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> I cannot for the life of me understand why Americans have such a problem with other people coming here to seek a better life. Half this country has been tricked into seeing hardworking immigrants as a threat to their safety and livelihood — but by all metrics, immigrants are a net positive to society.

I have no issue with legal immigration. Far from it, I’m in favor of attracting the best, brightest, and most hard working.

But knowing people overseas that want to come to the USA but are respectful enough to want to do it legally, I take issue with anyone that enters the country illegally. They’re cheating the system and showing immediate disdain for our system of laws. The second order effects of funneling money to smugglers and coyotes are bad as well.

Every country has a right to decide who can visit or immigrate. That’s the right of any sovereign state.

If the people of America want more immigration then have them petition their representatives to change the laws to all for it.



> They’re cheating

"Of course, 'It is illegal and unconstitutional to deport, detain for deportation, or recommend deportation of a U.S. citizen.' See Lyttle v. United States, 867 F.Supp.2d 1256 (M.D. Ga. 2012) (citing Tuan Anh Nguyen v. Immigration & Naturalization Serv., 533 U.S. 53, 67 (2001) (affirming that a citizen has the 'absolute right to enter [the United States] borders'); Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U.S. 618, 629 (1969) ('This Court long ago recognized that the nature of our Federal Union and our constitutional concepts of personal liberty unite to require that all citizens be free to travel throughout the length and breadth of our land uninhibited by statutes, rules, or regulations which unreasonably burden or restrict this movement.')" [1].

To the extent someone is unequivocally cheating, it's ICE.

[1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.21...


If you read the complete sentence you’d realize I’m referring to cheating against every other potential immigrant to come to the USA.

> To the extent someone is unequivocally cheating, it's ICE.

So what exactly is ICE supposed to do if they are deporting the illegal alien mother and child is a citizen? Forget the possibility of a deported father. Say a single mother with no legal status is being deported.

Does she not get the option to take her child with her?

If she didn’t take the child the same people would be likely be screaming about ICE separating families.

Kids are not a get out of jail free card.


> you’d realize I’m referring to cheating against every other potential immigrant to come to the USA

I know. I'm pointing out that the mother's illegal immigration is outweighed by ICE's illegal detention, deportation and wilful abrogation of legal and constitutional rights of a U.S. citizen.

> what exactly is ICE supposed to do if they are deporting the illegal alien mother and child is a citizen?

Follow the law. In this case, that would involve transfering the child to her designated custodian [1].

> If she didn’t take the child the same people would be likely be screaming about ICE separating families

Not an excuse for breaking the law!

[1] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69940863/1/v-m-l-v-harp...


In a debate between the concrete reality of US children being kicked out of the country and hypothetical potential non-citizens not being able to become a citizen, I will side with the child every time. I don't think that's a radical position.

Here's an interesting question: are undocumented immigrants actually stopping non-citizens from becoming citizens? These two things are actually quite independent, yes? You're building a very similar argument to "piracy is bad because it takes money out of the hands of the RIAA."


> Here's an interesting question: are undocumented immigrants actually stopping non-citizens from becoming citizens? These two things are actually quite independent, yes? You're building a very similar argument to "piracy is bad because it takes money out of the hands of the RIAA."

So in your analogy the RIAA are the huddled masses yearning to breathe free that respect immigration laws?


In your analogy, are undocumented immigrants not the huddled masses yearning to breathe free?


Of course. But they’re supposed to arrive at ports of entry and follow the process.

While it has no legal significance, that poem is written on base of the Statue of Liberty next to the immigration center at Ellis Island. It’s a pretty wild take to think that it’s means that people should cut down barbed wire fences and sneak into the country under the cover of darkness.


While we were tracking humans coming into America via ship back to the 1820s, the formal data collection approximating the modern system didn't even begin until 1891, seven years after the Statue was gifted to the US.

The "wild take" (which is, honestly, quite mundane) is the barbed wire fences don't even need to be up. We got along for a century and change soft-handling immigration (even longer, if you don't consider the border to be "strictly enfroced" until Operation Wetback in the 1950s). America has been strongest when it didn't care where you came from unless you gave it a reason to care.

Who is actually benefitting from a highly-militarized and exclusive southern border?


Rights imply an obligation.

What we're doing right now isn't working, isn't sustainable, and ignores several realities of how we interact with our neighboring nations (and, indeed, is a new problem... The current tight-border regime isn't even half a century old).

At what point do we decide that if the laws are broken that often, perhaps it's because they're bad laws that are too incompatible with reality to be practically enforced successfully? We could pass a law that requires you to hover three inches off the ground; do we blame you if you don't start levitating?


> What we're doing right now isn't working, isn't sustainable, and ignores several realities of how we interact with our neighboring nations (and, indeed, is a new problem... The current tight-border regime isn't even half a century old).

The problem with this argument is it’s downstream from a self fulfilling prophesy derived from the previous administration’s refusal to enforce the law. Illegal border crossings are down 99% over the past year. If that type of seriousness had been applied previously we wouldn’t be in the situation we are today.

We didn’t do the ounce of prevention so now we have to administer the bitter medicine that is the cure.


The medicine is not worth the cure. While illegal border crossings are down, it's because all border crossings are down... People have become legitimately fearful outside this country that visiting this country, even as our guests legally, could result in a long stay in detention with no due process. The damage this administration is doing to America's international reputation Is by no means worth lower border crossing numbers. It's the equivalent of keeping rowdy teenagers off your property by waving a shotgun at them... It works, but now your neighbors know you is the crazy shotgun toting guy at the edge of town and they avoid you.

Pax Americana is built on a web of trust that includes the notion that America is a welcoming nation. I think it's going to take economists some time to calculate the full magnitude of the damage that closing up the borders will do to America's ability to realize all of its interests. Where are we going to get the next generation of innovators and creators of scientific breakthroughs when people stop showing up at our universities because we are capriciously kicking them out? How are the communities who were bothered or scared of undocumented immigrants going to fair when tourists stop showing up?


They deported a US Citizen. A child. Kept from contact from her US Citizen father.

If that’s the sort of way that you believe we should treat legal immigrants, you have no basis to claim any support for them.


> A child. Kept from contact from her US Citizen father.

Is that true?

If this is the correct case link it doesn't seem like the father is a US citizen?

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.21...

> father executed a Provisional Custody by Mandate under Louisiana Revised Statutes

It seems odd that he would give provisional custody to "family friend" then?

Then this doesn't add up then

> Respondent Harper later sent an email further evincing her refusal to release V.M.L. to her custodian, see Exh. 2, and stating that she would instead require V.M.L.’s father to turn himself in for detention and deportation,

So they wanted to deport the US citizen father?

It's possible that I am looking at a different court case perhaps.




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