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Comment by DmenshunlAnlsis | Hacker News Reader

For the love of god, stick to the rant in your profile.

As of May 28, 2018, after nearly 7 years and over 13K karma points, I am no longer going to be very active on HN. This used to be a place where thoughtful conversation could take place; now it's nothing more than a den of bullies attempting to spread misinformation that supports their political views.

Enjoy your echo chamber everyone.

The irony given the sheer volume of moral panic and pearl clutching around “illegals” here makes it self-parody.

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I actually started this this with 1 comment genuinely asking how people could possibly endorse illegal immigration. No one actually expressed any defensible position, and they still haven’t. When people reply, I need to respond to those comments.

And what I said stands. I rarely comment here anymore. I have as much right to be here as you do.

I expressed a position upthread but you didn't reply.

I actually did reply to your comment about unethical laws. It isn't a law that children and parents must be separated at the border; that would indeed be unethical. But part of the whole scheme of crime and punishment is that when you break the law, you go to jail. So when these parents choose to break the law, by default, the parents and children wind up separated because the parent chose to break the law and is now in custody.

Actually you just dodged the cogent response you received.

Because many of these people are essentially refugees fleeing violence and extreme poverty in their home countries. Instead of helping these people we're tearing them from their families.

Then you framed your reply in terms of Mexico only, which ignored places like El Salvador, although maybe that’s just more “Mexico” in your mind? Point being, you’ve gotten many good replies, you just don’t like them, which is hardly the same as them being indefensible.

You have every right to be here, but less of a right to throw a tantrum about leaving while being here. That’s just rude. It’s only right to have some respect for the platform and people who use and maintain it while you use it.

I responded to that comment up above. I focused on Mexico because that is by far the largest source of illegal immigrants to the US. Not a single reply has answered my question as to why anyone would endorse illegal immigration. Many countries have many problems, we cannot just take in all of their residents.

I think it’s terrible that families are being separated. But I don’t know of another solution when their parents are choosing to bring their children with them to commit a crime.

The solution is to not separate them. You're not arguing in good faith when you suggest that the two possible binary outcomes are (a) unrestricted immigration or (b) separating kids from their parents.

Many of the illegal immigrants come to the border to flee violence or crippling poverty. They have to bring their kids. If they had the time or the income or the support system to migrate legally, they would.

With regards to your original point, I fail to see why Americans are not within their rights to protest laws that they feel are unjust. The employees understood that they may be fired for their views, but they did it because they could not in good conscience perform the work. You ignored the immediate reply about Jim Crow laws, but it's a good comparison. Would you also be angry with people that did not want to enforce Jim Crow laws?

> You're not arguing in good faith when you suggest that the two possible binary outcomes are (a) unrestricted immigration or (b) separating kids from their parents.

Completely agreed. Furthermore, it's the fact that we've had a lax border that is to blame for people expecting to get through without any trouble (or at least without being separated from their kids).

I have no problem with tightening up border security, but these kids did no wrong -- and to forcibly separate them from their parents is to do evil to them. I'm sure we can find a creative (if unorthodox) solution to this that allows kids to stay with their parents whether or not the parents are prosecuted.

I fail to see why Americans are not within their rights to protest laws that they feel are unjust

So you feel that restrictions on immigration are unjust? The law doesn't say that children must be seperated from their parents at the border. That's simply a natural consequence of breaking the law - the parent goes to jail, and something has to be done with any children they chose to bring to the crime scene. US citizens are jailed everyday, for small things like driving without a license, and if their kids are in the car, those kids go to Child Protective Services. In many cases, the parents can't afford to bail out and the children wind up in foster homes for months or years while the parent serves their sentence and then fights to get custody back.

This is all very ugly, but it all starts with a conscious decision to break the law with children in tow.

Sure I did. Because it's a minor crime and many of the people are involved are fleeing real danger. That's plenty enough reason to take a nuanced approach to dealing with the minor crime.

Most of the world has agreed to simply not charge refugees with entry crimes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_Relating_to_the_Sta...

But they aren't great.

>No one actually expressed any defensible position, and they still haven’t

No, nobody has given you a position you agree with. You can't just say "EVERYTHING I DISAGREE WITH IS INDEFENSIBLE HURR DURR", that's not how things work.

Whether or not you agree is irrelevant, but you clearly can't see that, so arguing with you is just a waste of time.

Grow up.

Nobody has given me anything to agree with or not. They just say that my position is wrong, and have no solutions.

You have had 2, but I guess they don't count.

Watch this:

Our economy depends on """illegal""" immigrants in order to survive things like harvest season.

It doesn't count when people say we should just open up the borders to anyone that claims that their country is poor or that life in Mexico kind of sucks. I feel bad for them, but that doesn't mean we can take care of them over here. So the "let's let all of Mexico in and we can hold hands and sing kum ba yah" position is not defensible.

Also, why the quotes around "illegal"? When you enter a country illegally, you are an illegal immigrant. Has PC culture gotten so out of hand that simply using the proper legal terminology is now offensive?

>It doesn't count when

So yeah, everything you disagree with doesn't count. Thanks for wasting my time.

You crossed into personal attack and incivility in this thread. Please don't, regardless of how wrong someone else is.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Where was my personal attack and incivility? Myself and downandout completely disagree but neither of us where uncivil or attacking each other.

I chose to stop responding before it became a flame war, I have no idea why you would go through this thread, and downvote and flag both of us. What are you talking about?

Well, for starters, "So yeah, everything you disagree with doesn't count. Thanks for wasting my time." is entirely uncivil by HN standards. So are "Grow up", "arguing with you is just a waste of time", and other things you've posted. Also, these comments are lacking in information other than that you're irritated, so they're unsubstantive in addition to uncivil.

As we tell everyone, please post civilly and substantively, or not at all. It isn't hard, but it requires wanting to use the site as intended.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

"Grow up" is uncivil but threads full of misogyny are fine

Jesus fucking christ. Just fucking delete my account, you people are fucking despicable.

That's a pretty nasty imputation so I don't want to let it go unanswered. Obviously "threads full of misogyny" are not fine. Equally obviously, other people behaving badly doesn't make it ok for you to.

>Obviously "threads full of misogyny" are not fine.

Then why the fuck do you let them reach the top of HN and do nothing about them?

What exactly are you suggesting? That we simply open up the border?

Please stop using HN for political flamewar.

People disagreed, this isn't a fucking flamewar. This site allows literal misogyny, but two people having a heated disagreement is a fucking flamewar?

I’m not sure how I’ve done that. I was asking a question; I’m trying to understand a position that many seem to have (being in favor of illegal immigration) that seems unfathomable to me.

The HN mods seem to have some form of issue with our disagreement and have downvoted and flagged this entire thread.

Just an FYI: Members can downvote and flag. Attributing that solely to the mods is inaccurate.

Occam's Razor. When the mod steps in at the same time as the entire thread is downvoted and flagged, that's more than a bit suspicious.

Well, I downvoted your above comment, in part because it unfairly accuses the mods of corruption on no real basis, basically. And I'm not a mod.

So, on your side, you have some fancy term for "inference" to justify your ugly accusation. On my side, I have solid evidence that not all downvotes are from the mods because I know what I did.

So there's that.

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