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> Being pro immigration does not mean you’re pro illegal immigration. This distinction is mostly out the window with today's populists, see e.g. repealing jus

> Being pro immigration does not mean you’re pro illegal immigration. This distinction is mostly out the window with today's populists, see e.g. repealing jus soli and all the other racist dogwhistles. > If they don’t have social security numbers, they’re not paying payroll taxes. They're using SSNs, often false or not their own. Read about the Earnings Suspense File at the SSA in the second link I posted.

ineedaj0b 2y ago
>This distinction is mostly out the window with today's populists, see e.g. repealing jus soli and all the other racist dogwhistles. your enemies aren't all dumb. the smart ones aren't likely to talk to you based on your attitudes towards them.
koolba 2y ago
> This distinction is mostly out the window with today's populists, see e.g. repealing jus soli and all the other racist dogwhistles. There are already some limitations on birthright citizenship, for example we do not grant it to children born to diplomats visiting the USA. It's not an unreasonable position to limit it to legal immigrants. Foreign embassies are considered US soil for jurisdictional purposes. If an army forced their way in to an embassy so that their pregnant battalion could deliver their babies within the embassy, should they get citizenship? If it doesn't apply to the embassy, how about if they do the same thing to a small island controlled by the USA or even the southern USA border?
- worstspotgain 2y ago
  You're right, I can picture this. A pregnant battalion of the Mexican army breaches the border and invades the US to give birth, 18 years later the kids are employed cleaning American bathrooms. Mexico wins and America is not great once again.
- pkaye 2y ago
  > There are already some limitations on birthright citizenship, for example we do not grant it to children born to diplomats visiting the USA. That's largely because the US is a signatory of the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations. Children of foreign diplomats born in the United States are not automatically granted citizenship because they are not considered subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.
- pkaye 2y ago
  > ...repealing jus soli and all the other racist dogwhistles. Australia did the exact thing. Switch from Jus Soli to Jus Sanguinis. Some Jus Sanguinis countries have switched to some hybrid system that allows legal immigrants to get citizenship at birth.
  - worstspotgain 2y ago
    Australia also has Vegemite and the Sydney funnel web spider. No desire to imitate those either. There's no reason to punish US-born babies just because their parents committed a misdemeanor jumping the border fence. If they're born here and grow up here they're as American as anybody else, descendants of the Mayflower border-jumpers included. To undertake the process of a constitutional amendment just to deny them that is one of the most racist policies being debated in this country since Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era.
    - Vecr 2y ago
      Make jumping the fence a felony then?
      - bennifer2 2y ago
        Deport the children of felons? Ok but the only country willing to take Eric has frigid winters. He might not make it.
      - ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago
        Yes, this and also just prevent the fence jumping in the first place. It's not an intractable problem, we do have the means to secure our borders.
- panick21_ 2y ago
  Legal immigration has already been reduced to almost nothing anyway. > If an army forced their way in to an embassy so that their pregnant battalion Most people prefer to live in the real world rather then in absurdist fantasy land.
  - koolba 2y ago
    Absurdist fantasies are to prove a point that some limits exist. The question then becomes what said limits are.
    - panick21_ 2y ago
      That limits exist is usually not that interesting to point out. Nothing is unlimited. It doesn't usually matter that much for practical policy. But it doesn't matter anyway because heat death of the universe.
ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago
This verbiage is just muddying the waters. When people say they're in favor of "legal immigration" we generally don't mean that we're fine providing a legal fig-leaf to the record high illegal immigration levels that we're seeing today. We mean that we're fine with the rate of immigration that as a country we've agreed that we're okay with (i.e. "legal immigration") and that it isn't okay to ignore these compromises and just let in anyone who shows up.
- worstspotgain 2y ago
  > record high illegal immigration levels that we're seeing today As of 2022, the undocumented population was still about 10% below its 2007 peak. [1] The population of the US grew by 11% over the same period, so as a fraction it's well below the recent maximum. Some of the statistics at the border increased massively in recent years because a lot of immigrants are now turning themselves in as refugees. [2] This allows them to "ride the disfunction" in the backlogged immigration courts, granting them legal work authorization and deportation protection in the meantime. If we fixed the disfunction, they would just stop turning themselves in once again. The level we've "agreed that we're okay with" is far from set. Every time we've tried to set it in recent years [3], restrictionists like you have spared no tactic to gum up the works. That's because you figured (correctly) that the level of legal immigration that we would compromise upon is higher than the level we currently have. Restrictionists are the primary reason we have a vast underclass of semi-serfs. [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/22/what-we-know-about-unauthorized-immigrants-living-in-the-us/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/22/what-we-k... [2] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/asylum-applications https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/asylum-applicatio... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_Security,_Economic_Opportunity,_and_Immigration_Modernization_Act_of_2013 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_Security,_Economic_Oppo...
  - ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago
    >the [legal] levels ...are far from set They are set. You appear to not like those levels, but they are well defined. Movements to change those levels are also fine, but again, legal immigration paths are well defined. >restrictionists like you We have a system by which we make these decisions as a society (i.e. the federal government). That system has not materially changed immigration recently. That isn't "gumming up the works" that's the system working as designed. >Restrictionists are the primary reason we have a vast underclass of semi-serfs. No. We have a underclass of semi-serfs because we have systematically and for decades chosen to turn a blind eye to (or actively encouraged) illegal immigration. We could enforce laws as they exist today and not have this human exploitation.
sneed_chucker 2y ago
> repealing jus soli and all the other racist dogwhistles What exactly is racist about being against jus soli? Personally, I think birthright citizenship solves more problems than it causes but I also see the arguments against it. Most countries in Africa, Europe, and Asia don't have it. None of the Nordic countries have it - are they racist? I thought those were the countries everyone says we should try and be more like?
- worstspotgain 2y ago
  > What exactly is racist about being against jus soli? Pretty much everything? If some new country like South Sudan was picking a rule from scratch, one could perhaps convincingly claim to be against jus soli for reasons other than racism. But to push for a constitutional amendment to deny citizenship to babies that are American in every way betrays the obvious reason for doing so. It just doesn't fool anyone.
  - sneed_chucker 2y ago
    Yeah, I'm not really convinced. Just sounds like you feel very strongly about this and want to say "everyone who disagrees with me is racist". The majority of the world's population lives in countries that don't do birthright citizenship. Jus Soli definitely gets abused. Cheap international flights didn't exist in 1866 when birthright citizenship became part of US law. I could see merit in amending those laws, perhaps not abolishing it but maybe tightening it to only apply to children of legal residents or something like that. That's a system that many countries use, including progressive European states.
    - worstspotgain 2y ago
      Trying to put motivations out of bounds over whether something is racist or not has historically been the core tactic in the bigot's playbook. We're all in favor of voters being literate, aren't we? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test The argument that a rule is color-blind on paper doesn't make systems that are incredibly racist any less so.

ineedaj0b 2y ago

>This distinction is mostly out the window with today's populists, see e.g. repealing jus soli and all the other racist dogwhistles. your enemies aren't all dumb. the smart ones aren't likely to talk to you based on your attitudes towards them.

koolba 2y ago

> This distinction is mostly out the window with today's populists, see e.g. repealing jus soli and all the other racist dogwhistles. There are already some limitations on birthright citizenship, for example we do not grant it to children born to diplomats visiting the USA. It's not an unreasonable position to limit it to legal immigrants. Foreign embassies are considered US soil for jurisdictional purposes. If an army forced their way in to an embassy so that their pregnant battalion could deliver their babies within the embassy, should they get citizenship? If it doesn't apply to the embassy, how about if they do the same thing to a small island controlled by the USA or even the southern USA border?

worstspotgain 2y ago
You're right, I can picture this. A pregnant battalion of the Mexican army breaches the border and invades the US to give birth, 18 years later the kids are employed cleaning American bathrooms. Mexico wins and America is not great once again.
pkaye 2y ago
> There are already some limitations on birthright citizenship, for example we do not grant it to children born to diplomats visiting the USA. That's largely because the US is a signatory of the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations. Children of foreign diplomats born in the United States are not automatically granted citizenship because they are not considered subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.
pkaye 2y ago
> ...repealing jus soli and all the other racist dogwhistles. Australia did the exact thing. Switch from Jus Soli to Jus Sanguinis. Some Jus Sanguinis countries have switched to some hybrid system that allows legal immigrants to get citizenship at birth.
- worstspotgain 2y ago
  Australia also has Vegemite and the Sydney funnel web spider. No desire to imitate those either. There's no reason to punish US-born babies just because their parents committed a misdemeanor jumping the border fence. If they're born here and grow up here they're as American as anybody else, descendants of the Mayflower border-jumpers included. To undertake the process of a constitutional amendment just to deny them that is one of the most racist policies being debated in this country since Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era.
  - Vecr 2y ago
    Make jumping the fence a felony then?
    - bennifer2 2y ago
      Deport the children of felons? Ok but the only country willing to take Eric has frigid winters. He might not make it.
    - ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago
      Yes, this and also just prevent the fence jumping in the first place. It's not an intractable problem, we do have the means to secure our borders.
panick21_ 2y ago
Legal immigration has already been reduced to almost nothing anyway. > If an army forced their way in to an embassy so that their pregnant battalion Most people prefer to live in the real world rather then in absurdist fantasy land.
- koolba 2y ago
  Absurdist fantasies are to prove a point that some limits exist. The question then becomes what said limits are.
  - panick21_ 2y ago
    That limits exist is usually not that interesting to point out. Nothing is unlimited. It doesn't usually matter that much for practical policy. But it doesn't matter anyway because heat death of the universe.

ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago

This verbiage is just muddying the waters. When people say they're in favor of "legal immigration" we generally don't mean that we're fine providing a legal fig-leaf to the record high illegal immigration levels that we're seeing today. We mean that we're fine with the rate of immigration that as a country we've agreed that we're okay with (i.e. "legal immigration") and that it isn't okay to ignore these compromises and just let in anyone who shows up.

worstspotgain 2y ago
> record high illegal immigration levels that we're seeing today As of 2022, the undocumented population was still about 10% below its 2007 peak. [1] The population of the US grew by 11% over the same period, so as a fraction it's well below the recent maximum. Some of the statistics at the border increased massively in recent years because a lot of immigrants are now turning themselves in as refugees. [2] This allows them to "ride the disfunction" in the backlogged immigration courts, granting them legal work authorization and deportation protection in the meantime. If we fixed the disfunction, they would just stop turning themselves in once again. The level we've "agreed that we're okay with" is far from set. Every time we've tried to set it in recent years [3], restrictionists like you have spared no tactic to gum up the works. That's because you figured (correctly) that the level of legal immigration that we would compromise upon is higher than the level we currently have. Restrictionists are the primary reason we have a vast underclass of semi-serfs. [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/22/what-we-know-about-unauthorized-immigrants-living-in-the-us/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/22/what-we-k... [2] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/asylum-applications https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/asylum-applicatio... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_Security,_Economic_Opportunity,_and_Immigration_Modernization_Act_of_2013 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_Security,_Economic_Oppo...
- ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago
  >the [legal] levels ...are far from set They are set. You appear to not like those levels, but they are well defined. Movements to change those levels are also fine, but again, legal immigration paths are well defined. >restrictionists like you We have a system by which we make these decisions as a society (i.e. the federal government). That system has not materially changed immigration recently. That isn't "gumming up the works" that's the system working as designed. >Restrictionists are the primary reason we have a vast underclass of semi-serfs. No. We have a underclass of semi-serfs because we have systematically and for decades chosen to turn a blind eye to (or actively encouraged) illegal immigration. We could enforce laws as they exist today and not have this human exploitation.

sneed_chucker 2y ago

> repealing jus soli and all the other racist dogwhistles What exactly is racist about being against jus soli? Personally, I think birthright citizenship solves more problems than it causes but I also see the arguments against it. Most countries in Africa, Europe, and Asia don't have it. None of the Nordic countries have it - are they racist? I thought those were the countries everyone says we should try and be more like?

worstspotgain 2y ago
> What exactly is racist about being against jus soli? Pretty much everything? If some new country like South Sudan was picking a rule from scratch, one could perhaps convincingly claim to be against jus soli for reasons other than racism. But to push for a constitutional amendment to deny citizenship to babies that are American in every way betrays the obvious reason for doing so. It just doesn't fool anyone.
- sneed_chucker 2y ago
  Yeah, I'm not really convinced. Just sounds like you feel very strongly about this and want to say "everyone who disagrees with me is racist". The majority of the world's population lives in countries that don't do birthright citizenship. Jus Soli definitely gets abused. Cheap international flights didn't exist in 1866 when birthright citizenship became part of US law. I could see merit in amending those laws, perhaps not abolishing it but maybe tightening it to only apply to children of legal residents or something like that. That's a system that many countries use, including progressive European states.
  - worstspotgain 2y ago
    Trying to put motivations out of bounds over whether something is racist or not has historically been the core tactic in the bigot's playbook. We're all in favor of voters being literate, aren't we? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test The argument that a rule is color-blind on paper doesn't make systems that are incredibly racist any less so.