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Like always, the left’s problem is that their proposed solutions read like they were written by teenagers, based on emotions and dismissive of the reasons why their supposed “enemies” disagree with them.
Most Americans would support having ICE operate perhaps even entirely with nonlethal weapons. That would be a smart thing to push for! And popular too. But the party line is instead “Abolish ICE.” And of course nobody (who isn’t pro-open-borders) trusts that there’s any Democratic plan besides look-the-other-way and maybe amnesty.
1. Win elections
2. Pass laws (or win the Presidency, a cheat code that has been the main way most things get done since ... 2008 or so, and is basically effective unless the "thing" is kinda unconstitutional and SCOTUS is against you. Blame RBG btw for screwing Dems on that last part)
The reason why we won't get this outcome is that the Democrats stopped being serious about convincing the moderates to get onboard their platform, because they give too much of a platform to the people who just chant slogans like "No person is illegal!" Which, while I get the humanitarian point, reads to me like you'd really prefer that anyone caught here illegally should ethically just be let go, rendering the whole concept of borders, visa applications, green cards, all of that, a big joke on the people who follow the rules.
ICE, being under DHS, is part of the US security apparatus. It has a threat-orientation. INS did have an enforcement component, but it was substantially an administrative agency. Immigration enforcement agents should primarily be process servers, notifying people whose papers aren't in order either what they need to do to fix them, or when their court date is.
Yet now it's getting undone for seemingly no reason. But I hope that there would actually be one, so please enlighten me and the other commenters.
This makes a great talking point, but those immigrants eventually assimilated into the culture, and also importantly, they were specifically allowed to come because the US needed more people in order to power its economy. The Chinese came to build the railroad, the Irish and Italians and Germans came over and worked in factories and as police and many other industries. This was badly needed 100 years ago.
Today most illegal immigrants are uneducated and are either working in the unofficial economy or in service-sector jobs, which depresses wages for everyone with low education. We don't need every restaurant to have an unending stream of desperately poor would-be busboys and dishwashers, or for Uber to have a stream of poor drivers. Or for rich people to have an ample supply of housekeepers paid in cash. All that does is keep wages in the toilet for working people.
But about open borders, why are so many Latin American countries such bad places to live that so many of their people want to come to the US? Open borders just means anyone can walk right in and bring all of their problems with them, not to mention their drug and human trafficking operations and the criminal gangs that operate them. We already have enough of that as it is.
No Western country can stay civilized with open borders. Anyone with half a brain can see how it is going in the UK and France, where they are only a bit more "open borders" than the US has been. Thankfully for Americans, Latin-American culture is more compatible with Western culture than Islamic culture is.
Given the present tide of things, however, I think there's no amount of course-correction back toward the left that would prove excessive. My opinion on this will change as soon as the tide does, and e.g. a leftist president endorses indiscriminate murder of ICE agents, or something equally egregious to what we're seeing in the opposite direction.
In a more ideological sense, though, I tend to despise the left/right continuum and think it is unhelpful for analysis.
Comparing the rhetoric today, this might never happen. There are qualitative differences between both political geoups, so grouping them together as a single horseshoe is 'unhelpful for analysis'.
That said, you cant fully rule out leftist led atrocities aswell and maybe thats the reason why the right is escalating in violent rhetoric, they want this as a self fullfilling prophecy to justify more violence.
When Kirk was shot, all the "this needs to stop" commentary, as if it was an organized mass phenomenon, was sending shivers down my spine. We all know how the far right envisions stopping this 'mass' violence.
What party? What makes it "seem" that way? Could you link to anyone calling for this?
Merely for illustration, a single example: https://abc7.com/post/protests-expected-socal-part-nationwid...
> Protesters were seen carrying flags, signs and spraying graffiti on nearby property, including on the U.S. Courthouse sign where it read "No one is illegal on stolen land".
This is completely orthogonal to the conversation, but I think you misunderstood that slogan. It does not mean “immigration rules must not be enforced”.
It means differentiating between a potentially illegal action (illegal entry/overstaying) and the person itself. You never talk about an illegal driver, or an illegal drinker, but people talk about illegal immigrants, with the implication that the person itself is illegal.
It’s subtle but it’s a step towards dehumanizing a person, or making infractions to their rights “count less” in the public eye.
Worse than that, we more and more often just see the term "illegals" being used, which completely removes the person from the description.
It only matters what we call them, if you want to keep them here forever. I think the present-day recommended term is probably just "immigrant" right? So basically we should call them the same thing we call the people who waited years for their turn and proved that they had a positive contribution to make to our society.
You think it makes no difference if we call them "the scum of the earth" or "below human entities" otherwise? Surely there's a line of what rhetoric you would tolerate. This is ours.
You are either misinformed, willfully ignorant or lying, and I've had it with this discussion style.
Yes, people who use "no one is illegal" do also say "no more borders". Not every single one, clearly humans are diverse, but your statement is just false.
Here a UK example even combining the statements (as I said, the movement is not limited to the US). https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.11073215
Another example, also showing this is an older movement (2005): https://www.statewatch.org/media/documents/news/2005/apr/int... ("No Borders/No One Is Illegal campaigns")
Because we're looking for people saying borders should be completely opened. An example of people saying something else is irrelevant.
> Yes, people who use "no one is illegal" do also say "no more borders".
Ok but the conversation is about people saying the latter. It was you who brought the former into the conversation.
> Here a UK example
Which British parties are active in the United States?
> Another example, also showing this is an older movement
The claim was that "the left" has no response to emigration issues beyond "open all borders" and that this was the policy of "one party." The existence of an anti-borders movement is again irrelevant to the questions I raised in response to this assertion.
The grandparent post accurately captured what I have understood people to mean by "no one is illegal" -- it is meant to protest a dehumanizing way to describe a class of people.
Don't you guys remind us about Obama being "the deporter in chief" every time you are given the occasion ?
Is it? I'm not aware of legislation introduced by the democrats, either when they were in power or today, that proposed anything resembling this. There are individual congresspeople calling for ICE to be abolished (which is not the same as having no immigration enforcement) but leadership within the democrats is very clear that they support extremely minor reforms like making ICE agents wear masks less frequently. This is considerably more minor than disarming ICE agents, which you claim would have nationwide support.
It's using immigration as a pretext to build an unaccountable group of thugs that disappear people into camps, murder political opponents and surveil the populace (as seen in OP). It's recruiting primarily from far-right militias, regularizing them into a paramilitary force of the regime.
There is no justifiable reason to have them terrorize an entire city like they have been doing in Minneapolis.
The brownshirts needed to be abolished in the 1920s, a pinky-swear they wouldn't do the thing they were designed to do wouldn't have been enough.
The same applies to their modern equivalent.
Obama and Biden, famously, deported more people than Trump. And with a substantially smaller budget too. Is this "no immigration enforcement" party in the room with us right now?
It was aggressive, it was inhumane, and immigrants were killed despite a massive effort by people from "the left" to feed and clothe people who were detained in open fields or between two border fences without any care being provided by the US agencies detaining them.
Maybe you are right that nobody who is right-leaning trusts that the US democratic party isn't pro border enforcement and anti immigration, but that's based purely on lies and propaganda.
If I want what I believe is a reasonable policy and the enforcers of that policy start doing the worst job ever, it is my duty to call them out, not to call out the opposing side for mostly imaginary reasons.
Abolish ICE is not a unreasonable take. If the agents working in this agency have become some ultra politicized paramilitary, it makes sense to abolish it and create a new agency altogether.
Indeed, this is the modus operandi, though I'd argue that it doesn't have to make sense but rather be in the political canon. I recall hearing arguments that "some gun deaths are necessary" (in the context of mass shootings at schools) for us to have our "god-given right" to own guns, but the purpose—owning guns for the ability to... checks notes... stand up to entities that can legally commit violence against you—isn't so obviously sensible.
That people get killed is a tragedy, but that the people that killed them do not get the proper training, guidance or consequences for their action is a problem.
It's fine to make reasonable sounding comments but for the love of God, a bit honesty wouldn't kill you.
"The party told you to ignore the evidence you see with your own ears and eyes*
Or the 'you aren't doing anything illegal but the masked government agents don't like it so they are going to use your biometrics to harass you in whatever ways the feds can make your life more difficult' laws?