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While I understand the logic behind deportations, and may or may not appreciate the policy itself, I do not understand the logic behind maintaining the status q

While I understand the logic behind deportations, and may or may not appreciate the policy itself, I do not understand the logic behind maintaining the status quo. What is the policy and vision of those who oppose any deportation of illegal immigrants (we use "undocumented" now, which gives the impression that they left their papers in the washing machine, not that they can't have them because they shouldn't be in the U.S.)? Full disclosure: I am an immigrant myself, and I have spent money and time following a cumbersome process that I have complied with anyway. Some, and surprisingly most of them are very left-wing, say that without illegal immigrants everything would cost a lot more, which seems to me to be an invitation to exploitation that is somewhere between funny and absurd. Some suggest legalizing everyone, thinking that people like me who follow laws and procedures are nothing but fools, and that making millions of people "legal" would have no impact on government and public finances. Moreover, making everyone "legal" would give the unpleasant impression that domestic policy is dictated by foreign people and countries, that laws are not really relevant, and that everyone is welcome and will receive goods and services. The same reasoning applies to Europe, whose domestic policies are dictated by North African and Sub-Saharan countries. And reciprocity, what is this strange word? Moroccans apply for Spanish or Italian citizenship, "simple procedures", they ask. But try to get Moroccan citizenship as a foreigner. It is impossible.

GauntletWizard 2y ago
The logic is very easy: Certain groups objectives are not "Everyone lives well" or even "I live well", they are "I live well in comparison to those I see around me". They do not say it aloud and they are not very bright, but by their actions and what compromises they are willing and unwilling to accept you can eke out their true utility function. They thrive in chaos because they receive relative pleasure from seeing others fall, and even more from importing the miserable and keeping them miserable. To be perfectly honest, everyone does this. Schadenfreude is an inherently human trait. The relative weight is different by person, though.
- quickthrowman 2y ago
  President Lyndon B. Johnson once said > If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.
kemotep 2y ago
In the United States, illegal immigration is largely a humanitarian crisis. A crisis in some ways caused by the United States and their involvement in Latin America the past century. Opposition to the incoming administration’s plan for mass deportation does not have to do anything with wanting a cheap labor pool to exploit or a lack of desire to enforce the law but potentially to avoid exasperating the humanitarian crisis. Additionally there is the huge economic costs and impacts discouraging even legal immigrants from entering the country to work as migrant farm labor and so on. This post[0] really opened my eyes to the scale of the plan Trump et al has and the kinds of impacts it could have. [0]: https://radleybalko.substack.com/p/trumps-deportation-army https://radleybalko.substack.com/p/trumps-deportation-army
- borroka 2y ago
  This is an unfalsifiable statement that is far from translating into a sensible policy. There are many (millions?) illegal immigrants from China, for example. How is the United States responsible for a kind of “humanitarian” crisis in China? Should the United States accept anyone arriving from anywhere in the world claiming that the United States has caused a “humanitarian” crisis in their country? Who knows if it is true or not, and who cares, right, saying it is enough. Would the US potentially mitigate the global "humanitarian crisis” going on, since millions of people from all over the world want to come to the U.S., by accepting everyone, providing food and services, etc.? Should the US organize transportation too, no question asked? When will it end, when no one wants to come to the United States? And the same is valid for Europe. This is the kind of irritating nonsense I was talking about. A state, a country, is not a humanitarian NGO.
  - kemotep 2y ago
    Well that used to be how it worked for the most part over 100 years ago. People just showed up and were able to become citizens largely frictionlessly. We can compromise between how immigration works today and how it worked during the heyday of Ellis Island but if you read the linked post in my previous comment you should see how simply saying we need to remove all these people and actually removing them is going to be quite a massive task. On a scale not seen in this country in decades if not centuries ago. If this country isn’t a charity then why would we go from not feeding and housing millions of illegal immigrants to now having to cover three hots and a cot while deporting them? The cost argument is more in favor of granting amnesty to existing immigrants and reforming the system to better vet but give more streamlined processes to migrants to discourage border crossings. This is a country built on immigration. You yourself are an immigrant to this country. Why do you deserve to be here any more than I do, someone born and raised here? Do you think the deportation forces if they come to your home or workplace and have questions about your legal status will be understanding of the fact you weren’t born here? Can we trust that the courts will give you due process when now having to handle quadruple the case load as before?
t-writescode 2y ago
> What is the policy and vision of those who oppose any deportation of illegal immigrants The United States has a hilariously complicated historical relationship with immigrants. * They are constantly the scapegoat of economic hardship, for one. * We pendulum back and forth over the decades and even centuries on "immigrants good" and "immigrants" bad[0] * In our regular swinging back and forth; and *ESPECIALLY* regarding people who were children when they came to the States, we have special-cased and threw under the rug literal millions of people without creating robust systems in place for the now 40-, 50- or 60-year old people who have literally built lives here that were brought over by their parents at ages 2... 3... etc. For those people especially, it's not a "go back to where you came from" sort of easy (though rude) statement. They have no where else. They lived here their whole lives and we've swept them under the rug. It is a national failing on our part. * We regularly and randomly grant clemency to various illegal immigrants that further perpetuates the cycle of increasing our numbers of legally dubious presences of people in the US. ALL OF THIS creates huge and complicated situations in the current political climate where we can't give naturalization/citizenship/whatever to these multiple millions of people because it would be rude or unfair or something. Long story short, the United States ignores our real immigration situation; and, has for so, so, so long that not a single solution to it outside of pure clemency will result in anything but destroyed lives; and while some people may say (ignoring ALL the logistic ridiculousness / literal genocide that it may cost) "it's a bandaid we need to rip off" and ruin the lives of the 10s of millions of people we would shove back and the 100s of millions or more people that would be directly impacted by their deportation, others remember that each of those 10s of millions of people are a person with lives and the value inherent in every person, and should be treated as such. Addendum: to answer the question directly, I would argue: immediate green-card status or similar to all Latin American individuals who have stayed here long term under DACA or any of the other previous status-dubious systems we've placed them under and either considering their existing time as time spent for citizenship purposes, or immediately starting their "Time in US" potential citizenship timeline. We can choose to close the borders again later. I care less about that than I do the many that are already here in their state of limbo. [0] To be very clear, when politicians, etc, say immigrants, in almost every circumstance, it's code for Latin American immigrants. If someone says something along the lines of "Oh, I immigrated from Ireland" or "my family is German", there's an internal thought from many Americans of "Oh, we're not talking about you" or "oh, but you came here legally", even if most illegal immigrants are Visa overstays.

GauntletWizard 2y ago

The logic is very easy: Certain groups objectives are not "Everyone lives well" or even "I live well", they are "I live well in comparison to those I see around me". They do not say it aloud and they are not very bright, but by their actions and what compromises they are willing and unwilling to accept you can eke out their true utility function. They thrive in chaos because they receive relative pleasure from seeing others fall, and even more from importing the miserable and keeping them miserable. To be perfectly honest, everyone does this. Schadenfreude is an inherently human trait. The relative weight is different by person, though.

quickthrowman 2y ago
President Lyndon B. Johnson once said > If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.

kemotep 2y ago

In the United States, illegal immigration is largely a humanitarian crisis. A crisis in some ways caused by the United States and their involvement in Latin America the past century. Opposition to the incoming administration’s plan for mass deportation does not have to do anything with wanting a cheap labor pool to exploit or a lack of desire to enforce the law but potentially to avoid exasperating the humanitarian crisis. Additionally there is the huge economic costs and impacts discouraging even legal immigrants from entering the country to work as migrant farm labor and so on. This post[0] really opened my eyes to the scale of the plan Trump et al has and the kinds of impacts it could have. [0]: https://radleybalko.substack.com/p/trumps-deportation-army https://radleybalko.substack.com/p/trumps-deportation-army

borroka 2y ago
This is an unfalsifiable statement that is far from translating into a sensible policy. There are many (millions?) illegal immigrants from China, for example. How is the United States responsible for a kind of “humanitarian” crisis in China? Should the United States accept anyone arriving from anywhere in the world claiming that the United States has caused a “humanitarian” crisis in their country? Who knows if it is true or not, and who cares, right, saying it is enough. Would the US potentially mitigate the global "humanitarian crisis” going on, since millions of people from all over the world want to come to the U.S., by accepting everyone, providing food and services, etc.? Should the US organize transportation too, no question asked? When will it end, when no one wants to come to the United States? And the same is valid for Europe. This is the kind of irritating nonsense I was talking about. A state, a country, is not a humanitarian NGO.
- kemotep 2y ago
  Well that used to be how it worked for the most part over 100 years ago. People just showed up and were able to become citizens largely frictionlessly. We can compromise between how immigration works today and how it worked during the heyday of Ellis Island but if you read the linked post in my previous comment you should see how simply saying we need to remove all these people and actually removing them is going to be quite a massive task. On a scale not seen in this country in decades if not centuries ago. If this country isn’t a charity then why would we go from not feeding and housing millions of illegal immigrants to now having to cover three hots and a cot while deporting them? The cost argument is more in favor of granting amnesty to existing immigrants and reforming the system to better vet but give more streamlined processes to migrants to discourage border crossings. This is a country built on immigration. You yourself are an immigrant to this country. Why do you deserve to be here any more than I do, someone born and raised here? Do you think the deportation forces if they come to your home or workplace and have questions about your legal status will be understanding of the fact you weren’t born here? Can we trust that the courts will give you due process when now having to handle quadruple the case load as before?

t-writescode 2y ago

> What is the policy and vision of those who oppose any deportation of illegal immigrants The United States has a hilariously complicated historical relationship with immigrants. * They are constantly the scapegoat of economic hardship, for one. * We pendulum back and forth over the decades and even centuries on "immigrants good" and "immigrants" bad[0] * In our regular swinging back and forth; and *ESPECIALLY* regarding people who were children when they came to the States, we have special-cased and threw under the rug literal millions of people without creating robust systems in place for the now 40-, 50- or 60-year old people who have literally built lives here that were brought over by their parents at ages 2... 3... etc. For those people especially, it's not a "go back to where you came from" sort of easy (though rude) statement. They have no where else. They lived here their whole lives and we've swept them under the rug. It is a national failing on our part. * We regularly and randomly grant clemency to various illegal immigrants that further perpetuates the cycle of increasing our numbers of legally dubious presences of people in the US. ALL OF THIS creates huge and complicated situations in the current political climate where we can't give naturalization/citizenship/whatever to these multiple millions of people because it would be rude or unfair or something. Long story short, the United States ignores our real immigration situation; and, has for so, so, so long that not a single solution to it outside of pure clemency will result in anything but destroyed lives; and while some people may say (ignoring ALL the logistic ridiculousness / literal genocide that it may cost) "it's a bandaid we need to rip off" and ruin the lives of the 10s of millions of people we would shove back and the 100s of millions or more people that would be directly impacted by their deportation, others remember that each of those 10s of millions of people are a person with lives and the value inherent in every person, and should be treated as such. Addendum: to answer the question directly, I would argue: immediate green-card status or similar to all Latin American individuals who have stayed here long term under DACA or any of the other previous status-dubious systems we've placed them under and either considering their existing time as time spent for citizenship purposes, or immediately starting their "Time in US" potential citizenship timeline. We can choose to close the borders again later. I care less about that than I do the many that are already here in their state of limbo. [0] To be very clear, when politicians, etc, say immigrants, in almost every circumstance, it's code for Latin American immigrants. If someone says something along the lines of "Oh, I immigrated from Ireland" or "my family is German", there's an internal thought from many Americans of "Oh, we're not talking about you" or "oh, but you came here legally", even if most illegal immigrants are Visa overstays.