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Comment by shadowgovt | Hacker News Reader

You can groan, but you can't provide a working solution.

I never expected this administration to successfully remove illegal immigrants because fundamentally at this point removing illegal immigrants means removing our neighbors. I did anticipate they would, and will continue to, unsuccessfully address the problem while causing an awful lot of pain for both immigrants and American citizens (this was inevitable since the problem fundamentally boils down to separating people from their neighbors over something as arbitrary as "borders someone else drew on a map before we were born").

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That's a little bit simplistic. Serious question...how old are you? Your world view is what I'd expect for someone with minimal life experience as an adult. Are you under 20?

Just the opposite, honestly. In my twenties I thought this was very simple and didn't understand why we hadn't sent all the "illegals" somewhere else.

I got older and wiser, and watched several more administrations face-plant when they tried to pretend it was an easy problem with an easy solution.

ok but just because they were incompetent in the past (although in the Dems case nobody is that incompetent, they were obviously manipulating voter demographics - a complete corruption of democracy). That in no way implies the govt cant properly manage the problem now.

Ignoring the blatant falsehood about voter demographics (non-citizens don't vote), what about anyone in this administration engenders an expectation of competence? This is this President's second term. We've already seen him botch the job once; I don't see any reason to expect better this time. It's not like he demonstrates a capacity to learn, or is even capable of admitting past error.

Best case is this is more of the same, and it wasn't good last time.

I think you're the one making falsehoods..

1. Apportionment for both the House of Representatives and the Electoral College absolutely includes undocumented immigrants and all other non-citizens. Their presence alone allocates more electoral weight to blue states where they congregate.

2. They may not vote immediately but over time they will marry/integrate and ultimately will vote. And crucially their children will vote. In the medium term voter demographics will change radically if Democrat corruption is allowed to proceed

3. As soon as they gain power again the Democrats will take whatever steps necessary to speed up the process of getting them on the electoral role. This will be done under the guise of "compassion" but will really be about the pursuit of power.

California used to be a red state but was turned blue through immigration.

The vast majority of Democrats voted against requiring proof of citizenship to vote.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/house-passes-republica...

Ah, you meant apportionment, not demographics. You are correct about apportionment. So your argument is that Democrats were only gentle on immigration because they wanted the voters in the States that would get those new representatives to like their party? If so, it raises the question...

... Why didn't the Republicans do the same? Seems like a good idea. Of course, the GOP pursuing good ideas may assume competence, something neither of us are assuming. I take your lack of defense of my criticism of this administration's competence as agreement.

(Different topic, but the Democrats were right to vote against proof of citizenship. You know who can't prove citizenship? My elderly mother-in-law who's born in the US and lived here her whole life. She doesn't deserve to be disenfranchised because her family was bad at keeping documentation. The people who get denied the vote when we start playing "papers please" at the polls are American citizens, not illegal immigrants).

Why didn't the Republicans do the same? You're asking why the Republicans aren't corrupt like the Dems? I don't know, you'll have to ask the Dems. We just have to deal with the consequences.

And in terms of your "criticism" of their competence, it was just a vague smear with nothing of substance behind it. Not worth acknowledging really, particularly if your benchmark is the Biden/Harris admin where we had an autopen president in the early stages of dementia and a vice-president (the border czar!) so incompetent she was too scared to go on podcasts.

Strange how the Dems always seem to find "justifications" to reduce election integrity whether it's through illegal immigration or lax election laws (promoting election fraud, ballot harvesting etc), whilst lecturing everybody about the need to "protect democracy".

It's not "corrupt" to serve the people. We have people living in this country for multiple decades for whom there are obstacles to citizenship. You've noted yourself it's good strategy (from numbers alone) to both help them live here and make them citizens.

... why didn't the Republicans do so? That doesn't sound like corruption, that sounds like good statesmanship.

And those "lax" election laws have worked for decades upon decades; the burden of proof is upon critics to show non-citizens are voting and the numbers just aren't there. Would you like some more lawsuits to prove that fact out, or are the ones the current President already filed (and then went on to win this ostensibly corrupt electoral system anyway) enough? Not interested in debating that topic since it's dead and buried in the ground.

Besides, the premise is flawed. it's not "reduction of election integrity" to make the government representative of the people who live here.

I just feel stupid having to argue the simple commonsense that it is the citizens only that should be allowed to vote, particularly after the influx of 10 million+ (likely much more) illegals in the last 4 years of the Biden admin.

You appear to have bookmarked my comments page, which you perhaps check regularly? I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Could you do me a big favour? Could you delete my bookmark and not reply to my comments any more. I would really appreciate this.

Neither of us are saying non-citizens should be allowed to vote. My concern is the likelihood that requiring additional documentation not previously required deprives citizens the right to vote. Because it does (https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-save-act-would-... , https://19thnews.org/2025/03/save-act-voting-married-women/).

... We do seem to disagree on whether the right approach to non-citizens living among us for decades is to try to suddenly send them away or to figure out why they're still non-citizens and maybe fix that though.

"Give me your tired, your poor," etc.

(It's not so much a bookmark as I keep checking replies to my comments and see you reply to them, then I chase that thread to see if you're carrying the same ideas elsewhere. Perhaps both of us could stand to keep the topics we discuss in this forum more on the topics of technology, business, and hacking.)

Please don't quote a couple of left-wing advocacy sites as if that's credible evidence. And yes you are arguing that non-citizens should be able to vote by consistently attacking any kind of approach that would manage the issue. None of the things I've argued are extreme or radical, simple common-sense in most countries I think. Anyway it would be great if you could stop replying as we are just re-hashing the same arguments repeatedly.

And you are arguing that citizens should be deprived the right to vote. Wouldn't common sense suggest that the current requirements are working, especially given that the guy who ostensibly got the election "stolen" from him got elected again? Where is the threat that demands tightening the requirements?

You are, of course, also welcome to leave the conversation if you feel it unproductive. It's neat how we are free to choose.

"Where is the threat that demands tightening the requirements?.." I've previously given you the answer to this question at least 5 times, if not more. I'II leave it there.

Not really. You keep asserting letting immigrants be citizens is some plot by Democrats to win elections demograpgically. The entire intellectual exercise is predicated on that being somehow wrong (as opposed to the rectification of dealing with the untenable tension that millions of people have lived here for decades without a path to becoming fellow citizens... A path that can be offered by an expedient as simple as fixing the law, not pouring more resources into failing to enforce a bad one).

You started this subthread with the musing "It[']s so strange how illegal immigration has been completely normalised in the minds of some people." It's normalized for the same reason school shootings (I don't like it, but ask any member of Gen Z: school shooting drills are as normal as your drills now) and Sunday football are normalized: when something goes on for decades, it's normal. We live in a country where the President's wife broke immigration law (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/melania-trump-modeled-...); are we expected to take him seriously when he leads a crusade against illegal immigration?

The GOP is looking at an ocean, seeing the law declares it's illegal for the ocean to be there, and trying to boil it (instead of doing the smart thing, adjusting to the reality, and building a bridge).

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