ALL HAIL PRESIDENT TRUMP

That seems to be a fairly common conservative position around here - "yeah it sucks, but if we rip the band-aid off now, we ruin less lives than if we leave things to sit and fester."

Here's the thing. You're worried about the message it sends to people when we say "yes, these folks get an out because through no fault or decision of their own they were put into an untenable situation they had no say in or control over". You're concerned that if we fire off a one-time amnesty for Dreamers it says to other folks "c'mon, do it again!" even as the government works to systematically illegalize immigration.

What about the other message, then? What about the message it sends to people when we say "close to a million people who look, speak, act, and think like American citizens are being forcibly evicted from the only homes they've known for their entire lives today because we are waging a war against Five Dollar Pablo, and immigration is retroactively no longer allowed in the United States"?

What sort of message does it send to people when your government is willing to send nearly a million people who've lived and worked here, contributed to the economy, followed the rules and done everything they could to be proper American citizens, off to most-likely-die in their 'home' countries where they know no one, have no prospects, and have never wanted to live in the first place?

The most fundamental criteria for immigration into the United States was, and should be once again, the fervent and honest desire to live here and be an American. Not 'come here and take advantage of our economy whilst preaching about how much better your home country is and refusing to acclimate/assimilate into the American people'. Those assholes can go right on back to China if it's such a better place to live. But a fundamental principle of this country damn near since its inception has been "if you want to live here, work here, be one of us? You can do that. Come on in, the door's open for you."

Dreamers want to live here. They want to work here. They want to be Americans. They have already assimilated. They have undergone naturalization damn near from the crib. You claim that amnesty is heinous, a short-sighted feel-good solution that sends the wrong message to future criminals.

I say that callously deporting a huge chunk of the most naturalized possible immigrants in this country is much more heinous.

Stop the criminal behavior. Punish the criminal behavior - not the hostage victimised by the behavior. If a Dreamer has to watch his mother and father get punted back to Nowherezistan because they undertook illegal behaviors, then I'm sorry for that Dreamer but an American should understand the importance of adhering to American law. Just as an American should understand that there is a difference between the law and justice.

There is no legal precedent for the current situation with DACA and the Dreamers. But the just options should be self-evidently inherent to all, ne?

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1453R wrote:

Dreamers want to live here. They want to work here. They want to be Americans. They have already assimilated. They have undergone naturalization damn near from the crib...

Punish the criminal behavior - not the hostage victimised by the behavior. If a Dreamer has to watch his mother and father get punted back to Nowherezistan because they undertook illegal behaviors, then I'm sorry for that Dreamer but an American should understand the importance of adhering to American law. Just as an American should understand that there is a difference between the law and justice.

There is no legal precedent for the current situation with DACA and the Dreamers.

Well shit, if you actually had the facts right I'd pretty much agree with you.

1. Dreamers aren't a monolith. Have some Dreamers assimilated? Yes. But many haven't, at least not beyond the technicality of "attended public schools with other students (and sometimes teachers) hostile to assimilation." It's a diverse group of people with a significant yet not omnipotent anti-assimilation activist movement.

2. You're pretty much alone among progressives I've heard in your willingness to deport the parents. Most aren't, and are counting on chain migration law and federal court rulings to keep the parents of (former?) DACA recipients with their families — as well as other family members not yet residing in the US. Just recently I linked an article where activists demanded amnesty for all illegal aliens. There are basically zero Democrats in Washington who are willing to deport these parents.

3. There's plenty of legal precedent. Amnesties have happened multiple times now, including under Reagan. This is a generational repeat occurrence.

I want to preface by stating that I feel like excessive multiquoting can be interpreted as condescending (not sure if that’s a thing, but I’m self conscious about it). That is not my intention here. There’s just a lot of different points that only require a brief reply; I have already (sort of) expounded my thoughts.

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1453R wrote:

You're concerned that if we fire off a one-time amnesty for Dreamers it says to other folks "c'mon, do it again!"

Just this once, you say?

Immigration Reform and Control Act, 1986
Section 245(i), 1992, and renewed again in 1997 and 2000
NACARA, 1997
DACA, 2012

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1453R wrote:

even as the government works to systematically illegalize immigration.

Perfectly backwards observation. Nobody is trying to make immigration illegal, they’re trying to legalize it. Our current de facto immigration policy is illegal immigration and pathological amnesty.

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1453R wrote:

What about the other message, then? What about the message it sends to people when we say "close to a million people who look, speak, act, and think like American citizens are being forcibly evicted from the only homes they've known for their entire lives today because we are waging a war against Five Dollar Pablo, and immigration is retroactively no longer allowed in the United States"?

Another perfectly backwards observation. Illegal immigration is (would, should) be no longer allowed.

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1453R wrote:

followed the rules and done everything they could to be proper American citizens

Everything they could? You mean like................................................. naturalizing? They’ve had six years for Christ’s sake.

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1453R wrote:

They have undergone naturalization damn near from the crib.

Naturalization isn’t like fermentation. You don’t just leave illegals sit out in the sun and they become legal over time. It is a legal process. That means getting in line, signing papers, and formally declaring “I want to be an American.”

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1453R wrote:

Stop the criminal behavior. Punish the criminal behavior - not the hostage victimised by the behavior. If a Dreamer has to watch his mother and father get punted back to Nowherezistan because they undertook illegal behaviors, then I'm sorry for that Dreamer but an American should understand the importance of adhering to American law. Just as an American should understand that there is a difference between the law and justice.

Agreed, but the server is restarting soon, so... later :)

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1453R wrote:

The most fundamental criteria for immigration into the United States was, and should be once again, the fervent and honest desire to live here and be an American.

Utterly agree. Start with that and go through the legal process like everyone else. Others in the same legal process without that fervent and honest desire should be delayed or denied to open up room at the front of the line for such obviously naturalizable future citizens.

I agree with Scrotie that your stance on deporting the parents is very unique. I actually agree with that stance quite a bit, but neither major party has mentioned anything like that at all.

I do think that amnesty is going to happen. It's somewhat of a foregone conclusion and everything we're seeing now is political games to see who can get the most brownie points (or sling the most mud points) before the elections in November.

We're in a really weird place now where the Dems actually stand to gain more by making Trump look bad than the self-harm they do to their own constituency by stonewalling DACA reform, and the only people pushing DACA reform forward are bleeding-heart Reps. It's a shame that Trump hate trumps caring about pushing democrat policy, but that's how it's been for a year already with no sign of stopping.

And make no mistake, the (R) side of the aisle is split on this issue, nowhere near the (repeated, utterly false) claims that you're making about them being united in wanting to reduce legal immigration. The two most vocal proponents of amnesty right now are... Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Trump himself, but only on every other day of the week. :P

Crimes have been comitted; punishments are merited. The punishment for illegal immigration is deportation. My issue is that young children that simply did what their parents told them to do and moved here with their families because they had exactly zero choice did not commit any crimes. That's like saying Li'l Timmy Brown should be locked away as a vicious sex offender because when he was five he kissed li'l Susie May across the street after seeing it in a movie somewhere and now she's yelling #MeToo. Fuck outta here with that - what was the kid supposed to do, tell his parents and his only means of support "No I wanna stay here I don't wanna be your ticket to America!"

How realistic do you really think that is?

Are some of these nasty people because their nasty parents raised them to be nasty people? Almost certainly. But damnit, being a nasty person isn't a crime yet. If it was we'd've arrested the President at least five hundred times last year.

So yes. An American child whose parents commit a crime gets to deal with their parents going to jail. It sucks for the kid, they had nothing to do with it and they're suffering anyways, but nobody ever says "keep Mama Vorhees out of prison, man! Li'l Jason needs her! We've gotta keep the family together!" So yeah.

If you came over here with the cynical intent of manipulating the system to secure an unfair advantage over other potential immigrants, or to dodge refugee status, then okay. You're out. The kid you used as an anchor gets to stay because the kid is a citizen, or damn near one.

My objection is not 'crimes don't deserve to be punished!' My objection is in the 'FUCK 'EM ALL OFF AND LET GOD AND ISIS SORT 'EM OUT' attitude that seems so prevalent around here. The notion that every single one of these people is a vicious hard-bitten criminal that deserves to be shipped right back into whatever war-torn hellpit they came here to get away from without any support whatsoever.

Exsqueeze. Don't we specifically have laws against Sins of the Father thinking here?

Well, I guess that didn't go as well as planned...lol

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1453R wrote:

My objection is in the 'FUCK 'EM ALL OFF AND LET GOD AND ISIS SORT 'EM OUT' attitude that seems so prevalent around here.

That's still a figment of your imagination. You must be thinking of some place else, or some other people. The farthest anyone has gotten here is "it's a shame but it must be done", and even that isn't universal.

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pneuma wrote:

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1453R wrote:

My objection is in the 'FUCK 'EM ALL OFF AND LET GOD AND ISIS SORT 'EM OUT' attitude that seems so prevalent around here.

That's still a figment of your imagination. You must be thinking of some place else, or some other people. The farthest anyone has gotten here is "it's a shame but it must be done", and even that isn't universal.

It most certainly is not a figment of my imagination in the news. I'm almost afraid to ask my usual Red Fundamentalist question - "How many [People you're complaining about supporting today] are you willing to shoot in the face per day?" - because I'm starting to feel pretty sure the answer to that question for a number of the frothing-mouthed savages wandering around out there is "how many bullets will you give me to do it?"

That said? May as well do it anyways since it's out there and I don't have any ammo right now anyways. So. Folks.

How many illegal immigrants are you willing to shoot in the face? Throwing most of these folks back to whence they came is as good as signing a death warrant in many cases, so why pay the middleman? How many of 'em are y'all willing to do in yourselves? Same for poor people, sick people, old people, and unlucky people while we're at it?

How many of these folks that red fundamentalists keep saying Americans should have no obligation to help or support are you, personally, willing to put a bullet into in order to reduce the country's welfare overhead? Because frankly if y'all are gonna keep pushing for people to die from being thrown back into active wars, starving to death, wasting away of sickness, or because everything they owned burned to the ground after a lightning strike?

The least you can do is make it quick, instead.

You do understand that if Trumps wall is fully funded the DACA people won't be deported, correct?

You are only asking conservatives the question about deportation for DACA people.

Why don't you ask democrats why they refuse to fund the wall? Your same sentiment can be applied to them.

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1453R wrote:

[Removed by Support]

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pneuma wrote:

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1453R wrote:

My objection is in the 'FUCK 'EM ALL OFF AND LET GOD AND ISIS SORT 'EM OUT' attitude that seems so prevalent around here.

That's still a figment of your imagination. You must be thinking of some place else, or some other people. The farthest anyone has gotten here is "it's a shame but it must be done", and even that isn't universal.

It most certainly is not a figment of my imagination in the news. I'm almost afraid to ask my usual Red Fundamentalist question - "How many [People you're complaining about supporting today] are you willing to shoot in the face per day?" - because I'm starting to feel pretty sure the answer to that question for a number of the frothing-mouthed savages wandering around out there is "how many bullets will you give me to do it?"

That said? May as well do it anyways since it's out there and I don't have any ammo right now anyways. So. Folks.

How many illegal immigrants are you willing to shoot in the face? Throwing most of these folks back to whence they came is as good as signing a death warrant in many cases, so why pay the middleman? How many of 'em are y'all willing to do in yourselves? Same for poor people, sick people, old people, and unlucky people while we're at it?

How many of these folks that red fundamentalists keep saying Americans should have no obligation to help or support are you, personally, willing to put a bullet into in order to reduce the country's welfare overhead? Because frankly if y'all are gonna keep pushing for people to die from being thrown back into active wars, starving to death, wasting away of sickness, or because everything they owned burned to the ground after a lightning strike?

The least you can do is make it quick, instead.

No, I don't want to shoot anyone. No, these people aren't coming from the type of shithole countries where every day carries a considerable risk of death AND we refuse to take anyone, with the possible exceptions of North Korea, Venezuela, and (particularly if the immigrant is homosexual) Islamic theocracies. More on this later.

The primary country we're talking about here is Mexico. Is Mexico a shithole country? Well, the drug cartels are a big problem, I'll grant you that. I feel we should be particularly accommodating to Mexican citizens seeking asylum from a cartel they've somehow managed to provoke, lest we find their decapitated head in Juarez the week following. But this is but a tiny fraction of Mexican immigration — and, to their credit, some who challenge the Mexican cartels have no intention of hiding in shadows.

No, the vast majority of the group here is economic migrants. Pure and simple. Exile is not always a death sentence. The world outside Western civilization isn't Wraeclast.

Now, I've been thinking about travel bans, and I'm starting to wonder if they're a good thing. I totally get that people coming from nations we can't trust are major security risks, but I can see how someone living under the spectre of dictatorship could be facing death if they haven't the sense to get out while they can. For that reason, I don't think we should technically ban travel from North Korea, but instead do the humane thing for people we can't trust due to security risks: immediately detain them, straight off the airplane. Volunteering for imprisonment is a bitter pill to swallow, but a cell and three squares a day here is a lot better than a bullet to the back of the head there. May their path to citizenship, uncertain but possible, begin behind bars.

And naturally, if we have sufficient diplomatic rapport with a nation for us to believe them when they say someone has a clean(ish) criminal record and isn't a security risk, no such precautions are necessary.