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Comment by skriticos2 | Hacker News Reader

Within Europe (ps: as a European citizen) you can go anywhere with a personal identification card (no passport) and there are no border controls (when walking or driving). There isn't even a border, just a sign: welcome to $country (ps: and maybe local driving instructions). Say what you will about the EU, but this has been a great achievement. I can go through airport security between two EU countries and security will just scan my ID and take a picture in an automated booth and I'm good to go (did exactly that several times). It's like 30 seconds to pass the security gate when entering and no personal interaction.

I'm really having difficulty to understand how the United States got from the cradle of freedom (let's say after the civil war, the colonization was not so prestigious) to the capricious and homophobic entity that it is shaping up to be.

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Within the states of US you can do the same ;) EU essentially wants to be United States of Europe. Though I'm not sure all EU states yet ready to surrender as much national sovereignty as US states did.

And what anything of this has to do with homophobia?

Donald Trump is undoubtedly homophobic, I think he's just pointing out that for the country to be voting for him, to an extent a proportion of them must agree.

And I disagree about you saying the EU just wishes to become the United States of Europe. In almost no sense does anyone give up their "sovereignty" by joining the EU. Every country still creates it's own laws, governs how it wishes to and has full control over what happens to itself. The EU only allows free travel and trade between each of the countries within it and also a standard currency and standard regulations (to enable the free travel and trade to happen in a safe environment).

Damnit...I hate to look like I'm defending Trump, but he was also the only Republican to let an open homosexual speak on the convention stage (Thiel).

He's self-serving and contradictory (see Pence), but it's not nearly as open and shut as suggested.

Do you have any specific reasons he's homophobic?

> Do you have any specific reasons he's homophobic?

Yes, actually. He's said very homophobic things and done some very transphobic things.

1. He's on record saying "marriage is between a man and a woman."

2. He's on record saying he supports Pence's "FADA" which makes it legal to discriminate against LGBT people in any way imaginable (including denying social services such as basic policing or health care services) if a person claims a sincere belief that their religion condones such discrimination. You can read more of it here, this draft is well-circulated: https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/2802 (fun fact, this law also makes it illegal for the States or any Corporation to have any rules that might curtial these actions, so as a business owner a manager could fire a gay person and you couldn't punish them for it).

And then this week, we saw Trump's admin immediately pull back protections put in place to keep trans children safe and provide them life-saving medical interventions.

The White House hasn't been this overtly homophobic since Reagan's pressec and the press pit laughed at gay men dying of AIDS.

I'm not sure why the guy waves a rainbow flag once and suddenly we're all supposed to ignore his policy promises. He said he'd sign FADA and unless something dramatic changes, he's going to get the opportunity to. Claims of an anti-LGBT stance and homophobia seem fairly well founded at this point.

Another post already pointed out that you are probably wrong about Trump's homophobia.

But about European countries creating their own laws, the federalist movement so prevalent in Brussels these days certainly doesn't see it that way. What you describe was the EEC or the EEA. What the EU is about is different: it is not just free trade; it's about accepting laws, devised in Brussels, regulating many aspects of life - from how taxation must be organised, how economic activity may be encouraged, whether a nation may allow its subjects to chew tobacco, how wind power must or must not be subsidized, whether and what kind of hunting is permitted and whether people may own firearms... everything. Not just trade.

Also, creating a EU army is a recurring topic.

See how the Brussels is so wound up now that Britain dared to say "no thank you" to ever closer political and monetary union. There's a huge disconnect between Brussels (and European Parliament members) and the nations they are supposed to represent.

I'd be in favour of the kind of EU you imagine it is. Unfortunately that's not what we're getting, and that's why EU is disintegrating.

> Donald Trump is undoubtedly homophobic

Not true. certainly not "undoubtedly".

> for the country to be voting for him, to an extent a proportion of them must agree.

Even less true. Even if Trump were homophobic - which is most likely not true - that does not mean somebody who voted for him supports him in that. Elections concern a wide array of issues, and people choosing between the two (or four, but let's not pretend anybody but the two had any chance) candidates necessarily compromise and vote for the person who may hold different views in many areas.

It is true that some homophobic people voted for him - as, it is certainly true, some also voted against him - but we know exactly nothing about how many and in what proportion. It is not the base for saying US is a homophobic country because of that, and it is most certainly not true.

> In almost no sense does anyone give up their "sovereignty" by joining the EU

Not true, please read about laws and policy harmonization in EU. Also, US does have wide areas in which state and not federal laws are used. One can argue US states have less sovereignty than EU member states, that's probably true, but the large amount of similarity is still there.

> The EU only allows free travel and trade between each of the countries within it and also a standard currency and standard regulations

This is impossible without EU members surrendering part of their sovereignty - unless you want to pretend that so many countries having same laws (or, as you call it, "regulations"), same migration rules, same currency policy, same trade rules, etc. all happened because by chance they all independently passed exactly the same laws.

Maybe "xenophobic" was the word they wanted.

Your first sentence is not entirely true: https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights-governments-100-mile-b...

Please elaborate.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement asserts authority over land within 100 miles of a border (including coasts). Anyone in the US can be stopped and asked for ID and proof they're in the country legally in that 100 mile zone.

"Within the states of US"

That's implying interstate travel. Are you claiming ICE has authority to stop someone going from Georgia to Tennessee? The analogy was EU countries to US states, and specifically did not include international US borders.

There are still no border controls between US states, even in this strange 100 mile enhanced security zone.

Not to detract from your point but you're referring to the Schengen Zone specifically. There are EU countries opted out (UK) and non-EU countries participating (e.g. Switzerland, Norway and Iceland).

> There are EU countries opted out (UK)

Not to nitpick, but the UK opted out of the EU entirely, not just the Schengen Zone.

Which is irrelevant to this topic. The UK still is in the EU and has never been in the Schengen Zone, which is the point here.

Europe varies. In the Netherlands you are supposed to carry ID at all times, and you can be fined if you don't supply it when the police ask.

Yes. Ironically, though, the police are not allowed to ask you without due cause. "Toonplicht, geen draagplicht." A hollow comfort.

Spain is the same at least for Spanish people , we have a national id card which you are supposed to take always with you

Wasn't this how the world worked up until a century ago? Anyone could walk or sail into any country, anywhere in the world, without a passport. Apparently the World Wars changed that.

Passports have been around for over 1500 years [1].

There was a brief blip in the 19th century, as railways started to cross Europe and passport checks seemed pointless [2], but that aside, passports seem to have been more common than not.

Given how much was controlled by monarchy-issued licenses and charters, I doubt it was that easy to rock up and enter a foreign country without any papers, but I'd certainly be interested to learn more.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passport#History

[2] http://www.wanderlust.co.uk/magazine/articles/destinations/a...

a century ago one couldn't arrive to a foreign land and immediately start receiving monthly check, free housing, health and other services [savage, barbaric regimes!]. typically people arrived to a foreign country with means and purpose. why would anyone need a passport? to protect whom against whom?

wrong, at least in the case of america. This poem from 1883, this was on the St. of Liberty, which was errected in 1886 [1]. "give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses". They didn't have means. There were the people who wanted to prevent the racially inferior from coming here, like italians, before them irish, etc. We aren't that america still, in 2016. 133 years later.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Colossus

i am not clear, which part of what i said is wrong.

Yes and no.

Customs duties were a bigger source of revenue. Ships didn't just travel freely.

People were less of a problem, as most people didn't stray more than a few miles from where they were born.

A century travel was much slower, more difficult and hence less common than it is now.

Really that applies if you are a "White EU Citizen". People of other ethnic origin are quite routinely stopped and questioned in the Schengen Zone at transportation points.

> there are no border controls (when walking or driving).

In practice they may not always exist, but I think Schengen member states have the authority to perform border controls in all cases (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area#Border_checks does not talk about distinctions depending on the mode of entry). In the current political climate, even as a citizen of a Schengen country, I would not cross borders within Schengen space without ID: I would not be surprised if states decided to perform border checks, and they would probably have the right to deny me passage if I do not have suitable ID.

I understand that there are some overlapping rules and regulations between EU member states and states in the Schengen Area. But you don't have to go more than a year back, when the refugee crisis peaked, to find Norway enforcing full border control on all land and sea based borders. But not by air, probably because they knew most refugees would never be allowed to board a plane or afford the tickets.

This ended up in a huge mess, but as far as I know very few were actually turned away. Mostly people ended up being fined for not being able to provide a valid ID and let back in after a manual verification. There were some controversy around this, as citizens are not legally required to carry IDs.

The temporary border controls are not there to physically stop people from entering, but to dissuade them from trying to go to Norway at all in the first place. That's the big effect, and it is of course intentional.

I've flown several times across European borders with no ID check ever. All I needed was the online ticket number. And this was in the last few years.

This wasn't true during the height of the refugee influx through Greece. I took a flight from Greece to Frankfurt and the German police inspected each passenger individually before we were allowed to the gate.

Also before any crises, when I was taking the cheap buses between copenhagen and hamburg, there was usually passports controls on entering Denmark. The police officers would be very lax with european citizens, it felt like though.

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