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Comment by dsfyu404ed | Hacker News Reader

There's a big difference between detention and deportation of illegal immigrants and detention of legal immigrants and American citizens.

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Because former are inhuman and latter a human? The most jarring part, of course, is that most of "illegal aliens" are rural Mexicans of Native American heritage, being detained in states like Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico, on land belonging to their country not too long ago, and to their ancestors for centuries.

I'm not sure that's a completely accurate view.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Guadalupe_Hidalgo

Mexicans in those annexed areas had the choice of relocating to within Mexico's new boundaries or receiving American citizenship with full civil rights. Over 90% chose to become U.S. citizens.

Ukrainians who lived in Crimea got full Russian citizenship too, but I'm not sure if that makes it fair and a done deal for the rest of the Ukrainians.

But I thought my other point was more important. Most Americans are newcomers to the Americas, a few generations tops. Most Mexicans are not, and nobody really asked them before erecting new borders on their lands.

How easy is to repeat the same mistakes from the past! Add some new terminology, change some laws, add more layers ofcomplexity to definitions. And it's done: we can repeat the evils from past and nobody will notice in the present.

I don't find the difference to be all that big.

...until they come for you

Who, the immigrants? I think you may have misread this conversation thread.

Republicans have suggested that the US repeal the Constitutional right of birthright citizenship specifically to allow people born in the US to illegal immigrants to be rounded up and "deported" to their parents' or grandparents' countries of origin.

The entire scope of this discussion involves more that simply arresting and deporting people who sneak into the US illegally - it also includes a movement to redefine American citizenship in terms of generational purity.

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