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Comment by zapataband2 | Hacker News Reader

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zapataband2

I've been in this country since I was 3 years old. My parents and I have never committed a crime.

There is no pathway to citizenship for us that doesn't involve leaving the country for at least ten years.

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It isn't ICE's fault that congress won't fix the immigration system.

So you're saying they're just following orders?

If your complaint is "the pathway to legal citizenship should be reformed", ICE is the wrong target.

I haven't taken any position, I'm only pointing out the parallels of the argument you're making to mistakes us humans have made in the past, that we don't want to make again.

But if you want me to make an assertion, I'll go with:

We're all on this blue marble together; Us vs Them is a negative sum game we don't want to play. ICE has earned the reputation they have, and until they do something that changes them from "dog murderers" and "targeting the wrong people", we shouldn't afford them any sympathy or excuses. ICE the organization might not directly be able to alter the laws they're given, but they can directly influence them, and change the way we talk about it. Individual ICE agents, likewise also can't change the laws they enforce, but they can change how they enforce them. They can spend more time doing what's right, instead of doing what's easy. They can take things a bit slower instead of murdering important family members, or making children afraid of what's going to happen to them.

Ok but I was replying to a specific post complaining about the pathway to citizenship.

Yes you were, you were also implicitly defending ICE. "It's not their fault." Perhaps, but they're contributing more towards making things worse, than making things better. So, technically correct or not, they deserve blame more than they do any kind of defense.

Oh, what, are they "just following orders"?

Nobody in this thread is blaming ICE for their own existence.

However, now that they exist and wield great political power, they probably should get some for their continued existence.

It is ICE's fault that they are targeting law abiding people (who contribute more to the country than they receive) and Americans [0] but are too afraid and/or incompetent to go after violent criminals.

0 - https://pix11.com/news/local-news/ice-agents-raid-nj-seafood...

Join the military and get fast tracked for a greencard.

American vets are getting caught up in ICE raids. These guys don't serve America, they are strictly white nationalists.

https://pix11.com/news/local-news/ice-agents-raid-nj-seafood...

White nationalism is indeed a major problem in ICE (and law enforcement in general), but I don't think this is an accurate way to paint the situation as a whole. This is what textbook nativism looks like, and many non-white americans are nativists as well. They rhyme and overlap and often share goals but they're not the same and they are often motivated by different fears.

What we see here looks more like this than like apartheid/jim crow (though if you look at how we treat legal immigrant labor it gets much blurier): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wetback

When Americans are getting targeted because of the color of their skin, it goes beyond nativism to white supremacy.

Sign a four year contract and use that time to fix your status. If not it's on you.

I read a story years ago about an undocumented resident who worked as an MP in the military. Not a problem as everyone operates under the authority of the president. He left the service and became a police officer. That was a major issue as non-citizen's can't enforce civil law.

Maybe you should have read my comment instead of thinking about a story from years ago. I'll say it again: American vets are getting caught in ICE raids. Your status doesn't matter. The color of your skin does.

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