"We're not anti-immigration, we're only anti-illegal immigration!"
* indefinitely pauses legal immigration *
* indefinitely pauses legal immigration *
They like to complain that "big government inefficient and bad" while actively making it inefficient and bad. They are fulfilling their own prophecies.
Similar to immigration I'm sure. If all immigration is illegal then it's all bad!
Being anti-illegal immigration and pro-legal immigration doesn't mean you want to flood the country with legal immigrants. That's the case in the UK, by the way, where the vast majority of immigrants are legal and it's the reason for the growing anti-immigrant attitude of the natives.
People who are anti-illegal immigration and pro-legal immigration also have requirements like:
- there should be a fixed number of legal immigrants
- they should be well vetted (this may be lacking in the US and UK)
- legal immigration should be points based
- quotas for legal immigrants should be increased contingent on the number of illegal immigrants which are expelled
- there should be checks to verify that visas are not abused (the way H1Bs are abused in the US with under qualified immigrants)
- asylum should be abolished because it's abused. It can be replaced by paying poorer countries to permanently host asylees.
> Being anti-illegal immigration and pro-legal immigration doesn't mean you want to flood the country with legal immigrants.
If only there were something between 0 and unrestricted immigration, some sort of program where people apply for permission and the government issues approvals for individuals to enter its borders after meeting legal criteria.
Nobody is banning legal immigration. It's being restricted. The headline itself says "pauses". Do you think no legal immigrant will be let into the US until 2028?
> some sort of program where people apply for permission
Yes, and if that program is being abused (just ask people here on HN about H1Bs to see how they feel), then you pause it until you figure out how to solve it.
In 2024, I didn't think we'd be murdering protesters in the streets or kidnapping heads of state or inciting global tariff wars paid for by US citizens or watching the president take billions of dollars of bribes using cryptocurrency.
Why do you think thos government is responding to something in a good faith attempt at improving a system?
No it has been banned. There is no legal way to do it. Even if it is a temporary ban, it is a ban. If you support indefinitely pausing legal immigration, you are anti-legal immigration.
> Yes, and if that program is being abused (just ask people here on HN about H1Bs to see how they feel), then you pause it until you figure out how to solve it.
That is an absurd strategy. Would you "indefinitely pause" schooling children until you can figure out a way to solve the problem of students cheating on tests? Would you "indefinitely pause" funding police forces until you can figure out how to prevent police abuses? Would you "indefinitely pause" money transfers until you can figure out how to solve tax fraud? Pausing any of these would create massive problems while doing nothing to speed up improvements, and it doesn't help that "solving" those problems may not even be possible. We can immediately switch to a better system after someone figures out that better system; until then we make do with what we have.
So of course that is the tiniest small print of every promise any politician makes, such that once it is a promise broken it is someone else's fault and not theirs.
Therefore their entire job is to lie.
You as a citizen have a choice to tolerate that or leave the country.