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> Trump has consistently supported all legal immigrants

Trump confirmed his own opposition to people of Mexican descent when he said judge Gonzalo Curiel had a conflict of interest.

He said that Curiel, who is descended from legal Mexican immigrants, could not rule fairly on a Trump trial, because Trump wanted to build a wall on the Mexican border.

Note that Trump did not claim that Curiel was an illegal immigrant, or that his predecessor were illegal immigrants. It was Mexican heritage generally that Trump claimed caused the conflict of interest.

And Trump of course has repeatedly spoken in favor of banning all Muslims from coming into the country, even legal immigrants.

These are just off the top of my head; there are many more examples. If you won't be convinced, that's on you.

I'm the furthest thing from a Trump supporter, but it is a significant leap to take his believe that a judge with Mexican heritage would be biased against him due to his anti-Mexican agenda, and turn that into an opposition of all people of Mexican descent. Trump has said some despicable things, but saying that a person of Mexican descent might be biased against him because he's basically a dick to Mexico seems reasonably logical. Now, claiming that that's grounds for the judge to recuse himself is quite a stretch, but I don't personally see it as racist. I also think that stretching to label questionable things as racist is counter-productive; it dilutes the meaning, and makes it more difficult to call out the extreme, blatant racism that's going elsewhere.

American pluralism, which the GP post was talking about, is the belief that people of many backgrounds can come together as equals and build a society together. Trump's focus on the Mexican heritage of an American judge (who was born in Chicago, Illinois, USA BTW) is a textbook attack on that idea.

I was responding specifically to this line: "Trump confirmed his own opposition to people of Mexican descent when he said judge Gonzalo Curiel had a conflict of interest."

I don't believe that particular incident is strong evidence that Trump opposes people of Mexican descent in general. I can understand his belief that a person of Mexican descent would not like him. I don't like him myself, nor do I agree with any of his stated positions on immigration or immigrants. I expect that if my parents were from Mexico, I might feel even more strongly that way, which is essentially what he suggested. (Again, I don't agree that it constitutes a conflict of interest! Just that the idea that a person descended from Mexican immigrants would likely not be a fan of his is not unreasonable.)

What snowwrestler says: Trump says an American Judge, whose job it is to be impartial and judge things, can't do his job because he's Mexican-American. That's messed up.

Sure, we can understand if the Judge has some personal feelings, but we also understand that he's going to set them aside and be impartial in his judgement because he's been made a JUDGE! We presume that the folks who gave him that authority did so because they thought and felt that he would be good at it. (And not "despite being a Mexican"!!)

Trump's B.S. undermines the whole concept of impartial Justice. It drives a wedge into the fundamental values of our government. And it's pretty racist against Mexicans and Mexican-Americans. It was a hell of a thing to say when he was just the joke candidate, and it's all the more dismaying now that he's the Joke President.

>What snowwrestler says: Trump says an American Judge, whose job it is to be impartial and judge things, can't do his job because he's Mexican-American. That's messed up.

Reality is a bit more nuanced than that.

A Mexican-American judge who is affiliated with `La Raza` [0] and is sympathetic to illegal immigrants (from Mexico) ruling on a case against an individual who is not sympathetic to illegal immigrants. The keyword I'm emphasizing because people conveniently leave it out is: illegal. It makes a drastic difference when speaking about immigration. Illegal immigration is not the same.

>The HNBA sometimes condemns rhetoric that it perceives as "divisive and racist" and aimed at immigrants. For example, in response to Donald Trump's comments regarding illegal immigration from Mexico to the United States, and Trump's derogatory remarks about some of those immigrants, the group's president issued a press release in July 2015 calling for a boycott of all Donald Trump-owned businesses.

[0] The Bar Association, not any racist-extremist group like some ignorant people have believed, no thanks in part to Breitbart's shoddy reporting on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanic_National_Bar_Associat...

Reality is always more nuanced. It's fractal, after all.

The point is that Trump's statements are a strong indicator of racist beliefs (latent or otherwise).

Consider the statement, "A member of the Hispanic National Bar Association who is a Judge can and will be impartial in the case in question."

I agree with everything you've written here except for the one italicized sentence. I think we fundamentally agree on Trump's character, and are basically having a discussion about semantics at this point. However, I do feel it can be a useful discussion. The people who write the N word and "Trump" all over someone's car are clearly racist. The people who say, "We don't want those people in our town. It's not a race thing, it's just that they're using up all the resources, and ruining the culture, and when I drive by the playground now, there aren't even any white kids there anymore," are probably racist, but legitimately don't believe they are. Trump may well be racist, but mostly he's opportunistic and self-centered, and in my opinion that's what his comment about the judge showed.

The problem is, calling that comment racist cheapens the condemnation of the writing-on-car guy. It also causes the second group to write you off as out of touch, ensuring they won't listen to anything else you say on the matter. Even calling that second group racist, while true, is most likely counter-productive. Most people with racist (or sexist, or homophobic..) beliefs honestly believe they don't have "any problem with those people", so labeling them in that way again just shuts down the dialog, and if anything hardens their views. And what ultimately matters is that people treat each other decently, so we need to choose both actions and language that are most likely to encourage that.

I get what you're saying. It's not constructive to simply shout "racist!" at someone and run away. (Although I did just that to "masondixon" elsewhere in this thread, but I stand by that: dude is a looney. Long experience has taught me not to waste time with a true-blue freakazoid like that.)

For communicating with normal everyday folks who don't even know they're racist you do indeed have to use a light touch if you want to get through to them. I totally agree with that and do my best to practice it.

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As for whether or not the statements he made about the Judge indicate strongly ("big league") that Trump is racist (however latent or unconscious) I think we have to agree to disagree. For me, and a lot of folks, it was disgusting hearing something like that from a presidential candidate. I'm not surprised so many people are saying today that his election proves that middle America is racist. I've heard his election called "revenge for eight years of <African-American> president"! In any event, racists are having a field day.

> "the belief that people of many backgrounds can come together as equals and build a society together."

not

> "the belief that people of many backgrounds ALWAYS come together as equals and build a society together."

Trump's argument was that a fully qualified, experienced, American citizen judge can't participate in civil society--can't do his civil service job properly--simply because his parents were Mexican.

It's un-American and wrong. I'm going to speak out about things like this, and everyone reading this comment should do so as well.

Each of us, every American citizen, is personally responsible for delivering a society that fulfills our ideals. No one else is going to do it for us.

I agree with this statement as well. I would suggest though, that it's being strawman'ed. Let's "steelman" the argument just as we try to do here on HN. For example, this statement is a strawman: "Trump said that a judge is inherently biased just because his parents are Mexican." The steelman would be something like, "Trump claimed that a judge had a conflict of interest against him. The judge was born in America, but has Mexican parents, which Trump believes could cause him to have a bias due to Trump's anti-Mexican policy proposals, such as the border wall."

Should he be calling the judge's ability to do his job into question? I don't think so, no. But let's argue against what he actually said - in fact, go even further than that and interpret it in the most reasonable way possible - because it's more likely to result in useful discussion among people of differing opinions.

There are generations of families --- literally millions of people --- that are linked together through people who are in the US "illegally". People were brought here as children and have known no other life. People who were born in this country and are unassailably citizens, deserving of all the protections previous generations of Americans died on beaches to defend for them, whose parents were brought here illegally as children.

Do not casually dismiss these people by appealing to "legal immigration". The Obama Administration had to fight hard to secure continued residency for some of these children, and Trump's 100 Day Plan includes a pledge to revoke that security.

This is a real concern deserving your careful consideration. It's not a sound bite. You can disagree, but if you're disagreeing that we should be concerned about a pledge to rend families apart, you owe a more careful and honest articulation of your disagreement than you gave here.

Why are you scare quoting "illegally"? They are here in violation of the law. If you don't believe in controlled immigration, just state that up front rather than trying to hide behind an appeal to emotion via stories of tearing families apart.

Your argument seems to be either that long time violators of a law should gain immunity to the law; or that we should grant citizenship to anyone who enters the country. Which is it?

> They are here in violation of the law.

Serious question: which law?

You need a visa to be here if you're not a US citizen.

https://travel.state.gov/content/visas/en/law-and-policy/law...

"The illegal entry of non-nationals into the United States is a misdemeanor according to the Immigration and Nationality Act, which prohibits non-nationals from entering or attempting to enter the United States at any time or place which has not been designated by an immigration officer, and also prohibits non-nationals from eluding inspection by immigration officers"

Even though it's nice to know the specifics, really, it's absurd.

A nation will not exist unless in the 21st century unless it manages its borders reasonably.

Thanks - I probably read a headline somewhere that entering the US illegally is not a felony and did not consider that it could still be a crime - a misdemeanour as you said.

A nation will not exist in the 21st century unless its demographics support its citizenry. Our population is aging, with insufficient service sector workers just to provide labor for the next generation of retirees, let alone fund their public pensions.

There's a term for the 21st Century nations in Europe that are especially good at enforcing their own borders: "demographic crisis".

Has importing an ethnically distinct underclass to perform labor & service jobs to fund the retirement of an aging population ever actually worked out well anywhere?

I'm Irish. Our immigration story in the US worked out pretty well.

You're the one bringing the term "underclass" into the discussion. I'm a Democrat: I think what we need is a path to citizenship for people who have proven themselves productive members of our society.

What I don't see is a rebuttal to my argument, which is that demography strongly suggests immigration is a net economic benefit to the country.

> Our immigration story in the US worked out pretty well.

There are a great many accomplished, upstanding US citizens of Irish descent today, but let's not forget that mass Irish immigration also brought machine politics & race riots to the USA in the short-to-medium term.

"Underclass" isn't meant as a moral judgment, I'm just talking about the people who work low-wage, low-prestige jobs with little job security. The USA already has fairly bad ethnic stratification of income; I don't want us to turn into Brazil or Mexico in that regard.

As a moral or practical matter, I don't think deporting families is a good idea. I do think we have to find a way to stop digging a hole. Let the people who are here now assimilate - it's harder now, with modern communication and transportation technology, because it's so much easier to live in an enclave. Find ways to encourage people who are already here to have more kids if there is a concern about future workers.

Because it is the only case in which "illegal" refers to a status rather than an action, as if the very act of existing in the United States without correct documentation was an affront against justice.

This is a very un-American view of how the law works, and so the scare quotes are merited.

> Because it is the only case in which "illegal" refers to a status rather than an action [..] a very un-American view of how the law works

That's because the illegal action consists of being in a location where you have no right to be. And it's not, in fact, the only case. Compare it to its close relative, trespassing:

An "illegal resident" is someone living in a country of which they have neither citizenship nor visa.

An "illegal occupant" is someone living in a building of which they have neither possession nor tenancy.

It seems rather straightforward to me. Whether such a view is "un-American" or not I legitimately do not know, not being an American myself. Though I can say that that word doesn't have the proudest of histories, to put it mildly.

Maciej missed the point I was making, but I'm not going to let the conversation continue to miss it.

No. There are young people in the United States who are citizens of this country by right. Children born in the US are citizens. They are not illegal immigrants. There are families that consist overwhelmingly of citizens who happen to have in the fabric of their families people who are here without a visa.

Those people aren't causing problems. In fact: they are a benefit to our economy --- according to the overwhelming consensus of economists both left and right.

Trump proposes to hunt those people down and deport them, solely to satiate the race-tinged fears of people who Trump himself has helped impoverish.

> No. There are young people in the United States who are citizens of this country by right. Children born in the US are citizens. They are not illegal immigrants.

Yes, of course, but those are definitely not the people I was talking about. If someone is referring to legal citizens as illegal immigrants, that's wrong and they should stop.

As for the rest of your comment, I will politely decline to respond. I wasn't trying to start a discussion over what would be a fair or sensible immigration policy - that could never fit inside a HN thread. I was only objecting to idlewords's assertion that it is inherently wrong to describe someone as "illegal".

I just described people who are not here in violation of the law and yet will be gravely harmed by Trump's immigration policies.

They will be harmed by their parents' decision to break the law. The same thing would happen if their parents violated any other law. Why would this be different?

> No - they said they are going to repeal and replace Obamacare with something else. That does not mean they are going to strip people of their health insurance.

The only "something else" that has been mentioned thus far is the utterly inadequate notion of savings accounts. If Donald Trump manages to produce the magical pony that provides affordable health care for individuals regardless of pre-existing conditions while not requiring an individual mandate or bankrupting the health insurance industry, then I'll believe he actually is a genius.

So if Trump's problem is only with illegal immigrants, I'm sure he and his supporters would be more than happy to relax immigration policy and regularize the illegal immigrants that are already in the U.S., thus solving the issue?

Well, he seems to plan the J1 and the H1B Visas. So, he is seemingly against potential legal immigrants too..

H1B program is completely broken and is heavily abused by Indian bodyshops. US needs a skill-based migration system, like any other developed nation.

That would be awesome, if it was actually possible. The reason it is not done is that suddenly it would become much more difficult for Americans to get high paying jobs. H1B's lottery system is infuriating for those who go through it, but it is quite difficult to exploit deterministically.

Who would you prefer coming to the US? 50000 semiskilled workers from TCS/Infosys/etc, or 50000 extremely talented engineers that will be no-brainer hires for any company every year?

If someone steals money from you, you don't gift it to them to stop them from being a thief. The illegal immigrants that are here should have to go through the same process as the rest of us immigrants. Otherwise it's just moral hazard disincentivizing immigrants from following the legal process.

I was talking with a Chinese coworker who had the same objection: He had gone through the arduous proper channels to immigrate, and wondered why the folks who came here illegally should be granted special favor. It seems unfair to him.

I pointed out that many of the people here now as "illegal immigrants" are an indispensable part of our society and economy. They are de facto citizens, denied the full benefits of citizenship. We can't throw them out because our economy would tank. The options are to leave them in a twilight class or legitimize them.

I definitely think that people coming here should do so legally. I'm not sure what to do about "the Mexican Problem" (to describe it in 18th century terms.)