correctly and on-time and always make required meetings.
> Coddling people like this isn't doing them any favors.
Yes. Yes it is.
Pray you never find yourself in a situation where you can't work anymore or rely on anyone. Because under Trump's, this means guaranteed death. In the richest country ever.
Trump, speaking to his nephew about their disabled son [1]: "Maybe you should just let him die"
I look for the message of helping the poor, but it’s frustrating that politicians can evade it and their self-attained devotion to Christianity go unchallenged.
The phrases to look for are “infested” and “purge”. Some politicians consider low-income to be a character of a person or a group (all the way up to a nation). Those same politicians laud language from Hitler about infestations and metaphors of racial purity.
That was an answer to a trick question. The inquisitor was trying to get him to admit to defying Roman rules so he could get him imprisoned. And he gave an answer that the coins that have Roman emperor faces on them belong to the emperor, implying people could stop using those coins.
Even the most generous pro-government take on that passage would have him believing that the state should be separate from the church, so church doctrine should not be imposed through state decree.
Did the historical Jesus really say that? He wasn't one of the religious authorities who had a deal with Rome. Many Jews didn't like Roman occupation as seen by the revolts. If Jesus had issues with the Jewish authorities, he probably did with the Roman ones as well. Apocalyptic Jews would have believed God was coming soon to overthrow the kingdoms of the world, which were controlled by evil spirts.
You willfully ignore the 'Big Beautiful Bill' which will make the poor poorer, taking Medicaid from millions of people and making the richest of the rich richer with tax breaks.
> Former President Donald J. Trump, in an interview broadcast Sunday, doubled down on his description of immigrants as “poisoning the blood” of the country, language that echoes Hitler.
> “Why do you use words like ‘vermin’ and ‘poisoning of the blood’?” Howard Kurtz, the media critic and interviewer, asked on Fox News. “The press, as you know, immediately reacts to that by saying, ‘Well, that’s the kind of language that Hitler and Mussolini used.’”
> “Because our country is being poisoned,” Mr. Trump responded.
"we should try to make conditions better for everyone such that fewer people are poor" and similar arguments is how the government scams you and everyone else into their racket. You always had the option to give to the poor, you didn't need a mob going in your pockets to do that.
"But muh roads and hospitals and police." Lol, that is covered by the ~0.5% of my salary I pay in property taxes and a little extra in use taxes and county and state sales tax. The federal portion, what do I get? Massive subsidies for people who stick their boot down my throat, military provocations that make us all far less safer, the worlds largest prison population (and near the top per capita). None of it makes sense -- the stuff that matters was achieved with the feds spending 2% of the gdp (and I might add, pretty much open immigration).
"Helping the poor" is one of the worst mistakes the USA ever undertook.
History shows we've historically been pretty shitty at doing that at an individual level.
> The federal portion, what do I get?
Ignoring FICA, a large chunk is debt servicing, public health, earned income tax credits, food assistance, SSI, science programs, global trade security, and more. Most isn't "people who stick their boot down [your] throat", unless you're someone looking to abuse workers or food production or happens to be outside in LA these days.
In the context of finding an enemy, the admin literally tried to recreate the premise of the Michael Moore film Canadian Bacon before realizing it just wasn't sticking. I'll bet they took it as a challenge.
That's disingenuous - all policy is inherently political. Reducing the tactics of fascism to politics is no different than the claim that all politicians are the same.
It's no mistake that the War on Drugs and the War on Terror were both radical increases in authoritarian power, both of which were implemented by Republicans as part of right-wing approaches to addressing both perceived and real threats.
Yes, those are political objectives, but the entire point of calling them out as fascist is to distinguish them from other anti-fascist political objectives which seek to reduce or constrain the power of the state, or to strengthen human rights guaranteed by the state.
Voted for overwhelmingly by both parties. Obama also started wars in new countries. Clinton expanded war on drugs despite criticizing it. And all dem presidents failed to deschedule cannabis and other relatively harmless drugs.
> both of which were implemented by Republicans as part of right-wing approaches to addressing both perceived and real threats.
In between republican presidents there were also Democrat presidents and they did zero to put a stop to any of them. Zero. Using your logic above, both types of presidents are fascist in nature since they followed the same policies.
What I am saying is that when the state takes power from the people, it (almost) never gives it back. Just like with laws, repealing them is a gargantuan task and again, almost no will to do it. Taxes, they go up more then they ever go down.
Reagan's amnesty, like the others, was a bait and switch. The DC/corporate establishment said, "Let us amnesty the ones that are here, and we'll get control of the border and stop the flow." After getting their amnesty, the second part never happens.
That's led directly to the current mess because it taught people that the most important thing is to get into the country, regardless of legality, so you could be in place when the next amnesty came along.
True. Maybe the worst act of Trump's first term was commuting the sentence of a kosher meatpacking company executive. He was in prison for bank fraud, but he should have been there because he got busted for having hundreds of illegals working in Postville, Iowa. We should be going hard after the corporations and their executives who hire illegals and deporting the illegals.
Commuting the sentences of wealthy offenders was and continues to be a tactical decision. It aligns the interests of the wealthy behind Trump, especially folks who are wealthy and willing to break the law to gain or grow their wealth.
Commutation and Pardons under the current regime are signal about what behaviour will be forgiven, ignored, or even outright rewarded.
LOL. When ICE detained 900 employees from Tyson Foods who were undocumented, many provided them with written instructions from the company on how to fill out onboarding, payroll, and tax paperwork if they were undocumented immigrants, i.e., the company was perfectly aware and actively facilitating.
When they had their big press conference to announce the 900 arrests, reporters asked about plans to investigate the company based on the documentation found.
"That's not in the scope of our investigation. We do not have plans to do that at this time."
To no one's shock, they've never found time to do it since, either.
How about starting with getting the largest republican border state to require private business to run a free simple check of the persons work status?[0] The federal gov has had a free system for that for years. But they won't and they wont create an enforcement agency to check that state government offices comply. I am sure they can find it in the 11B immigration budget to audit some businesses. They won't.
Undocumented immigrants are too important to the economy, to the tune of over 17.7 billion worth in 2005. (in Texas)
Instead they do things that look great (and check the most important box): border wall (that the US gov pays us for), security forces (that the US gov pays us for), mandating that the sheriffs work with fed agencies (that the US will reimburse them for). But passing a law that requires businesses use a free quick government service to check documents and a small agency to do random audits -- that's to too burdensome on the state's bottom line. Any one that thinks states like Texas actually wants to eliminate undocumented immigration at this point, has simply been hoodwinked.
No, it was an honest understanding that rounding up and shipping off millions of people can not be done in a way consistent with what conservative (against a federal paper checking sweep of the nation), Christian (love thy fellow man) America was at the time. Sadly we are a much different country now and put our desire to punish 'the scary other' above checks on government power or any pretence of following Christ's teachings.
People wouldn't have continued to come if Conservatives hadn't continued to employ and build business models around undocumented labor. Not addressing the root cause of the problem, employers willing to reward people for coming to the US, is the problem with the Reagan amnesty. Nothing else would have stopped immigration like stopping the reward for immigration would have. But conservatives are addicted to their bottom lines/business special interests and couldn't bring themselves to do what needed doing to stop what they term a 'foreign invasion'. At least the dems do it out of compassion and don't see it as an invasion. The conservatives just allowed the financing of what they see as a 'foreign invasion' for a small share of business special interest dollars.
It's honestly mind boggling that some third of the country is convinced about immigrants "coming for their jobs". Meanwhile we choose to punish the immigrants coming in instead of the companies for hiring illegal immigrants for sub minumum wages.
Really shows the priority of some people here. It's clearly not getting a job.
> it taught people that the most important thing is to get into the country, regardless of legality, so you could be in place when the next amnesty came along.
That is a strange thing to think is to blame. I'll take a guess that you do not live in a (south) border state.
People were taught they could come into the country and (1) find work that (2) paid more than not having work -- when they got paid at all [0] and still less than US workers [1] and the state not only allows it but encourages it. Why? There continues to be a chronic shortage of construction workers to fill jobs. Our housing situation would be far worse if the GOP immigration stance was anything more than a dog and pony show. [2]
The state with the longest south border has refused to require businesses use the fed e-verify system to check work id's, everyone knows they use fake ids. It's not some scandal that Reagan or the "Dems" recently caused. It's simply just the way it always has been. Makes for great rage bait though.
But, we do appreciate all your federal tax dollars paying us to "get tough on immigration"!
Texas, again, failed to pass a bill aimed at conducting a "study of the economic, environmental and financial effects of illegal immigration on the state" -- just the cost mind you. The last study in 2006 found that they contributed more than they cost. Deporting the "estimated 1.4 million undocumented immigrants living in Texas in 2005 would have cost the state about $17.7 billion in GPD." [3] They have since refused to do another study. They know mass deporting immigrants would devastate the economy and growth.
For the undocumented that's been here awhile, it's just another day. Maybe they get unlucky and it's their turn to play a part in the "tough on immigration" hoax. They'll be back in a few days because the state and their employer needs them and no one will bat an eye when the cameras are off. Which is why we should be taking note of the extremes Trump is going to, there is something else to it; else his buddies in Texas would have passed those bills last month.
The error is that you're ignoring the actual statistics in lieu of what Fox told you. I can't make a horse drink, but feel free to look up the immigration statistics in Biden's term vs trump's first term.
> Trump would not have won if Dems had not escalated illegal immigration 2020-24.
Do you actually have any source to support your claim? I mean, MAGA nuts have been swearing for over a decade that there was a torrent of illegal immigrants arriving each day into the country, and that somehow democrats were to blame, but even after Trump's fascist push with it's forced deportations of everyone including US citizens without due process the numbers barely reached 100k. And now we're seeing Trump's ICE thugs mobilizing a small army of agents to assault Home Depot parking lots?
The Congressional Budget Office estimated [1] about 10.4m immigrants during 2020-2024, more than 3 times more than under Trump's first term, and of which most was illegal immigration.
The numbers cited by Republican scaremongers like Stephen Miller were probably inflated and derived from CBP border encounters, rather than on how many people were entering the country. But there does seem to have been a significant surge, partly thanks to new immigration programs that made it easier to entering the country while seeking asylum. Deportations seems to have remained high under Biden.
Ah yes, you're doing the meme: if ANYTHING happens it means "fuck the Democrats"
Sure, it couldn't possibly be anything else like inflation after COVID (which happened globally) that caused incumbents to lose around the world. No, Dems just needed to get this one thing right and they're to blame for Trump. Sure.
The meme is still applicable to MAGA voters. For example, Trump could start a riot at the Capitol and it would be Dems' fault for not doing enough to stop it.
How has Trump improved our lives and country in his first term?
And how is he improving our lives now?
Trying to understand how you as an HNer, who I’m assuming applies logical / critical thinking, considers facts and evidence as important, can vote for someone who a) is a convicted criminal b) absolutely not interested in improving our lives.
Which countries are using the military to enforce laws? Which countries are denying due process? In which countries is the executive branch ignoring court orders? In which countries is the executive branch claiming the powers of the legislative and judicial branches?
I have no doubt these countries exist, but I'm deeply skeptical that they are imitable.
> And no country gives whatever it is you're calling due process to illegal immigrants.
Virtually every European country gives due process, even in illegal immigration cases. And probably more importantly, the US Constitution requires due process even for cases of illegal immigration.
> Obama deported hundreds of thousands without any legal hearings
But they had due process. He didn't round people up in the streets without the ability to contest government claims of illegal immigration.
I'm not from America, so just a casual observer. Isn't it possible to do a simple database check with some kind of ID? Or biometric? Where I'm from both are registered for ~everyone so it's fairly simple to do a check. The point being that if the database does not have the record they must have been an illegal?
No, the US does not have a database of citizens or a national ID. There's been long-standing resistance to such a thing, as part of the general American distrust of centralized government and what a tyrannical government could do with that information. That resistance has even been bipartisan, coming more from the left or right depending on who is in power. So there's no quick database check.
However, in practice, if you're a citizen, it's pretty easy to prove it. You'll be carrying forms of state-issued ID and you'll have a paper trail that makes it obvious. There's rarely much ambiguity over whether a particular person is here legally or illegally, as much as some might like to pretend there is.
Hmm. Makes sense. Then couldn't the government have tapped into one of those processes, making it clear to everyone that the people that are being deported are illegal (or not) and saved themselves all the court cases?
Yes if their goal was to deport people who immigrated illegally. No because the goal is to remove due process. The next step is to deport citizens convicted of crimes.[1] Then prosecute political opponents.[2]
The US doesn't keep biometric data on every citizen or lawful resident, and the government can trivially lie or make a mistake about whether they did the database/ID check. This isn't a hypothetical, many legal residents and some citizens have been swept up, and without due process they have no ability to say, "I'm a legal resident" or "I'm a US citizen". They can just be shipped off to an El Salvadoran prison camp where the president can claim, "oops, I can't get them back because they're not in our jurisdiction any more".
> Which countries are using the military to enforce laws?
A number of European countries have military or paramilitary forces used for law enforcement when it comes to things such as quelling riots. Here is an example.
Uh, no. This is about illegal detainment of people (some of whom are citizens) by federal law enforcement. The overwhelming majority of citizens want a functioning immigration system (and a functioning criminal justice system). What I and others won't abide is law enforcement violating their oath and illegally detaining and deporting people.
Obeying illegal orders to attack American citizens on American soil is certainly something, but it isn't law enforcement.
If this were actually about law enforcement, we would have passed the bipartisan border protection / immigration bill that has been on the table for eons.
That's because of racism for two hundred years that made it so there was only one gym for the kids in that area.
If it's a true story. Your comment history reads like conservative talking points fabricated by someone pretending to be black or pretending to care about black people. Specifically not like a black conservative.
Op is describing very real cost shifting that happens. Certain corporations get large benefits from migrant workers but they are human and have to live somewhere so the cost of housing and feeding them gets shifted to adjacent communities. These adjacent communities get hit twice because migrant labor also decreases salaries for locals. People who are in the high earning buckets benefit from the cheaper wages and abundant work force for construction, landscaping maid services.
Op should blame the people in the high earning bucket. It is ridiculous to blame the poor migrant workers in this situation - its not like they are living high on the hog. They are, by your description, victims as well, employed only because they can be treated more poorly than local people.
Op is in fact criticizing the policy those people benefit from. Just because the migrants are used as human pawns doesn't mean the policy critique is invalid.
Funny, I stayed at a hotel in a small town in Texas recently that was across the street from a construction site. The hotel owner said that since Trump was elected that occupancy was way down. Lots of the workers at the construction site were undocumented and stayed at the hotel. Since Trump's election, nothing had happened at the construction site and the hotel's future was in question.
> These adjacent communities get hit twice because migrant labor also decreases salaries for locals.
If the migrant labor is filling in labor gaps, then no, this is not true. Seems the evidence also disagrees: "Consistently, economists have found that an increase in immigration rates does not cause a drop in wages for U.S.-born workers" [1]
Please provide evidence that your statement is true even in any instance, let alone generally true. The economic impact of migrant labor is quite real, and positive, in terms of taxes and money spent back in the community.
I think this is an example of different branches of government working against each other. The feds want them here working as invisible slaves hence the crackdown. The local government has to appease the vocal activists so they put them up in public spaces to the detriment of other uses.
Sorry, but this is both hyperbolic and so low on details it's hard to understand the problem. Migrants, so you mean basically homeless people? Low income, so a big chunk of the problem is that minimum wage is not enough to survive without help? (That applies to everyone, not migrants) What does being black have to do with that? What do you mean the kids have nowhere else to go? There are so many kids with no after school programs or any kind.
Perceived enemy? Even the most liberal of cities touting themselves as “sanctuary cities” had to pivot and declare they simply cannot handle the influx.
12million immigrants came into the country during the Biden administration. This type of load on the system does not go unnoticed. NYC for example was drastically transformed.
They cannot handle it with the resources being given. This is true for the red states like Texas and what not, the social services we do have struggle to handle the load. But we're choosing to let these systems struggle. We could solve it if we chose to do so.
In 2020 our population was ~330 million people. Even if 12 million people immigrated to the United States, that's an influx of 3.6%. In reality its probably closer to 4 or so million, so really more like 1.2%. We're supposedly the wealthiest country on the planet with so much opportunity and freedom and yet we can't handle adding far less than 5% of the population as migrants in five years? If that's the case, we're probably the poorest country on the planet, not the wealthiest.
And that's a population of millions admittedly including many minors and major barriers to thriving, but overall far fewer elderly or disabled people than the general population. Boosting immigration is only an economic drag if you structure the asylum/immigration process to prevent people from working, which we do now seemingly to punish communities that accept immigrants.
Yes, basically this. Americans have to hustle all day in the war against "line go down". Our agency is not allowed to be put to caring for other people but the illusion the 1% alone prop up society.
So sick of Americans empty-analysis and ignorance of externalities their society puts on others; overseas colleagues see it as white Taliban. They don't see people in streets over tariffs screwing up their lives, so they've started to tell their politicians Americans (as in the public) are not reliable actors. They don't realize it, but the American publics own credibility is shot, not just their politicians.
I have taken to cutting off friends and family and shit talking anyone in public that wants to socialize; do the politic work to put me on the hook for their healthcare, otherwise I refuse to bother with their existence. Withdrawing from people's lives is a forcing function for self reflection.
You all keep me off the hook caring you exist. I just have to help make line go up. Anything to do with you all as individuals is not my responsibility. That's the choice of the American people. I'm here to profit, not give a fuck you exist.
That's what my fellow Americans taught me through their feckless political effort. Illusory idea some invisible hand gives a shit based upon the gibberish from history they read by people who were wanking their literacy rather than inventing indoor plumbing.
This does nothing to change the facts of my statement.
And even then, we could choose to do something about that. We could do more to help people settle all across the US and be well supported to succeed. But we don't. So instead, we have people crowd the areas where we turn a blind eye to hiring illegal labor and have the social impacts concentrated there and then refuse to actually do anything to help those social costs.
But these are all things we choose to do. We could choose to do something else.
There's many towns & small cities that have been revitalized by immigrants communities. Lewiston Maine, Charleroi Pennsylvania.
America is really struggling to support & enable a people, to create a social safety net. Opportunity is low. But often when immigrants come in from other places, they will put in enormous energy, that can bring some very sad towns back to life.
Once again, we're choosing to not have these social supports or social services. It's a choice. We could do it if we wanted, after all we're allegedly the wealthiest country on the planet but somehow can't seem to afford anything.
> How do you decide who goes where?
I'm not suggesting we force it to be a top-down forced decision. I'm often a pretty free-market and empowering people to make their own decisions kind of guy, when it makes sense. And sure, people will tend to cluster more in large cities, that happens even for non-migrants. But in the end, we're doing practically nothing to encourage people to spread out that social cost (or worse, encouraging for forcing the clustering), and that doing nothing is a choice. And then we're doing very little to support these places experiencing such large social costs, which is once again a decision.
All of this is stuff we could do differently, we just choose the status quo (or now choosing violence!) that doesn't work well for a lot of us. Sure seems to be making some people exceptionally wealthy though.
We could’ve done something but we ran out of money, the previous generation built up too much debt and sold off the future so now we ran out of the resources.
Yes, I probably would have made the same argument about the Irish, Italians, Germans, etc. Did they not demographically replace the English, Natives, Blacks? Would the percentage of the US that is English, Native, Black not be higher if there had not been mass immigration of Irish, Italians, Germans, etc. last century and before?
> Did they not demographically replace the English, Natives, Blacks?
In the 1800s? No. You realize how much happened with the great expansion and all that? The population squeeze that happened from the civil war? I find it laughable you'd be arguing for the Native American tribes in the early 1800s. Once again, showing your racist ideology. Thanks for further confirming such a thing. America is for white Protestants only. Got it.
Thanks for confirming to you, me, a white Christian American is not welcome here and shouldn't have been here in the first place. Because I'm not really the right kind of white Christian.
This is why I laugh whenever anyone lauds Singapore for stuff like public housing.
They literally have an immigration schema, if you want permanent resident to citizen track, that requires immigrants to match the ethnic makeup of the country's citizens.
So you have all these white public housing advocates, talking about how great public housing is in Singapore, but they leave out that you have to have PR or citizenship to get it, and they've accomplished making all that possible by having like half their population non-citizens who pay taxes for housing they're ineligible to get and then the people living in the public houses are ethnically guaranteed non-replacement.
> So you have all these white public housing advocates, talking about how great public housing is in Singapore, but they leave out that you have to have PR or citizenship to get it
I find such things to be incredibly backwards and abhorrent. To think if you lucked out in some genomic lottery to be allowed to have extreme privilege in society, this sounds like a fucking nightmare
There are a lot of cool and neat things about Singapore but damn do a lot of things feel like the kind of things that keep me up at night.
But honestly, the modern GOP is closer to enforcing such requirements than any opposing party.
You should start campaigning against the ethnic discrimination happening by statute within US borders against fellow US nationals or citizens. American Samoa won't let ethnic outsiders own the vast majority of the land, and much of Hawaii non-reservation state lands are reserved to 'the blood' of the people of the right race, no matter that its to the exclusion of filipinos and other races subjugated under the Hawaiian Kingdom which was the pretext to begin with.
I definitely don't know enough about the history of such issues to make a deep and reasoned take and thus will mostly shut up until I read more about it. I only vaguely know what big news sources have said about such things in passing.
But as a quick take I think the land pressures of native Hawaiians is radically different than the land issues of white Christians in Texas. And it's not like there's any deeply historic religious connections to Arlington Texas to white Christians for a quick example is there? The worry if cultural elimination is probably radically different at a quick glance wouldn't you agree?
Cultural elimination though real is largely a fraudulent right IMO, it is imposing 'positive' rights like the right to not have your culture eliminated. That's not how rights work, you have the right to practice your culture but not force other people to be practicing yours.
I'm generally for open or at least non-discriminatory immigration. A few sticking points
1) Discriminatory settling patterns are well established as imposed law in the US, i.e. 'hawaiian home lands', American Samoa, Saipan, etc. The first step here is to make ALL US nationals and citizens equal, before we can really even hope to start making immigrants equal. Given limited political capital this would be my #1 priority to burn that capital on.
2) Welfare is essentially incompatible with open immigration and pushes the populace heavily towards favoring middle age wealth foreigners -- that is basically europeans and white English speaking countries. We could probably make it a little less 'racist' if immigrants were forced to permanently disclaim any access to public funds.
3) Immigration is justified under human and properties rights, freedom to go wherever one is invited or has ownership, and basic human liberties. Immigration in practice in the US heavily relies on use of public facilities, which are paid for by the tax payers -- as property owners you would be violating their rights if US persons cannot control foreign access to the public properties they are forced to pay taxes for. i.e. there should be zero immigration controls whatsoever crossing from one ranch to the other on adjacent parts of the Mexican border, but when you use public resources you are now becoming a trespasser if the property owners don't consent.
> Cultural elimination though real is largely a fraudulent right
You start off by declaring it's a fraudulent right but then spend hundreds of words arguing for a framework for your own fraudulent right
> Welfare is essentially incompatible with open immigration
One might then question the rest of their ideals about their morals and what Christ has charged us to do and wonder if racial stability is the standard or helping people is the standard. But I guess you've already decided on such a thing.
> Discriminatory settling patterns are well established as imposed law in the US, i.e. 'hawaiian home lands', American Samoa, Saipan, etc.
I'd say laws in island territories have vastly different concerns than laws on the mainland especially when considering land and cultural concerns. They have vastly different pressures, don't you agree? Like what were going to argue only white Protestants can own land in Montana? Pretty different circumstances here than a tiny island with religious circumstances.
I'll address the third point since it is the only one I don't see as a fundamentally irreconcilable difference in subjective opinion that cannot be proven factually.
The ethnic discrimination laws in America Samoa, and to a lesser extent Saipan (I think for them more about control, they have no problem with Chinese running roughshod operating all kinds of shady and illegal business, it is probably the most corrupt place in the US) are aimed towards stopping cultural elimination. The case is compelling for Samoa, the others are just naked racial discrimination as the local populace seems to have settled on the fact their culture has pretty much been eliminated as anything beyond a footnote and they're going to cash grab all they can out of the remains which I guess is just the usual American dream.
(Hawaii used to go even further, and racially discriminate in voting, but racial discrimination in voting was struck circa 2000 with dissent written by the now deceased racist Ruth Ginsburg in Rice v Cayetano. Not long after that 'non-'Hawaiians also finally got the right to equally run for office).
American Samoa is particularly aggressive about it, their government and IIRC even the feds strongly imply or command you can enter for 30 days as a tourist without further authorization, despite the fact that established case law and the American Samoa Bar training to internal lawyers teach that US citizens have the right to permanently settle and work in American Samoa. I did some research and could not find any case of a US citizen being 'deported' from the territory unless they were wanted for crimes elsewhere but they do their damnedest to make it sound like you can be.
I'm sorry but pointing to some rocks in the Pacific as the overall idea of ethnic diversity measuring stick of the United States seems pretty pants on head kind of mentality. I don't understand how I could take anything else you argue for seriously. Thanks for continuing to show me who you really are, I'll be sure to take notes.
Amazing how fast you backtracked. Point to actual cases of parts of the USA going hard on racist policy preventing demographic replacement which based on your rhetoric is something you pretend to be against, and your response is more or less lol actually it doesn't matter, it's just some rocks.
No matter that previously you were pointing to places as small as Arlington Texas.
You don't actually care about eliminating these discriminatory policies. You just have your racist motives to apply it inequally.
I've been highly consistent in my statements. I'm in no position to pass judgement on whatever is happening in American Samoa or Hawaii as I'm definitely ignorant to the issues. I'm only speaking from a high level comparison of the issues, which is they're vastly more land constrained than the mainland US. So to me, an ignorant person not read into the debate, it seems we can't really make hard rules and comparisons. It's comparing to extremely different situations, easy to see even without me having a lot of deep knowledge on the topic.
And it really shows your ignorance too, acting like Arlington is some small place. There's tons of land around here in North Texas, ample for whoever to make a new story and new life. The people making up most of the population have only been here for like a hundred years, tops. Any kind of long historic claim to the land outside of Native American populations are a farce. This isn't true for small islands in the Pacific which probably have a vastly more complicated history.
But it sure shows your character that you bother to deeply look up such a legal basis for racist ideology. Good work broadcasting your hard work.
And yeah, I'm the racist for arguing anyone should have the ability to partake in American prosperity. Meanwhile you're the non-racist advocating for enforcing racial land rights across all the US. Got it.
When I want to take part in the prosperity of American Samoa, you just don't have all the facts and hey it's just a "rock." When an American Samoan wants to come to Arlington, which is far more land constrained in population density, then suddenly you lose your decision paralysis. It's exceedingly and crystal clear your ulterior motives. This is just naked racism.
I posted this comment [1] in reply to the other participant in this subthread but it applies equally to you. Please make an effort to observe the guidelines when participating on HN.
True or not you had to wade through at least two flagged comments to get to mine. You really have yourself to blame if you didn't want to continue reading. You were warned twice but sought this, you wanted it.
So how about this: go fuck yourself, and your nauseating appeal to your ivory tower techie faux-academic attempt at guidelines. Nothing about me is 'equal' to this self righteous racist piece of human garbage, although I admit his behavior is the very best argument as to why his culture should rapidly be overshadowed in Texas.
The guidelines apply to everyone equally. We don't care what topic you're arguing about or what side you're supporting, but still we get accused of being biased in favour of something or another every day.
This is only a place where people want to come to discuss things because we and others put effort into keeping it that way. If you're going to participate here, and if you're going to expect others to be held to a high standard, we need you to hold yourself to a high standard too.
Acting like Texas is space constrained as much or more than American Samoa just really shows how much you've twisted reality to try and match your racist ideas. Texas is many things, it is not space constrained.
Once again, I don't really know what's happening there. This is all conjecture based on what's obvious for comparing an island nation to a giant and mostly uninhabited Continental plain. If there's more people in North Texas, we just build more homes. We just drag the highway out a bit more. We just rezone to allow a bit more density. There is plenty of land here that's entirely empty and devoid of development. An island nation doesn't have that. If they get pushed out of what's there, where do they go? The bottom of the ocean? Seriously, think for two seconds if your racist brain will allow it. And I acknowledge, I don't know the policies, I don't know what's really happening there. But I can at least acknowledge the societal pressures going on are massively different.
> This is just naked racism.
I agree, your points are naked racism. Looking for some legal reason to put race restrictions on land generally across the entire United States is absolutely a racist position to take which seems to be the main position you're arguing for. Whether or not the policies on American Samoa are racist (they might be, I've agreed I'm ignorant to them!) isn't a valid reason for bringing such racist policies to the mainland US.
Both commenters have broken the guidelines in this flamey back-and-forth, which is exactly the kind of thing we're trying to avoid on HN. In particular you've both made swipes at each other, and engaged in ideological battle. Please take a moment to read the guidelines and make an effort to observe them in future.
but context was set to just 'immigrants' . Why would i go up the chain if the context was reset ?
Are you saying 'immigrants' anywhere in this thread automatically implies 'illegal immigrant' . Thats really confusing to me.
> Are we instead saying that anyone not born in the US but comes in is an enemy?
this is ridiculous twisting of my comment. I was just correcting record about population increase from immigration. population increase doesn't happen just from immigrant visas, ppl on non-immigrant visas stay in the country often for decades.
Then let me clarify, I was intending to talk mostly about illegal immigration and asylum seekers, the kinds of immigrants person I was replying to was probably mostly talking about. These are the immigrants people seem most concerned about, as they typically have a higher rate of relying on social services and welfare at least in the short term. It is these kinds of immigrants which impose the largest initial cost on society to allow in.
But sure, somewhere around 4-5 million illegal/undocumented immigrants, add another 10 million or so non-immigrant visas (which I agree, tend to have people end up staying for lots of other reasons), we're still somewhere around 15 million or so migrants with most of those having some kind of stable job lined up before they arrive. It's still less than 5% of the overall population increase with these migrants, but now a lot of these in this addition are largely economically self-sufficient from the get-go (those with work visas). You're not really changing my point at all.
In the end we're just too poor to deal with a generally pretty minor increase in population over several years while simultaneously seemingly being the wealthiest nation on the planet? How does that make sense?
Also, your claim of:
> usa issued 10 million non-immigrant visas in 2024. not counting 5 million tourist visas
is factually incorrect. The US issued around 11.5 million non-immigrant visas, of which 8.5 million were visitor visas. So not a total of 15 million visas and excluding the tourism its really about 3 million non-immigrant not-tourist visas.
> in 2024, in Fiscal Year 2024, we issued 11.5 million visas, and that’s a world record for us, breaking all previous records. Of these 8.5 million were visitor visas.
There were 10,438,327 non immigrant visas. Out of which there were 5,902,426 b1/b2 and 29,286 B1.
looks like i din't count ppl with BCC in visitor visas.
> In the end we're just too poor to deal with a generally pretty minor increase in population over several years while simultaneously seemingly being the wealthiest nation on the planet? How does that make sense?
again, i didn't say this. i was just trying to correct the record.
I honestly have no say in "how many is too many" . i have no idea how to even think about that to come up with a framewrok to answer that question
> Annual net migration — the number of people coming to the country minus the number leaving — averaged 2.4 million people from 2021 to 2023, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Total net migration during the Biden administration is likely to exceed eight million people.
Why try to minimize it or be defensive about the figure? The Biden administration is proud the number is high. Do you want the number high or low?
From ChatGPT:
> So, while 10–11 million CBP encounters is the most solid official figure, when you add gotaways, overstays, and parole entries, the total number of people likely entering without full authorization could reasonably be around 15–17 million during the Biden presidency.
That page is a joke. Ignoring reality does not manufacture a new reality. Four million might be the legal migration count, hard to say.
We had caravans of tens of thousands of people constantly streaming into the US for four years. The video evidence is out there for everyone to see. News outlets that did not engage in hiding reality and promoting falsehoods had crews at the border every day for four years collecting video evidence of what was going on.
If you care about understanding the truth, go to the US Customs and Border Protection website and look around. You can also cross check with Homeland Security and other official sources. And, yes, you will find data that predates the Trump administration...so you can't blame bias. For example, if I remember correctly, there were over THREE MILLION unauthorized entries in 2024.
Imagine how long a caravan with an extra 8 million people would be. I mean, I’ve been to a Huskers football game and seen what the exit looked like, and this would be 100x more.
If such a thing were being reported by multiple reputable sources, I’d be less inclined to roll my eyes at the preposterous idea.
We had an average of 250K people per month coming into the country for 48 months by land an air. The relevant government agencies have published the statistics, even going back to Biden era reports. You can believe anything you want, but thinking that it was only four million is a delusion.
OK, even if I play your game and we say it was "only" four million (ridiculous). Here's the problem:
That means 88K people per month for 48 months breaking our laws. Four million people entering the country without permission has a very simple name: Invasion.
Even worse, unless we create 88K new jobs per month for 48 months, these people are, by definition, unemployed. Our published unemployment statistics somehow conveniently ignore this fact. And, the other fact that we ignore is that the US has not created an additional 88K jobs per month over the 48 months of the Biden administration. The best we did was to recover the 10 million jobs lost during the pandemic.
At 12 million, that is 250K new jobs required to support them. The US is NOT AT ALL anywhere close to that growth rate, not even enough for 88K new workers per month.
That aside, as a resident of Los Angeles, I have seen the increase in crime (a neighbor's home, for example, was broken into by a couple of illegal immigrants). In addition to that, these destructive demonstrations full of Mexican, Guatemalan and Salvadorian flags are as tone deaf as can be. Throwing cinder blocks at police officers on the road and highway (surprised nobody died) isn't going to do anything positive for anyone's cause, justified or not.
This is madness and it has to stop. What's worse, is that these people are protesting (and wanting to protect) criminals. The government of the state and city are also on the side of criminals. Here's a partial list of who was detained in Los Angeles and who these demonstrators want released into our city:
A DHS post from 2025 is not reliable information, just reading the headline should be enough to notice that. The number of unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. has been more or less stable for the last 20 years: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/22/what-we-k...
What percentage of the 10 million recovered jobs were taken by incoming immigrants?
People died and permanently retired during the pandemic. It's possible the 10 million number represents a restored workforce; it's also possible it represents a changed workforce.
If the latter, that illegal immigration allowed the US to recover faster than it would have otherwise and the lesson from history is we're a stronger nation for easing immigration restrictions.
> illegal immigration allowed the US to recover faster than it would have otherwise and the lesson from history is we're a stronger nation for easing immigration restrictions.
There is no question whatsoever that immigration, legal and done correctly, is a force for good. As a legal immigrant, it understand this very well.
In fact, I understand the entire process very well, including the illegal immigration part. You see, when I was six years old, my parents overstayed their tourist visa in the US. They were then told to leave and my entire family left. Two years later, after going through proper channels, we obtained permission to come to the US legally.
I truly do not understand how people twist themselves into a pretzel to justify illegal entry into a country. Actually, it is worse than that, the only country where they seem to think this is OK is the US. Every single person who is for illegal immigration in the US understands why you cannot just move to New Zealand, for example, to stay and work there without permission. They also understand New Zealand's points system for the selection of who is granted permanent residency. Not in the US. Of course not.
Proponents also say that not enough people are let in legally or that it is too slow. Two points to be made here. The entire planet wants to come to the US, so, yeah, it will take a couple of years (as it did for my family). Second, when millions of people enter illegally, the annual quota for legal immigration cannot be increased. Doing so would exacerbate the problem. So, illegal immigration actually hinders changes and growth of the legal immigration system.
Finally, proponents of illegal immigrants are of the same ilk as those who propose raising tax rates for everyone except themselves. And, when they do include themselves, they don't lead by example and simply send more money than they owe to the government. Same with immigration. How?
I break into your home with my entire family while you are on vacation. I start paying the bills; power, water, insurance, heck, I even pay the mortgage.
Can we all stay in your home forever? You are welcome to come back from your vacation and share the home with us?
Of course not. Nobody of sound mind would accept such a situation.
How is breaking and entering into a country --any country-- justified and elevated to almost be a virtue?
While not a perfect analogy, of course, this does illustrate a fundamental idea: You don't get to grab things (your iPhone, car, home, residency, benefits, etc.) by force and keep them just because you did. If the world worked that way we would all be walking around with a firearm strapped to our leg and blood would run down every street in the nation. Violating these fundamental rights is nothing less than destructive to society.
> Every single person who is for illegal immigration in the US understands why you cannot just move to New Zealand, for example, to stay and work there without permission
Yes, of course, and this is not contradictory. "American Exceptionalism" means different things to different people, but broadly speaking: as a nation built of immigrants, there's no particular "right" time to pull up the ladder and say "That's enough immigrants now." Most people who support this position (not all, but enough to be concerning), when you peel back the veneer, support it because they want America to be "A nation of X" and America facing the reality of more people with different world experiences threatens that goal. There's a reason the protests in Charlottesville turned from being about the history of the South to chants of "Blood and Soil."
Regardless of what the law says: the reality on the ground is the American economy is relying on the labor provided by the undocumented, and they are our friends and neighbors for years running. Sometimes, when a law bends too hard against what the people actually want, you ditch the law. A government fails to grasp that to its peril; hopefully, it only results in tea wasted in the harbor.
> when millions of people enter illegally, the annual quota for legal immigration cannot be increased
Untrue; these are rules we make up for ourselves. Congress could set the number to zero tomorrow. Or infinity. It's entirely up to us.
> Finally, proponents of illegal immigrants are of the same ilk as those who propose raising tax rates for everyone except themselves
I think we'd have to agree to disagree. I, for instance, am in favor of raising taxes on myself and people in my tax bracket, as well as basically everyone above my tax bracket. No strong opinion on lower brackets. And I do send more than I owe to the government. And buy bonds.
Your meta-argument is "These people don't see the problems;" I think you are mistaken. People see the problems, they just think they're better handled with community service than with truncheons and planes to some other country.
> I break into your home with my entire family while you are on vacation. I start paying the bills; power, water, insurance, heck, I even pay the mortgage.
> Can we all stay in your home forever?
I mean, that's an argument about "squatter's rights," not immigration, but for what it's worth... yes? The law in many states does recognize your right to keep using the land if you develop it and it's de-facto abandoned. If I own so much land I can't use all of it and you find a better use for it, that's on me.
The nature of immigration is so divorced from this analogy as to make it worthless. Try this one instead: You come here, build a house, raise a family. Five years later, I come along and try to kick you out because you didn't cross an 'i' on some paperwork in 2019. Is this just, or should I leave you the heck alone because you're not hurting anyone?
> You don't get to grab things (your iPhone, car, home, residency, benefits, etc.) by force and keep them just because you did
I'm sure you're not arguing "America should be returned to the Native Americans..." But that is the argument you are making here. Are you sure you mean it?
... FWIW, I'm sorry your parents were forced out. In an ideal world, that shouldn't have happened. That would have been, what, roundabouts the Reagan presidency? Reagan's administration set us on the path to where we are today by deciding a lot of laws on the books suddenly needed enforcement where little had happened. To all our detriment.
Well, time to exit this thread. The problem with HN having become a monoculture forum is that it is impossible to have conversations. I never downvote or flag anyone, particularly those who disagree with me. The same is not true on the other side, if you don't tow the line you get attacked, downvoted and flagged mercilessly until you shut your mouth. So, yeah, you win. Have a good day.
Oh, my mistake. They got got by Nixon. Nixon set up the playbook that Reagan ran with on immigration. He needed to make your parents the enemy to sew up Southern votes. To be honest, it probably would have worked for another four years had he not been so paranoid that he spied on his political opposition and got caught out for it (back when that sort of thing mattered in American Presidential politics).
I appreciate seeing your vantage point on this topic. While we do not agree, It is helpful to see other people's takes.
Just in case you misinterpreted my story, I think it was 100% correct and proper for the US to ask my family to leave, apply for permission to come back legally and finally do so. My parents did not do the right thing by overstaying their visa and working. In other words, I do not agree that they should have been allowed to stay.
When they did obtain authorization they had to agree to not be a burden to US taxpayers for five years. I also agree with this.
Legal and orderly immigration is essential for societies to function. This is true everywhere on this planet.
The people chucking cinder blocks and protestors are unaffiliated. That is guilt by association, a logical fallacy.
Seeing immigrants and perceiving an increased in crime, and citing that they are related is post facto rationalization fallacy.
Let's see... what other logical fallacies are in here. Oh.. people emigrate and die, so the accumulation of numbers is not valid nor does that handle double counting.
AFAIK a strong US economy generates around 250k jobs per month. Further, there were more jobs created under Biden than were lost during the pandemic.
I'd also suggest if this all were a big deal, illegal entry ought to be elevated from a civil infraction. It is more severe in the eyes of the law to drive 25 hour than it is to overstay a visa.
> The people chucking cinder blocks and protestors are unaffiliated.
I didn't say they were and you have no clue if they are or are not. Even if you were personally there to demonstrate peacefully, no have no clue what forces are operating behind they scenes. And we know that part is true. One way to put it is that aspects of this is organized crime. They will eventually be discovered and held to pay for what they have done in a court of law.
> Let's see... what other logical fallacies are in here
Not a logical fallacy, but the most incomprehensible development over the years is that somehow large numbers of people think it is OK for people to just pour into the US as they wish, no controls, no admission criteria, nothing. And yet, the same people understand that this is not acceptable anywhere else in the world.
Clearly there's nothing I can say to help people who are firmly chained inside the cave looking at shadows. The indoctrination is way too powerful. Some of us try, but, sadly, the only way this insanity will pass is for people to gain clarity on their own. Not sure what it will take. Time will tell.
Perhaps this is your idea of what this country needs to become?
> Not a logical fallacy, but the most incomprehensible development over the years is that somehow large numbers of people think it is OK for people to just pour into the US as they wish, no controls, no admission criteria, nothing
Actually, it's the other way around.
The US southern border was very porous for most of its history. Around 1986, a combination of moral panic about Latino influence on the culture and concerns about drug trade enabled the Reagan administration and Congress to tighten immigration law into something approximating the structure we have today in terms of enforcement (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5049707/).
This backfired spectacularly. Let people bop back and forth to Tijuana, and they bop back and forth to Tijuana. Force them to struggle to cross the border, to declare nationality, start evicting them if they over-stay... And now they have reason to choose and to fight for the choice. The result of closing the border is undocumented immigration went up (secondary statistics strongly suggesting that this was actual immigration, not enforcement resulting from more tracking of undocumented immigrants).
Regardless of the law on paper, under-enforcement was the behavior of the land for nearly a century, and this new regime is an experiment that has strongly suggested the law was sourly anti-human to begin with.
(As a meta-comment on law: you're talking to a generation that watched the War on Drugs happen. Don't be surprised Americans have soured on the notion, in general, that law and morality are closely interlocked).
Why then bring up the cinder block issue if it's unaffiliated?
> Some of us try, but, sadly, the only way this insanity will pass is for people to gain clarity on their own. Not sure what it will take. Time will tell.
I'd say it would take sound arguments. Meanwhile, your arguments are not sound. You did not address what I wrote. To rebut a 'guilt-by-association' criticism, you said "I didn't say they were [affiliated]". That confirms the criticism.
You did not address the post-facto rationalization criticism at all.
I also saw a person in a pokemon costume too. Until we can have some sound arguments and facts, it's very much a choose-your-own-adventure situation. Are we here to just yell at each other? I personally do think the country needs to maintain rule-of-law (with notable mention of the 1st amendment), and the full rule-of-law goes for everyone, police, protestors, and opportunists.
I understand your position. There is nothing I can say that will change it. Only time and life experience will, maybe.
Not here to yell at you or anyone. Having lived in multiple cultures and countries across the world, I bring to the table a perspective that most Americans simply do not have. I have no clue if you are American, BTW. I have had the experience of being in fear for my life while detained by military thugs as a teenager. I have seen and lived the pain and misery leftist ideologies bring to populations first hand.
Any immigrant who has actually lived these realities cannot comprehend how it is that the US does not simply laugh these people off the stage. And, to be sure, the extreme right is just as destructive, yet that is not a reality in the US at all (despite the media pushing that narrative into people's brains day after day).
So, like I said, nothing I can say to you or anyone else, that much is obvious. There are things you learn about society and ideology that can only be learned from experience. Maybe the US needs to live through a leftist utopia for a period of time for everyone to come out smarter. That would be tragic, of course, but it might also be necessary. If California does not scare the shit out of the rest of the nation I don't know what will.
California is scaring the shit out of people, but not for the reasons you seem to suggest.
Rolling in the National Guard and Marines on a peaceful protest is, quite frankly, un-American. It's massive federal overreach that has led to violence in the past. Would be nice if the current administration knew its own history.
They were throwing molotov cocktails, rocks, scooters, mortar-like fireworks, bottles with urine and chemicals and who knows what else. They were destroying and looting stores and vandalizing everything in sight. I don't know how many Waymo cars they destroyed (it looked like five). Far from peaceful.
The moderate or peaceful majority is never the reason for enforcement actions. These are triggered by a militant and violent minority, some of whom are actually paid to cause disruption. So, you have a couple of choices. The first is to do nothing and just let it burn. We have seen that happen before. The second is to bring forward an overwhelming show of force to dissipate that violent element (and bring them to justice). That's what happened.
This is no different from control system theory. The ideal critically-damped feedback loop does not exist when dealing with mobs. Either you crank up the dampening early or you pay the consequences of doing it too late. We can't have entire business districts destroyed by thugs. You have to stop them as soon as possible. As it stands, these animals caused a massive amount of damage in just a couple of days.
Yesterday showed the contrast very well, there was a peaceful (truly, not the fake "peaceful" pushed by the media while shit is burning) protest that seemed to number in the thousands of people. Perfect. No problems. That only happened because thugs (the minority) learned within a day or two that they would suffer severe consequences for their actions.
The third option is proportionate response, which the administration danced right over. Why? Why roll in the federal forces when the governor says it's not needed? They didn't show up to protect those shops or Waymo cars anyway, so that's irrelevant; as per the Secretary of Defense's own testimony today (https://youtu.be/10itk-W8DV4?feature=shared&t=128), they were dispatched to protect law enforcement attempting to enforce immigration law against a city that does not want their citizens kidnapped off the street by an unaccountable government.
Violence happened, but not to any scale that makes a military deployment on American soil in peacetime make sense.
> This is no different from control system theory.
Rolling out the Marines is turning the `I` knob, not the `D` knob. It's teaching protestors "if you're gonna show up, come armed to deal with soldiers." Incredibly dangerous in a country where that firepower is in so many private hands.
I don't know when we became a nation so cowardly that we have to point military firepower at our own citizens. When strangers are turning out into the streets to thwart federal enforcement, maybe the problem is the law not the criminals?
The sources you consider "reputable" lie all the time...by cherry-picking, obsfucating, mis-direction, distorting, half-truths etc. They of course, flat-out lie too quite regularly too.
This is a bad argument because it could very easily go either way. Post any source of yours for the 12 million number and I'll just as easily say it's fake too.
> Ignoring reality does not manufacture a new reality.
I wish we could tell that to Trump.
>We had caravans of tens of thousands of people constantly streaming into the US for four years. T
Okay, and Biden deported more people than Trump's first term. Is that fact a joke too?
>go to the US Customs and Border Protection website and look around.
Okay, what am I looking for? The most recent news update was June 5th about building a wall in Arizona. I thought that 2016 narrative was over?
>if I remember correctly, there were over THREE MILLION unauthorized entries in 2024.
And
>In Fiscal Year (FY) 2024, there were 271,484 individuals removed from the US by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). This number represents an increase of nearly 90% compared to the previous fiscal year. This data includes removals by ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO).
And your talking points thrown out like some kind of analysis-ending gotcha have shielded you from seeing the truth. It matters much less that Biden was mentally unfit because responsibilities were delegated to advisors and a professional bureaucracy. That was the group project dynamic of our system of government that we took for granted.
Now that bureaucracy has been smashed in favor of autocracy, and we're suffering the other demented guy - not merely as a figurehead, but getting straight raw dogged by his rotting brain as he destroys what's left of our distributed economy with a national sales tax, orders the American military to attack American cities, and preps for a uuuuge North Korean style parade.
As Americans, we have a right to protest. That right does not go away when other people damage property, government property especially. Remember January 6, where there weren't even real ideals at stake but just a crowd riled up on fake news campaign propaganda that turned out to be utterly false?
When things do get out of hand, which is far beyond a few destroyed government vehicles, it is up to the local police forces to set the balance between restoring order and that still existing first amendment right to protest. Despite LAPD having been doing this just fine, Trump is illegally escalating the situation to look strong for the useful idiots still following him, to distract from his hissy fit with Musk, and most importantly to take the focus off his Big Ugly Deficit Spending Inflation Bill poised to bankrupt our country.
It seems like you need to have the realization that just because you've caught one tribe's media lying does not mean that you've found pure truth.
> your talking points thrown out like some kind of analysis-ending gotcha have shielded you from seeing the truth.
Typical. Diminish the other person by claiming that everything they say are talking points. In other words, they are mindless drones simply repeating what they are told. The minute you take that perspective the only thing you can believe is your own bullshit, because everything else is dismissed as talking points. Brilliant.
> It seems like you need to have the realization that just because you've caught one tribe's media lying does not mean that you've found pure truth.
I'll repeat what I said in another comment:
Having lived in multiple cultures and countries across the world, I bring to the table a perspective that most Americans simply do not have. I have had the experience of being in fear for my life while detained by military thugs as a teenager. I have seen and lived the economic and cultural destruction the left loves to use to control societies. They love the poor so much they multiply them. I have seen and lived the pain and misery leftist ideologies bring to populations first hand. No leftist society in history, anywhere, has elevated their population. Before you say China, that was done by the CCP grabbing onto external capitalist forces, without which they would still be an agrarian society.
To be sure, the extreme right is just as destructive, yet that is not a reality in the US at all (despite the media pushing that narrative into people's brains day after day).
Any immigrant who has actually lived these realities cannot comprehend how it is that the US does not simply laugh these people off the stage. Or, how it is that Americans are so easily duped by these professional manipulators.
There's nothing I can say to you or anyone else to have you see the reality that has been playing out, that much is obvious. There are things you learn about society and ideology that can only be learned from experience.
Maybe the US needs to live through a leftist utopia for a period of time for everyone to come out smarter. That would be tragic, of course, but it might also be necessary. If California does not scare the shit out of the rest of the nation I don't know what will.
> Typical. Diminish the other person by claiming that everything they say are talking points.
Your comment was better before you edited it to have this. The criticism isn't of you personally, it's of using a cookie-cutter argument that sidesteps talking about the actual topic. Do you not see how it's a non-sequitur to talk about now-out-of-office Biden's mental incapacity as a response to Biden being mentioned as the nominal figurehead for a set of policies?
> I have had the experience of being in fear for my life while detained by military thugs as a teenager
Is the problem here not the military thugs and the lack of individual rights and freedoms, not whatever political narratives are being professed by the people ruling with the thugs?
> I have seen and lived the economic and cultural destruction the left loves to use to control societies
Why is it just "the left" ? Why not all authoritarians ? It seems to me that authoritarians will use any ideology as a backbone for driving hypocritical "do as I say" power.
> To be sure, the extreme right is just as destructive, yet that is not a reality in the US at all
This is the crux of your bait and switch, where you've heavily focused on how bad the power-descendant "leftists" could be, but now give a pass to the different flavor authoritarians that are currently attacking our society. By my own analysis of seemingly undisputed facts, we have or have had:
- Tariffs further destroying our economy, implemented and dialed back with seemingly no actual rationale or goals besides shaking down other countries for personal enrichment.
- Significant destruction of the US bureaucracy which had been somewhat constraining authoritarian power. The problem with bureaucratic authoritarianism wasn't the bureaucracy but rather the authoritarianism.
- Destruction of US scientific research capacity because the communities doing the research had the wrong politics. And for what remains, the implementation of a right-flavored Lysenkoism.
- American soldiers in an American city pointing guns at American citizens exercising their first amendment constitutional rights, against the express authority of that state's government.
- International isolation through alienation of our long-term allies by telling them we might side with their adversaries instead, or even outright attack them ourselves.
- A weaker Dollar based on political instability
- A massive deficit spending bill on the table, continuing the long trend of Republicans complaining about monetary inflation while actually being the worst offenders.
If and when "leftists" get back into power, all of these liberty-destroying trends will be gleefully embraced and expanded under the banner of leftism "fixing" what rightism did, just as they're currently being justified as rightism "fixing" what leftism did. In reality it's all just individual-liberty-destroying authoritarianism. What has changed is that you are now gleefully supporting it.
> If California does not scare the shit out of the rest of the nation
How is this not just another cliche talking point? I've spent some time in LA a while ago. It wasn't for me - self absorbed, entitled, group-performative politics as a coping mechanism for societal problems. Affluenza where all the white people don't even know which end of a screwdriver to hold because they pay an immigrant underclass to do anything beyond changing a GU24. Oh, and you actually find yourself getting sick of sunny days because there is no damn weather. I could go on!
But "scare the shit" ? If you don't want to live in that culture and environment, don't go there? Despite my distaste, individual choice seems fine to me.
Apart from statements of Mayor Adams, could you list maybe 3 examples?
Trying to research this, I see examples like Denver and Chicago that have had struggles, anx did things like limit shelter stats to 72 hours. I found no examples though that were point blank: "we cannot handle this." Again, excluding mayor Adam's, perhaps you can help fill in the gaps with concrete examples and hopefully some verbatim quotes of "we cannot handle this?"
Chicago had taken measures to restrict migrant buses from dropping off migrants within the city limits so they were dropping them off in the burbs.
under the guise of some nonsensical rules "we want orderly drop-offs with 24 hr advance notice and only 2 migrant busses total in 24 hrs"
When you wrote "so they", I want to be sure that the 'they' refers to bus operators that were payed to drop off migrants in Chicago:
"The city says buses can arrive only during daytime hours so volunteers can be available to help, but bus drivers are responding by dropping migrants off in Chicago suburbs at night." [1]
The '2 buses per day' needs context. That could very well be a simple ask to not send them all at once. Further, the buses we are talking about were meant to overload the target the cities. They were sent with no notice, no coordination, just dumping a couple hundred or more people off into a random place in a random city. The ask therefore of "don't send all buses just on the same day", instead spread it out so that the volunteer resources are not overwhelmed and have a chance to work with and place everyone. I don't want to belabor this too much further, but I strongly suspect the desire for 2 buses max was a lot more about load balancing than it was rate limiting.
My impression, Chicago was more like "do this orderly, we can handle it, just don't drop off a couple hundred people all at once in some random place without telling us."
> I strongly suspect the desire for 2 buses max was a lot more about load balancing than it was rate limiting.
load balance with what exactly ? there is only one server thats rate limiting. oh you mean other servers being border states that aren't allowed to do similar rate limiting?
you asked "examples and hopefully some verbatim quotes of "we cannot handle this?""
I gave you an example of exactly that but you say you "suspect" its not that. Chicago doesn't need "volunteers" to handle intake. City spent 700M dollars to migrant housing, employing thousands of people in all sorts of roles. You think they are dependent on volunteers to man a bus intake point? That was all clearly a ruse. Migrant shelters were very unpopular with mayor's core constituency[1].
> do this orderly, we can handle it
It was not like that it was "we can only take 2 buses total per day any" It was clearly stated in city ordinance. Why are you twisting it into something else. Demand doesn't just drop off just because city decided to rate limit.
I think you are being higly disingenuous here.
Edit: ok i see why from your other comments. You were making a statement not asking a question about cities not wanting migrants.
Anyways, I don't have dog in this fight. I am telling you what the mood was here in south chicago at that time.
> I gave you an example of exactly that but you say you "suspect" its not that
Sorry, I should have been more direct. I do not see your example is a verbatim, "we cannot handle this." Your example strikes me as a: "please don't dump everyone on us all at once without telling us first. Spread it out some, give us notice, and don't do it in the middle of the night so that the people who would help are available."
> Chicago doesn't need "volunteers" to handle intake.
I'm just quoting the source, from the previously referenced [1]: "The city says buses can arrive only during daytime hours so volunteers can be available to help."
> Demand doesn't just drop off just because city decided to rate limit.
We agree there was a limit put in place. We have not yet established the intent was to rate limit vs any other plausible explanation. Even if load balancing were not the intent, that does not prove the intent was rate limiting.
OTOH, if we did know the total number of buses, then we could infer rate limiting. Notably if there are more than 14 buses/wk, then the 2 buses per day limit would be a rate limit. If it's 10 busses/wk, then a 2 bus/day max is not a rate limit beyond the 24 hour threshold, which is exactly load balancing.
> Anyways, I don't have dog in this fight. I am telling you what the mood was here in south chicago at that time.
I appreciate that. I can understand that there would have been a tense mood. The way people were 'shipped' to Chicago seemed intended to put high stress on the community receiving them.
Fair enough. I asked for 3 examples and we have differing impressions over just the one example you were able to provide. No other examples were provided. If you care to list other examples, I'll be willing to allow it as an exercise for future readers for whether they consider those other examples as valid as well and would leave the last word with you.
We had no problem in NY handling the influx. In fact we handled it so well that it angered the Republicans even more because they still gave immigration money to Texas AND had to give more money to the sanctuary cities. A problem they created and reaped the effects.
There were not 12 million immigrants entering during the Biden administration. Please provide balanced proof.
The only people in NY that claimed we couldn’t handle it were the Mayor who was trying to get out of his blatant corruption by appealing to Trump.
Texas didn’t struggle. They just created the appearance that it was an influx by immediately putting people on buses and shipped across the country then covering it in the media as if a bunch of buses driving somewhere means the border is under surge.
Funny how that seems to have ended magically as soon as Trump was elected.
As a resident of Texas, yes we are struggling with migration. I'm not trying to paint migration in a negative light, but we do need to do more in terms of ESL programs and better funding schooling and similar programs in migrant-heavy areas. It's hard to have well performing schools in areas where it's hard to hire a teacher that speaks the language of the children, our Medicaid programs are struggling to provide healthcare, etc.
We all point to Texas's education department as a laughing stock of results. But we expect Texas to bear a massive part of the burden of low income non-English migrants while using the same measuring stick to compare. And we act like this is fair. And don't get me wrong, Texas' legislature is complicit for the failure! We should all do more to support these communities.
I do agree, it's largely a self inflicted problem. But things need to change to properly deal with the increase in those relying on public programs. They're underfunded, understaffed, and under supplied. We're not setting people up for success, and it shows.
As someone who knows many people who were high-quality Spanish speaking elementary teachers in Texas, it's hard to find skilled and qualified people willing to work at that level working for the wages being offered when the cost of living is what it is and other jobs are offering considerably more.
When you can have 80% of the take home apay but have fewer parents issuing death threats while filling tacos at Taco Bell (and they pay for your community college to go elsewhere) it's no surprise teachers choose to go elsewhere.
Practically every school district in Texas is facing a qualified teacher shortage.
There is an issue around a general teacher shortage, mostly due to poor pay and treatment. It's hard to find teachers in general. It's been exacerbated recently in states like Texas, with proposed book bans and bans on teaching history. No one wants to get punished for assigning Brave New World or teaching about slavery (and teachers don't want to lie to kids about history, either).
Of course, the Trump admin has responded to this by deciding not to fund the TQP grant program, which in part trains and places teachers in high-need areas like STEM, special ed, and bilingual ed. This struggle is mostly a self-inflicted policy choice.
I can’t tell what kind of change you’re asking for. Your state refuses to raise wages and fund education. So instead inciting a fictional immigration crises is the acceptable change? Rounding people up and locking them up won’t solve the other self inflicted problems. It will just make money for the prisons.
> Your state refuses to raise wages and fund education
I'm saying we need to change our funding for education and protect workers rights. We need to crack down on those hiring illegal labor. I agree things need to change. I think the federal government should acknowledge we're being more impacted by immigration than many other states and help more with education and other social programs. I think it was a bad choice for us to not expand Medicaid back in the day and I think its bad we're talking about restricting it more. I'm probably not the person you're picturing in your mind, I'm going to go ride a bicycle to pick up my kids from school today and I've talked a few friends of mine out of buying a pickup truck.
> And don't get me wrong, Texas' legislature is complicit for the failure!
I'm fully agreeing at least half the problem is within.
> Rounding people up and locking them up won’t solve the other self inflicted problems
I agree! I don't think a lot of what Texas is doing is good!
I try not to make judgements based on where people are from. I was just seeking clarity in your statement. You don’t sound like a drooling troll interested in spreading national politicking. You sound like a concerned citizen of Texas and promoting education and expanding healthcare is how we get out of this mess for sure.
12 million is equivalent to the average population of 2 states.
The Democrats, who love to lecture everybody about "protecting democracy", are attempting to sway voter demographics in their favor through illegal immigration. California used to be a Republican state till it was turned deep blue through immigration.
And one-party states produce the worst, most incompetent politicians, who rise to the top not through the battle of ideas, ability and accountability but through political favors and backroom deals.
They have Silicon Valley and the largest population of any US state.
Gavin Newsom gets zero credit for either of these things.
You only have to look at how incredibly badly prepared for and managed the palisade fires were to see the level of incompetence under Gavin Newsom.
The topic is "Marines being mobilized in response to LA protests." The protests are about ICE rounding up people on suspicion of being undocumented immigrants. Whether a place being full of undocumented immigrants is actually a bad thing is extremely salient to the topic, especially when the President has decided it's worth pointing the military's guns at our own citzenry over.
It's fascism 101.