"Coming here illegally is a crime so everyone who does it is a criminal."
The legal moralism people apply to immigration is absurd, especially in the United States. We have purposefully made it impossible to do the right thing, so we can rejoice in punishing those who do it "wrong". It's shameful, in my opinion.
Look, the point is that democracy should mean democracy. You don't like our immigration laws. I really don't like our immigration laws. They're still our immigration laws, we should fight to change them. Nobody's human rights are being actively violated because they're not allow to immigrate here.
The entire reason the last 20 years of effective nullification (by blue states ignoring them and even subverting them) is so pernicious is because it's just plain anti-democratic. If, like marijuana, most people were effectively in favor then this wouldn't be a serious issue, but the problem is that nullification undermines rule of law. It's hard for us to argue for a reasonable immigration system when, if we don't get the system we want, we literally just say "fuck it, just ignore the rules."
There is no more blue state ignoring immigration laws than blue states ignoring crimes like federal tax evasion. It’s not the state’s responsibility to enforce immigration laws or to help the federal government enforce immigration laws.
In fact, the Supreme Court actually said states had no standing to sue the federal government to enforce the law.
> There is no more blue state ignoring immigration laws than blue states ignoring crimes like federal tax evasion. It’s not the state’s responsibility to enforce immigration laws or to help the federal government
Local authorities often work with federal officials even though they are not obliged to.
And the difference is that drug dealing is a state and federal crime. Illegal immigration is only a federal crime. Has there ever been a state and federal partnership on federal tax fraud for instance?
I said in another reply that on Jan 6th of 2020, not electing Trump caused political escalation. Trump is going to find any excuse to escalate in Blue states - including sending the National Guard.
Mortgage fraud is a state crime and a federal crime as are banking laws. I’ve signed 5 mortgages (well actually seven including two refinances), they all include state and federal laws. Foreclosure procedures are under the jurisdiction of the state and sometimes the local ordinances
The state isn’t helping the federal government pursue IRS cheats.
I’ve offered multiple examples of states and municipalities working together with federal enforcement of FEDERAL laws. The idea that this isn’t enough to satisfy you is ridiculous.
From what I can see, sanctuary cities were acting within the law. Their only stance was that they wouldn’t spend precious time and resources verifying immigration status for schools, and city services. As these are paid for and voted on by city residents, that seems fair.
If states, and cities aren’t bound to help the federal government enforce every law, unless congress writes a law to say they must.
CBP and ICE always had the general authority to be more effective, but did not use it. As we can see from actions in this era, enforcing immigration law at all costs has draconian side effects on civil liberties, and general happiness and wellbeing.
While it’s true, the immigration issue has been marinating for a while, the current policy is not a good solution.
I’m not suggesting that nullification is against the law. It’s not. States have the right to ignore federal laws if they choose to. However if the states refuse to cooperate with law enforcement, and especially when they pass laws making cooperation illegal, it is for very obvious reasons likely to result in political escalation, as the feds will need to spend a significant amount of resources on statewide enforcement.
When you refuse to allow city and state law enforcement to assist federal agencies, don’t be surprised if federal law enforcement show up. It’s not even unprecedented, it’s just an issue of scale.
Ultimately, this is about democracy, and how refusing to participate when laws we don’t like pass, it is a recipe for extreme political conflict because it’s inherently undemocratic.
When it comes to cooperating with other entities, governments have to take a unified approach. Rather than have individual teachers deciding to question students on immigration status or not, they decided to not pursue the matter at all.
It seems fair. Immigration policy isn’t supposed to be enforced by local authorities to begin with. And unlike hiring a worker, there’s no easy way for people to verify immigration status. Finally, immigration offenses can be misdemeanors so spending effort in upholding hard to determine civil infractions seems unwise for local officials.
If ICE or CBP actually shows up and investigates, local authorities do help. Even in Chicago where the public is very much against it, the local police continue to cooperate with ICE … if nothing else just to shield them from protesters.
All sanctuary laws said is that local authorizes do not have to do thankless investigative work on people hundreds if not thousands of miles away from a land border with another country.
As someone who cares about democracy, I think it’s best practiced at the most local level possible, and if federal authorizes disagree with local policy they can override it via laws.
You just don’t see thus happening in many cases because local laws agree with federal ones, or are even more stringent. But this is a case where the locals could not, constitutionally, make a law (it has been tried, like in Arizona to have locals investigate legal immigration status but it’s been deemed unconstitutional).
For the record, I don’t think we a huge difference in opinion. I’m not surprised that ICE and CBP is out in force. I’m surprised it took so long, but think they could be more targeted, less brutal, and overall more competent.
Yea, I’d say we generally agree. Though I think noncompliance laws like sanctuary city laws are a significant escalation over just choosing a different allocation of resources.
My point is only that if the feds are going to go full agents in schools and shit, I think we ought to follow the harm reduction principles so people don’t actually get hurt when the violence kicks off. My concern is we’re nontrivially flirting with a genuine civil conflict.
If by “feel the same way” you mean “wouldn’t be surprised if random folks start getting charged with marijuana possession if the administration starts enforcing the laws on the books,” then yes.
I don’t “support” what the administration is doing, I’m just saying we’re actually on the losing side of the argument… and we’re actually flirting with real political violence with a losing argument.
If the states that have legalized some kind of marijuana uses wanted to (40 of 50 states), they could trivially actually legalize it.
There was “real political violence” because people wanted Trump to be president in 2020 and more recently a state lawmaker was swatted in Indiana because he didn’t go along with Trump’s redistributing demands.
In fact Romney said that some lawmakers were afraid to go against Trump because they were afraid for their families and they couldn’t afford armed security like he could. Is that really how we want to make decisions in this country?
> Nobody's human rights are being actively violated because they're not allow to immigrate here.
US law enshrined both refugees and asylum seekers as separate categories of immigration specifically to deal with human rights issues observed in the 20th century. While that doesn’t mean any person anywhere has a right to be a citizen in the US, it is closer to true than your statement suggests.
“Sanctuary policies” are about enforcing the 10th Amendment. The Federal government alone is responsible for immigration policy. The states should not have to participate, and sanctuary policies are a public declaration that they won’t (usually because local law enforcement knows that it makes their primary job of enforcing the criminal code harder if residents won’t testify).
The reason we haven’t reformed US immigration laws is that everyone agrees it is broken, but nowhere close to a supermajority agree on _how_ it is broken or the steps needed to fix it. See “gang of 8” negotiations circa 2013. This is the inevitable outcome of the founders making Congress slow/stagnant by default. Also damn near half of the voters being propagandized with immigration ragebait for decades.
When my family came over to what is now the USA, immigration was as simple as paying for your own boat trip and passing a health inspection. It was hundreds of years of very “open borders” before Congress decided to go hyper racist and xenophobic in the 1870s.
It’s worth poiting out that Republicans have long insisted that “we can’t reform immigration laws without _first_ kicking out all illegal immigrants. It’s neither a reasonable expectation that we can do that, nor is it a reasonable precondition for reform negotiations. It’s also hilariously false that all recent immigrants vote for Democrats — that demographic is FAR more likely to be Evangelical Christian or Roman Catholic Christian, which heavily vote towards Republicans (not to mention all of the Socialism/Communism haters from Cuba, Vietnam, Venezuela who think Democrats are somehow equivalent to “far left”).
Nullification doesn’t harm US law. It is the escape valve people in the US use judiciously when US law becomes unruly and malicious.
My point is about the laws themselves. If they were unjust laws, there is an argument for civil disobedience. They aren’t though, so civil disobedience here is just anti-democratic.
So, is this what we are doing? Downvoting and non sequiturs that amount to deflection and whataboutism?
Not caring about democratic results — when human rights are not at issue — is a very dangerous precedent. I absolutely hate the current administration. They are not responsible you the laws on the books. They were successful last election, in some part, exactly because this is a very relevant political issue.
> I don’t downvote people that have a different opinion so it ain’t me
Totally fair. I’ve had a tough time with my good-faith, heterodox views on this issue lately.
>>they are not responsible for the laws on the books
>so in 26/28 when Blue people take over they are free to disregard all laws because they are not “responsible for it”?
No, my only point is that some seem to try to argue that “Trump is different because he is acting in bad faith,” and I generally agree.
The problem with that argument is that our immigration laws are decades old, and blue states nullification is also decades old. We’ve found ourselves dealing with federal enforcement of federal laws because of state nullification, we don’t like that enforcement — I don’t like that enforcement — but we could pretty much end all this escalation between blue states and the feds by just agreeing to enforce the laws on the books. No more flirting with literal civil war. Just dealing with the consequences of a losing position as humanely as possible, given the fact that it’s going to suck.
Then we can fight to change those laws democratically.
> we could pretty much end all this escalation between blue states and the feds by just agreeing to enforce the laws on the books
This is incredibly naive. You've got an academic point in the context of rewinding the clock back twenty years, sure. But as to the current situation?
Federal law-breaking forces are attacking citizens for simply exercising their first amendment rights to protest. Federal law-breaking forces are abducting people based on skin color and the declaration of a shoddy facial-recognition "app". Federal law-breaking forces are terrorizing entire apartment buildings by ransacking them in the middle of the night. Federal law-breaking forces are aggressively attacking people to seize control of situations that would otherwise be closer to even-party civil disputes (eg the woman who was violently kidnapped out of her own car because the jackboots crashed into her). Federal law-breaking forces are hiding their faces to avoid having their crimes documented and possibly facing justice.
This is all a much stronger form of wanton illegality - anti-Constitutional, organized, criminal, and aggressively violent transgressions - than people being here illegally. This is not terribly surprising, because all signs point to the immigration issue being nothing more than a pretext for unleashing fascist paramilitary gangs on American civil society - specifically fundamentalist red state militias hopped up on social media delusions and pathetic revenge fantasies, ultimately serving nothing beyond naked autocratic power.
So if you are earnestly concerned about the rule of law (and I agree we should be!), you should be focusing your current ire on those federal law-breaking forces. And no amount of "perhaps we did something to deserve this" navel gazing changes this.
> So if you are earnestly concerned about the rule of law (and I agree we should be!), you should be focusing your current ire on those federal law-breaking forces.
> They're still our immigration laws, we should fight to change them
It’s good advice, but a big hill to climb. The Dem politicians walk a fine line here. The influx of illegal immigrants is truly unpopular, not just with folks on the right, but also many in the moderate left and independents. They dems realize it’s a hot potato which is why you get a lot of immigration rhetoric to try and satisfy the anger, but don’t really get any effort to change any laws even when they held both branches and the presidency through 2021-2022.
Prior to 2016, both parties were pretty aligned on it, only when Trump made it a core issue did the parties start to diverge on the topic.
> The influx of illegal immigrants is truly unpopular
Does it apply to rich immigrants?
Not having housing, high medical bills, gun violence are unpopular. To blame poor immigrants is the scapegoat and many people think that kicking all of them out will solve the problems that they want to be solved. It will not.
The current state of things is that big corporations and the rich want immigration, they just do not want immigrants to have rights. The solution that they have found is to make most immigrants illegal so they have no rights, they can be paid below minimal wage and they can be blamed for being criminals so nobody looks at the rich while they literally rape minors.
I agree that is very difficult to change. But not because the average voter would not accept it, but because the rich are pushing for a narrative were immigrants are at fault of all the excesses of the rich.
You can also call it undemocratic, not just because blue states are actively subverting them, but because the intent of the subversion is to create new voters and shift demographics into their favor.
I actually don’t think that’s relevant. I don’t think people vote for one party or another because of their race or ethnicity. I think assuming people vote along ethnic lines is honestly pretty idiotic, and I think the last two elections have demonstrated this as being entirely sensible.
Interesting that you imply I said anything about race. I didn’t.
Never mind that the reason people point out the last two elections is that they show statistical anomalies - which is by itself proving my point. The data is clear on this.
But further it runs counter to simple game theory.
If a Country, governed by Party A, enacts a law, prohibiting Nazis from immigrating, but Party B undermines that law in municipalities they rule in (by providing „sanctuary cities“, stopping law enforcement on such matters entirely, providing services including legal help for naturalization, and more things) basically stretching the timeframe as long as possible for illegal Nazis to be present in the country, so that they either become eligible Nazi voters locally (by residence status), naturalized Nazi citizens eventually or at least have Nazi offspring with a citizenship title – then obviously the Nazis are going to vote for the party that allowed that to happen (Party B), and against that party that tried to stop this (Party A).
And this will (decreasingly with each generation) be true for their Nazi offspring as well.
Illegal immigration is a crime. So is jay walking and software piracy and murder. There’s a lot of nuance to be had here in how big of a deal it is and how people who do the deed are treated.
It’s always felt weird though that it’s become taboo to call it a crime, but maybe that’s just me.
The issue is that it is illegal AND a nontrivial part of the electorate wants it enforced.
The “let’s all step back and consider my side’s view of this” isn’t really relevant after our side loses elections. If the will of the people is to start enforcing jay-walking, for better or worse, we’re going to see a lot of jay-walking enforcement.
I think it's more that something being a crime doesn't make it immoral, and something being a crime doesn't mean it should continue to be.
I do not think most illegal immigration should be considered a crime. That's my position. Moralizing about it by saying "well these people are CRIMINALS" because they crossed an imaginary line on a map is odious to me.
Actually the United States stands out not from the moralism, that’s very common in other countries.
What amazed me is how many Americans think immigration laws are optional. That entering and working illegally is no biggie.
Every other country I’ve lived in has much more strict immigration laws. Even the 3rd world countries that can’t seem to deliver potable tap water.
Deportations are standard, quick and supported by the population. Actually “supported” is wrong, it was more “yeah and…?”. No anger, self-riteousbess, just “thats how it’s supposed to work”
Most countries consider immigration enforcement is as standard as enforcing laws against bank robbery or littering. “Why wouldn’t you do it?” is the most typical take.
Also a lot of people applying that legal moralism consider it not just acceptable, but laudable to try to cheat on your taxes, a pretty significant crime.
Combining qualities you oppose into theoretical groups is a common, very human fallacy, but it will poison your mind against humanity. It's the origin of tribalism.
For example, I'm a white non-religious straight liberal US man with a hippy upbringing that I value dearly, and I think the opportunity to immigrate should be as available as possible to all good people. But I also recognize that it must be responsibly controlled, and the native culture and quality of life must be prioritized (for all nations, not just the West), and one piece of that is stopping illegal immigration. And it's not unreasonable to have an opinion that we are, to some degree, failing at all the pieces.
>But I also recognize that it must be responsibly controlled, and the native culture and quality of life must be prioritized (for all nations, not just the West), and one piece of that is stopping illegal immigration.
I agree, it's about time we prioritized natives over illegal immigrants. We should start by giving back the land we stole from them, honoring our treaties and respecting tribal sovereignty. Maybe give Mount Rushmore back to the Lakota.
Reverse the order of the crimes in that sentence and you can find that opinion in droves on HN any day of the week.
What we really ought to be ridiculing if not punishing and marginalizing is inconsistency and cognitive dissonance.
There are so many issues possible in a nation of 300+mil that we cannot form opinions on policy based on vibes and emotions, we must have principals and let them inform our opinions.
The vast majority of accusations of hypocrisy in social/political arguments are based on subjectivity in the first place. There is simply no such case where X is objectively the same as Y - or else it would be X, and not Y. You can always form an argument around the difference between the two things. Maybe it's a weak argument and the person making it is obviously engaging in a double standard - but there is no way to draw a line.
> We have purposefully made it impossible to do the right thing
We have the most people trying to get in and let the most people in legally year after year, so not only is it no impossible, but we're the best at it.
> so we can rejoice in punishing those who do it "wrong".
Except no one is rejoicing that, but I can see how certain bubbles may have interest in spreading that misinformation.
Illegal immigration isn’t bad because people didn’t do their paperwork. It’s bad because it overrides society’s determinations about which foreigners to allow into the country and how many. So “making it easier to immigrate legally” misses the point completely.
And this concern about “who and how many” is well founded. Alexander Hamilton himself noted the dangers of cultural division from immigration. https://www.iwp.edu/articles/2016/12/21/hamiltons-actual-vie.... He wrote: “The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common national sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits; on the exemption of the citizens from foreign bias, and prejudice; and on that love of country which will almost invariably be found to be closely connected with birth, education, and family.”
Silicon Valley understands that culture drives outcomes when it comes to companies and startups, but have a huge blind spot about culture when it comes to countries. But culture matters just as much for countries as companies. Immigrants bring their cultures with them—typically from places less successful than the U.S.—and that culture persists for generations: https://www.sup.org/books/economics-and-finance/culture-tran.... That has serious consequences for society. You can easily look at Minnesota versus New Jersey and see that immigration patterns have left an imprint on culture centuries later. And it’s equally clear that certain parts of the country are culturally better than other parts of the country. America would be much more orderly and well governed if more of it was like Minnesota and Utah and less like West Virginia or New Jersey.
> It’s bad because it overrides society’s determinations about which foreigners to allow into the country and how many. So “making it easier to immigrate legally” misses the point completely.
No it doesn't. What if I want more foreigners? What if I want people to come here? Somehow, these arguments only ever seem to rachet in favor of people who want less immigration, not more.
I'd say the federal government of the United States is currently overriding my preferences about who to allow into the country and how many, actually, by aggressively enforcing immigration laws in ways they likely were not intended to be enforced, and in ways which are repeatedly being found to be illegal, actually.
> And it’s equally clear that certain parts of the country are culturally better than other parts of the country. America would be much more orderly and well governed if more of it was like Minnesota and Utah and less like West Virginia or New Jersey.
You need to add a "to my preference" here when you talk about which parts of the country are "culturally better" than others. You clearly have strong ideas about what you'd like US culture to be, many of which I suspect I deeply disagree with.
Is your argument that West Virginia is "disorderly" or "culturally inferior" because of immigrants? Which groups, and from when?
> > It’s bad because it overrides society’s determinations about which foreigners to allow into the country and how many.
> No it doesn't. What if I want more foreigners? What if I want people to come here?
Then that's your preference, that's not society's determination! We theoretically live in a democracy. Policy should be determined by the Rule of Law determined democratically, not by @ivraatiems's preference.
> What if I want more foreigners? What if I want people to come here?
Your view doesn't reflect the electorate. Cato, an extremely pro-immigration organization, did a study in 2021. They found that, after being informed about current immigration levels, the median respondent stated 500,000 immigrants should be admitted to the US annually: https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/styles/aside_3x/pu.... A recent Pew study found that 11 million immigrants arrived from 2020-2025, or over 2 million per year. That's four times what the median American thinks the immigration influx should be.
> You need to add a "to my preference" here when you talk about which parts of the country are "culturally better" than others. You clearly have strong ideas about what you'd like US culture to be, many of which I suspect I deeply disagree with.
It's not purely subjective. Communities in America settled by Puritans, Quakers, Dutch, Scandinavians, and Mormons simply do better on objective metrics. For example, a UCLA study found that Mormon men live 10 years longer than white men generally: https://www.deseret.com/2010/4/13/20375744/ucla-study-proves.... The two states with the highest social mobility (Utah and Vermont: https://www.archbridgeinstitute.org/social-mobility-in-the-5...) are polar opposites politically, but are similar in that both were settled by people from particular parts of Britain.
But the subjective matters as well. Lee Kuan Yew visited London in the 1960s, and was amazed by an unattended news stand in Piccadilly Circus with an "honor system" cash box: https://www.reddit.com/r/london/comments/1mn8moh/how_do_you_.... As someone from Bangladesh, I fully concur. My preference is the opposite of Bangladesh, something like an orderly New England town full of high-social trust people who raise their kids with sayings like "there's no such thing as a free lunch."
> Is your argument that West Virginia is "disorderly" or "culturally inferior" because of immigrants? Which groups, and from when?
Appalachia was settled by people from a culturally distinct region of northern Britain: https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/four-folkways. Hundreds of years later, this group remains culturally and sociologically distinct from other British Americans.
> My preference is the opposite of Bangladesh, something like an orderly New England town full of high-social trust people who raise their kids with sayings like "there's no such thing as a free lunch."
How do you reconcile your preference for this with the fact that a lot of the other people who express this preference would prefer you hadn't come from Bangladesh to join them?
It really seems to me, genuinely, like the rules you advocate for would exclude you if they were applied to you today. You can read elsewhere on my profile the story of my Indian roommate who had very similar views to you, and his illegal deportation. The system is not and has never been "let's see if you're the sort of Indian or Bangladeshi or whatever that we'd like", it's "you're from those backwaters? no thanks."
Does it bother you that other people from Bangladesh - or anywhere - who wanted the sort of society you want will likely not be permitted to join it if you build it here? Frankly, my experience with a lot of non-immigrant folks with the views you espouse is that they wouldn't welcome you no matter what views you had.
But society's determination is that a certain quantity of illegal immigrants should enter every year because they have less rights and can be better exploited by businesses. Being deliberately blind to this reality is also living in a fantasy land.
An easy solution to this would be to grant those individuals legal status once they are in the country.
(Yes, I know this has many many other consequences. I am not necessarily actually advocating for it just happening with the stroke of a pen. But holding that up as a reason to prevent immigration itself rings hollow to me.)
The purpose of a system is what it does. Proposing solutions is unhelpful because the system is not interested in the problem being fixed. The problem is a designed in feature.
China has 1.4 million immigrants, and 12000 foreigners with permanent residency. Not per year, but total, cumulative [1]. Despite having 4x the population of the USA.
Meanwhile the USA has gone from 83% White in 1970 [2], to White children being a minority [3] in less than 50 years. And most of that change was due to legal immigration (that they were promised wouldn't change anything [4]) Yet still they're called out for not erasing their own identity even faster.
So do you just not believe in the national right to self-determination, to decide who may live among them? Do you also not believe in this right for Kashmir [5,6] or Palestine?
[6] Human rights activists said that the moves to change Kashmir’s status were only the first steps in a broader plan to erode Kashmir’s core rights and seed the area with non-Kashmiris, altering the demographics and eventually destroying its character. Previous laws barred outsiders from owning property. - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/world/asia/india-pakistan...
How long did it take America to go from 0% white to almost complete native erasure?
If we’re gonna apply your definitionally racist argument then whites (ie Europeans) (or Asians or Africans) shouldn’t be in the country.
Also, apparently you’re ok with America’s population doubling with immigration as long as those immigrants are white Europeans?
The share of immigrants as a percentage of population is about where it was between the mid 1800s and early 1900s, but you’re fine with that because it was primarily Europeans? (Although, ironically, a lot of those Europeans were also not considered white contemporaneously and it’s only now that their descendants consider themselves white and rail about all the non white immigeants).
I would not be using the "natives were wiped out by foreign conquerors" argument in support of uncontrolled (or any other kind) immigration, if I were you.
> So do you just not believe in the national right to self-determination, to decide who may live among them? Do you also not believe in this right for Kashmir [5,6] or Palestine?
On a personal moral/philosophical level, I think lines on a map which we call "nations" are a foolish way to decide who is allowed to go where and do what.
So from first principles, I don't accept the framing. I don't think "national" right to self-determination is a meaningful or valid term. It exists in practice but it is not valuable except in terms of pragmatism/realpolitik.
Therefore, I advocate for immigration policies which are much more focused on helping people and bettering society around me than on any nation-based concept of identity. That doesn't mean I want to bring more people who would hurt others into my society. But it does mean I don't care about whether the people who come in are "like me" in some meaningful way.
(That doesn't mean I don't act like nations exist or agree that they do, just that my ideal world probably would not include them in that way. Nor does it mean I don't think national lines ever echo the lines of societies or that I'm an anarchist who doesn't believe in governments. I just don't accept the idea that "this person lives on this side of the border" is a meaningful way to decide if they get to live in a place or not.)
Also, it sounds like what you consider "national" framing is actually racial framing. Given that you spend a lot of time talking about white people in a nation that has never been just white people, is that not correct?
Why are you so concerned with White people being the minority? Does the US somehow have a history of not treading minorities equally or something that I’m not aware of?
It should be telling that a great portion of these people are young men, and young men from certain regions view women, minorities, and ideas like honesty and fairness much differently. Europe is facing this right now. What are you suggesting? All of India moves to the US? Are you even aware they'd do that if they could? That is _not_ practical.
What do you mean with "telling"? That they are in tech because that's the demographic of tech folks? Or that men in most parts of the world are responsible to make enough money for the whole family?
It's more rethorical but I seriously don't know how that's telling.
> Europe is facing this right now.
What exactly? War in Syria was ten years ago.
> What are you suggesting? All of India moves to the US?
I find it clear that the suggestion is: Provide a clear and feasible path for people who wish to migrate and will benefit the society. We lack that in Europe/Germany as well and ironically are missing the laws to deal with criminal immigration effectively.
It's sad many people don't even know or think about the difference of regular migration and coming as a refugee. Migration of skilled workers must become much easier in Europe, while refugees are a very different topic.
The US is doing something right if so many people are ready to wait in limbo for decades of the one life they get on this planet.
For people on employment visas - they are one economic downturn away from everything being undone. They ll get 60/90 days to leave the life and relationships they have spent years building.
As someone who was in this limbo and eventually became a citizen... It's better than the other options. In particular, I could take my dollar savings back to my home country and I'd still be much ahead of my friends who never tried to come to the US.
I mean, I personally don't believe in chemtrails or "mind control" myself, but to each their own- even if the CIA had explicit programs because -they- (falsely, in my opinion) believed in "mind control.
And you can ignore the 2009 US-backed honduras coup and everything back to the 1953 coup against Árbenz if you want, and take my tongue in cheek reference to the murder of JFK as evidence that I'm a crank- I'm used to that, even if very rarely have I heard the folks making those assertions make a plausible and informed case of what did happen to JFK.
But still, even if you ignore me because I am crank, you're not going to get beyond a simple, likely-racist, and probably wrong understanding of US immigration without understanding long-term US foreign policy in South and Central America.
All true but isn't our quality of life built on mines in Africa (car batteries and phone batteries) and sweatshops in China and co (much of our clothes)? To what degree does that reinforce that other countries have lower quality of life? Then again, this isn't specific to just the US.
There is no doubt that the country caps and quotas for immigrants from countries with large populations like India, Mexico, Philippenes and China are a huge problem.
I’m not sure that anyone can really agree on a solution, but there should be some stop loss where these things can’t be delayed beyond a certain fixed length of time and/or they shouldn’t issue the initial visas if the backlog to adjust is so long.
The reason that this and most immigration law hasn’t been fixed is that while most people agree that this is a problem, there is not really a compromise solution that everyone can really agree on.
> I’m not sure that anyone can really agree on a solution, but there should be some stop loss where these things can’t be delayed beyond a certain fixed length of time and/or they shouldn’t issue the initial visas if the backlog to adjust is so long.
What initial visas? If you are talking about selectively denying non-immigrant dual-intent H-1B visas to people from countries with long timelines in some or all immigrant visa categories (not that getting an H-1B doesn't imply intent to seek to immigrate, and doesn't require qualification in an immigrant visa category), that's...well, even as someone who thinks the H-1B is a bad idea ab initio, a remarkably non-helpful policy to layer on top.
> The reason that this and most immigration law hasn’t been fixed is that while most people agree that this is a problem, there is not really a compromise solution that everyone can really agree on.
It's not just that people agree it is a problem and don't agree on a solution, people don't even agree on what the problem is though they might agree that, e.g., the long waitlists from certain countries are symptoms of some problem.
Like, when some people favor eliminating all immigration from certain countries, and other people favor eliminating per country caps, that isn't a different solution to the same problem, its a fundamental difference in what is perceived as the problem.
Those four countries have very different quota problems though: folks from Mexico and Philippines face a long wait in family immigration, mostly to bring their kids & siblings to the US ( https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/v... ), whereas Indian nationals also face long waits for employment based green-cards.
Noting that you can always use your country of birth or your spouse's country of birth (cross-chargeability) for an employment-based green-card, my understanding has always been that Indians have large preference (or face large pressure) to marry other highly-educated folks that they often meet in the US but are also born in India that other immigrants just don't face as much.
> Those four countries have very different quota problems though: folks from Mexico and Philippines face a long wait in family immigration, mostly to bring their kids & siblings to the US
Mexico faces long wait times in all of the quota-limited family-based immigrant visa categories.
The Phillipines faces a few months longer wait time in one severelly globally backlogged family based category (F4; where there is a 17 year backlog for most countries and its 3 months longer for the Phillipines), but not otherwise.
India and China have long backlogs in most employment-based immigrant visa categories (but generally much less than Mexico has in family-based categories), India also has an longer-than-usual backlog (more than Phillipines, less than Mexico) in the F4 family based category.
There was bipartisan immigration legislation working its way through Congress, until the president killed it because it went against his "immigration bad" narrative.
I think they could at least offer some sort of reprieve for people waiting in line. Their status is tied to employer whims. If someone has lived in the country for 5 years and in line for citizenship perhaps give them some protection in case their employment gets taken away. Some grace period, perhaps access to healthcare.
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-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
It's an argument based on a value. The parent's position is ostensibly that the value does not currently survive contact with concrete reality in the US today.
America has a pretty generous immigration cap. But we have chosen as a nation that we want diverse immigration. At one time we prioritized western europeans, and we decided that wasn't a great policy. So we switched to one that encourage people from everywhere. This is what American's want, diverse immigration. I don't get how that somehow is bad? I don't get how more populous nations should have greater representation. Again, we had larger groups from certain countries (western europe) and we decided we SPECIFICALLY don't want that, that that isn't fair immigration policy and isn't part of America's diversity. We aren't going back to that.
It is not a right, for sure. However, there are historical reasons why they are county wide quotas. Before the 1965 INA (Hart-Celler Act, which JFK wanted), they had a national-origins quota system: each country's quota was based on the existing immigrant population of that national origin already in the United States, using data from the 1890 census. Because the U.S. population in 1890 was overwhelmingly from Northern and Western Europe (especially Protestants), this formula strongly favored those groups. Immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe was heavily restricted because most of them are Catholics. Once Catholics got political power, thanks to JFK, this is reformed in favor of what we see country based caps.
The national-origins formula was explicitly designed to maintain the existing ethnic composition of the U.S.--in other words, preserve what policymakers at the time considered the “traditional” American demographic makeup.
In fact it's the opposite. We used to have a system that promoted western european, and we decided to change that. So we split them up in a way that encourages diversity. People from populous nations think this isn't fare. American's think it is explicitly fair, that our system makes sure people from all over the world come and join us, not just immigration dominated by the highest populous countries.
I understand the diversity is good, and that immigration can create that take. But I don't understand that 'immigration good, policies for diversity bad' take?
> American's think it is explicitly fair, that our system makes sure people from all over the world come and join us, not just immigration dominated by the highest populous countries.
I'm an American, and I don't understand how it is explicitly fair that India and China with areas of very large and populations of very large have the same immigration caps as Belize. Especially when something happens and Sudan becomes Sudan and South Sudan and the same people and the same area now have twice the cap; how is that explicitly fair? If India reorganized as the Union of Indian Republics (which I hope is not an offensive hypothetical name), where each state became a full country with an ISO-2 code and an ITU country code, would it be fair that each of the 36 member states have the same cap as any other country? Also, I'm not sure why the overall caps haven't changed since 1990. It feels like they should be indexed to something.
I think this version of quotas/caps is better than the previous version, but that doesn't make it explicitly fair.
I would be interested in knowing what the priority dates would look like if we adjusted the overall caps every ten years after the census to some percentage of overall US population (the 1990 cap was set at approximately 0.3%) or annually based on estimates works too, and also adjusting up the per country caps a bit too.
Basically the idea is that foreign nationals can only have as much leverage as the quota. This is based partly on old fears that European powers would recolonize the US.
Whether or not is necessary or not, I can’t say but if India separated into 500 different counties, then the US would only be catering to 500 micronations, maybe even divided on ethnic lines, and not a single powerful one which could get cultural dominance.
For a historical case, look at the British Empire. If given a large quota, most immigrants would be from the original isles because that’s who have the financial means to cross the ocean, while the billion plus people living in colonies like India wouldn’t have a chance until the Empire breaks.
Is it fair that Bugatti Chiron has to obey the same speed limit as Geo Metro?
The country cap is the limit on the speed of immigration from that country. If we establish such a limit for any reason, why does it have to be proportional to the size of the country? If anything, it should be lower for the bigger countries if we consider this a safety measure against a country gaining too much influence, similar to trucks having lower speed limit than cars on some roads.
I have no problem with your notion of diversity. The whole EU population is 450 million, and there are 27 countries within the EU. So, the question: is China/India less diverse than the whole EU? Some say "yes"; others, "no". Both provide good reasons for their answers.
However, one can't deny the original immigration template with a variable. Original value for this variable: "national-origins". That value is replaced with "country wide quotas". The other value is f(diversity): another formula f based on the variable 'diversity'.
American citizens and their politicians have total freedom to replace the template, or change the current value for one of the variables, or replace with another variable.
Policies encouraging diversity aren't necessarily good or bad on their own. It may be that it is time to readjust those quotas based on the current needs.
Idk about US, but in Europe we are in dire need of migration. The shortage in for example health care is acute and alarming, at least in Germany.
Our cleaning women is just about to finish her three year training program. However she failed the final exam because of the complicated wording of the test. Her German is good enough but formal German is a different beast. She is allowed to redo the test a single time next week.
If she passes, she will have an official German degree but has to leave the country because her visa is based on the training program. She then has to reapply for another visa to be allowed to reenter Germany.
Completely dysfunctional in my opinion. The system should bring people in that will be a net positive for the country while filtering out criminals.
Pragmatically: if you want to enforce the legality of a state-affirmed migration path, it has to be viable. Without a militarized border (which is impractical based on nation size and undesirable for fiscal and moral reasons) and a militarized interior (do you _like_ what ICE is becoming?), the best mitigation for illegal immigration is viable legal immigration.
Fiscally: immigrants have above-average entrepreneurial tendencies. It doesn't take a lot of enterprise creations and resulting tax payment and job creation to offset a _lot_ of social service consumption. Inbound migration also is what keeps the US from having a net-shrinking population, which until we can get away from late-stage capitalism is a death knell for the economy.
Morally and ethically: this is a nation of immigrants. If you claim to be a native, do you speak Navajo? Ute?
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
It’s not a bad thing per se, but democratic action can produce cultural shift to something that was previously considered outside of the scope of your country’s way of life. What matters is what you want to achieve as a country, a society, a community and so on. This is something groups of people have to decide for themselves, and the worst form of disagreement is violence.
I am of the view that more than 10 countries in the world should be built on enlightenment ideals, have a rule of law, have systems and processes for providing a good quality of life, and have centers of education and productivity.
I don’t think it’s reasonable that we should shift billions of people to live in a handful of nations via immigration. If that’s the overall plan, then nations where those people are immigrating from should just become vassal states.
It isn’t necessarily, but it’s currently used in the US to allow the wealthy to avoid investing in Americans.
Instead of investing in Americans by lowering costs of necessities (food, housing, education, children) they chase short term profits for the benefits of shareholders (which is by and large the ultra rich). It’s much cheaper to import labor where the above costs were paid for by somebody else.
I suspect that the amount of background legwork for each application is fairly limited. It should be possible to triage the vast majority of applications in a matter of days at most, at least the denials. It's wild that it takes years to do this.
You've clearly never seen someone go for citizenship. It's a relatively involved process that involves multiple interviews, character reference letters, lots of paperwork, etc.
Getting a greencard (or equivalent) is an entirely different thing and is even _more_ broken.
I've known several people who've done it. I wasn't trying to argue that there isn't a lot of manual labor going on. But I'm doubting how much of that labor extends beyond interfacing with the applicant.
Are they interviewing references outside the country? Doing deep background checks that are not basically instant electronically? That's what I'm talking about. The denial process can probably be made extremely fast, and then the tedious interview part can be focused only on the ones we are planning to accept otherwise.
You're probably right that the background checks aren't that intensive, but every other part of that process is. If needing 2+ interviewers for 15-30 minutes per candidate isn't labor intensive, I don't know what your definition is.
The American people have spoken time and again that we want these caps. That we want opportunity spread to more countries than just the most populace. That immigration policy should support diversity over other considerations.
The reason this hasn't been fixed is because most American's support current policy along with promoting family unification and other decisions that are based on our moral positions. America has set a pretty generous amount of immigration slots, and it's not broken that we chose to fill them in a diverse way.
> That we want opportunity spread to more countries than just the most populace. That immigration policy should support diversity over other considerations.
There's an unspoken assumption there that India and China are monocultures, containing no diversity within themselves. Or that diversity is neatly defined by a border on a map.
Anecdotally as someone in a large tech company, fairly common and much easier to get than a lot of visa classes. But then, you have to be Canadian or Mexican (and the Canadian one is generally easier).
Also keep in mind that it's a non-immigrant, non-dual intent visa, so if you end up wanting to stay, you'll need to adjust to another class at some point.
Takes for fucking ever. I worked with my girlfriend -> fiancee -> wife through her transition between student visa, H1B, green card, citizenship. The whole process took about 7 years.
The odds of a change in the constitution are pretty low. Whereas our economic need for immigrants is consistently high... So most of this is just very cruel theatre. Employers fill out an I9 for every hire. Illegal immigration could be ended in a week at the employer level through purely administrative enforement. Instead we have what we have; which means the cruenty theatre is the purpose. Why would that be?
And it can also be a burden. If you are born on US soil to non-US nationals and therefore become an accidental American you are subject to US tax laws on worldwide income.
In the UK at least banks will not sell you financial products with tax implications (pensions, tax exempt savings schemas (ISA's to the locals)) because of the US reporting requirements.
And getting your citizenship revoked requires lawyering so its a PITA.
I know some Americans will find it hard to believe but there are people who want out of this system and feel trapped in it.
Other people's right to a jury can actually invade YOUR freedoms when jury duty compels you to come hear their case under threats of fines/jail time, but we accept that right as a burden for others.
Hasn't the president signed an executive order that says birthright citizenship is not for children of non-citizens? I see that it's being challenged in court, but the order is currently valid, right?
> Hasn't the president signed an executive order that says birthright citizenship is not for children of non-citizens?
Executive orders have force to the extent that they exert powers that the President has directly under the Constitution or that are assigned to the President by Congress exercising the powers it has directly under the Constitution.
Amending the Constitution by altering the definition of citizenship in the Fourteenth Amendment (or overruling the Supreme Court's consistent reading of the language of the Fourteenth Amendment, if you prefer that characterization) is neither a power granted to the President directly by the Constitution, nor a power Congress has granted the President by statute, nor even within the power granted to the Congress by the Constitution to grant to the President if it was inclined to do so.
> I see that it's being challenged in court, but the order is currently valid, right?
“Currently valid” is a tricky concept. In one sense, its is valid only to the extent it is actually compliant with the Constitution and laws which have higher priority than executive orders. Or you can read the question as really being about whether it can currently be applied, in which case the answer is a more simple “no”, because after the Supreme Court made the usual recent route to a simple single interim resolution pending the full litigation by simply deciding that nationwide injunctions were not within the power of district courts, they could only issue orders against government actions applicable to the litigants before them, a class action was certified covering everyone who might be affected by the order [0], and a preliminary injunction in that case has blocked the order.
Executive orders cannot overrule the Constitution.
14th Amendment:
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."
There are rumblings about "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" somehow excluding folks based on their immigration status, but frankly, the meaning is clear, and jurisprudence recognizes this. The jurisdiction carveout is for international diplomats, i.e. people who are literally not subject to US law. Immigrants, even illegal immigrants, are subject to US law. Stating otherwise would have vast repercussions.
> Executive orders cannot overrule the Constitution.
And I would hope this is a fairly universally held position, not so partisan. Today one side might cheer an executive order overriding the 14th amendment, but how will they feel if the next administration decides to pull the same stunt with the 2nd?
We don't want to go there. There are already some states experimenting with doing end-runs around the Constitution with their own civil laws, and for similar reasons I would expect rational people to want that effort to fail.
>> Executive orders cannot overrule the Constitution.
> I would hope this is a fairly universally held position, not so partisan.
I agree. I think the constitution limits both the executive and the legislative branches.
> how will they feel if the next administration decides to pull the same stunt with the 2nd?
The 2nd amendment has already been overridden by federal laws without a constutional amendment.
The 2nd used to mean that the states has a right to let their citizens arm themselves privately with military weapons. The federal government was forbidden by the 2nd to interfere with this.
I'm from Europe and fine with the very restrictive licensing we have here.
But it looks very shortsighted to wildly re-interpret the constitution far outside of the original meaning, instead of passing new amendments.
> The 2nd used to mean that the states has a right to let their citizens arm themselves privately with military weapons
In particular, at the time that it was written, it meant arm themselves with military weapons for the purposes of military action. That's what the contemporary use of the term "bear arms" was understood to mean. Try to find any mention of self-defense from back then. It wasn't what they were thinking about.
Or look at this earlier version: “A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, but no one religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person.”
That conscientious objector clause at the end certainly gives some context to the discussion.
The modern interpretation of the second amendment is very different.
Thanks for the detailed answer, I think that'll be a relief for many. However, would you say this still is a volatile situation for people who are facing this issue? Are the rulings _final_ on this? Or is there chance of people getting stuck in limbo?
> Thanks for the detailed answer, I think that'll be a relief for many. However, would you say this still is a volatile situation for people who are facing this issue? Are the rulings _final_ on this? Or is there chance of people getting stuck in limbo?
No, rulings are not final. SCOTUS could and very well may disagree with more than a hundred years of jurisprudence and overrule e.g. US v. Wong Kim Ark[1], enabling much easier denaturalization by the federal government. Here's an example article from a right-wing think tank about why they believe SCOTUS should overrule Ark[2].
That seems like a very good demonstration of the pitfalls of originalist interpretations of the Constitution. Even then, the argument comes off as extremely weak. And it doesn't even begin to try and address the consequences of reinterpreting the meaning of "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof".
Are conservatives envisioning a new class of slaves? People born on US soil who have none of the protections of the Constitution? Even if that is not the goal, it's not hard to imagine that there would be far-reaching consequences from deciding that the Constitution was not a limit on the behavior of government, but in fact only applied to citizens. What a massive bump in power for the bureaucrats in DC.
Heck, we could just snatch people off the street and declare they cannot prove they are a citizen therefore they have no Constitutional protections. No right to due process so they can prove they're a citizen, nothing like that. Better plan on carrying your passport at all times (and hope it doesn't get ... lost).
No, it is held up in court. The SCOTUS tried to make it valid by ruling against universal injunctions, but within days the challenges were refiled as class actions.
But if you welcome immigrants so as not to run out of labor or stagnate culturally, rather than simply dislike immigrants, you'd want to improve the bureaucracy.
Is it a hideous insult because you think it's not true, or because the wording feels offensive? Is there a more polite way to express the same sentiment, if you think it's true, or is it either true or insulting?
Cuba has had zero immigration for a long time but has an interesting culture.
Vietnam has basically zero immigration. Indonesia. Philippines. India. Honduras. Guatemala. Brazil. Jamaica. Mexico.
It's both insulting and untrue in a way that feels degrading to these nations' rich thriving cultures. That somehow only western, immigration heavy cultures are valid or are cultures of any worth.
I do think those nations have rich, thriving cultures. I also think that any culture, no matter how rich and thriving, can lead itself toward stagnation if it becomes overly insular. It's fair to point out that immigration isn't the only possible source of cultural diversity, but it's a powerful force for it, and I think the United States, being a huge cultural exporter, is at more risk than countries that are less dominant on the internet.
"so as not to run out of labor"
Beloved by the extreme right economically and now Trump. Low ball the labor market. Destroy the middle class and especially the working class. But at least CEOs will get their performance bonuses, and shareholders will see shares rise due to lower costs.
It's literally the current case. Our citizenry is incapable of meeting our labor needs. ("Why" is another discussion entirely.)
If you were to remove all the illegal immigrants right now from the US, our economy would be kneecapped. Granted, the harvest season is over in most of the US, but housing would be among the first markets to collapse functionally. If you are uncertain how important that market is, study the Great Recession of 2008.
"If you were to remove all the illegal immigrants right now from the US"
The wage levels and benefits would have to rise to meet the demand for labor. The US would also have to sort out its education and trades system too.
But if you think this is a skills shortage, I've got a bridge to sell you. And by the way, you are economically libertarian and on the same side as Trump. Bringing in an Indian to do the same job as an American citizen for half the wage is not a skill shortage, it's crony capitalism.
"housing would be among the first markets to collapse functionally"
Poe's Law. You'd have a massive supply in housing, and therefore a collapse in the prices to owning a house. It has nothing to do with '08.
"f you are uncertain how important that market is, study the Great Recession of 2008."
The great recession(It was a depression. I'd suggest studying definitions) was caused by three things:
President Clinton scrapping Glass-Steagall Act, the dam set up after the Great Depression of '29 to stop it happening again.
President Clinton signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Credit default swaps were the nukes of '08. Clinton exempted CDSs from regulation!!
President Clinton rewrote the Community Reinvestment Act forcing banks and lending institutions to give NINJA loans under the charge of racism(see commentator above) if they did not.
He also signed NAFTA allowing cheap labor and material into the US, and allowing companies to move South. (see Ross Perot great sucking sound)
He also brought China into the WTO devastating not just America, but the entire West.
I swear, it needs to amended so that natural born citizens should also have to pass citizenship questions like immigrants to retain their citizenship. How can you not know this? Have you never read or heard a recital of the bill of rights?
And yet we still have the most people trying to get in, and we also let the most people in annually, so we must be doing something better than everyone else. Of course, everything can always be improved.
Because this thread is a little spicy, I just want to remind folks that their comments are potentially "discoverable" in a legal situation. So if you comment something disparaging about minorities or immigrants it may haunt you later. Let’s keep it civil.
Being a citizen is totally overrated unless you have a lawn that needs blowing and qualify for social security. I imagine many 49ers felt the same way.
"Just do it the right way."
"Coming here illegally is a crime so everyone who does it is a criminal."
The legal moralism people apply to immigration is absurd, especially in the United States. We have purposefully made it impossible to do the right thing, so we can rejoice in punishing those who do it "wrong". It's shameful, in my opinion.
Look, the point is that democracy should mean democracy. You don't like our immigration laws. I really don't like our immigration laws. They're still our immigration laws, we should fight to change them. Nobody's human rights are being actively violated because they're not allow to immigrate here.
The entire reason the last 20 years of effective nullification (by blue states ignoring them and even subverting them) is so pernicious is because it's just plain anti-democratic. If, like marijuana, most people were effectively in favor then this wouldn't be a serious issue, but the problem is that nullification undermines rule of law. It's hard for us to argue for a reasonable immigration system when, if we don't get the system we want, we literally just say "fuck it, just ignore the rules."
There is no more blue state ignoring immigration laws than blue states ignoring crimes like federal tax evasion. It’s not the state’s responsibility to enforce immigration laws or to help the federal government enforce immigration laws.
In fact, the Supreme Court actually said states had no standing to sue the federal government to enforce the law.
> There is no more blue state ignoring immigration laws than blue states ignoring crimes like federal tax evasion. It’s not the state’s responsibility to enforce immigration laws or to help the federal government
Local authorities often work with federal officials even though they are not obliged to.
https://missionlocal.org/2023/11/feds-tout-new-all-hands-on-...
You’re missing the point. I’m not saying nullification is illegal, I’m saying it’s inherently political escalation.
And the difference is that drug dealing is a state and federal crime. Illegal immigration is only a federal crime. Has there ever been a state and federal partnership on federal tax fraud for instance?
I said in another reply that on Jan 6th of 2020, not electing Trump caused political escalation. Trump is going to find any excuse to escalate in Blue states - including sending the National Guard.
> Has there ever been a state and federal partnership on federal tax fraud for instance?
Yes, obviously:
https://www.fincen.gov/financial-fraud-enforcement-task-forc...
Mortgage fraud is a state crime and a federal crime as are banking laws. I’ve signed 5 mortgages (well actually seven including two refinances), they all include state and federal laws. Foreclosure procedures are under the jurisdiction of the state and sometimes the local ordinances
The state isn’t helping the federal government pursue IRS cheats.
For instance this is the GA website.
https://dbf.georgia.gov/common-violations-cited-mt-exams
The state of GA could care less if you don’t pay your federal taxes, defraud the federal government of SSA and Medicare funds etc.
I’ve offered multiple examples of states and municipalities working together with federal enforcement of FEDERAL laws. The idea that this isn’t enough to satisfy you is ridiculous.
From what I can see, sanctuary cities were acting within the law. Their only stance was that they wouldn’t spend precious time and resources verifying immigration status for schools, and city services. As these are paid for and voted on by city residents, that seems fair.
If states, and cities aren’t bound to help the federal government enforce every law, unless congress writes a law to say they must.
CBP and ICE always had the general authority to be more effective, but did not use it. As we can see from actions in this era, enforcing immigration law at all costs has draconian side effects on civil liberties, and general happiness and wellbeing.
While it’s true, the immigration issue has been marinating for a while, the current policy is not a good solution.
I’m not suggesting that nullification is against the law. It’s not. States have the right to ignore federal laws if they choose to. However if the states refuse to cooperate with law enforcement, and especially when they pass laws making cooperation illegal, it is for very obvious reasons likely to result in political escalation, as the feds will need to spend a significant amount of resources on statewide enforcement.
When you refuse to allow city and state law enforcement to assist federal agencies, don’t be surprised if federal law enforcement show up. It’s not even unprecedented, it’s just an issue of scale.
Ultimately, this is about democracy, and how refusing to participate when laws we don’t like pass, it is a recipe for extreme political conflict because it’s inherently undemocratic.
When it comes to cooperating with other entities, governments have to take a unified approach. Rather than have individual teachers deciding to question students on immigration status or not, they decided to not pursue the matter at all.
It seems fair. Immigration policy isn’t supposed to be enforced by local authorities to begin with. And unlike hiring a worker, there’s no easy way for people to verify immigration status. Finally, immigration offenses can be misdemeanors so spending effort in upholding hard to determine civil infractions seems unwise for local officials.
If ICE or CBP actually shows up and investigates, local authorities do help. Even in Chicago where the public is very much against it, the local police continue to cooperate with ICE … if nothing else just to shield them from protesters.
All sanctuary laws said is that local authorizes do not have to do thankless investigative work on people hundreds if not thousands of miles away from a land border with another country.
As someone who cares about democracy, I think it’s best practiced at the most local level possible, and if federal authorizes disagree with local policy they can override it via laws.
You just don’t see thus happening in many cases because local laws agree with federal ones, or are even more stringent. But this is a case where the locals could not, constitutionally, make a law (it has been tried, like in Arizona to have locals investigate legal immigration status but it’s been deemed unconstitutional).
For the record, I don’t think we a huge difference in opinion. I’m not surprised that ICE and CBP is out in force. I’m surprised it took so long, but think they could be more targeted, less brutal, and overall more competent.
Yea, I’d say we generally agree. Though I think noncompliance laws like sanctuary city laws are a significant escalation over just choosing a different allocation of resources.
My point is only that if the feds are going to go full agents in schools and shit, I think we ought to follow the harm reduction principles so people don’t actually get hurt when the violence kicks off. My concern is we’re nontrivially flirting with a genuine civil conflict.
Do you feel the same way about states that don’t enforce federal laws against weed and actively endorse it?
If by “feel the same way” you mean “wouldn’t be surprised if random folks start getting charged with marijuana possession if the administration starts enforcing the laws on the books,” then yes.
I don’t “support” what the administration is doing, I’m just saying we’re actually on the losing side of the argument… and we’re actually flirting with real political violence with a losing argument.
If the states that have legalized some kind of marijuana uses wanted to (40 of 50 states), they could trivially actually legalize it.
There was “real political violence” because people wanted Trump to be president in 2020 and more recently a state lawmaker was swatted in Indiana because he didn’t go along with Trump’s redistributing demands.
In fact Romney said that some lawmakers were afraid to go against Trump because they were afraid for their families and they couldn’t afford armed security like he could. Is that really how we want to make decisions in this country?
Again, I agree with this sentiment. Unfortunately whataboutism isn’t an argument.
There is no whatsboutism. Refusing to act is not “violence”.
I never suggested it was… which is exactly why pointing to unrelated political violence is whataboutism.
> Nobody's human rights are being actively violated because they're not allow to immigrate here.
US law enshrined both refugees and asylum seekers as separate categories of immigration specifically to deal with human rights issues observed in the 20th century. While that doesn’t mean any person anywhere has a right to be a citizen in the US, it is closer to true than your statement suggests.
“Sanctuary policies” are about enforcing the 10th Amendment. The Federal government alone is responsible for immigration policy. The states should not have to participate, and sanctuary policies are a public declaration that they won’t (usually because local law enforcement knows that it makes their primary job of enforcing the criminal code harder if residents won’t testify).
The reason we haven’t reformed US immigration laws is that everyone agrees it is broken, but nowhere close to a supermajority agree on _how_ it is broken or the steps needed to fix it. See “gang of 8” negotiations circa 2013. This is the inevitable outcome of the founders making Congress slow/stagnant by default. Also damn near half of the voters being propagandized with immigration ragebait for decades.
When my family came over to what is now the USA, immigration was as simple as paying for your own boat trip and passing a health inspection. It was hundreds of years of very “open borders” before Congress decided to go hyper racist and xenophobic in the 1870s.
It’s worth poiting out that Republicans have long insisted that “we can’t reform immigration laws without _first_ kicking out all illegal immigrants. It’s neither a reasonable expectation that we can do that, nor is it a reasonable precondition for reform negotiations. It’s also hilariously false that all recent immigrants vote for Democrats — that demographic is FAR more likely to be Evangelical Christian or Roman Catholic Christian, which heavily vote towards Republicans (not to mention all of the Socialism/Communism haters from Cuba, Vietnam, Venezuela who think Democrats are somehow equivalent to “far left”).
Nullification doesn’t harm US law. It is the escape valve people in the US use judiciously when US law becomes unruly and malicious.
> Nobody's human rights are being actively violated because they're not allow to immigrate here.
Many people’s rights are being violated recently while enforcing immigration law
My point is about the laws themselves. If they were unjust laws, there is an argument for civil disobedience. They aren’t though, so civil disobedience here is just anti-democratic.
They’re criminals. Criminals give up some of their rights. That’s how the law is enforceable.
These comments are like those dudes that paint themselves silver and gold to convince you they are statues.
so glad we have Red people running the country / ICE who obey every law on the books - phew…
So, is this what we are doing? Downvoting and non sequiturs that amount to deflection and whataboutism?
Not caring about democratic results — when human rights are not at issue — is a very dangerous precedent. I absolutely hate the current administration. They are not responsible you the laws on the books. They were successful last election, in some part, exactly because this is a very relevant political issue.
I don’t downvote people that have a different opinion so it ain’t me!
> they are not responsible for the laws on the books
so in 26/28 when Blue people take over they are free to disregard all laws because they are not “responsible for it”?
> I don’t downvote people that have a different opinion so it ain’t me
Totally fair. I’ve had a tough time with my good-faith, heterodox views on this issue lately.
>>they are not responsible for the laws on the books
>so in 26/28 when Blue people take over they are free to disregard all laws because they are not “responsible for it”?
No, my only point is that some seem to try to argue that “Trump is different because he is acting in bad faith,” and I generally agree.
The problem with that argument is that our immigration laws are decades old, and blue states nullification is also decades old. We’ve found ourselves dealing with federal enforcement of federal laws because of state nullification, we don’t like that enforcement — I don’t like that enforcement — but we could pretty much end all this escalation between blue states and the feds by just agreeing to enforce the laws on the books. No more flirting with literal civil war. Just dealing with the consequences of a losing position as humanely as possible, given the fact that it’s going to suck.
Then we can fight to change those laws democratically.
> we could pretty much end all this escalation between blue states and the feds by just agreeing to enforce the laws on the books
This is incredibly naive. You've got an academic point in the context of rewinding the clock back twenty years, sure. But as to the current situation?
Federal law-breaking forces are attacking citizens for simply exercising their first amendment rights to protest. Federal law-breaking forces are abducting people based on skin color and the declaration of a shoddy facial-recognition "app". Federal law-breaking forces are terrorizing entire apartment buildings by ransacking them in the middle of the night. Federal law-breaking forces are aggressively attacking people to seize control of situations that would otherwise be closer to even-party civil disputes (eg the woman who was violently kidnapped out of her own car because the jackboots crashed into her). Federal law-breaking forces are hiding their faces to avoid having their crimes documented and possibly facing justice.
This is all a much stronger form of wanton illegality - anti-Constitutional, organized, criminal, and aggressively violent transgressions - than people being here illegally. This is not terribly surprising, because all signs point to the immigration issue being nothing more than a pretext for unleashing fascist paramilitary gangs on American civil society - specifically fundamentalist red state militias hopped up on social media delusions and pathetic revenge fantasies, ultimately serving nothing beyond naked autocratic power.
So if you are earnestly concerned about the rule of law (and I agree we should be!), you should be focusing your current ire on those federal law-breaking forces. And no amount of "perhaps we did something to deserve this" navel gazing changes this.
> So if you are earnestly concerned about the rule of law (and I agree we should be!), you should be focusing your current ire on those federal law-breaking forces.
More whataboutism… always whataboutism.
> They're still our immigration laws, we should fight to change them
It’s good advice, but a big hill to climb. The Dem politicians walk a fine line here. The influx of illegal immigrants is truly unpopular, not just with folks on the right, but also many in the moderate left and independents. They dems realize it’s a hot potato which is why you get a lot of immigration rhetoric to try and satisfy the anger, but don’t really get any effort to change any laws even when they held both branches and the presidency through 2021-2022.
Prior to 2016, both parties were pretty aligned on it, only when Trump made it a core issue did the parties start to diverge on the topic.
> The influx of illegal immigrants is truly unpopular
Does it apply to rich immigrants?
Not having housing, high medical bills, gun violence are unpopular. To blame poor immigrants is the scapegoat and many people think that kicking all of them out will solve the problems that they want to be solved. It will not.
The current state of things is that big corporations and the rich want immigration, they just do not want immigrants to have rights. The solution that they have found is to make most immigrants illegal so they have no rights, they can be paid below minimal wage and they can be blamed for being criminals so nobody looks at the rich while they literally rape minors.
I agree that is very difficult to change. But not because the average voter would not accept it, but because the rich are pushing for a narrative were immigrants are at fault of all the excesses of the rich.
You can also call it undemocratic, not just because blue states are actively subverting them, but because the intent of the subversion is to create new voters and shift demographics into their favor.
I actually don’t think that’s relevant. I don’t think people vote for one party or another because of their race or ethnicity. I think assuming people vote along ethnic lines is honestly pretty idiotic, and I think the last two elections have demonstrated this as being entirely sensible.
Interesting that you imply I said anything about race. I didn’t.
Never mind that the reason people point out the last two elections is that they show statistical anomalies - which is by itself proving my point. The data is clear on this.
But further it runs counter to simple game theory.
If a Country, governed by Party A, enacts a law, prohibiting Nazis from immigrating, but Party B undermines that law in municipalities they rule in (by providing „sanctuary cities“, stopping law enforcement on such matters entirely, providing services including legal help for naturalization, and more things) basically stretching the timeframe as long as possible for illegal Nazis to be present in the country, so that they either become eligible Nazi voters locally (by residence status), naturalized Nazi citizens eventually or at least have Nazi offspring with a citizenship title – then obviously the Nazis are going to vote for the party that allowed that to happen (Party B), and against that party that tried to stop this (Party A).
And this will (decreasingly with each generation) be true for their Nazi offspring as well.
Illegal immigration is a crime. So is jay walking and software piracy and murder. There’s a lot of nuance to be had here in how big of a deal it is and how people who do the deed are treated.
It’s always felt weird though that it’s become taboo to call it a crime, but maybe that’s just me.
The issue is that it is illegal AND a nontrivial part of the electorate wants it enforced.
The “let’s all step back and consider my side’s view of this” isn’t really relevant after our side loses elections. If the will of the people is to start enforcing jay-walking, for better or worse, we’re going to see a lot of jay-walking enforcement.
I think it's more that something being a crime doesn't make it immoral, and something being a crime doesn't mean it should continue to be.
I do not think most illegal immigration should be considered a crime. That's my position. Moralizing about it by saying "well these people are CRIMINALS" because they crossed an imaginary line on a map is odious to me.
Actually the United States stands out not from the moralism, that’s very common in other countries.
What amazed me is how many Americans think immigration laws are optional. That entering and working illegally is no biggie.
Every other country I’ve lived in has much more strict immigration laws. Even the 3rd world countries that can’t seem to deliver potable tap water.
Deportations are standard, quick and supported by the population. Actually “supported” is wrong, it was more “yeah and…?”. No anger, self-riteousbess, just “thats how it’s supposed to work”
Most countries consider immigration enforcement is as standard as enforcing laws against bank robbery or littering. “Why wouldn’t you do it?” is the most typical take.
Also a lot of people applying that legal moralism consider it not just acceptable, but laudable to try to cheat on your taxes, a pretty significant crime.
Combining qualities you oppose into theoretical groups is a common, very human fallacy, but it will poison your mind against humanity. It's the origin of tribalism.
For example, I'm a white non-religious straight liberal US man with a hippy upbringing that I value dearly, and I think the opportunity to immigrate should be as available as possible to all good people. But I also recognize that it must be responsibly controlled, and the native culture and quality of life must be prioritized (for all nations, not just the West), and one piece of that is stopping illegal immigration. And it's not unreasonable to have an opinion that we are, to some degree, failing at all the pieces.
Why must the natives quality of life be prioritised?
Because otherwise why should native residents support the government or agree to submit under its laws and regulations?
>But I also recognize that it must be responsibly controlled, and the native culture and quality of life must be prioritized (for all nations, not just the West), and one piece of that is stopping illegal immigration.
I agree, it's about time we prioritized natives over illegal immigrants. We should start by giving back the land we stole from them, honoring our treaties and respecting tribal sovereignty. Maybe give Mount Rushmore back to the Lakota.
Reverse the order of the crimes in that sentence and you can find that opinion in droves on HN any day of the week.
What we really ought to be ridiculing if not punishing and marginalizing is inconsistency and cognitive dissonance.
There are so many issues possible in a nation of 300+mil that we cannot form opinions on policy based on vibes and emotions, we must have principals and let them inform our opinions.
The vast majority of accusations of hypocrisy in social/political arguments are based on subjectivity in the first place. There is simply no such case where X is objectively the same as Y - or else it would be X, and not Y. You can always form an argument around the difference between the two things. Maybe it's a weak argument and the person making it is obviously engaging in a double standard - but there is no way to draw a line.
> We have purposefully made it impossible to do the right thing
We have the most people trying to get in and let the most people in legally year after year, so not only is it no impossible, but we're the best at it.
> so we can rejoice in punishing those who do it "wrong".
Except no one is rejoicing that, but I can see how certain bubbles may have interest in spreading that misinformation.
Illegal immigration isn’t bad because people didn’t do their paperwork. It’s bad because it overrides society’s determinations about which foreigners to allow into the country and how many. So “making it easier to immigrate legally” misses the point completely.
And this concern about “who and how many” is well founded. Alexander Hamilton himself noted the dangers of cultural division from immigration. https://www.iwp.edu/articles/2016/12/21/hamiltons-actual-vie.... He wrote: “The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common national sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits; on the exemption of the citizens from foreign bias, and prejudice; and on that love of country which will almost invariably be found to be closely connected with birth, education, and family.”
Silicon Valley understands that culture drives outcomes when it comes to companies and startups, but have a huge blind spot about culture when it comes to countries. But culture matters just as much for countries as companies. Immigrants bring their cultures with them—typically from places less successful than the U.S.—and that culture persists for generations: https://www.sup.org/books/economics-and-finance/culture-tran.... That has serious consequences for society. You can easily look at Minnesota versus New Jersey and see that immigration patterns have left an imprint on culture centuries later. And it’s equally clear that certain parts of the country are culturally better than other parts of the country. America would be much more orderly and well governed if more of it was like Minnesota and Utah and less like West Virginia or New Jersey.
> It’s bad because it overrides society’s determinations about which foreigners to allow into the country and how many. So “making it easier to immigrate legally” misses the point completely.
No it doesn't. What if I want more foreigners? What if I want people to come here? Somehow, these arguments only ever seem to rachet in favor of people who want less immigration, not more.
I'd say the federal government of the United States is currently overriding my preferences about who to allow into the country and how many, actually, by aggressively enforcing immigration laws in ways they likely were not intended to be enforced, and in ways which are repeatedly being found to be illegal, actually.
> And it’s equally clear that certain parts of the country are culturally better than other parts of the country. America would be much more orderly and well governed if more of it was like Minnesota and Utah and less like West Virginia or New Jersey.
You need to add a "to my preference" here when you talk about which parts of the country are "culturally better" than others. You clearly have strong ideas about what you'd like US culture to be, many of which I suspect I deeply disagree with.
Is your argument that West Virginia is "disorderly" or "culturally inferior" because of immigrants? Which groups, and from when?
> > It’s bad because it overrides society’s determinations about which foreigners to allow into the country and how many.
> No it doesn't. What if I want more foreigners? What if I want people to come here?
Then that's your preference, that's not society's determination! We theoretically live in a democracy. Policy should be determined by the Rule of Law determined democratically, not by @ivraatiems's preference.
> What if I want more foreigners? What if I want people to come here?
Your view doesn't reflect the electorate. Cato, an extremely pro-immigration organization, did a study in 2021. They found that, after being informed about current immigration levels, the median respondent stated 500,000 immigrants should be admitted to the US annually: https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/styles/aside_3x/pu.... A recent Pew study found that 11 million immigrants arrived from 2020-2025, or over 2 million per year. That's four times what the median American thinks the immigration influx should be.
The New York Times did a great podcast about how Congress has been (falsely) promising since the 1960s that changes to immigration laws would not result in increased immigration: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/podcasts/the-daily/electi....
> You need to add a "to my preference" here when you talk about which parts of the country are "culturally better" than others. You clearly have strong ideas about what you'd like US culture to be, many of which I suspect I deeply disagree with.
It's not purely subjective. Communities in America settled by Puritans, Quakers, Dutch, Scandinavians, and Mormons simply do better on objective metrics. For example, a UCLA study found that Mormon men live 10 years longer than white men generally: https://www.deseret.com/2010/4/13/20375744/ucla-study-proves.... The two states with the highest social mobility (Utah and Vermont: https://www.archbridgeinstitute.org/social-mobility-in-the-5...) are polar opposites politically, but are similar in that both were settled by people from particular parts of Britain.
But the subjective matters as well. Lee Kuan Yew visited London in the 1960s, and was amazed by an unattended news stand in Piccadilly Circus with an "honor system" cash box: https://www.reddit.com/r/london/comments/1mn8moh/how_do_you_.... As someone from Bangladesh, I fully concur. My preference is the opposite of Bangladesh, something like an orderly New England town full of high-social trust people who raise their kids with sayings like "there's no such thing as a free lunch."
> Is your argument that West Virginia is "disorderly" or "culturally inferior" because of immigrants? Which groups, and from when?
Appalachia was settled by people from a culturally distinct region of northern Britain: https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/four-folkways. Hundreds of years later, this group remains culturally and sociologically distinct from other British Americans.
> My preference is the opposite of Bangladesh, something like an orderly New England town full of high-social trust people who raise their kids with sayings like "there's no such thing as a free lunch."
How do you reconcile your preference for this with the fact that a lot of the other people who express this preference would prefer you hadn't come from Bangladesh to join them?
It really seems to me, genuinely, like the rules you advocate for would exclude you if they were applied to you today. You can read elsewhere on my profile the story of my Indian roommate who had very similar views to you, and his illegal deportation. The system is not and has never been "let's see if you're the sort of Indian or Bangladeshi or whatever that we'd like", it's "you're from those backwaters? no thanks."
Does it bother you that other people from Bangladesh - or anywhere - who wanted the sort of society you want will likely not be permitted to join it if you build it here? Frankly, my experience with a lot of non-immigrant folks with the views you espouse is that they wouldn't welcome you no matter what views you had.
But society's determination is that a certain quantity of illegal immigrants should enter every year because they have less rights and can be better exploited by businesses. Being deliberately blind to this reality is also living in a fantasy land.
An easy solution to this would be to grant those individuals legal status once they are in the country.
(Yes, I know this has many many other consequences. I am not necessarily actually advocating for it just happening with the stroke of a pen. But holding that up as a reason to prevent immigration itself rings hollow to me.)
The purpose of a system is what it does. Proposing solutions is unhelpful because the system is not interested in the problem being fixed. The problem is a designed in feature.
You’ll have to forgive me for not respecting Hamilton’s view of culture considering he was a slave owner.
> especially in the United States.
China has 1.4 million immigrants, and 12000 foreigners with permanent residency. Not per year, but total, cumulative [1]. Despite having 4x the population of the USA.
Meanwhile the USA has gone from 83% White in 1970 [2], to White children being a minority [3] in less than 50 years. And most of that change was due to legal immigration (that they were promised wouldn't change anything [4]) Yet still they're called out for not erasing their own identity even faster.
So do you just not believe in the national right to self-determination, to decide who may live among them? Do you also not believe in this right for Kashmir [5,6] or Palestine?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_China
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta...
[3] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/less-than-half-of-us-chil...
[4] Secretary of State Dean Rusk and other politicians, including Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), asserted that the bill would not affect the U.S. demographic mix - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Ac...
[5] Kashmir’s new status could bring demographic change, drawing comparisons to the West Bank - https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/08/08/kashmirs-new...
[6] Human rights activists said that the moves to change Kashmir’s status were only the first steps in a broader plan to erode Kashmir’s core rights and seed the area with non-Kashmiris, altering the demographics and eventually destroying its character. Previous laws barred outsiders from owning property. - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/world/asia/india-pakistan...
How long did it take America to go from 0% white to almost complete native erasure?
If we’re gonna apply your definitionally racist argument then whites (ie Europeans) (or Asians or Africans) shouldn’t be in the country.
Also, apparently you’re ok with America’s population doubling with immigration as long as those immigrants are white Europeans?
The share of immigrants as a percentage of population is about where it was between the mid 1800s and early 1900s, but you’re fine with that because it was primarily Europeans? (Although, ironically, a lot of those Europeans were also not considered white contemporaneously and it’s only now that their descendants consider themselves white and rail about all the non white immigeants).
I would not be using the "natives were wiped out by foreign conquerors" argument in support of uncontrolled (or any other kind) immigration, if I were you.
> So do you just not believe in the national right to self-determination, to decide who may live among them? Do you also not believe in this right for Kashmir [5,6] or Palestine?
On a personal moral/philosophical level, I think lines on a map which we call "nations" are a foolish way to decide who is allowed to go where and do what.
So from first principles, I don't accept the framing. I don't think "national" right to self-determination is a meaningful or valid term. It exists in practice but it is not valuable except in terms of pragmatism/realpolitik.
Therefore, I advocate for immigration policies which are much more focused on helping people and bettering society around me than on any nation-based concept of identity. That doesn't mean I want to bring more people who would hurt others into my society. But it does mean I don't care about whether the people who come in are "like me" in some meaningful way.
(That doesn't mean I don't act like nations exist or agree that they do, just that my ideal world probably would not include them in that way. Nor does it mean I don't think national lines ever echo the lines of societies or that I'm an anarchist who doesn't believe in governments. I just don't accept the idea that "this person lives on this side of the border" is a meaningful way to decide if they get to live in a place or not.)
Also, it sounds like what you consider "national" framing is actually racial framing. Given that you spend a lot of time talking about white people in a nation that has never been just white people, is that not correct?
Why are you so concerned with White people being the minority? Does the US somehow have a history of not treading minorities equally or something that I’m not aware of?
No one has the right to immigrate to another country. If that country has steep requirements, that's its prerogative.
It should be telling that a great portion of these people are young men, and young men from certain regions view women, minorities, and ideas like honesty and fairness much differently. Europe is facing this right now. What are you suggesting? All of India moves to the US? Are you even aware they'd do that if they could? That is _not_ practical.
What do you mean with "telling"? That they are in tech because that's the demographic of tech folks? Or that men in most parts of the world are responsible to make enough money for the whole family?
It's more rethorical but I seriously don't know how that's telling.
> Europe is facing this right now.
What exactly? War in Syria was ten years ago.
> What are you suggesting? All of India moves to the US?
I find it clear that the suggestion is: Provide a clear and feasible path for people who wish to migrate and will benefit the society. We lack that in Europe/Germany as well and ironically are missing the laws to deal with criminal immigration effectively.
It's sad many people don't even know or think about the difference of regular migration and coming as a refugee. Migration of skilled workers must become much easier in Europe, while refugees are a very different topic.
The US is doing something right if so many people are ready to wait in limbo for decades of the one life they get on this planet.
For people on employment visas - they are one economic downturn away from everything being undone. They ll get 60/90 days to leave the life and relationships they have spent years building.
Billions of people around the world live in poverty without running water or power, let alone economic opportunities.
Saying the US is doing something right because people want to immigrate there is setting the bar very low.
Those billions would happily go to any Developed country, and per capita, the US doesn’t have particularly high immigration (Australia is the highest)
>Those billions would happily go to any Developed country
You'll find it's a lot more difficult to immigrate to those other developed countries
The US is very commonly regarded as the hardest country in the world to get a work permit as a foreigner.
I had two to the US, and have had them for three other countries.
Work permits and immigrant visas are not the same thing, though they are overlapping categories.
Agree, and immigrant visas are harder than work permits
The only thing that proves is how badly misinformed and propagandized on the matter the common person is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_China
As someone who was in this limbo and eventually became a citizen... It's better than the other options. In particular, I could take my dollar savings back to my home country and I'd still be much ahead of my friends who never tried to come to the US.
Well, in it's favor the US is one place where the CIA probably won't overthrow the government (the 1963 coup notwithstanding).
> (the 1963 coup notwithstanding)
I too believe that contrails are mind control.
I mean, I personally don't believe in chemtrails or "mind control" myself, but to each their own- even if the CIA had explicit programs because -they- (falsely, in my opinion) believed in "mind control.
And you can ignore the 2009 US-backed honduras coup and everything back to the 1953 coup against Árbenz if you want, and take my tongue in cheek reference to the murder of JFK as evidence that I'm a crank- I'm used to that, even if very rarely have I heard the folks making those assertions make a plausible and informed case of what did happen to JFK.
But still, even if you ignore me because I am crank, you're not going to get beyond a simple, likely-racist, and probably wrong understanding of US immigration without understanding long-term US foreign policy in South and Central America.
All true but isn't our quality of life built on mines in Africa (car batteries and phone batteries) and sweatshops in China and co (much of our clothes)? To what degree does that reinforce that other countries have lower quality of life? Then again, this isn't specific to just the US.
There is no doubt that the country caps and quotas for immigrants from countries with large populations like India, Mexico, Philippenes and China are a huge problem.
I’m not sure that anyone can really agree on a solution, but there should be some stop loss where these things can’t be delayed beyond a certain fixed length of time and/or they shouldn’t issue the initial visas if the backlog to adjust is so long.
The reason that this and most immigration law hasn’t been fixed is that while most people agree that this is a problem, there is not really a compromise solution that everyone can really agree on.
> I’m not sure that anyone can really agree on a solution, but there should be some stop loss where these things can’t be delayed beyond a certain fixed length of time and/or they shouldn’t issue the initial visas if the backlog to adjust is so long.
What initial visas? If you are talking about selectively denying non-immigrant dual-intent H-1B visas to people from countries with long timelines in some or all immigrant visa categories (not that getting an H-1B doesn't imply intent to seek to immigrate, and doesn't require qualification in an immigrant visa category), that's...well, even as someone who thinks the H-1B is a bad idea ab initio, a remarkably non-helpful policy to layer on top.
> The reason that this and most immigration law hasn’t been fixed is that while most people agree that this is a problem, there is not really a compromise solution that everyone can really agree on.
It's not just that people agree it is a problem and don't agree on a solution, people don't even agree on what the problem is though they might agree that, e.g., the long waitlists from certain countries are symptoms of some problem.
Like, when some people favor eliminating all immigration from certain countries, and other people favor eliminating per country caps, that isn't a different solution to the same problem, its a fundamental difference in what is perceived as the problem.
Those four countries have very different quota problems though: folks from Mexico and Philippines face a long wait in family immigration, mostly to bring their kids & siblings to the US ( https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/v... ), whereas Indian nationals also face long waits for employment based green-cards.
Noting that you can always use your country of birth or your spouse's country of birth (cross-chargeability) for an employment-based green-card, my understanding has always been that Indians have large preference (or face large pressure) to marry other highly-educated folks that they often meet in the US but are also born in India that other immigrants just don't face as much.
> Those four countries have very different quota problems though: folks from Mexico and Philippines face a long wait in family immigration, mostly to bring their kids & siblings to the US
Mexico faces long wait times in all of the quota-limited family-based immigrant visa categories.
The Phillipines faces a few months longer wait time in one severelly globally backlogged family based category (F4; where there is a 17 year backlog for most countries and its 3 months longer for the Phillipines), but not otherwise.
India and China have long backlogs in most employment-based immigrant visa categories (but generally much less than Mexico has in family-based categories), India also has an longer-than-usual backlog (more than Phillipines, less than Mexico) in the F4 family based category.
There was bipartisan immigration legislation working its way through Congress, until the president killed it because it went against his "immigration bad" narrative.
I think they could at least offer some sort of reprieve for people waiting in line. Their status is tied to employer whims. If someone has lived in the country for 5 years and in line for citizenship perhaps give them some protection in case their employment gets taken away. Some grace period, perhaps access to healthcare.
They are not "in line for citizenship", they're in line for a green-card, that's very different
Citizenship in this country is not a right. Why is it important that we allow more people in from these other nations? Why is that a good thing?
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-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
It's certainly a popular poem, but I don't see any great evidence it has ever reflected American values.
Not even in that only 3% of the US population is Native American, and the rest are therefore descended from or are themselves immigrants?
This is just a tired old emotional argument. It won't phase anyone who sees the results of modern immigration practices.
It’s not an argument, it’s a value.
It's an argument based on a value. The parent's position is ostensibly that the value does not currently survive contact with concrete reality in the US today.
We get it, you don't like immigrants.
America has a pretty generous immigration cap. But we have chosen as a nation that we want diverse immigration. At one time we prioritized western europeans, and we decided that wasn't a great policy. So we switched to one that encourage people from everywhere. This is what American's want, diverse immigration. I don't get how that somehow is bad? I don't get how more populous nations should have greater representation. Again, we had larger groups from certain countries (western europe) and we decided we SPECIFICALLY don't want that, that that isn't fair immigration policy and isn't part of America's diversity. We aren't going back to that.
It is not a right, for sure. However, there are historical reasons why they are county wide quotas. Before the 1965 INA (Hart-Celler Act, which JFK wanted), they had a national-origins quota system: each country's quota was based on the existing immigrant population of that national origin already in the United States, using data from the 1890 census. Because the U.S. population in 1890 was overwhelmingly from Northern and Western Europe (especially Protestants), this formula strongly favored those groups. Immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe was heavily restricted because most of them are Catholics. Once Catholics got political power, thanks to JFK, this is reformed in favor of what we see country based caps.
The national-origins formula was explicitly designed to maintain the existing ethnic composition of the U.S.--in other words, preserve what policymakers at the time considered the “traditional” American demographic makeup.
Fascinating, and thank you for this history.
In fact it's the opposite. We used to have a system that promoted western european, and we decided to change that. So we split them up in a way that encourages diversity. People from populous nations think this isn't fare. American's think it is explicitly fair, that our system makes sure people from all over the world come and join us, not just immigration dominated by the highest populous countries.
I understand the diversity is good, and that immigration can create that take. But I don't understand that 'immigration good, policies for diversity bad' take?
> American's think it is explicitly fair, that our system makes sure people from all over the world come and join us, not just immigration dominated by the highest populous countries.
I'm an American, and I don't understand how it is explicitly fair that India and China with areas of very large and populations of very large have the same immigration caps as Belize. Especially when something happens and Sudan becomes Sudan and South Sudan and the same people and the same area now have twice the cap; how is that explicitly fair? If India reorganized as the Union of Indian Republics (which I hope is not an offensive hypothetical name), where each state became a full country with an ISO-2 code and an ITU country code, would it be fair that each of the 36 member states have the same cap as any other country? Also, I'm not sure why the overall caps haven't changed since 1990. It feels like they should be indexed to something.
I think this version of quotas/caps is better than the previous version, but that doesn't make it explicitly fair.
I would be interested in knowing what the priority dates would look like if we adjusted the overall caps every ten years after the census to some percentage of overall US population (the 1990 cap was set at approximately 0.3%) or annually based on estimates works too, and also adjusting up the per country caps a bit too.
Basically the idea is that foreign nationals can only have as much leverage as the quota. This is based partly on old fears that European powers would recolonize the US.
Whether or not is necessary or not, I can’t say but if India separated into 500 different counties, then the US would only be catering to 500 micronations, maybe even divided on ethnic lines, and not a single powerful one which could get cultural dominance.
For a historical case, look at the British Empire. If given a large quota, most immigrants would be from the original isles because that’s who have the financial means to cross the ocean, while the billion plus people living in colonies like India wouldn’t have a chance until the Empire breaks.
Is it fair that Bugatti Chiron has to obey the same speed limit as Geo Metro? The country cap is the limit on the speed of immigration from that country. If we establish such a limit for any reason, why does it have to be proportional to the size of the country? If anything, it should be lower for the bigger countries if we consider this a safety measure against a country gaining too much influence, similar to trucks having lower speed limit than cars on some roads.
I have no problem with your notion of diversity. The whole EU population is 450 million, and there are 27 countries within the EU. So, the question: is China/India less diverse than the whole EU? Some say "yes"; others, "no". Both provide good reasons for their answers.
However, one can't deny the original immigration template with a variable. Original value for this variable: "national-origins". That value is replaced with "country wide quotas". The other value is f(diversity): another formula f based on the variable 'diversity'.
American citizens and their politicians have total freedom to replace the template, or change the current value for one of the variables, or replace with another variable.
Policies encouraging diversity aren't necessarily good or bad on their own. It may be that it is time to readjust those quotas based on the current needs.
What did you do to earn your citizenship?
Idk about US, but in Europe we are in dire need of migration. The shortage in for example health care is acute and alarming, at least in Germany.
Our cleaning women is just about to finish her three year training program. However she failed the final exam because of the complicated wording of the test. Her German is good enough but formal German is a different beast. She is allowed to redo the test a single time next week. If she passes, she will have an official German degree but has to leave the country because her visa is based on the training program. She then has to reapply for another visa to be allowed to reenter Germany.
Completely dysfunctional in my opinion. The system should bring people in that will be a net positive for the country while filtering out criminals.
In the long run it seems likely enough that it will become mainstream that people don't have the right to enforce borders against others.
Like the real long run, try to use your imagination.
> In the long run it seems likely enough...
Does it seem more likely than the alternative? If so, what is your argument that that is more likely?
Pragmatically: if you want to enforce the legality of a state-affirmed migration path, it has to be viable. Without a militarized border (which is impractical based on nation size and undesirable for fiscal and moral reasons) and a militarized interior (do you _like_ what ICE is becoming?), the best mitigation for illegal immigration is viable legal immigration.
Fiscally: immigrants have above-average entrepreneurial tendencies. It doesn't take a lot of enterprise creations and resulting tax payment and job creation to offset a _lot_ of social service consumption. Inbound migration also is what keeps the US from having a net-shrinking population, which until we can get away from late-stage capitalism is a death knell for the economy.
Morally and ethically: this is a nation of immigrants. If you claim to be a native, do you speak Navajo? Ute?
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "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!"
Why not? Why is a bad thing?
It’s not a bad thing per se, but democratic action can produce cultural shift to something that was previously considered outside of the scope of your country’s way of life. What matters is what you want to achieve as a country, a society, a community and so on. This is something groups of people have to decide for themselves, and the worst form of disagreement is violence.
I am of the view that more than 10 countries in the world should be built on enlightenment ideals, have a rule of law, have systems and processes for providing a good quality of life, and have centers of education and productivity.
I don’t think it’s reasonable that we should shift billions of people to live in a handful of nations via immigration. If that’s the overall plan, then nations where those people are immigrating from should just become vassal states.
It isn’t necessarily, but it’s currently used in the US to allow the wealthy to avoid investing in Americans.
Instead of investing in Americans by lowering costs of necessities (food, housing, education, children) they chase short term profits for the benefits of shareholders (which is by and large the ultra rich). It’s much cheaper to import labor where the above costs were paid for by somebody else.
Fully, fully disagree. The process should be better, but caps are not one of the problems that needs significant rework.
I suspect that the amount of background legwork for each application is fairly limited. It should be possible to triage the vast majority of applications in a matter of days at most, at least the denials. It's wild that it takes years to do this.
I assume it's intentional. And/or profitable.
You've clearly never seen someone go for citizenship. It's a relatively involved process that involves multiple interviews, character reference letters, lots of paperwork, etc.
Getting a greencard (or equivalent) is an entirely different thing and is even _more_ broken.
I've known several people who've done it. I wasn't trying to argue that there isn't a lot of manual labor going on. But I'm doubting how much of that labor extends beyond interfacing with the applicant.
Are they interviewing references outside the country? Doing deep background checks that are not basically instant electronically? That's what I'm talking about. The denial process can probably be made extremely fast, and then the tedious interview part can be focused only on the ones we are planning to accept otherwise.
You're probably right that the background checks aren't that intensive, but every other part of that process is. If needing 2+ interviewers for 15-30 minutes per candidate isn't labor intensive, I don't know what your definition is.
Going for citizenship is pretty easy once you have a green-card, and you can do it without a lawyer. It's a bunch of easy paperwork and an interview.
Getting the green card though...
The American people have spoken time and again that we want these caps. That we want opportunity spread to more countries than just the most populace. That immigration policy should support diversity over other considerations.
The reason this hasn't been fixed is because most American's support current policy along with promoting family unification and other decisions that are based on our moral positions. America has set a pretty generous amount of immigration slots, and it's not broken that we chose to fill them in a diverse way.
> That we want opportunity spread to more countries than just the most populace. That immigration policy should support diversity over other considerations.
There's an unspoken assumption there that India and China are monocultures, containing no diversity within themselves. Or that diversity is neatly defined by a border on a map.
> The American people have spoken time and again that we want these caps.
Evidence for this, or even that the majority of the American people understand the system of caps, whether or not they support it?
> That immigration policy should support diversity over other considerations.
The people most supportive of the caps are the people most openly hostile to the concept of diversity having value, generally.
Speaking of the US, how are TN visas nowadays? Are companies allergic to their paperwork like other visas that are harder to get?
Anecdotally as someone in a large tech company, fairly common and much easier to get than a lot of visa classes. But then, you have to be Canadian or Mexican (and the Canadian one is generally easier).
Also keep in mind that it's a non-immigrant, non-dual intent visa, so if you end up wanting to stay, you'll need to adjust to another class at some point.
Who would even want to come to the US any more? Nobody is welcome any more, not even citizens, except those rich enough to bribe the king.
Takes for fucking ever. I worked with my girlfriend -> fiancee -> wife through her transition between student visa, H1B, green card, citizenship. The whole process took about 7 years.
Do you have any publications or work of your experience through this? Looking to learn more about it for my own personal life as well.
9 months - from conception to birth
birthright citizenship will soon end so you may need to find greener pastures elsewhere :)
The odds of a change in the constitution are pretty low. Whereas our economic need for immigrants is consistently high... So most of this is just very cruel theatre. Employers fill out an I9 for every hire. Illegal immigration could be ended in a week at the employer level through purely administrative enforement. Instead we have what we have; which means the cruenty theatre is the purpose. Why would that be?
> The odds of a change in the constitution are pretty low
The constitution need not change, the Supreme Court can just change their interpretation of it
Immigration to the US takes so long, a large percentage of the applicants die of natural causes while waiting. It's Kafkaesque. https://www.cato.org/blog/16-million-family-sponsored-immigr... https://www.newsnationnow.com/us-news/immigration/400000-ind...
Citizenship in the United States is not a right.
To anyone who happens to be born on its soil, it actually is. And leaving people on bureaucratic limbo for decades is abusive.
And it can also be a burden. If you are born on US soil to non-US nationals and therefore become an accidental American you are subject to US tax laws on worldwide income.
In the UK at least banks will not sell you financial products with tax implications (pensions, tax exempt savings schemas (ISA's to the locals)) because of the US reporting requirements.
And getting your citizenship revoked requires lawyering so its a PITA.
I know some Americans will find it hard to believe but there are people who want out of this system and feel trapped in it.
That is also a problem. US taxes on worldwide income is absurd. Especially if you don't live in the US.
Yeah, rights can be burdens - no shit.
Other people's right to a jury can actually invade YOUR freedoms when jury duty compels you to come hear their case under threats of fines/jail time, but we accept that right as a burden for others.
Hasn't the president signed an executive order that says birthright citizenship is not for children of non-citizens? I see that it's being challenged in court, but the order is currently valid, right?
> Hasn't the president signed an executive order that says birthright citizenship is not for children of non-citizens?
Executive orders have force to the extent that they exert powers that the President has directly under the Constitution or that are assigned to the President by Congress exercising the powers it has directly under the Constitution.
Amending the Constitution by altering the definition of citizenship in the Fourteenth Amendment (or overruling the Supreme Court's consistent reading of the language of the Fourteenth Amendment, if you prefer that characterization) is neither a power granted to the President directly by the Constitution, nor a power Congress has granted the President by statute, nor even within the power granted to the Congress by the Constitution to grant to the President if it was inclined to do so.
> I see that it's being challenged in court, but the order is currently valid, right?
“Currently valid” is a tricky concept. In one sense, its is valid only to the extent it is actually compliant with the Constitution and laws which have higher priority than executive orders. Or you can read the question as really being about whether it can currently be applied, in which case the answer is a more simple “no”, because after the Supreme Court made the usual recent route to a simple single interim resolution pending the full litigation by simply deciding that nationwide injunctions were not within the power of district courts, they could only issue orders against government actions applicable to the litigants before them, a class action was certified covering everyone who might be affected by the order [0], and a preliminary injunction in that case has blocked the order.
[0] https://www.aclu.org/barbara-v-trump-nationwide-class-action...
Executive orders cannot overrule the Constitution.
14th Amendment:
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."
There are rumblings about "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" somehow excluding folks based on their immigration status, but frankly, the meaning is clear, and jurisprudence recognizes this. The jurisdiction carveout is for international diplomats, i.e. people who are literally not subject to US law. Immigrants, even illegal immigrants, are subject to US law. Stating otherwise would have vast repercussions.
> Executive orders cannot overrule the Constitution.
And I would hope this is a fairly universally held position, not so partisan. Today one side might cheer an executive order overriding the 14th amendment, but how will they feel if the next administration decides to pull the same stunt with the 2nd?
We don't want to go there. There are already some states experimenting with doing end-runs around the Constitution with their own civil laws, and for similar reasons I would expect rational people to want that effort to fail.
>> Executive orders cannot overrule the Constitution.
> I would hope this is a fairly universally held position, not so partisan.
I agree. I think the constitution limits both the executive and the legislative branches.
> how will they feel if the next administration decides to pull the same stunt with the 2nd?
The 2nd amendment has already been overridden by federal laws without a constutional amendment.
The 2nd used to mean that the states has a right to let their citizens arm themselves privately with military weapons. The federal government was forbidden by the 2nd to interfere with this.
I'm from Europe and fine with the very restrictive licensing we have here.
But it looks very shortsighted to wildly re-interpret the constitution far outside of the original meaning, instead of passing new amendments.
> The 2nd used to mean that the states has a right to let their citizens arm themselves privately with military weapons
In particular, at the time that it was written, it meant arm themselves with military weapons for the purposes of military action. That's what the contemporary use of the term "bear arms" was understood to mean. Try to find any mention of self-defense from back then. It wasn't what they were thinking about.
Or look at this earlier version: “A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, but no one religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person.”
That conscientious objector clause at the end certainly gives some context to the discussion.
The modern interpretation of the second amendment is very different.
Those words in the Constitution are just words. They can be interpreted away by the Supreme Court.
Thanks for the detailed answer, I think that'll be a relief for many. However, would you say this still is a volatile situation for people who are facing this issue? Are the rulings _final_ on this? Or is there chance of people getting stuck in limbo?
> Thanks for the detailed answer, I think that'll be a relief for many. However, would you say this still is a volatile situation for people who are facing this issue? Are the rulings _final_ on this? Or is there chance of people getting stuck in limbo?
No, rulings are not final. SCOTUS could and very well may disagree with more than a hundred years of jurisprudence and overrule e.g. US v. Wong Kim Ark[1], enabling much easier denaturalization by the federal government. Here's an example article from a right-wing think tank about why they believe SCOTUS should overrule Ark[2].
1. https://www.oyez.org/cases/1850-1900/169us649
2. https://americanmind.org/features/the-case-against-birthrigh...
> 2. https://americanmind.org/features/the-case-against-birthrigh...
That seems like a very good demonstration of the pitfalls of originalist interpretations of the Constitution. Even then, the argument comes off as extremely weak. And it doesn't even begin to try and address the consequences of reinterpreting the meaning of "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof".
Are conservatives envisioning a new class of slaves? People born on US soil who have none of the protections of the Constitution? Even if that is not the goal, it's not hard to imagine that there would be far-reaching consequences from deciding that the Constitution was not a limit on the behavior of government, but in fact only applied to citizens. What a massive bump in power for the bureaucrats in DC.
Heck, we could just snatch people off the street and declare they cannot prove they are a citizen therefore they have no Constitutional protections. No right to due process so they can prove they're a citizen, nothing like that. Better plan on carrying your passport at all times (and hope it doesn't get ... lost).
No, it is held up in court. The SCOTUS tried to make it valid by ruling against universal injunctions, but within days the challenges were refiled as class actions.
It is not valid.
Freedom of speech is though. You're allowed to complain about the process as much as you want.
But if you welcome immigrants so as not to run out of labor or stagnate culturally, rather than simply dislike immigrants, you'd want to improve the bureaucracy.
Implying that homogenous cultures are "stagnant" is a hideous insult to people all around the world.
Is it a hideous insult because you think it's not true, or because the wording feels offensive? Is there a more polite way to express the same sentiment, if you think it's true, or is it either true or insulting?
Cuba has had zero immigration for a long time but has an interesting culture. Vietnam has basically zero immigration. Indonesia. Philippines. India. Honduras. Guatemala. Brazil. Jamaica. Mexico.
It's both insulting and untrue in a way that feels degrading to these nations' rich thriving cultures. That somehow only western, immigration heavy cultures are valid or are cultures of any worth.
I do think those nations have rich, thriving cultures. I also think that any culture, no matter how rich and thriving, can lead itself toward stagnation if it becomes overly insular. It's fair to point out that immigration isn't the only possible source of cultural diversity, but it's a powerful force for it, and I think the United States, being a huge cultural exporter, is at more risk than countries that are less dominant on the internet.
Just say what you really mean "white people have no culture"
Would it make you feel better if I told you I think Japan, South Korea, and China are at risk of the same?
I'm not worried about which culture, I think any culture that's not exposed to other cultures is putting itself at a disadvantage.
Not if your reelection campaign is reliant on the votes of racists
"so as not to run out of labor" Beloved by the extreme right economically and now Trump. Low ball the labor market. Destroy the middle class and especially the working class. But at least CEOs will get their performance bonuses, and shareholders will see shares rise due to lower costs.
It's literally the current case. Our citizenry is incapable of meeting our labor needs. ("Why" is another discussion entirely.)
If you were to remove all the illegal immigrants right now from the US, our economy would be kneecapped. Granted, the harvest season is over in most of the US, but housing would be among the first markets to collapse functionally. If you are uncertain how important that market is, study the Great Recession of 2008.
As opposed to figuratively.
"If you were to remove all the illegal immigrants right now from the US" The wage levels and benefits would have to rise to meet the demand for labor. The US would also have to sort out its education and trades system too. But if you think this is a skills shortage, I've got a bridge to sell you. And by the way, you are economically libertarian and on the same side as Trump. Bringing in an Indian to do the same job as an American citizen for half the wage is not a skill shortage, it's crony capitalism.
"housing would be among the first markets to collapse functionally" Poe's Law. You'd have a massive supply in housing, and therefore a collapse in the prices to owning a house. It has nothing to do with '08.
"f you are uncertain how important that market is, study the Great Recession of 2008." The great recession(It was a depression. I'd suggest studying definitions) was caused by three things: President Clinton scrapping Glass-Steagall Act, the dam set up after the Great Depression of '29 to stop it happening again. President Clinton signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Credit default swaps were the nukes of '08. Clinton exempted CDSs from regulation!! President Clinton rewrote the Community Reinvestment Act forcing banks and lending institutions to give NINJA loans under the charge of racism(see commentator above) if they did not. He also signed NAFTA allowing cheap labor and material into the US, and allowing companies to move South. (see Ross Perot great sucking sound) He also brought China into the WTO devastating not just America, but the entire West.
What exactly does "stagnate culturally" mean?
As far as I can tell, America has rapidly become a cultural cesspit, and yet immigration has never been higher.
Not sure I follow...
it's literally in the bill of rights.
I swear, it needs to amended so that natural born citizens should also have to pass citizenship questions like immigrants to retain their citizenship. How can you not know this? Have you never read or heard a recital of the bill of rights?
And yet we still have the most people trying to get in, and we also let the most people in annually, so we must be doing something better than everyone else. Of course, everything can always be improved.
Because this thread is a little spicy, I just want to remind folks that their comments are potentially "discoverable" in a legal situation. So if you comment something disparaging about minorities or immigrants it may haunt you later. Let’s keep it civil.
Given the current administration, it might actually be beneficial
Being a citizen is totally overrated unless you have a lawn that needs blowing and qualify for social security. I imagine many 49ers felt the same way.
What?