A Knock at the Door | Hacker News Reader

A Knock at the Door

siroker.com

2 pointsdsiroker2 comments

I appreciate your story, and your effort to write it up. It's debatable whether it's too politicized for discussion on HN. I tend to think it's important enough that it should be here, since (as you point out) lack of discussion has the effect of upholding current policy. That said, I take issue with your assertion that "All the ICE agents could see was that he was a Muslim". I obviously don't know the motivations of these individual agents, but it seems certain that first and foremost they saw someone who had violating American immigration law.

Far from being the "all the ICE agents could see", I wouldn't even be sure that they knew that he was Muslim --- does that show up on documents they have? Yes, 90% of Bangladeshis are Muslim, which makes it likely, but unlike me, I'm doubtful the agents bothered to consult Wikipedia to know this. It's possible they were more likely to enforce the law because of his "color", but in the absence of more information I think you hurt your case by implying this is a clear-cut case of religious discrimination. Yes, it's likely his on the scene pleas "fell on deaf ears", but do you really want our immigration laws to be selectively unenforced based on the snap judgement of agents on the scene?

I think the better question is whether as a country we are "shooting ourselves in the foot" making it too difficult to qualified professionals from certain countries to immigrate to the US. But once we have a law in place, and a clear procedure for legal immigration, if we want to have any control over immigration, I feel we have to enforce the laws we have as uniformly and fairly as possible. What do you think is the best way for us deal with violations of this law? Presuming the details you were told were true, what do you think would be the right approach to this case? And how do you think violators should be treated while the details are verified?

You make a great point and I should have done a better job defending my vilification of the ICE agents. They violated his rights by even entering his home without a warrant. Not only that but as a student and being married to a citizen, he had rights that were violated. I don't think the ICE agents were merely "following orders" and do deserve some of the blame for the situation. I don't have great answers to your questions but I do think it starts by adhering to our constitution in situations like this (namely the 4th, 5th, and 14th amendments which apply to non-citizens) and then we can go from there.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com