What It Looks Like When the President Asks People to Snitch on Neighbors | Hacker News Reader

What It Looks Like When the President Asks People to Snitch on Neighbors

splinternews.com

33 pointskeitmo23 comments

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http://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2016/12/02/new-hotline-deals-...

Whether it's considered snitching or reporting by concerned citizens depends on your political views.

Indeed, not very different from: https://www.immi-moj.go.jp/immimail/datainput.php

http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/information/protection/fraud/re...

Where you can report overstayers etc.

The line can surely be blurry, but I'd say that reporting people for doing something that has no effect on you, and harms no one, is snitching.

Being an undocumented immigrant in America is no more harmful to society than being a jew in 1930s Germany.

And next we can ask, "How do we know some of the jews weren't criminals?" perhaps?

Wow. The translation of your "How do you know that such an imigrant is not being a criminal?" to the equivalent statement in 1930's Germany is so direct and so poignant, I would have thought you were trying to support the parent's post, but I believe you're using that line to try to fault their thinking (which I find genuinely frightening in terms of the object lesson it presents on the ease of vilifying a "them" group, and how easily that kind of rhetoric can creep into polite conversation)

This was posted as an opposite to what OP posted, to point out his sided point of view while fortifying his opinion with pretty much unrelated, emotional part of history.
I made sarcasm very obvious, especially with exactly saying it was that, in the second line.
Learn how to read in between lines.
Edited the post so no one else thinks it is the real reply.

When talking about potentially inflammatory topics on the web, expecting the reader to "read between the lines" as you say is probably never a workable idea as there can be and are enough potential speakers across the entire spectrum of opinion that any intended meaning could be possible and potentially valid for "reading between the lines" (hence Poe's Law[0] and other challenges in the discussion of complex topics on the web when the range of speaker opinions and audience opinions is large and unknown).
No one ever expects Poe's law to apply to their own sarcasm, but unfortunately it always does.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

They are doing potential harm to the millions of immigrants who want to come to the country legally. Many of whom wait years to get their visas and get work.
They are undermining legal immigrants.
My preference would be a system such as Singapore, Japan, Australia, Canada, etc. where they favor people whose skills are in short supply at home. Make it easier to hire high demand low availability skills as well as seasonal workers legally while simultaneously making it very hard to hire undocumented workers in order to encourage legal pathways.

I'm a legal immigrant in the US. The presence of undocumented immigrants has zero negative effect on me.

So... Kind of like tax cheats. Zero effect. Let's make it optional.

Ignoring the fact that it's against the law, I'd say there's a problem of illegal immigrants taking jobs away from citizens, or at the very least lowering the wages that a citizen can expect for lower end jobs.
Then, when they have children, they get benefits that citizens pay for.
Now throw in the fact that if even one illegal immigrant commits one crime, that's one more crime committed than if there was no illegal immigrant.
To compare the situation to Jews in 1930s Germany is foolish at best.
Edit - I just noticed that you use the term "undocumented immigrant." They're illegal immigrants, and ignoring that doesn't change the fact.

Being in the US without status is a civil violation, not a criminal offense.
The Supreme Court ruled in 2012 [1] that a removable alien being in the US is not a crime. They can be deported, sure, but it's not a crime and therefore shouldn't be locked up (except as a temporary measure before deportation). It's only a crime if you crossed illegally, but that's a fraction of the cases. Most "removable aliens" entered legally, but overstayed their visas.
> Now throw in the fact that if even one illegal immigrant commits one crime, that's one more crime committed than if there was no illegal immigrant.
Replace "illegal immigrant" with "jew", and you'll hopefully see my point. Keep in mind that undocumented immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than citizens. They lower the crime rate.
[1] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/567/11-182/opini...

Anyone surprised? This is exactly how it went in East Germany where everybody was encouraged to rat out their neighbors to the authorities about "staatszersetzendes Verhalten", just like what China is doing to its citizens still.
This stuff is the hallmark of a police state.

I loathe the comparison of Trump's presidency with fascism or now eastern bloc denunciation. I would appreciate it if we could criticize bad policies on their own merit, without the exaggerated historic comparisons. In my opinion, this is just fuel for division.

I don't see that as a Trump specific thing. As mentioned in other comments, other facilities for the same purpose existed before. VOICE just makes it much more visible.
I totally disagree that this is an exaggerated historic comparison. As someone who grew up in East Germany, all the measures which restrict the individual freedoms, which were put into place, over the years, make me sad and angry. And having historical examples which show the bad effects of such policies in a very striking manner is in my opinion a very useful shorthand, instead of elaborately discussing a policy (with an expected outcome). Especially the effects of Stasi methods are well researched, so they are a very useful comparison indeed.
I just wanted to pint out that what the article discusses has very close parallels to what we know about the "usefulness" of the same methods in e.g. East Germany.

> "staatszersetzendes Verhalten"
For those who cannot speak German, a literal translation would be "state-dissolving behavior". It sounds more dramatic in German, though. :)

At the risk of invoking Godwin, I have to say that this frighteningly reminiscent of the stories that Milton Mayer details in his 1955 book "The Thought They Were Free: The German's 1933-45" .

Other than the fact that the Jews were living there as legal citizens, not illegal immigrants.

I'm sorry, I should have been more clear. The parallels that I see are related to the institutionalization of neighbor spying on neighbor. All that's missing are sanctioned and codified Blockleiters.

This same behavior is why the IRS does not allow for anonymous reporting of tax violations. I think this article is overreaching in their fear, and perhaps fear-mongering. If a crime has been committed then a citizen is well within their rights to report it. You may not like that as a matter of politics, but it is legal. We should not be afraid to report behavior we feel might be illegal due to political correctness[0], or politics but at the same time, retaliatory use of law enforcement for crimes not justified should be punished.
[0] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3344736/Neighbors-Sa...

This is just obscene on so many levels.

This needs to be flooded with legit sounding cases to dilute it out of existence.

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