That guy had been overstaying a tourist visa for something like 17 years, and only started the green card process in April 2025. I don't think people who have overstayed tourist visas for 17 years should be eligible for any kind of permanent residency in the US, and would support laws making it impossible for someone in his position to get a green card or a work permit.
The fact that he is a white Irishman is legally irrelevant and enforcing immigration law in a race-neutral way is pretty un-Gestapo-like behavior.
Only because we made the "overstaying" an illegal offense. But there's no reason to -- if the guy was paying taxes the whole time, and never committed a serious crime, then we should be happy to welcome such guys, ramping up our GDP.
Don't forget that the paperwork costs a lot, if one has children, can get close to $10k.
Look at Spain -- instead of deporting "illegals", they just made them "legals" (those without a criminal record). Easy, problem solved.
You make it sound like deportations happen because of some mistaken legal wording. That's distortion of reality. A significant amount of US citizens voted for them to happen. I'm sure they heard about GDP many times and still found other reasons more important. It wouldn't be a wild guess to assume that they won't buy Spain as a good example.
America's a society built around finding people to punish and watching them get punished. I don't understand it, myself. It's like Roman gladiator fighting. But Americans seem to need to feel like they're hurting people who "deserve" it and they can't do that by convincing themselves nobody deserves to be hurt.
If he was paying taxes during that time period he was also committing a felony.
Sounds like B.S.
Anyone not eligible for a SSN can get a TIN and pay taxes to the IRS.
* https://www.irs.gov/tin/itin/individual-taxpayer-identificat... * https://www.nilc.org/resources/itinfaq/
And all those payments has contributed trillions of dollars https://www.cato.org/blog/cato-study-immigrants-reduced-defi...
I like this theory of paying taxes is a felony, tell me more!!
Levity aside, working on a tourist visa is a violation but generally isn't prosecuted as a felony.
Also the grandparent post said "They seized a white Irishman last October who had a valid work permit and was just about to head to his green card interview."
If he had a valid work permit I suppose this means that he was allowed to work and pay taxes on that work, in other words - no, he was not committing a felony.
All you need to pay taxes is an SSN. One can get an SSN in many ways, e.g. long ago on another visa. Same as income to pay on -- can be earned in many ways.
The first lady originally came to the US on a tourist visa before getting work as a model and eventually applying for a green card several years later. Musk came to the US on a student visa for a program that he never actually enrolled in. Even if you want to argue its "race-neutral", it's certainly not "proximity to the president neutral" so it still is very much "Gestapo-like behavior".
It's not Gestapo-like, and whatever is your position on political spectrum it's ridiculous to put things like Stalin-Hitler-Mao-Pol Pot repressions on the same level as anything happening in the US.