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Comment by tinyhouse | Hacker News Reader

I don't have a horse in this race, but I do have a question. If you don't deport illegal immigrants, why not just open the border to everyone to come in? (let's ignore criminal records, etc for this exercise). What's the point of not letting people in but then if they manage to come in illegally, assume it's all good and they can stay?

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That's the question, isn't it? Why not just do that? Who are you trying to keep out of the country, and for what end, and is that end best attained by removing people from the country who aren't the ones you are trying to keep out?

For instance, if you believe the border should be strict to keep out serial killers, what does that have to do with removing Korean car factory workers who aren't serial killers?

Well, if a Korean car factory worker live and work illegally in the country, then it makes total sense to remove them, regardless if they are serial killers or not. A company shouldn't even hire anyone who is not eligible to work legally in the country. There are laws that need to be followed like everything else.

It sounds like you're saying that you want the country to have open borders so that everyone can come live and work here given they pass some basic checks (no criminal history for example). I am not saying that is wrong, but that's not how pretty much every country in the world operates.

> then it makes total sense to remove them, regardless if they are serial killers or not.

Why?

> A company shouldn't even hire anyone who is not eligible to work legally in the country.

Apart from the legal punishments themselves, why not? What goal is achieved by this?

Because once they come in sufficient numbers they will turn your country into the country they fled from - and then you are in trouble.

Which river is it in Ireland that they dye green every year for St Patrick’s day like they do in Chicago?

This is a slippery slope argument at best and jingoist rhetoric at worst.

It's really not. It takes many generations to assimilate. You cannot just invite a huge influx of people and not expect a major cultural shift.

"major culture shift" != "they will turn your country into the country they fled from".

Regardless, the culture is that of a nation of immigrants. I don't see how anything here can cause major cultural shift away from that. I am willing to bet you won't be willing to elaborate either, so next goal post move please...

Different people are different. Any change in demographics — such as an increase in wealth inequality or number of smartphones — causes a major cultural shift. What is the evidence that this particular cultural shift is very bad?

I don't understand. Can you elaborate?

So for the United States, it would primarily be family-oriented Spanish speaking Catholics whose kids will be bilingual and grandkids will speak only English? There have been waves of immigrants before where the Irish or Italians or Germans were seen as "invaders" undermining the character of the country. And then their descendants fully integrated and became part of the culture.

Also the US and Western European countries are in much better economic and civic conditions that the immigrants can take advantage of to live better lives and contribute.

No horse either but here is an attempt (ignoring criminal record as you say): Opening the border and letting her rip is clearly not sustainable in the medium term. So you try to make it (reasonably) hard to get in incl. turning people away at the border.

Once they are in (incl illegally so) you concede you have lost on this instance. Now you admit that forcefully removing immigrants carries too high a cost (literally + damage in the communities you remove the immigrants from + your humanitarian image). So you don't.

Somehow that balance seems really hard to get right and edge cases (criminal record) matter.

I'm not a big fan of this solution since it rewards people who knowingly did something that is illegal. It also allows businesses to take advantage of these people, unless you decide to give them legal status immediately. However, I agree with you that getting the balance right is really hard and that deporting people, esp families with kids who grew up here and did nothing wrong, is very problematic.

Because we like second-class citizens because its easier to exploit their labor.

Buying into the narrative that any of this is about illegal immigrants is a red herring. Immigration is merely a pretext for enabling an unaccountable fascist police state using big data from the consumer surveillance industry to both keep enough people believing the regime's abject reality-insulting lies (the carrot), while extralegally punishing anybody who might be too effective at speaking out (the stick). This is painfully obvious as they move on to target US citizens - both the boots on the ground terror gangs, as well as the increasing political rhetoric about deporting citizens.

That's no longer immigration; that's an invasion. You can't just let unfettered immigration into a country because that would drain resources and have a negative cultural impact. Yes, people in a country pay taxes and as such should enjoy protections against invaders.

As if those were the only two possibilities.

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