The lesson learned is that people going to their immigration hearings to stay legal are getting nabbed, and going the legal way is a convoluted recipe for failure.
As soon as enforcement lets up an iota the lesson will be it is wiser to stay off paper and off the visa pathway and go underground. People who aren't arrested and don't present to CBP for entry and don't get a visa, as far as the government knows, don't exist.
The people going to their immigration hearings to "stay legal" were apprehended as illegal immigrants, invited to come up with an excuse as to why they should be allowed to stay in the country, and released. You'll literally see "apprehension date" on their paperwork. The "legal way" is to apply for that stuff, then enter the country.
It's annoying that people elide this. There is an ongoing attempt by the current administration to remove these very recently introduced practices that no one voted for. Or a show of an attempt, really, because they love illegal labor.
But it's weird that for the past decade that illegal immigrants who have been caught are released almost immediately into a dilatory multi-year process of hearings. It's also weird that even those that have not been apprehended are issued IDs, work permits, business and drivers licenses, get in-state tuition as state schools, and in some places get to vote for local elections. There was never a debate about this, and it would have never survived a debate.
It's important to note that none of the countries that they are coming from allow people to do this. You can't just walk into Mexico and be Mexican, or fly to Nigeria and be Nigerian. Any shock that they have is in how easy it is to just walk and fly into the US and stay indefinitely.
> it is wiser to stay off paper and off the visa pathway and go underground.
This is how it used to be. But "underground" is nothing like this; it isn't in-state tuition and business licenses and street protests. It's usually harder than just going back home. In the late 90s, net migration from Mexico was negative. The "wall" (that Hillary Clinton helped push, and had a hand in started modern left-bashing among Democratic administrations) was a bad idea because a lot of people just jumped the border for enough time to make a few dollars, then ran back. People would go back and forth half a dozen times. After the wall, getting across was so onerous that you had to stay.
Previously, if you were a Mexican who hit a bad financial patch, you ran to the US, worked like a dog, and ran back with enough cushion to get your life going again - if you failed again, you could just repeat the process. After the wall when you hit that same patch, you had to commit to trying to make a life in the US.
I think the inflection point was the desire to get cheap labor to repair New Orleans after the flood, but they didn't want to hire the black people who lived there, they wanted to get rid of them, to ship them out to FEMA trailers in neighboring states. That's exactly what they did.
To obtain asylum through the affirmative asylum process you must be physically present in the United States. You may apply for asylum regardless of how you arrived in the United States or your current immigration status.[1]
> The "legal way" is to apply for that stuff, then enter the country.
Which is next to impossible, particularly for immigrants who pick crops and process livestock. It’s annoying when people elide this.
> It's also weird that even those that have not been apprehended are issued IDs, work permits, business and drivers licenses, get in-state tuition as state schools, and in some places get to vote for local elections.
Or since those people pay taxes and are subject to governance, maybe it isn’t weird at all.
I don't think the drugs analog works. What this activity by ICE does though is put a chilling effect on "legal" immigration and tourism. Which will over time hurt supply chains, tourist destinations and jobs overall.
I agree with GP, but from the opposite perspective.
ICE doing a good job of removing illegal aliens ("acting like SS" in GP's parlance) will trigger the next democratic president to relax border enforcement. This is what happened with Biden. He let in 7.2 million migrants [1].
There's no way for Trump to deport 7.2 million people in 4 years. Pro-illegal immigration presidents are always at an advantage.
Trump's strict (and good) policies might trigger the next democratic president to just blanket pardon all illegal aliens, and the next republican president can't do anything about it.
> No matter what, the whole ICE acting like the SS thing will only result in more illegal migration in the long term, like a lot more.
How so? What mechanism do you see that goes from "ICE acting like the SS" to "a lot more illegal migration in the long term"? What's the cause and effect here?
Not saying you're wrong, necessarily, just... I don't see the causality at all.
My guess is he sees ICE hauling people out of even the courts when they were attempting to abide by the legal processes and will say f-it, why bother, its safer to not adhere. just my assumption of OP's intent.
Why fill out the right paperwork and actually attend your court dates and immigration hearings if there is a good chance that will result in your extraordinary rendition to some torture prison God-only-knows-where? Much safer to simply stay off the books.
Well ideally you're supposed to have a valid visa before you cross the border. I don't like the idea of the government promising people a path to amnesty and then going back on its word because there's a new administration in town but ultimately the people they're nabbing are in this situation because they already have invalid visas so I don't think it follows that this would discourage people from obtaining visas like they were supposed to have already done.
To obtain asylum through the affirmative asylum process you must be physically present in the United States. You may apply for asylum regardless of how you arrived in the United States or your current immigration status.[1]
What was the reaction to SS? or to stick to my DEA example, what was the result of the war on drugs? millions and millions dead because of drug related causes right? how do you think the nation will react to ICE's brutal and cruel, even illegal operations? many would consider them heroes, but the other side will consider them no different than the SS or gestapo, the only correction is to wind down immigration enforcement dramatically, increasing immigration.
Imagine a democrat administration simply reverting ICE to its pre-2025 state. the implication alone and the perception it gives will drive up illegal immigration. "america is open again".
Statistics are showing that the total immigrant population is down by over a million since the start of the year. If you have the ability to leave, why put up with this nonsense?
A large number of people, myself included, are now radicalized against the concept of immigration enforcement. I think everyone has a duty to make sure that ICE is as ineffective as possible and ICE agents are as miserable as possible. There's a lot of talk, for example, about how the asylum system is easily abusable; that's true, but now we will not be able to fix it because no immigration reform compromise that doesn't destroy ICE is acceptable.
My city, capital city, local PD (also in Washington state) put out this press release after ICE blocked up a busy intersection in peak hour chasing someone:
> [Department] was not notified of or involved in this enforcement action. By state law, city resolution, and department policy, [we do] not cooperate or coordinate with federal immigration enforcement.
> Voters don't want a streamlined and efficient immigration system that lawfully allows a lot of migrants
There was a really interesting open ended survey some years ago, in the leadup to the trump/clinton election but I can't find it now sorry.
When republicans voters were asked to describe their preferred immigration policies, they outline a stance significantly more permissive and flexible, and less burdensome, than the one we currently have. More liberal than the reality, in other words.
People don't know what the immigration policies are and so they can't know what they should be either. The anti-immigration sentiment is a stunning propaganda victory decades in the making, no more.
Is self-determination a human right? We certainly decided a lot of nations to the south of us didn't deserve that right. Look up the history of the banana republics some time.
Up until it conflicts with my country’s rights, yes. Not sure what you’re suggesting. Is mass migration to the United States the policy of, say, Mexico?
I'm suggesting that we spent a lot of effort overturning elected governments in South America because we didn't like who they voted for and what their policies were with regard to US fruit companies. US policy directly created instability, civil war, and a generally terrible situation that they are dealing with now. Do you know what a banana republic is?
Yeah, it's a nation. A nation of immigrants. Where did your great-great-great grandfather come from? Did he spontaneously erupt from this common ancestry and heritage that you speak of?
Hi, Jew here: I was with you until you started slandering dissenters as "rootless cosmopolitans"—a slur has cost my family dearly—from jobs and enrollments to several dozen of our very lives.
Yes, NO land is an "economic zone" while it is also a home. I feel this especially acutely having grown up in the San Francisco Bay Area where My friends and I struggle to compete for housing with the best and the brightest from the entire world over who, themselves, treat my home region less like a community and more like an understaffed amusement park.
Nevertheless, your blood quanta framing is utterly horrifying to me, someone whose family were murdered, lands stolen, and who has no country to go back to.
We are not by choice "rootless cosmopolitans", but by the very bigotry you espouse.
> Blood and soil (German: Blut und Boden, pronounced [ˈbluːt ʊnt ˈboːdn̩] ⓘ) is a nationalist phrase and concept of a racially defined national body ("Blood") united with a settlement area ("Soil"). Originating in the German völkisch movement, it was used extensively by Nazi Germany
Hence my antipathy, 20+ years ago, to the creation to a department of "Homeland" Security. Not that function of that entity itself was necessarily a bad idea, but that the concept of a "homeland" is fundamentally at odds with the USA's credal concept of civic belonging. Smuggling the blood and soil metaphor (further and officially) into the national consciousness has born disastrous fruits.
> will only result in more illegal migration in the long term
Why? Wouldn't it disincentivize illegal immigration by making it much more riskier?
Agreed that the legal immigration system needs an overhaul, these are a lot of people living in limbo, paying taxes and not causing crimes with very few rights.
The term no taxation without representation was the reason the USA got founded.
It's a temporary partisan solution, the other party will do the opposite, reducing enforcement and letting even more illegal migrants in, lest they be accused of being a xenophobe.
Not sure of that to be honest, I think that would be a loud minority.
Once democratic cities got a taste of the flood of people coming in that were sent by southern states, they realized how big the issue is and how much of a drag on resources it is.
That's not how it is in reality, southern states (not just them though) have been doing that with homeless people too, not just immigrants.
Republicans did jim crow in the 50s and 60s, we still talk about it today, and the positive blowback from that needs no explanation. Keep in mind that ICE is doing a lot more than cops did to protesters in the 60s, and it is targeting not just one group but several minority groups. not only that, it is all being live streamed, and it is affecting a lot of majority-group americans more directly. If ICE can avoid being disbanded it would be a great victory for them.
If I were exaggerating, I would be talking about tribunals and mass incarcerations of ICE agents, but I'm not.
No, it was Republicans (today) who used to be democrats in that era. parties are made up of people, it was the same people or their ideological inheritors. Many republicans today in congress (especially leadership) were of voting age in that era. a 20 year old in 1969 would be 75 today, younger than the current and former president.
Yes, they were. They are republicans now. You arguing in bad faith here, because you very well know the democrats back then are the republicans now. The party of democrats back then is not the party of the democrats now. the democratic party represented the same people republicans represent today. You're trying to make an falsely link the democratic party today with the party in the 60's, you know that link is incorrect, but since it helps you make a point, you're making it anyways. I call this: intellectual fraud.
Ideologically, they were republicans. In name only, they were Democrats.
This is not some 'haha gotcha!' type thing. Real argument with real human brains don't work that way. You can be technically right but if it's on some semantic bullshit nobody cares about, then you're wrong.
