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Comment by apawloski | Hacker News Reader

If it's not a serious case or a national security threat, why impose de-naturalization quotas? Surely if there are real threats out there we should be dedicating the energy to those?

(Also since you brought up Obama, why was Obama able to deport so many more people than Trump? And able to do it without terrorizing US cities with secret/poorly trained police, or needing a DHS with a larger budget than most other countries' militaries?)

You're fixated on a "technically this is legal" argument. But you're (perhaps willfully) missing the larger repercussions. This administration has lied and misled about their opponents committing fraud. You know they are not acting in good faith. So why would we want to further empower capricious, inconsistent, and politically motivated behavior?

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You need to enforce it because illegal immigration is harmful in and of itself, even if the immigrants aren’t criminals or national security threats. Why do we enforce speed limits even when the person doesn’t cause a serious accident? Because the point of the law is to create a deterrent effect that compels people to follow a certain process.

Obama had an easier time deporting people because, at the time, most people in his party accepted the view that illegal immigration is harmful even without some other crime: https://www.foxnews.com/media/2010-obama-clip-goes-viral-whe.... Back then, even most Democrats embraced requiring immigrant to assimilate. If you think assimilation is important, then it naturally follows that we have to control the number of immigrants at a level where America changes them before they change America. Today, many of them reject assimilation in favor of multi-culturalism. If you embrace multi-culturalism, it’s hard to justify any limit on the number of immigrants. And at that point, illegal immigration just becomes a technicality.

Can you elaborate more about how you think it's harmful despite having nothing to do with crime?

For the same reason people fishing without a license is harmful even if it's not otherwise criminal. It's not about one fish. It's about a system that's designed to avoid social harm by limiting the aggregate volume of an activity, and people fraudulently bypassing those limits.

Does fishing without a license warrant the same large-scale violent carceral approach that DHS is taking? That would be an insane, disruptive overreaction for something that poses no public safety danger.

> So why would we want to further empower capricious, inconsistent, and politically motivated behavior?

Well because I want the laws enforced. Other politicians had my whole life to enforce immigration law and they chose not to. If it's between this and unchecked immigration status quo, I choose this. This is a lesson to respectfully enforce the rule of law and the will of the people lest they enforce it disrespectfully later.

What Trump proved was that prior administrations simply chose not to enforce the immigration laws. Last year was the lowest number of border crossings since 1970, a nearly 90% reduction compared to 2022: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/02/02/migrant-e... https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/02/02/migrant-e.... It was accomplished by simply choosing to enforce the law.

> It was accomplished by simply choosing to enforce the law.

They accomplished it by terrorizing people based on the color of their skin. There's nothing "simple" about creating a gigantic secret police force. There's nothing "lawful" about blatantly ignoring court orders.

You already conceded that there is no public danger. Your argument boils down yet again Great Replacement nonsense about immigrants being bad for America.

> Well because I want the laws enforced.

All laws? Because there are several that the administration are actively breaking. Surely you want those enforced too? How about court orders?

> Other politicians had my whole life to enforce immigration law and they chose not to.

I mean, Obama was way more effective at deporting illegal immigrants than Trump. Even by raw numbers. So I'm not sure how you can honestly argue that de-naturalization quotas are necessary now, when they weren't before for an even more effective administration.

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