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Part of the reason why I support "sanctuary cities" is that it's better for everyone if undocumented immigrants feel safe talking to the police. Imagine someone

Part of the reason why I support "sanctuary cities" is that it's better for everyone if undocumented immigrants feel safe talking to the police. Imagine someone broke into my car and there was a witness who saw the whole thing. I want them to be OK telling the cops what happened. I want them to be OK reporting crimes in their neighborhood. I want them to be OK testifying about it in court. I want them to be OK calling 911. Even if I put all human rights issues aside, I don't want anyone to be punished for talking to the police simply because of their immigration status, because their freedom to do so makes my own daily life safer. Well, that goes double for courtrooms. If some guy's due to testify in a murder case, I don't want him skipping court because some quota-making jackass at ICE wants to arrest him because of a visa issue. In this case, the person was actually in court to face misdemeanor charges (of which they haven't been convicted yet, i.e. they're still legally innocent). I want people to go to court to face trial instead of skipping out because they fear they'll be arrested and deported for unrelated reasons. I bet the judge has pretty strong opinions on that exact issue, too.

thuanao 2y ago
I want "sanctuary cities" because the whole idea of "illegal" people is tyrannical and inhumane.
Gabriel54 2y ago
What is the purpose of laws if they are willfully ignored? Where do you draw the line? If the police don't care about someone's immigration status, why should they care about who broke into your car?
- dbspin 2y ago
  The line is prosecution policy. There are thousands of laws on the books that are never enforced, particularly in the United States. Given the inhuman and grossly illegal deportation without due process of thousands of people by the Trump administration - to an extrajudicial torture prison no less - many means of resisting the kidnap of people (citizens or non) are reasonable).
  - petre 2y ago
    I hope Trump ends up in prison, that's all I can say. Arguably South Korea has better democracy, because Yoon Suk Yeol is probably going to prison for insurrection.
- gortok 2y ago
  This over-simplifies our federal system to the point of uselessness. The Federal Government is responsible for immigration. It's their job to set policies and adjudicate immigration issues. Local and State Law Enforcement are not responsible for -- and indeed it is outside of their powers to enforce immigration laws. Supreme Court precedent is that states cannot be compelled by Congress to enforce Immigration law (see: Printz v. United States). So, what you have in this situation are the fact that States and the Federal Government have opposing interests: The States need to be able to enforce their laws without their people feeling like they can't tell the police when there's a crime, and the current federal policy is to deport all undocumented immigrants, no matter why they're here or whether they are allowed to be here while their status is adjudicated.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - Gabriel54 2y ago
    > Supreme Court precedent is that states cannot be compelled by Congress to enforce Immigration law (see: Printz v. United States). So the supreme court struck a reasonable compromise between federal and state interests. I am not a lawyer, but I am certain that this precedent does not give states the right to actively obstruct federal agents from doing their job, that is, to enforce federal immigration law.
    - hypeatei 2y ago
      > does not give states the right to actively obstruct federal agents Who said they had that right and when did this happen?
      - Gabriel54 2y ago
        The warrant of the judge's arrest strongly suggests that she did not think it was appropriate for ICE to arrest Ruiz and took actions to prevent it from happening.
- mmanfrin 2y ago
  > What is the purpose of laws if they are willfully ignored? Nearly every liberty we take for granted was at one point against the law or gained through willful lawbreaking. A healthy society should be tolerant of some bending of the rules.
  - Gabriel54 2y ago
    I agree with you. A quick search suggests that there are 11 million undocumented people in the United States, or about 3% of the population. A healthy society does not harbor 11 million people without documentation so they can be exploited by employers for cheap labor, not given proper health care and labor rights.
    - nemomarx 2y ago
      Right - more risk of deportations pushes them under ground and allows easier exploitation, like employers who can hold this status over their head. People who have productively worked in the country and either paid taxes or contribute to the economy for some years should be offered pathways to naturalization or at least work visas and real legal protection.
    - Me1000 2y ago
      Yet it's interesting how we put the blame and punishment on the people being taken advantage of, and not the employers who are exploiting them. If both parties are breaking the law shouldn't we at the very least ensure that the business owner who is exploiting any number of workers is held to the same standard as an undocumented person whose only crime was not having the proper paperwork?
      - Gabriel54 2y ago
        I don't blame them. If I were them, I would do the same thing. However, as someone with the ability to vote and influence (to a very small degree) public policy, I would prefer we move toward a system in which strong labor rights exist in this country, and this is simply impossible in an environment in which employers are free to hire labor off the books for "pennies". To be clear, I think both political parties in the US are terrible, and all of this debate serves the interests of the employers that benefit from this situation.
- ClumsyPilot 2y ago
  I am still waiting for a “corporations are people” to get death penalty
- crote 2y ago
  Should a serial killer go unpunished because its sole witness would face lifetime imprisonment for jaywalking if they were to testify? Do you believe gangs should roam free due to a lack of evidence, or would it be better if they could be rolled up by offering a too-sweet-to-ignore plea deal to a snitch? Laws are are already routinely being ignored. There's a massive amount of discretionary choice space for law enforcement and prosecution. It's not as black-and-white as you're making it sound.
rufus_foreman 2y ago
>> If some guy's due to testify in a murder case, I don't want him skipping court because some quota-making jackass at ICE wants to arrest him because of a visa issue From the criminal complaint in this case: "I also am aware that pursuant to its policies, which had been made known to courthouse officials, the Milwaukee ICE ERO Task Force was focusing its resources on apprehending charged defendants making appearances in criminal cases – and not arresting victims, witnesses, or individuals appearing for matters in family or civil court." So it sounds like they take this into account. As for why they make arrests at the courthouse: "The reasons for this include not only the fact that law enforcement knows the location at which the wanted individual should be located but also the fact that the wanted individual would have entered through a security checkpoint and thus unarmed, minimizing the risk of injury to law enforcement, the public, and the wanted individual." Makes sense. Seems like they have weighed the risks and advantages of this and come up with a reasonable approach.
- mint2 2y ago
  So now instead of appearing in court and face their consequences if guilty, they are motivated to flee and evade even if innocent of the crime they are appearing in court for?
- trhway 2y ago
  >and not arresting victims, witnesses, or individuals appearing for matters in family or civil court. Tell that to the guy who is rotting in the El Salvador's torture prison despite having official protection from the US court, not just self-declared policy of ICE like that above. Especially considering how shady ICE and its people are, bottom of the barrel of federal law enforcement.
billy99k 2y ago
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tintor 2y ago
[flagged]
- andrewstuart2 2y ago
  In an ideal world, maybe that's how it would work. In reality, that's not how it works or likely ever will work. So the comment you're replying to is a pragmatic approach to "how do we make the world we actually live in, not some idealized fantasy, safer?"
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - IncreasePosts 2y ago
    In reality, Trump's tough on illegal immigrants approach has drastically reduced the number of illegal border crossings compared to Biden's term. So, it seems that "people living in the country illegally" doesn't have to just be a fact of life, if there are federal policy changes that can radically alter the number of people who illegally enter the country.
    - const_cast 2y ago
      Sure, if this is true... and it only came at the cost of due process. Even if you prevent everyone from coming here illegally, you'll still have "illegal" immigrants. I would wager most illegal immigrants came here perfectly legally.
    - crote 2y ago
      Illegal border crossings are a distraction. The vast majority of "illegal immigrants" entered legally and overstayed their visa. This makes "radically altering the number of people entering illegally" a fairly meaningless achievement in practice. For all we know those very same people who would have crossed the border illegally are now spending the extra money to enter legally and overstay: same number of incoming "illegal immigrants", but via different pathways.
- 2y ago
bdelmas 2y ago
I am going to be downvoted to oblivion but sanctuary cities for what you are saying is like a monkey patch in code. It "works" for now but it's not a long-term viable solution. A person breaking the law and be fine to be a criminal to be in a country is already the wrong mindset. And these persons are only at step 1 in a life in the US. What happens when life will be tough later are they now magically going to stop all criminal solutions? Their solution to be in the US was already to break the law. Thankfully there are already laws to protect people being persecuted, in danger, people needing asylum, etc... We need even better laws in these areas and improvements in witness protection laws for a part of your example. But again sanctuary cities "work" for now but it is not a long-term solution. Beyond attracting criminals, it also creates a weird lawful oxymoron at the opposite of the rule of the law. (And again, there are things like asylum, etc...)
- nemomarx 2y ago
  Sure, we should also reform immigration and make the legal pathways better and more accessible to attract citizens but cities have no ability to control that, while they can impact some things locally, so it's different groups of people doing both of these?
  - bdelmas 2y ago
    To be honest, for me personally having cities that have that much power is weird to me. It should be something at the state or federal level. But as a counterargument: if this is not monkey patching, why not create a full sanctuary state? Sounds scary to me. We need better laws. Current laws are also in place because it's just easier and works for now. Like instead of redoing visas and how they are processed for the 1M undocumented persons working in agriculture (that's 40% of ag workers!), people are fine with how things are now and also can justify to give lower unlawful salaries. Like this state is also bad for undocumented people too. They can just be taken advantage of and fired/used/disregarded when their managers want to... Solutions that go against the rule of the law are overall a very bad idea for everyone.
    - kstrauser 2y ago
hypeatei 2y ago
This line of thinking only works if you consider illegal immigrants as people of which a certain side does not and is actively arguing that the bill of rights only applies to citizens. Basically, if you view illegal immigrants as the end of the world, then any deferral of their deportation is equally as bad. There is no room for discussion on this topic, being "illegal" is a cardinal sin and must be punished at all costs.
- ClumsyPilot 2y ago
  > bill of rights only applies to citizens. I could argue that it’s inhumane, contradicts all the values US claims to stand for, or could be used as a back door to harass citizens. But ultimately fundamental issue is this - if you want to be a seat of global capital and finance, a global reserve currency and the worlds most important stock exchange, that is the price. Transnational corporations, their bosses and employees have to feel secure. That is the only reason (often corrupt) businessman take their money from Russia, China, and other regimes that do not guarantee human rights and bring it to the west.
  - hypeatei 2y ago
    I think some are missing the sarcasm. I enjoyed your comment at least.
- godelski 2y ago
  > if you consider illegal immigrants as people Actually, I disagree[0]. The logic works just fine if you recognize that it is impossible to achieve 100% success rate. It is absolutely insane to me that on a website full of engineers people do not consider failure analysis when it comes to laws. Conditioned that you have not determined someone is an illegal immigrant: _______What do you want to happen here? _________________ Wait, sorry, let me use code for the deaf if (person.citizenStatus == illegal && person.citizenStatus in police.knowledge()) { deport(person, police) } else if (person.citizenStatus == illegal) { // What do you want to happen? // deport(person) returns error. There is no police to deport them } else if (person.citizenStatus == legal) { fullRights(person) } else if (person.citizenStatus == unknown { // Also a necessary question to answer // Do you want police randomly checking every person? That's expensive and a similar event helped create America as well as a very different Germany } else { // raise error, we shouldn't be here? } Am I missing something? Seems like you could be completely selfish, hate illegal immigrants, AND benefit through policies of Sanctuary Cities and giving them TINs. How is that last one even an argument? It's "free" money. EDIT: > the bill of rights only applies to citizens Just a note. This has been tested in courts and there's plenty of writings from the founders themselves, both of which would evidence that the rights are to everyone (the latter obviously influencing the former). It's not hard to guess why. See the "alternative solution" in my linked comment... It's about the `person.citizenStatus == unknown` case.... [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43796826 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43796826
openasocket 2y ago
There's another argument that you touched on in your last paragraph that I think deserves to be underlined, which is about proper accountability. Imagine an undocumented immigrant who commits a serious crime, like murder. Do you want the local prosecutors to go after them, and send them to jail for a long time? Or do you want ICE to go after them, in which case they ... get deported and wind up living free in another country (putting aside the current debacle with El Salvador and CECOT). Where is the justice in that? If someone commits some sort of crime in the US, I want justice to be served before we talk about deporting them.
- pfannkuchen 2y ago
  I mean banishment has worked pretty well for crimes historically. The punishment/rehabilitation spectrum is wrong on both sides IMO. If the threat is gone, from a utility perspective it doesn’t really matter how it happens.
  - godelski 2y ago
    Has it? - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriolanus - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_IV_of_England - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin Are you guessing or are you positive?
    - pfannkuchen 2y ago
      I just can’t even talk to people on the internet anymore. I am speaking in general. Banishment was applied to commoners since forever. Did they crime in the area anymore? No, they aren’t there anymore. Is there a special case for banishing political leaders, where the dynamics are different? Sure, probably. Does that apply here? No, obviously not.
      - thunderfork 2y ago
        [dead]
      - 2y ago
godelski 2y ago
This. Same with giving them TINs so that they pay taxes. These BENEFIT citizens and permanent residents of the country. I see a lot of comments being like "what's the point of laws if they get ignored." Well, we're on a CS forum, and we have VMs, containers, and chroots, right? We break rules all the time, but recognize that it is best to do so around different contextualizations. There's a few points I think people are missing: 1) The government isn't monolithic. Just like your OS isn't. It different parts are written by different people and groups who have different goals. Often these can be in contention with one another. 2) Containerization is a thing. Scope. It is both true that many agencies need to better communicate with one another WHILE simultaneously certain agencies should have firewalls between them. I bet you even do this at your company. Firewalls are critical to any functioning system. Same with some redundancy. A sanctuary city is not a "get out of jail free card." They do not prevent local police from contacting ICE when the immigrant has committed a crime and local police has identified them. They are only protected in narrow settings: Reporting crimes to police, enrolling their children in school, and other minimal and basic services. If they run a stop sign and a cop pulls them over, guess what, ICE gets contacted and they will get deported[0]. Forget human rights, think like an engineer. You have to design your systems with the understanding of failure. So we need to recognize that we will not get 100% of illegal immigrants. We can still optimize this! But then, what happens when things fail? That's the question. In these settings it is "Conditioned that an illegal immigrant was not found, do we want them to report crimes to the police or not?" "Conditioned that an illegal immigrant was not found, do we want them to pay taxes?" How the hell can the answer be anything but "yes"? You can't ignore the condition. Absent of the condition, yeah, most people will agree that they should be deported. But UNDER THE CONDITION it is absolutely insane to not do these things. There is, of course, another solution... But that condition is fairly authoritarian. Frequently checking identification of everyday persons. It is quite costly, extremely cumbersome to average citizens, and has high false positive rates. I mean we can go that route but if we do I think we'll see why a certain amendment exists. It sure wasn't about Grizzly Bears... [0] They may have holding limits, like not hold the immigrant more than a week. Maybe you're mad at this, but why aren't you mad at ICE for doing their job? You can't get someone out there in a week? Come on. You're just expecting the local city to foot the bill? Yeah, it costs money. Tell ICE to get their shit together.
onetimeusename 2y ago
That sounds reasonable but would you also support a strongly enforced border and tighter policies on illegal immigration so this isn't an issue in the first place? I think it becomes hand-wringing and disingenuous when it starts to seem that this isn't really about reasonable policy and it's more about trying to prevent deportations by any means necessary. What's unspoken is that there are deeply held, non-articulated beliefs that open borders policies are a good thing. These views aren't generally popular with the electorate so the rhetoric shifted to subtler issues like what you are describing.
- kstrauser 2y ago
  Depends on the enforcement methods and the policies. Of course we can defend our border. No, we shouldn't waste billions on some stupid fence that will be climbed or tunneled or knocked over or walked around. I'm absolutely willing to have the discussion about what appropriate policies should be, as long as we can agree that we're talking about real, live humans who are generally either trying to flee from the horrible circumstances they were born into, or trying to make a nicer lives for themselves and their families, and the policies reflect that. I'm not for open borders. In any case, that's irrelevant to whether I think ICE should be hassling people inside a courthouse for other reasons, which I think is bad policy for everyone.
timewizard 2y ago
Replace illegal immigration with any other crime. What if a witness to a murder is an accused thief? Should we let thefts go unpunished because it may implicate their testimony in more severe crimes? What we actually do is offer the person reduced sentencing in exchange for their cooperation but we don't ignore their crime. In terms of illegal immigrants, if they haven't filed any paperwork, or haven't attempted to legally claim asylum, then they shouldn't be surprised they're left without legal protections, even if they happen to have witnessed a more severe crime.
- kristjansson 2y ago
  > we don't ignore their crime And no one is asking the relevant authorities to ignore their duties to enforce immigration policy. They're just saying that state and local courts and police aren't the relevant authorities, and that they'd prefer to have the rest of the apparatus of government function with and for undocumented people.
  - timewizard 2y ago
    > And no one is asking the relevant authorities to ignore their duties to enforce immigration policy. I take a look at Los Angeles policy, which was recently ensconced into law, and it does specifically require authorities to ignore their duties. It even requires them to interfere in them. They cannot, even if if they incidentally know a persons immigration status, contact immigration authorities with that information. If the immigration authorities find out anyways they are required to prevent those authorities from even _interviewing_ the subject let alone take them into custody. If requested to participate in any sort of joint operation they must decline just because it's the federal immigration authorities. > and that they'd prefer to have the rest of the apparatus of government function If that were the case then only the first restriction above would need to exist. Instead they literally provide an active shield against any enforcement of these federal laws and directly interfere with that function. > for undocumented people. If the city is so willing to shield this class of people from federal immigration enforcement then why aren't they also willing to then document them on their own terms? It seems inappropriate and careless to me and leaves these people in a slightly worse place than they were without the sanctuary status. It also makes it look like their primary concern is frustrating federal law and not truly caring for a desperate class of people.

thuanao 2y ago

I want "sanctuary cities" because the whole idea of "illegal" people is tyrannical and inhumane.

Gabriel54 2y ago

What is the purpose of laws if they are willfully ignored? Where do you draw the line? If the police don't care about someone's immigration status, why should they care about who broke into your car?

dbspin 2y ago
The line is prosecution policy. There are thousands of laws on the books that are never enforced, particularly in the United States. Given the inhuman and grossly illegal deportation without due process of thousands of people by the Trump administration - to an extrajudicial torture prison no less - many means of resisting the kidnap of people (citizens or non) are reasonable).
- petre 2y ago
  I hope Trump ends up in prison, that's all I can say. Arguably South Korea has better democracy, because Yoon Suk Yeol is probably going to prison for insurrection.
gortok 2y ago
This over-simplifies our federal system to the point of uselessness. The Federal Government is responsible for immigration. It's their job to set policies and adjudicate immigration issues. Local and State Law Enforcement are not responsible for -- and indeed it is outside of their powers to enforce immigration laws. Supreme Court precedent is that states cannot be compelled by Congress to enforce Immigration law (see: Printz v. United States). So, what you have in this situation are the fact that States and the Federal Government have opposing interests: The States need to be able to enforce their laws without their people feeling like they can't tell the police when there's a crime, and the current federal policy is to deport all undocumented immigrants, no matter why they're here or whether they are allowed to be here while their status is adjudicated.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- Gabriel54 2y ago
  > Supreme Court precedent is that states cannot be compelled by Congress to enforce Immigration law (see: Printz v. United States). So the supreme court struck a reasonable compromise between federal and state interests. I am not a lawyer, but I am certain that this precedent does not give states the right to actively obstruct federal agents from doing their job, that is, to enforce federal immigration law.
  - hypeatei 2y ago
    > does not give states the right to actively obstruct federal agents Who said they had that right and when did this happen?
    - Gabriel54 2y ago
      The warrant of the judge's arrest strongly suggests that she did not think it was appropriate for ICE to arrest Ruiz and took actions to prevent it from happening.
mmanfrin 2y ago
> What is the purpose of laws if they are willfully ignored? Nearly every liberty we take for granted was at one point against the law or gained through willful lawbreaking. A healthy society should be tolerant of some bending of the rules.
- Gabriel54 2y ago
  I agree with you. A quick search suggests that there are 11 million undocumented people in the United States, or about 3% of the population. A healthy society does not harbor 11 million people without documentation so they can be exploited by employers for cheap labor, not given proper health care and labor rights.
  - nemomarx 2y ago
    Right - more risk of deportations pushes them under ground and allows easier exploitation, like employers who can hold this status over their head. People who have productively worked in the country and either paid taxes or contribute to the economy for some years should be offered pathways to naturalization or at least work visas and real legal protection.
  - Me1000 2y ago
    Yet it's interesting how we put the blame and punishment on the people being taken advantage of, and not the employers who are exploiting them. If both parties are breaking the law shouldn't we at the very least ensure that the business owner who is exploiting any number of workers is held to the same standard as an undocumented person whose only crime was not having the proper paperwork?
    - Gabriel54 2y ago
      I don't blame them. If I were them, I would do the same thing. However, as someone with the ability to vote and influence (to a very small degree) public policy, I would prefer we move toward a system in which strong labor rights exist in this country, and this is simply impossible in an environment in which employers are free to hire labor off the books for "pennies". To be clear, I think both political parties in the US are terrible, and all of this debate serves the interests of the employers that benefit from this situation.
ClumsyPilot 2y ago
I am still waiting for a “corporations are people” to get death penalty
crote 2y ago
Should a serial killer go unpunished because its sole witness would face lifetime imprisonment for jaywalking if they were to testify? Do you believe gangs should roam free due to a lack of evidence, or would it be better if they could be rolled up by offering a too-sweet-to-ignore plea deal to a snitch? Laws are are already routinely being ignored. There's a massive amount of discretionary choice space for law enforcement and prosecution. It's not as black-and-white as you're making it sound.

rufus_foreman 2y ago

>> If some guy's due to testify in a murder case, I don't want him skipping court because some quota-making jackass at ICE wants to arrest him because of a visa issue From the criminal complaint in this case: "I also am aware that pursuant to its policies, which had been made known to courthouse officials, the Milwaukee ICE ERO Task Force was focusing its resources on apprehending charged defendants making appearances in criminal cases – and not arresting victims, witnesses, or individuals appearing for matters in family or civil court." So it sounds like they take this into account. As for why they make arrests at the courthouse: "The reasons for this include not only the fact that law enforcement knows the location at which the wanted individual should be located but also the fact that the wanted individual would have entered through a security checkpoint and thus unarmed, minimizing the risk of injury to law enforcement, the public, and the wanted individual." Makes sense. Seems like they have weighed the risks and advantages of this and come up with a reasonable approach.

mint2 2y ago
So now instead of appearing in court and face their consequences if guilty, they are motivated to flee and evade even if innocent of the crime they are appearing in court for?
trhway 2y ago
>and not arresting victims, witnesses, or individuals appearing for matters in family or civil court. Tell that to the guy who is rotting in the El Salvador's torture prison despite having official protection from the US court, not just self-declared policy of ICE like that above. Especially considering how shady ICE and its people are, bottom of the barrel of federal law enforcement.

billy99k 2y ago

[flagged]

tintor 2y ago

[flagged]

andrewstuart2 2y ago
In an ideal world, maybe that's how it would work. In reality, that's not how it works or likely ever will work. So the comment you're replying to is a pragmatic approach to "how do we make the world we actually live in, not some idealized fantasy, safer?"
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- IncreasePosts 2y ago
  In reality, Trump's tough on illegal immigrants approach has drastically reduced the number of illegal border crossings compared to Biden's term. So, it seems that "people living in the country illegally" doesn't have to just be a fact of life, if there are federal policy changes that can radically alter the number of people who illegally enter the country.
  - const_cast 2y ago
    Sure, if this is true... and it only came at the cost of due process. Even if you prevent everyone from coming here illegally, you'll still have "illegal" immigrants. I would wager most illegal immigrants came here perfectly legally.
  - crote 2y ago
    Illegal border crossings are a distraction. The vast majority of "illegal immigrants" entered legally and overstayed their visa. This makes "radically altering the number of people entering illegally" a fairly meaningless achievement in practice. For all we know those very same people who would have crossed the border illegally are now spending the extra money to enter legally and overstay: same number of incoming "illegal immigrants", but via different pathways.
2y ago

bdelmas 2y ago

I am going to be downvoted to oblivion but sanctuary cities for what you are saying is like a monkey patch in code. It "works" for now but it's not a long-term viable solution. A person breaking the law and be fine to be a criminal to be in a country is already the wrong mindset. And these persons are only at step 1 in a life in the US. What happens when life will be tough later are they now magically going to stop all criminal solutions? Their solution to be in the US was already to break the law. Thankfully there are already laws to protect people being persecuted, in danger, people needing asylum, etc... We need even better laws in these areas and improvements in witness protection laws for a part of your example. But again sanctuary cities "work" for now but it is not a long-term solution. Beyond attracting criminals, it also creates a weird lawful oxymoron at the opposite of the rule of the law. (And again, there are things like asylum, etc...)

nemomarx 2y ago
Sure, we should also reform immigration and make the legal pathways better and more accessible to attract citizens but cities have no ability to control that, while they can impact some things locally, so it's different groups of people doing both of these?
- bdelmas 2y ago
  To be honest, for me personally having cities that have that much power is weird to me. It should be something at the state or federal level. But as a counterargument: if this is not monkey patching, why not create a full sanctuary state? Sounds scary to me. We need better laws. Current laws are also in place because it's just easier and works for now. Like instead of redoing visas and how they are processed for the 1M undocumented persons working in agriculture (that's 40% of ag workers!), people are fine with how things are now and also can justify to give lower unlawful salaries. Like this state is also bad for undocumented people too. They can just be taken advantage of and fired/used/disregarded when their managers want to... Solutions that go against the rule of the law are overall a very bad idea for everyone.
  - kstrauser 2y ago

hypeatei 2y ago

This line of thinking only works if you consider illegal immigrants as people of which a certain side does not and is actively arguing that the bill of rights only applies to citizens. Basically, if you view illegal immigrants as the end of the world, then any deferral of their deportation is equally as bad. There is no room for discussion on this topic, being "illegal" is a cardinal sin and must be punished at all costs.

ClumsyPilot 2y ago
> bill of rights only applies to citizens. I could argue that it’s inhumane, contradicts all the values US claims to stand for, or could be used as a back door to harass citizens. But ultimately fundamental issue is this - if you want to be a seat of global capital and finance, a global reserve currency and the worlds most important stock exchange, that is the price. Transnational corporations, their bosses and employees have to feel secure. That is the only reason (often corrupt) businessman take their money from Russia, China, and other regimes that do not guarantee human rights and bring it to the west.
- hypeatei 2y ago
  I think some are missing the sarcasm. I enjoyed your comment at least.
godelski 2y ago
> if you consider illegal immigrants as people Actually, I disagree[0]. The logic works just fine if you recognize that it is impossible to achieve 100% success rate. It is absolutely insane to me that on a website full of engineers people do not consider failure analysis when it comes to laws. Conditioned that you have not determined someone is an illegal immigrant: _______What do you want to happen here? _________________ Wait, sorry, let me use code for the deaf if (person.citizenStatus == illegal && person.citizenStatus in police.knowledge()) { deport(person, police) } else if (person.citizenStatus == illegal) { // What do you want to happen? // deport(person) returns error. There is no police to deport them } else if (person.citizenStatus == legal) { fullRights(person) } else if (person.citizenStatus == unknown { // Also a necessary question to answer // Do you want police randomly checking every person? That's expensive and a similar event helped create America as well as a very different Germany } else { // raise error, we shouldn't be here? } Am I missing something? Seems like you could be completely selfish, hate illegal immigrants, AND benefit through policies of Sanctuary Cities and giving them TINs. How is that last one even an argument? It's "free" money. EDIT: > the bill of rights only applies to citizens Just a note. This has been tested in courts and there's plenty of writings from the founders themselves, both of which would evidence that the rights are to everyone (the latter obviously influencing the former). It's not hard to guess why. See the "alternative solution" in my linked comment... It's about the `person.citizenStatus == unknown` case.... [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43796826 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43796826

openasocket 2y ago

There's another argument that you touched on in your last paragraph that I think deserves to be underlined, which is about proper accountability. Imagine an undocumented immigrant who commits a serious crime, like murder. Do you want the local prosecutors to go after them, and send them to jail for a long time? Or do you want ICE to go after them, in which case they ... get deported and wind up living free in another country (putting aside the current debacle with El Salvador and CECOT). Where is the justice in that? If someone commits some sort of crime in the US, I want justice to be served before we talk about deporting them.

pfannkuchen 2y ago
I mean banishment has worked pretty well for crimes historically. The punishment/rehabilitation spectrum is wrong on both sides IMO. If the threat is gone, from a utility perspective it doesn’t really matter how it happens.
- godelski 2y ago
  Has it? - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriolanus - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_IV_of_England - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin Are you guessing or are you positive?
  - pfannkuchen 2y ago
    I just can’t even talk to people on the internet anymore. I am speaking in general. Banishment was applied to commoners since forever. Did they crime in the area anymore? No, they aren’t there anymore. Is there a special case for banishing political leaders, where the dynamics are different? Sure, probably. Does that apply here? No, obviously not.
    - thunderfork 2y ago
      [dead]
    - 2y ago

godelski 2y ago

This. Same with giving them TINs so that they pay taxes. These BENEFIT citizens and permanent residents of the country. I see a lot of comments being like "what's the point of laws if they get ignored." Well, we're on a CS forum, and we have VMs, containers, and chroots, right? We break rules all the time, but recognize that it is best to do so around different contextualizations. There's a few points I think people are missing: 1) The government isn't monolithic. Just like your OS isn't. It different parts are written by different people and groups who have different goals. Often these can be in contention with one another. 2) Containerization is a thing. Scope. It is both true that many agencies need to better communicate with one another WHILE simultaneously certain agencies should have firewalls between them. I bet you even do this at your company. Firewalls are critical to any functioning system. Same with some redundancy. A sanctuary city is not a "get out of jail free card." They do not prevent local police from contacting ICE when the immigrant has committed a crime and local police has identified them. They are only protected in narrow settings: Reporting crimes to police, enrolling their children in school, and other minimal and basic services. If they run a stop sign and a cop pulls them over, guess what, ICE gets contacted and they will get deported[0]. Forget human rights, think like an engineer. You have to design your systems with the understanding of failure. So we need to recognize that we will not get 100% of illegal immigrants. We can still optimize this! But then, what happens when things fail? That's the question. In these settings it is "Conditioned that an illegal immigrant was not found, do we want them to report crimes to the police or not?" "Conditioned that an illegal immigrant was not found, do we want them to pay taxes?" How the hell can the answer be anything but "yes"? You can't ignore the condition. Absent of the condition, yeah, most people will agree that they should be deported. But UNDER THE CONDITION it is absolutely insane to not do these things. There is, of course, another solution... But that condition is fairly authoritarian. Frequently checking identification of everyday persons. It is quite costly, extremely cumbersome to average citizens, and has high false positive rates. I mean we can go that route but if we do I think we'll see why a certain amendment exists. It sure wasn't about Grizzly Bears... [0] They may have holding limits, like not hold the immigrant more than a week. Maybe you're mad at this, but why aren't you mad at ICE for doing their job? You can't get someone out there in a week? Come on. You're just expecting the local city to foot the bill? Yeah, it costs money. Tell ICE to get their shit together.

onetimeusename 2y ago

That sounds reasonable but would you also support a strongly enforced border and tighter policies on illegal immigration so this isn't an issue in the first place? I think it becomes hand-wringing and disingenuous when it starts to seem that this isn't really about reasonable policy and it's more about trying to prevent deportations by any means necessary. What's unspoken is that there are deeply held, non-articulated beliefs that open borders policies are a good thing. These views aren't generally popular with the electorate so the rhetoric shifted to subtler issues like what you are describing.

kstrauser 2y ago
Depends on the enforcement methods and the policies. Of course we can defend our border. No, we shouldn't waste billions on some stupid fence that will be climbed or tunneled or knocked over or walked around. I'm absolutely willing to have the discussion about what appropriate policies should be, as long as we can agree that we're talking about real, live humans who are generally either trying to flee from the horrible circumstances they were born into, or trying to make a nicer lives for themselves and their families, and the policies reflect that. I'm not for open borders. In any case, that's irrelevant to whether I think ICE should be hassling people inside a courthouse for other reasons, which I think is bad policy for everyone.

timewizard 2y ago

Replace illegal immigration with any other crime. What if a witness to a murder is an accused thief? Should we let thefts go unpunished because it may implicate their testimony in more severe crimes? What we actually do is offer the person reduced sentencing in exchange for their cooperation but we don't ignore their crime. In terms of illegal immigrants, if they haven't filed any paperwork, or haven't attempted to legally claim asylum, then they shouldn't be surprised they're left without legal protections, even if they happen to have witnessed a more severe crime.

kristjansson 2y ago
> we don't ignore their crime And no one is asking the relevant authorities to ignore their duties to enforce immigration policy. They're just saying that state and local courts and police aren't the relevant authorities, and that they'd prefer to have the rest of the apparatus of government function with and for undocumented people.
- timewizard 2y ago
  > And no one is asking the relevant authorities to ignore their duties to enforce immigration policy. I take a look at Los Angeles policy, which was recently ensconced into law, and it does specifically require authorities to ignore their duties. It even requires them to interfere in them. They cannot, even if if they incidentally know a persons immigration status, contact immigration authorities with that information. If the immigration authorities find out anyways they are required to prevent those authorities from even _interviewing_ the subject let alone take them into custody. If requested to participate in any sort of joint operation they must decline just because it's the federal immigration authorities. > and that they'd prefer to have the rest of the apparatus of government function If that were the case then only the first restriction above would need to exist. Instead they literally provide an active shield against any enforcement of these federal laws and directly interfere with that function. > for undocumented people. If the city is so willing to shield this class of people from federal immigration enforcement then why aren't they also willing to then document them on their own terms? It seems inappropriate and careless to me and leaves these people in a slightly worse place than they were without the sanctuary status. It also makes it look like their primary concern is frustrating federal law and not truly caring for a desperate class of people.