I hear "I'm not anti immigrant, I'm anti illegal immigrant" a lot. To which there is an easy solution: increase the number of legal immigrants we allow.
Instead we're doing exactly the opposite, cutting down on legal immigration as well. Making it hard for me to believe that it was ever about illegal immigration at all.
Even worse, with changes like this we are taking large swathes of legal immigrants and transforming them into illegal immigrants. It reads to me that a substantial number of green card applicants will now be subject to ICE detention.
The cynical take is that with US companies expecting productivity increases via AI, they need to protect the US workers from competition via foreign labor. The current administration was voted in with an anti-immigration mandate so this is consistent. The practical reality is that you are not safe on any visa, it can be terminated arbitrarily by the state department and your recourse is likely expensive and timely.
The current admin does not understand that our lead comes from immigrants. Sorry, but most Americans are kind of mediocre academically.
I do not understand why the "American First" MAGA crowd can't get it through their thick skulls that everything nice they have, including our technological lead, is built by immigrants that are just smarter than they are.
This is just an ego problem I suspect. It bruises the ego of MAGA voters to realize that immigrants actually are smarter, they actually do get paid more (and not because they're "taking the jobs" but because they are actually more desirable.)
> The current admin does not understand that our lead comes from immigrants. Sorry, but most Americans are kind of mediocre academically.
> I do not understand why the "American First" MAGA crowd can't get it through their thick skulls that everything nice they have, including our technological lead, is built by immigrants that are just smarter than they are.
Which specific Americans are kind of mediocre academically? Which specific immigrants are smarter than the average American and are therefore responsible for the nice things about America?
Not all American citizens have the same level of intelligence, nor do all people attempting to or actually succeeding in immigrating to the US. To the extent that "everything nice" including technological development is grounded in the average level of intelligence of the people currently inhabiting a country (which I think is a substantial part of but not the entirety of the explanation), this doesn't necessarily imply that immigration which isn't specifically gated on the intelligence of individual immigrants will improve a country along this metric.
And in fact the US has a huge number of legal pathways for immigration (including some like "immigrating illegally, having a natural-born-citizen child on US soil, and having that child sponsor your legal immigration decades later) that have nothing at all to do with how intelligent a given immigrant is.
And of course, immigration itself changes how "mediocre academically" Americans are, by changing who Americans are - an immigrant might eventually become a citizen; or if they don't their children born on US soil will be.
It's a simple matter of math. The USA has less than 5% of the world's population. It's statistically impossible for that 5% to be the smartest 5% in the world. Therefore, if we want the smartest people in the world, we have to allow immigrants.
The smartest aren't uniformly distributed across the Earth.
That's true. It is possible that the smartest 5% are all here in the USA. But it is statistically unlikely that's true.
You put words in my mouth. I don't claim that the smartest are clustered in the USA.
So your original comment was somewhat of a tangent. the point jedberg made is that it is in the interest of a country with a strong economic and academic base to welcome the smartest people from across the world, since it is unlikely that all the smartest people in the world are in the US.
Yes, but Jedberg makes it sound as though -- given that only a small fraction of the world's population lives in the USA -- the country has little chance of succeeding if it is to go without immigrants. I disagree, and an extreme example I could offer as a counterpoint is Japan: tiny population (relatively), yet outsized performance.
is your contention that this new process is too difficult for the smartest 5% in the world to figure out?
No? Not sure how you reached that conclusion. I'm just stating that the USA needs immigrants if we want to increase our median intelligence because we can't possibly have the smartest people in the world born here.
so in order to increase our median intelligence, we should make the process super easy?
Obviously those smart people are going to go where they feel welcome, rather than climbing through obstacles designed purely for humiliation and malevolence.
Yes.
Why should immigration be kafkaesque? It is in the US interest to have a pipeline of smart, hard-working, innovative people come to this country. The US is/was in many ways a great country for them to come, but we are not the only international destination for such talent. Why would we want to put up such artificial barriers to entry, if we agree on the premises I laid out?
The purpose of this is to discourage legal immigration.
So what prevents the incompetent and lazy from immigrating?
The current American immigration process is not figure-out-able. As any immigration lawyer will tell you, there's strategies with higher or lower chances of success, but there's nothing at all like a roadmap which will definitely lead to permanent residency if you follow it well.
The smartest 5% are able to figure out where they're not welcome.
https://yaledailynews.com/articles/international-grad-school...
come on, don't do this here.
> including our technological lead, is built by immigrants
That's my point to get the Constitution changed (Amendment #28) to allow an immigrant to run for POTUS. We love US more than natural-born citizens. Our interests are far more aligned with the betterment of the country than anyone else's.
Oh boy! If we are talking about constitutional amendments I can probably think of a few that would be much more important than that.
I’m not sure US academia is mediocre. It’s more like… normal?
But America being what it is, it attracts those with most potential creating and sustaining a network effect.
But there’s nothing intrinsically good or bad of the US, and it’s quite easy to mess up the equilibrium and go back to the mediocrity you mentioned
It’s a numbers game. Taking the best from the world talent pool is going to provide better results than from the much smaller American talent pool. Unless your country has more than a billion people, you need to look at world talent.
The US has to especially encourage immigration since we have gone out of our way to make the education system systemically broken. Our funnel is broken on purpose. Look at countries with strong showings in things like chess or running. Why is that? They encourage large populations of kids to participate, the larger the pool the more top performers.
It's not an ego problem. It's a racial one.
Our lead does not come from immigrants. The American people, who are a distinct people, have shown time and again a potential for great things.
Even if it were true, there are wider effects of immigration that you must consider. The purpose of life isn't to increase GDP. It reflects poorly on you that you must cast your opponents as being stupid and spiteful. Could it be that MAGA voters are humans with real motivations and rationales?
By “American People” you mean native Americans?
Because Literally everyone else in the US is an immigrant. Or are you referring to the Spanish that settled the west? The French in the far south? The Italians and Jews that populated New York? The British and Africans?
I’m painting in broad strokes, but to say “the American People” as if it’s somehow distinct from immigrants is just ladder pulling.
> Because Literally everyone else in the US is an immigrant
I'm not American, but this conversation happens a lot in Canada where I'm from too
I was born in Canada, in a Canadian hospital. I've never had any other home than this country.
I'm descended from immigrants, but I am not an immigrant. I'm not considered indigenous either, that's a whole other type of person.
What a strange thing, to be from a place but have many people say "it's not your place, it's stolen" as if I had a say in that. If I went anywhere else, I would be an immigrant there.
Very odd.
You don't know the meaning of the word you're using.
Immigrant (noun) A person who comes to a country to take up permanent residence.
Unless your people walked across the Bering Strait during the last ice age you're an immigrant.
Which ones?
Certainly if 8,000[1] years ago a tribe walked across and settled, and then 7,000 years ago another group walked across and set up camp next to the descendants of that first tribe who had been there a thousand years, the second group were actually immigrants, right?
And how do we sort it out now, millennia after those various groups arrived, after all that DNA has been mixed together?
My point is just that it's silly to label any race or group "immigrant" or "native" based on what movements we guess from their skin color that their ancestors may have made millennia or centuries ago, or even what their parents did. Yes, I'm very in favor of birthright citizenship, even if people have "anchor babies" in bad faith the baby didn't have any say in it. And no one else of any color had any say in being born in America either.
[1] please substitute correct numbers -- they don't matter
I don't know. I do know that, as far as America is concerned, "native" doesn't include the colonizers who showed up 200 years ago when the land was already settled.
> Could it be that MAGA voters are humans with real motivations and rationales?
No, it couldn't. Trump tells them to vote a certain way, they do it. Look at Massie's primary as an example.
Go on thinking that, but it really won't help the Democrats win if they persist in this attitude. Voters are just looking at what's on offer from both parties, and one party's platform has been judged to be both hostile to their interests and also actively scorns them as people. The other is mostly hostile to their interests and is super corrupt, but it cuts taxes[1] and doesn't belittle them.
The Democrats squeaked out one miraculous win buoyed by the incompetence of Trump's band of corrupt idiots in the early COVID days. But now merely pointing out how incompetent and corrupt Trump is stopped working, as we saw in 2024. Do Democrats have anything left in the playbook besides derision and scorn toward those outside their tent? We will soon see, I guess.
[1] I know the talking points say that the tax cuts "only benefit the rich" but I'm far from a 1%er and can tell you that I'm paying way more taxes in a blue state than I would be in a red state, and also the OBBB improved things for me. Voters in those blue states can see their tax bills and the one thing Democrats can't say is that they don't put a huge tax burden on those who work.
> The current administration was voted in with an anti-immigration mandate
Given that they’re underwater for approval rating on immigration it seems both you and they have misread the room. Most people’s objections have to do with immigrants who are violent criminals that are going around neighborhoods hunting for cats and dogs to eat. This is what their campaign was highlighting as a problem. They have not been cracking down specifically on those immigrants. For this, they have no mandate.
>Most people’s objections have to do with immigrants who are violent criminals that are going around neighborhoods hunting for cats and dogs to eat. This is what their campaign was highlighting as a problem. They have not been cracking down specifically on those immigrants.
There never were "violent criminals that are going around neighborhoods hunting for cats and dogs to eat." That was a baseless, racist caricature and it's unfortunate that anyone took it seriously.
And we all still remember "the wall," and Trump complaining about immigration from "shithole countries" like Haiti (versus Norway and Sweden, gee I wonder what the qualifying factor is there) and how Mexico was sending drug dealers and rapists across the border. The immigration policy of this administration has always been that immigrants (specifically any non-white immigrants) are an existential danger to American culture and safety. You don't try to wall off your entire southern border because you think the problem is a minority of bad actors. The DHS doesn't deploy white nationalist anti-immigrant propaganda[0,1] because it's just concerned about a criminal element.
And they didn't misread the room. Trumpism is first and foremost a white nationalist nativist movement. People wanted the wall. They wanted immigration stopped. "The immigrants were taking our jobs." "Muslims can't assimilate into civilized society." "Europe is basically a war zone because of all of the Muslims and low-IQ sub-Saharan Africans." These are all things Trump supporters have been saying for years and that the American right has been saying since at least 9/11. "Borders, Language Culture" as Michael Savage used to say. It's all been out in the open.
White Christian conservatives still support Trump's immigration policies by a wide margin. He speaks to the people he intends to speak to. I don't know why so many Black people and Latinos signed up for the "Leopards eating your face" party thinking the leopards wouldn't eat their face, but that's on them. But pretending Trump doesn't have a mandate to purge the country of immigrants is just naive - that is the only mandate he actually has.
[0]https://newrepublic.com/article/199094/dhs-neo-nazi-memes-no...
[1]https://www.splcenter.org/resources/hatewatch/dhs-white-nati...
Strangely, his current approval ratings on immigration policy is only about 37%. There appears to be a wide gap between what people thought they were voting for a year and a half ago, and what they are seeing now.
I think there's a wide gap between the consequences they expected and the consequences they got.
We’ve also seen that you’re not safe on a green card either.
Trump has -20% to -25% net approval depending on the poll, and his approval rating on immigration is -10 to -15%. Clearly people do not like any of this in practice even though they might have liked it in theory.
I mean, the issue is that a large number H1B folks have vital skills for the US economy and that even just 20% of those leaving would mean every single big tech company would be in immense trouble
> even just 20% of those leaving would mean every single big tech company would be in immense trouble
I'm not so sure.
I think it would play out like this:
1. 20% H1Bs leave; 2. Those migrants are now in countries of origin, looking for work; 3. Many of the big US tech companies will already have offices in those countries, and those that don't can make new offices if they wanted to; 4. many, but likely not all, of those employees are now working for the same employer (or close enough), just in a different jurisdiction; 5. as none of these employees are physically in US hotspots, all the other stuff that happened in those hotspots because of big tech pay, suffers, conversely all the stuff which was suppressed because of those wages may (possibly) return; 6. two of the things that go down are the number of people transitioning from temporary visa to citizenship, and the available talent pool for the local-to-those-places startup and VC scenes.
Certainly a lot of them do. It's also true that having a large portion of them leave will just mean that the company will have to replace them with someone who will require a higher wage, and won't have any issue leaving if the workplace culture degrades.
The "anti illegal immigrant" crowd ignores, or more likely supports, the systemic racism built into the current immigration system put in place by racist lawmakers throughout the country.
This new policy is no different and is a trap to kick out and never accept back more non-white immigrants.
"an easy solution: increase the number of legal immigrants we allow."
Not really.
The answer is: have a fair, transparent and function system.
Then - yes - you can totally 'increase' (or decrease) as needed.
'Increase a bit' likely the right thing to do - but it's a completely separate question.
But throwing Green Card holders out is completely insane, grabbing people out of church and schools and putting them into detention without oversight is cruel and inhumane.
The national debate is insane.
Just basic, normal, reasonable policy and process.
That's it.
Like DMV level stuff.
Then you can adjust the numbers one way or another.
In my experience, the phrase is just used to mean, "I don't hate immigrants, but..." (which, like the phrase "I'm not racist, but...", you are free to doubt case-by-case). I.e. it is not inherently inconsistent to apply the same disclaimer regarding a belief that legal immigration is too loose, too high, mismanaged, whatever; since that doesn't necessitate a belief that immigration as a concept is bad.
I'm right there with you, and it's why I go to great pains to articulate the entirety of my position on immigration when I get into these sorts of debates. The simpler someone's position on immigration is, the less they understand it at length or the more extremist their viewpoints tend to be.
It's wickedly complicated, isn't it? I'm distressed by anybody who doesn't change their position from time to time.
It's not that complicated, my immigration policy is "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Mine comes to the same conclusion via a different route. I don't want my government telling me where I can or cannot travel to or decide to live, and I want all other governments to do the same.
my position has been steady since the start of my political consciousness (maybe ~12 years?)
all laws, including immigration laws, should be enforced consistently and universally, and without bias. and the laws should be changed to make it much simpler and easier to immigrate especially if you are able to already secure employment, housing, and health insurance.
I know this is going to. be contentious, but US mainstream discourse seems to have completely eliminated the distinction between illegal and legal immigration, in the last 10 years. Everyone seems to be a "migrant".
US policy has also nearly completely eliminated the distinction, by making legal immigration close to impossible and ~arresting~ kidnapping people at courthouses who are there for their immigration hearings, then shipping them off to foreign torture camps.
It is so nearly impossible, that somewhere between a half million and a million people have done it every year for the past few decades (including last year).
Nearly half of the workforce of crop farmworkers in the US is made up of "illegal" immigrants. The US food-supply relying on those people has meant that, in practice, immigration law enforcement is deliberately selective and self-serving.
So, the idea of illegal immigration as a vice worth cracking down on and punishing has not been consistently applied by the people publicly condemning it (like this current administration), meaning there is a very real sense in which the distinction between illegal and legal immigration is not real.
"The people"? Are you sure you're not committing the common sin of conflating vocal people with most people? For example, I publicly condemn illegal immigration, regardless of which industry said immigrants are propping up, while at the same time recognizing that such industries need to be carefully extricated from reliance on illegal immigrants and also that the management of immigration and the definition of illegal immigration needs to be fixed.
As another disconnect, farmers overwhelmingly voted for Trump. I really don't understand how people are using their brains any more.
It wasn’t ever about illegal immigration. It’s a way to make the position sound logical and tolerable. Now the goal post is moving to make only certain people legal.
Trump equivocated when it came time to condemn people shouting “The Jews will not replace us” and the Proud Boys. Anyone who thinks it’s just about illegal immigrants is delusional.
Somewhat ironically many of those most vocal about supporting all this are immigrants.
Those that jumped through all the hoops above bar, paid their dues in a messed up system where they bit their upper lip and got through it, and have been extremely frustrated at others trying to game the system.
I was one of them, and supported the idea of going after illegal immigrants. But now they're coming after me too, a faculty with a PhD, researching AI.
You really weren't paying close attention to their rhetoric, then.
But you obviously knew what they really meant to accomplish, right? How could you not, being a faculty with a PhD. And yet you supported them anyways.
I’m also an immigrant.
When I heard the crowd roar every time Trump said “we’re going to kick them out” I knew exactly what the crowd was cheering. Trump never used those moments to say “but America is a nation of immigrants and we celebrate their contributions”. He wanted to rile up a crowd while maintaining a fig-leaf of “oh it’s only illegals who are evil”
You don’t have to have a PhD to understand the appeal and consequences of nativist populism — just the slightest understanding of history.
There are plenty of voices explicitly saying that there are too many legal immigrants coming to the US under existing US immigration law, whose presence is not good for the majority of existing Americans despite not being illegal.
E.g. https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/charlie-kirk-we-ha...
> And by the way, I want to make – I want to be very clear. I’m not just talking about illegal immigration, we have way too many legal immigrants coming into this country, too. 1.5 to 1.6 million legal people coming – Ilhan Omar came in legally and she hates the country. She’s a sleeper cell infiltrator of the United States representing Congress. She hates the country. She hates the west. She should be deported back to where she came from, Somalia. Go run for City Council in Mogadishu. The country is not enriched by people like Ilhan Omar.
> I hear "I'm not anti immigrant, I'm anti illegal immigrant" a lot.
A lot of those people had no issue with ICE bullying and detaining legal immigrants.
Or citizens who look like a immigrants.
It’s a smokescreen people use to claim it’s not racist. It reminds me of that south park episode with the cable company representatives with velcro pockets. “Oh you want to migrate here legally? Oh it will take 3 years and it requires an active employment offer at application time and on arrival? Oh no… tell me more”
The aim is not to fix the problem. These populists would be out of power the moment the problem is fixed. They want to prolong it - even make it worse - because that's what keeps people angry.
I hear it a lot too. It makes no sense. Obviously, if only the illegality was the problem, we could just declare all immigration legal and that would "solve" it. But it wouldn't, obviously, because that's not what people are concerned about at all
What are people concerned about? If I walk into your house uninvited, that’s trespassing. Is that “solved” by declaring all entry into residences legal?
The problem with these analogies is that your nation is not only your nation, but also the nation of all the people who are very happy with all the migrants, for whatever reason.
> If I walk into your house uninvited, that’s trespassing.
Sure.
What happens if your kid invites round a friend of theirs you don't like?
What happens if you are a kid and your sibling does?
What happens if you rent out a room to a lodger, and the lodger invites someone over?
What happens if you're a tenant in a rental, and the landlord sends in an emergency plumber?
Remember, every single migrant working illegally in your country is someone that another person in your country wanted to employ; if you're in the US, most of those employers will be selling you your food and your houses, which most of you seem to like, while some were South Koreans making data centres which you personally may hate but your pension funds love.
The U.S. is an aggressively capitalist system. A person’s value is usually measured in dollars exchanged for labor. Legal immigration status is not a certification of capability, so it has little practical utility. In a capitalist exchange, it literally doesn’t matter.
What the lower classes are concerned about is the value of their labor relative to others’, while the upper classes are concerned with getting a good deal by avoiding increases to the labor-cost floor. Bribes/subsidies and offered scams, have worked so far.
If the federal government, as an institution, were genuinely concerned about illegal immigration, it would have a different set of tactics. Start by punishing the sources of capital (fewer people), then property owners (more people), and only afterward the laborers themselves (many people).
What I see is a combination of class warfare and political theater, not a sincere effort to enforce the law. The law is incidental, made obvious by the exceptions the administration has had to carve out for certain industries.
It's collective narcissism. Narcissists only ever express one emotion - aggressive contempt. So the destruction, incoherence, murder, and abuse are all predictable outcomes of a malignantly narcissistic regime.
Out groups are always the initial targets for these movements, but as time goes on any form of dissent will cause narcissistic wounding and will be treated accordingly.
The reality is that people who say that are certainly anti-immigration, they just know people don’t like when they say that
Its not about immigration at all. It is about creating a "us vs them" tribal narrative. That's why people defend even US citizens being harassed under this administration. And the justification is because they might hold a different PoV.
The irony is that if anyone thinks they are going to solve this problem - I have a bridge to sell. If GoP solves this then they are going to lose of the biggest talking points in next elections. I can see this being challenged and drama played out for long time saying "other side" is not letting them move forward with it.
All the while the "extraordinary" Green Card will actually be "ordinary" - done by greasing POTUS palms. Because POTUS and his supporters are hell bent on turning America into a third world low trust country.
This was from the official DHS account -- https://xcancel.com/DHSgov/status/2006472108222853298
What do you think they mean by "100 million"?
Many people hold one or more of the following positions:
1. Illegal immigration is bad, and we should do more to reduce it.
2. Immigration (any kind) is too numerous. Eg someone could say "Nashua, New Hampshire is now 17.2% foreign born and I think that is too high." Within 2. there are multiple separate reasons to have the position. One could think that its bad for assimilation, or one could be upset that the Nashua school system's budget increases are almost completely due to having to hire more ELL staff to accommodate the rapid rise in non-English speakers in a school system that used to be almost entirely English speakers. I'm sure there are more complicated examples but I hope that one is easy to understand.
3. Immigration (any kind) is used to lower wages of the working and middle class via labor and program abuses. At the low end, this used to be a leftist talking point (the kind Bernie Sanders once talked about). At the high end, it is grousing about H1B abuses. Despite many agreeing that th program has large abuses, H1Bs are legal immigrants.
Your idea of an "easy solution" doesn't remotely correspond to a solution for people who think #2 or #3. Even for #1, someone who dislikes illegal immigration does not necessarily want more legal immigration, though that used to be a very common view (eg, Bill Clinton in the 1990s, I think George Bush too). If a person believes #3, increasing the number of legal immigrants may simply increase the corresponding abuses.
n.b. the text above is descriptive, not normative.
Trump grew up when anybody not white legally could be treated as less than. He lost this legal ability in his formative years in college.
Stephen Miller is upset he never got to experience that.
Immigrants from Europe will some how get an exception depending on their skin color. Same goes for South Africans
They only want a certain type of immigrants. I know some that go through the process easy breezy and others that absolutely suffer. It is largely dictated by country of origin, outside of the normal checkboxes.
Everybody across the world only wants a certain type of immigrant. The salient difference is whether the definition of "certain type" is petty or not (e.g. based on skin color vs based on qualifications).
They were always just against immigrants, legal or not. It was obvious back then, it should be super obvious now. And most of them didn’t really hate all immigrants, just those with a particular skin color. The MAGA movement was always racist at its core, no one should be surprised by the turns it has taken.
Point of order: that is blatantly untrue. Anti illegal immigrant has everything to do with ensuring the people in the country are known and allowed. It is completely uncoupled from legal immigration. To say an easy solution is increasing legal immigration is just saying lets leave all the security holes wide open and just make it so only the real bad guys use them because others have an easier time going legal.
You could keep the vetting system and still increase legal immigration a lot. Those are two separate issues.
Do you believe mass immigration has any negative side effects, at all?
Let's say hypothetically the UK increased its population by around 3 million since 2020, including one particular influx designed and implemented by Boris Johnson to suppress wage inflation, which had a direct effect on the lower end of the job market for the native population. You could also easily argue it led to a direct surge in popularity of the far right party Reform.
Purely hypothetical of course...
You'd consider that a good thing?
I agree. I think there are ways to do that that could get more support than the way we're currently doing things.
Imagine if we began processing immigration applications at a rate ten- or a hundredfold of what we currently do. Imagine if just about anyone could get in, barring things like people with actual serious criminal records, etc. Imagine if when you got in via that system, you got some kind of long-term resident visa, which required you to pay an additional tax for, say, the next 10 years. Also imagine that this long-term resident visa gave you a path to citizenship, on condition of permanently renouncing all other citizenships you might hold. In other words, imagine that becoming a legal immigrant was far less onerous in process, but slightly more onerous in official requirements.
Such a plan could be framed as encouraging immigrants who want to "put down roots", and that kind of immigration is much more plausibly spun as beneficial, because people who move to a place to live permanently do not want it to be sucky. By making the process simpler but applying clear costs (e.g., extra tax), it also gives people an easy to way to demonstrate that they want to do things the right way.
Also, making the process more straightforward makes it much more politically palatable to deport people who violate it (which will still happen). A large part of the "bleeding-heart" leftist perspective towards immigrants stems from a sense that many people who immigrate illegally do so because "they had no other choice". If the bar to legal immigration is lowered so that it becomes a live option, this argument is harder to make.
This pattern plays out across so many things conservatives say. It was never about free speech. It was never about being civil after someone was killed. It was never about balancing the budget. Their anti-dei stance was never about fairness. And no it was never about illegal immigration. It’s almost like they lie constantly about their beliefs. To themselves as much as everyone else.
I'll keep repeating it: stop assuming that fascists use their words to accurately express what they think and feel. They don't. They use words solely as a tool to increase their power. Hypocrisy does not register for them, in fact they're tickled that their enemies shackle themselves by feeling the urge to be logically consistent. You cannot engage in debate with fascists, you're playing chess while they're playing shoot-my-opponent-in-the-head-while-he-thinks-we're-playing-chess.
And I will stop assuming that people know what the word fascist actually means
"Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past."
~ Jean-Paul Sartre, 1944
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It's not. Trump has always wanted to revert back to a predominantly white America if he could achieve it. The government is racist and hides their racism behind shitty interpretations of our founding articles.
There are deeper lesson here.
First, a lot of the immigrants that people complain about now are only immigrants because the US fucked up their country. Venezuela is the poster child for this. There are consqeuences to destabilizing other countries for American corporate interests.
Second, companies like illegal immigration. It allows them to pay people sub-minimum wage in horrible working conditions and if the workers every complain, you just call in ICE to deport them. You pay a small fine for employing undocumented migrants and the next day hire a new batch. You probably even have avoided paying wages to the deported workers.
Third, a lot of attention is paid to people who sneak into the country. This is the minority. Also, "entering without inspection" (that's the legal term) is a civil infraction (unless you've previously been deported; then it's a crime), much like a traffic ticket. You technically aren't a criminal if you do this.
But the majority of undocumented migrants are visa overstayers. They get a legal visa to come to the US, often a visit visa, a student visa or a temporary work permit (eg J1, H2A, H2b) and just don't leave.
And to answer your implied question, it's not about illegal immigration. It's about white supremacy and the exploitation of labor under capitalism.
Democrats actively encouraged more than 10 million illegals to pour into the country during the previous administration. They lied about it and downplayed it for three years, and then (when election season rolled around) they talked tough about their plan to "seal the border"... which was another lie, as the bill they proposed would have allowed illegal immigration to continue at up to ~6X the historical average rate without requiring any action whatsoever to "seal the border". When the American people vote for mass deportations, those were called "fascism" and the basic enforcement of immigration law is actively, even physically opposed.
But an inconvenient process change has you clutching your pearls and crying "bad faith"? Yikes.
I'm curious what you think "actively encouraged" means here?
I'm not anti immigrant, I just really care about paperwork \s
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It’s sad that pragmatically adjusting quotas is never the loudest argument in the room. I’m in favor of greatly increasing legal immigration, providing paths for safe work and citizenship (when that’s the goal). I’ll admit that my idea of an ideal system is probably not palatable for many. But if we could start from anywhere near a sane baseline, I’d understand wanting to gradually find sustainable quotas that take all factors into account. I’m done with purity tests and letting perfect be the enemy of good.
I suppose by “all factors” I mean all factors aside from exploitation and xenophobia, but I hope we could at least move the Overton window back that far.
Okay. Let's choose a small random country as a basis for your immigration ideas. Ie., Rwanda (pop 14.8m) or Israel (pop 10.24m). What is the quantity of immigration flow that you want, who and from where and on what basis of admission over what time period. What are your intended demographic, social, and political shifts that you say are going to be "not palatable" for the people living there now? In fact, please expand on exactly how "not palatable" you expect your plans to be for them.
This strikes me as an unreasonable demand on the author of the comment. Part of the point of the current system was (at least at some point) to have knowledgeable people, armed with the available facts, figures and theories make some attempt at balancing the safety of the incoming people against (at the very least) their economic impact on the country. From there some rudimentary guard rails (quotas, visa type, etc.) would be set. I suspect few of us in this forum feel comfortable making these decisions from behind a phone, tablet or laptop.
My understanding is that many of us, perhaps including the author of the comment to which you are responding, would like to see at lease some small, inching movement towards such a system.
On the contrary, asking for well-thought out political thought is the most reasonable demand in the world. If you have an idea about health care, national defense, or trade policy, I expect thought and numbers, not vague platitudes.
For example, you want small inching movement. From what starting point? Inching movement from the near-zero flows of the mid-20th century? Inching movement from the mass flows of the 21st century? Both ideas would have major consequences, and if you are going to advocate for mass social change, you should think it out and advocate with care and thoughtfulness.
I’d take rapid movement, honestly, I simply think it unlikely. In terms of what kind of change, I was speaking of movement toward a rational system with clear goals, with decisions made by knowledgeable people. With that in mind any movement, I think, should be estimated from the present. We can’t change the past!
Agreed, care and thoughtfulness should be the rule, not the exception. Presently we are getting neither. I’m a software developer, I don’t work in policy; but I believe our immigration position should be aligned with policy goals and I’m not sure we have any of those, either.
In any case, re-categorizing so many legal immigrants in order to imprison them strikes me as pointless and fundamentally wrong.
Why do we need to quantify an exact quota to qualify as well thought out political thought? Some people think about this issue from the basis of fundamental freedoms. Innocent, productive people deserve the opportunity to move where they obtain the most prosperity.
If I advocated abolition in the 19th century, it would be missing the point to turn around and say "oh yeah? And how many slaves would you like to free per year, and what effects do you expect that to have? Include examples of past slave rebellions"
> For example, you want small inching movement. From what starting point?
The obvious assumption is that they mean from where we are right now. We're not going to suddenly be at the mid-20th century again. This comes off as argumentative more than curious (as do your other comments in this thread, for what it's worth).
Advocating for small inching change to a rate is different from advocating from small inching change. Easy example: if you are in a car with an accelerator pedal depressed.
> Advocating for small inching change to a rate is different from advocating from small inching change.
No, it isn't. It is a change; whether it's acceleration or velocity is an implementation detail. Whether it should be changed suddenly or gradually is the spec.
The US's strength is/was in part because of immigration. The best and brightest want to come to the US to go to school and then they often stay for the enormous opportunities only available in the US. I want any immigrant that wants to come to the US given a reasonable path to make that happen.
You are right that the Native Americans were completely misplaced by immigrants, but immigration made the US what it is today and I see no reason it won't continue to make the US a uniquely strong country.
You may be interested to learn that American immigration flows were higher or lower at various times (nearly zero for long periods). As you allude to with Native Americans, the effects of the different flows were not uniform on all people, and instead caused various negative and positive effects. The period of Americans great post-WWII economic and military rise came during its longest period of immigration moratorium, during which its population was fairly homogeneous. In recent decades, America has begun to decline economically and militarily relative to China, a country not subject to these "strengthening flows". Odd case.
The citizenry would probably fare no worse than with the arrival of the Irish, the Italians, or the Germans. What are you expecting, for the Indians or Chinese to sack DC aux Visigoths?
“Open borders” was pretty much standard across the world prior to World War 1. These tightly controlled immigration policies are, historically speaking, incredibly new.
I think it’s self evident that the U.S. benefited greatly from its mass immigration inflows in the 19th and 20th centuries.
It's a different world now
Your statement has no basis whatsoever in reality. The US, for example, had a four-decade moratorium on immigration beginning in 1924. Mass immigration flows appeared at various times and places in the past (often accompanied by bloodshed and suffering), but it's highly incorrect to imagine that 21st-century 1st world demographic shifts are some sort of historical norm.
How is the moratorium of any relevance considering WW1 ended a few years before 1924?
Are you serious?
"Oh, you support immigration? Write an entire nation's immigration policy. Can't/won't do it? You must be a paid shill."
People are allowed to have opinions without regurgitating policy documents on demand.
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People coming to live in your area, not your personal home, to work hard for opportunities, are in no material way like pick pockets. Your analogy is so extreme I am tempted to assume you argue in bad faith. The economic success of the United States, its simultaneous growth and flexibility and prosperity is directly caused by our heightened skills to welcome immigrants and make use of their talents and desire for success (compared to other countries with similar demographics). We are awesome at welcoming people into a modern society that values smarts, individual diversity, getting along with neighbors of differing backgrounds, hard work, risk taking, striking out on your own, the NBA, good home cooked food, fast food, and Taylor Swift, and getting them to enjoy these things also.
I didn't say they were pickpockets. I was trying to point out the absurdity of correcting illegal activity by simply eliminating laws.
I love immigration. We should have lots of immigration! But it should occur within consistently, fairly enforced laws passed by our legislative system. I get that our immigration system is arguably broken and that it's very difficult to pass meaningful legislation, but that doesn't mean we should just allow whoever is president to dictate immigration policy.
So the thing to analogize is that DHS is acting like a junior high school gang, enforcing ever shifting rules and norms capriciously for the fun of bullying to score points with the onlookers. The bullied folks are not analogous to pick pockets. We have laws, laws under which TPS is legal for ever, under which we don’t round up and export people without criminal records, laws under which people pay taxes and raise their families here; all of this suffering being caused by Miller is not for the effects of the policies but for the demonstration of cruelty, contempt for differences, and a distraction from the roll back of a middle class centric economy where hard work and education were a pathway to a good family life.
Yeah it was a bad comment. I really misunderstood the grandparent.
> I was trying to point out the absurdity of correcting illegal activity by simply eliminating laws.
Isn’t this straw man? Who said anything about eliminating laws or being inconsistent about legal immigration? The top comment was only pointing out that slowing the flow of legal immigration does not fix illegal immigration and probably makes it worse. Some people don’t love immigration or feel we should have lots, despite the benefits, and sometimes those people say contradictory things.
Yes, it would be utterly absurd to decriminalize cannabis. Oh, wait...
It is to make a system where people are less incentivized to commit crimes.
This comparison is flawed because there is not legal pickpocketing, but there is legal immigration.
If there was a legal pickpocketing, and someone claimed to only be opposed to illegal pickpocketing, then it would be reasonable to point out that unless they're lying about their intent a solution to preventing illegal pickpocketing would be to make it all legal.
The analogy falls apart because nobody argues that they are "only" opposed to illegal pickpicketing.
If people are opposed to any form of immigration, then they should just admit that, rather than pretend they're only opposed to illegal immigration.
a. Opposed to someone taking my money against my will and the law just because they want to, “for a better life”.
b. Not opposed to someone taking my money in exchange for goods or services I want.
a. Opposed to someone moving into my country against my will and the law just because they want to, “for a better life”.
b. Not opposed to someone moving into my country because I married them and want them here.
There’s a whole spectrum between a and b, but I think most people are against a.
Legal pickpocketing is taxes you’re opposed to, or wages being garnished.
In theory people who say they’re only against illegal immigration are saying they completely agree with all policies regarding legal immigration, now and maybe into the future. Likely not what these people actually believe because while possible it would be a silly position. They’re probably just saying it to try to find some common ground with very pro immigration people. Likely a fools errand.
What's wrong with letting the citizens of a country have agency in who they allow in? This isn't the gotcha you think it is.
In this case the people brought up in the United States are sacrificing the well fare of their own children to preserve their own fears. I think that is wrong.
I want to keep the US a destination for hard work and smarts and striking out on your own. Don’t shelter your lazy kid, show them the beauty of complexity and mastery. Have them master some difficult skills, whether that’s a second language or botany or math or public speaking or building things. We are all responsible to each other for excellence. Respond to the opportunities for excellence, of what we can build together, dont’t yield to sloth and resentment being satisfied with turning your back on your own potential. The future is awesome and we welcome all who want to contribute! We welcome competition - better to be second best to the best than turning your back and cutting yourself off from the course of history.
Lots of things are wrong with giving people the power to make choices that affect the whole world, while excluding others who are equally or more affected, based on where they happened to be born.
If the logic is that people who are born somewhere else shouldn't have any agency over immigration laws, well, why does someone who lives in some town in my country with a negligible immigrant population get a say in who I and my colleagues can invite to work with us, and who I and my neighbors can invite to live with us?
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> I hear "I'm not anti immigrant, I'm anti illegal immigrant" a lot. To which there is an easy solution: increase the number of legal immigrants we allow.
Being "anti illegal immigrant" doesn't have to imply you let in whoever wants as long as they follow some process. You are taking away the agency of the people to select its immigrants.
If someone says they're not anti immigrant and then turns around to say immigration should be more difficult, there's an obvious logical disconnect in their worldview. It doesn't matter about illegal vs. legal: they want to make immigration more difficult, after claiming they are not against immigration. The comment does not claim there's anything wrong with the policy choice, just that the following policy preference betrays the initial statement as false.
It doesn’t seem inherently contradictory for someone to think “I’m not anti-immigrant” and “my ideal target for legal immigration is at 80% of its current rate”.
Um. Yes. Those are obviously contradictory.
How so?
If legal immigration was at 40% of its current level and I wanted legal immigration to double from there, would that still be anti-immigrant?
Or does having any limit whatsoever mean that you're opposed to a thing?
I'm totally for it! I just wish there was less of it.
I don't know how else to read that.
I think I see where you're coming from. To use an example, Switzerland has tight immigration controls due to the policies which grant citizens and permanent residents certain welfare benefits, since they don't want those to be leeched by people who do not contribute as much back. That is against immigration while not being anti-immigrant; the point is that the immigration itself does not motivate the policy which limits immigration, instead being motivated by the existence and meaning of other policies (a kind of protectionism).
Tying this back to OP's comment, it's hard to see these policy changes as any sort of legitimate protectionism and it's just as hard to divorce them from the justifications given by people who start with "I'm not anti-immigrant".
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If the borders are often then no one is coming in illegally
there are quite a number of issues with the situation as it was evolved. lots of people are intersted as a matter of policy in admitting that the US is largely functional because of immigrant labor, but relying in illegal immigration to fill those roles hasn't been great for the structure of the country or the laborers themselves. and to be clear this is not just harvesting the crops, and raisin the children, and building the houses, its also doctors and engineers and all sort of other professions.
so there a huge need to have a difficult policy discussion about what to do without cratering the economy.
but when you start removing civil liberties and running around in gangs grabbing random brown people off the streets and sending them to indefinate detention in the middle of nowhere, dumping people in Somalia, claiming you have the right kill anyone you want, you shouldn't be surprised when people start waving around the f word.
>but when you start removing civil liberties and running around in gangs grabbing random brown people off the streets and sending them to indefinate detention in the middle of nowhere, dumping people in Somalia, claiming you have the right kill anyone you want, you shouldn't be surprised when people start waving around the f word.
You've been propagandized to believe that is happening. Remember when we were grabbing random brown people, including Black Olympian school superintendents right off the streets and sending them to concentration camps?
https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/27/us/ian-roberts-des-moines-sup...
Months later the truth comes out: illegal alien with guns in his possession, which is a federal crime. Deportation order issued under Biden's administration.
The post-truth era has made the f word effectively meaningless.
Maybe they saw the roving bands of masked militants roaming the streets and grabbing people without warrants with their own eyes like I did.
Masked ICE officers grabbing people with open warrants and deportation orders is what I saw with my own eyes.
A piece of paper signed by your boss isn't the same as a real warrant signed by a judge.
No real lawyer will ever tell you that an "administrative warrant" is a real thing that lets jackbooted thugs enter your home and detain you. It's absurd and disgusting, and you should feel dirty for defending it.
https://apnews.com/article/ice-arrests-warrants-minneapolis-...
https://ij.org/issues/ijs-project-on-the-4th-amendment/admin...
Sending masked goons to pull people off the streets is unconditionally fascist, and the people who participated are criminals who all belong in prison. If some of the goons were particularly conscientious and never arrested someone without good cause, that's great, and perhaps if they prove that we can shorten their sentences.
The following things are not in contradiction:
1) Someone can be against illegal immigration and for legal immigration.
2) That same person's idea about who should immigrate to the country may exclude most or all of the people who are currently immigrating illegally.
It's not like you can only be against illegal immigration because they forgot to fill out some form. Legal immigration has a component of deciding who gets in.