I mean that is basically the entire basis of the shy Trump voter phenomenon. Even after 8 years of trying to correct for it it showed up last year enough to tip the election from one which the polls said was a dead heat in the Electoral College to a clear Trump and Republican popular vote victory.

This is true.

Hence the importance of controlling the narrative by spinning unchecked stories about immigrants eating cats, disproportionate rates of murder and crime, ignoring revenue from immigrants paying taxes, etc.

The fact that sufficient people will vote on immigration as an issue is orthogonal to the realities of laws and enforcement rates and entirely predicated upon perception of such issues.

Yes! Well stated. 33% of illegals would be a huge win, while also aiming at self deportations by targeting incentives.

very rarely, you see even americans being abducted at their work place but the company owners are mostly left alone. If employing illegal immigrants was that risky, it would drop dramatically. This isn't about illegal immigration, it is about hatred and cruelty. Native born american citizens are rotting in prison without so much as seeing a judge or a lawyer, if you defend that, you are a traitor. If you can at least disavow that, I can consider that your argument is in good faith.

Your link shows the company was fined. what a joke. americans are rotting in prison and the company is fined? why the employers not in jail next to the illegal immigrants. Who was in a better position to obey the law? the wealthy employer who screwed over american workers by hiring illegal migrants, or the desperate migrant trying to earn an honest living?

I hope you reflect on your moral character before defending these people.

So, if a traffic light never changed from red to green, you would advise..? Or do you just mean “in that situation, be very careful not to crash”?

This is the problem with leaky analogies. The US immigration system is more like a train tunnel in a Wile-E Coyote cartoon that Roadrunner can run through but Wile-E slams into.

> There is no right to immigrate in the USA just because you want to, you have to convince the government somehow to let you in.

Agreed. But it is only human to want to improve your living conditions. Illegal immigrants are not claiming their migration was lawful, no one is, so the argument about their right to migrate is meaningless. The law requires them to convince the government to let them in, but a law you cannot enforce is also meaningless. if your family was in poverty, would you care what the american government thought about you trying to cross the border and work to earn a living? I mean, I wouldn't blame them if they stole, I think you're not appreciating the adversity of poverty.

Let's say working after illegally migrating is equivalent to theft. It is hypocritical, and therefore invalid, to expect a person in poverty to obey the law of a land they're not even in simply out of the goodness of their hearts. Deporting them makes sense, punishing them does not, since every single american would do the same or worse if the situation was reversed. you cannot punish people for doing the same thing you yourself would do.

You solve the root causes, punish employers for hiring them, subsidize mexico's economic development,etc... but what's happening now is sociopaths being let loose on the american people.

> But quick deportation is. Imagine doing the whole trek from south/central america to the USA just to be sent back the next day. That's what deterring a lot of people now, wasting months of travel and money just to have it be worthless seems to be very dissuasive.

I think less people will migrate in the near term, until work arounds to avoid ICE are developed. People will still attempt this. Have you read about migration to euorope? a lot of them literally die on the trip, a good chunk just get scammed before they even reach the mediterranean. people will still risk all of this. for them, their former situation is equivalent to death. For some, it is worse, because it isn't them that is suffering, it is their parents,kids,etc.. so the risks are all worth it, even it costs them their lives.

> A lot of the latest immigration woes would be solved if the Venezuelan government was taken down and some real democratic government stepped in.

No, it would be solved if employers were targeted instead. a lot of modern woes would be solved by putting business owners in prison. It just isn't politically palatable. off the books employees don't pay income tax, you can nail the employers for tax fraud conspiracy among other charges. They're screwing over not just the government, but americans looking for work. they're artificially deflating wages by abusing illegal migrants. The worst they get is a fine. But concentration camps for the migrants is tolerable?

It's strange to me that you chose to not cite the guidelines to elsewhere such as:

> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle.

Are anti-immigrant sentiments acceptable if they are simply well-articulated?

And if not, then why do you feel it necessary to be more critical of the language I or lalaithion use for explicit dismissals of racists and xenophobes than the actual racism or xenophobia itself?