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Elon Musk’s DOGE Uses Police to Seize Independent Nonprofit
Obviously, if you wanted to paint Trump as a dangerous authoritarian fascist, this is exactly the sort of thing you'd point to as Exhibit A. So I'm trying to determine if this is actually as bad as it sounds, what the steelman is here, and the extent to which this may or may not have been under the purview of the executive branch's legitimate authority.
The linked article and their website describe USIP as a "private" nonprofit that was "founded by Congress". Obviously, the government using the police to forcibly seize private property due to political differences is not a good look. Presumably there are legal minutiae here that would determine the extent to which this organization is or is not still subject to the government's authority (is any organization "founded by Congress" subject to federal government control in perpetuity?).
As a side note, the Trump administration seems to REALLY hate US assistance to foreign countries and they're doing their damndest to shut it off. USIP describes itself as an "independent organization dedicated to protecting U.S. interests by helping to prevent violent conflicts and broker peace deals abroad".
Come on, it's hard not to have a little sympathy for her at least
Yeah that’s awful. A reasonable compromise here would be giving people who’ve been here for a certain amount of time amnesty and a green card. Hard to support this
The pathway to citizenship is out of the country and to the back of the line.
There's your reasonable compromise. Not amnesty, not ever amnesty, not ever again.
There is no line. There is no path to citizenship for random people.
I don't want infinite immigrants, either, but I've always found it disingenuous the way some people act like their only problem with immigrants is that they are coming in illegally and jumping the queue instead of waiting their turn. The implication is that there is some kind of workable immigration process everyone can apply for and that the only reason not to do so is because you are too impatient to wait a few years or too dismissive of law and authority to bother going through the proper channels.
This is totally false. There is no path to immigration for the vast majority of people. If you support enforcing current immigration law, you support denying millions the chance to live and work in the U.S. for no other reason than they were born outside of it, condemning them to a much worse quality of life in countries full of poverty and violence, and you need to own that.
I support it, because allowing unlimited immigration combined with a welfare state, affirmative action, and NIMB zoning is unsustainable, but I'm not missing the proper mood; I feel bad about it, but it has to be done.
(Caplan would chime in with the keyhole solution of denying the immigrants welfare and civil rights, but he's delusional if he thinks that's politically stable)
Yes. The average condition of humanity is indeed full of poverty and violence in an economically disadvantaged country. The fallacy in the pro-immigration-for-all argument is thinking that geographic change (transplanting people from poor countries to rich ones) will solve what is fundamentally a social problem (poor countries are poor and remain so because they have poor-quality people). One only need look at Sweden, Germany, or France to see what happens when you allow in high numbers of low potential immigrants. Current US immigration law as written (very different from what is actually enforced) recognizes this and is designed to filter for only the best, brightest (or at least richest), and highest potential immigrants who will add value to the nation. This is a wise policy that reflects the fundamental instincts of nations through the millenia. It is only recently that society has become peaceful enough for suicidal empathy not to be exterminated by Darwinistic processes, though the jury is perhaps still out on that in the long term.
I firmly believe that if you advocate for less restrictive immigration rules, you should be legally obligated to support those immigrants at your own expense, in your own house. If you cannot put your money and life where your mouth is, you have no business telling the rest of us to do so.
It's also not self-evidently more just even if it were true.
A lot of the criticisms of hardline immigration positions on the grounds of geographic luck count just as much against most migrants themselves.
Why do central Americans have a disproportionate right to see their living standards improved, even if we agree borders are unjust? There are poorer people who couldn't even conceive of making journey. Clearly, nothing about de facto not enforcing the law eliminates the problem either.
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There's a line, it just might be decades or centuries long. If you apply now and life extension is invented within your lifetime, you just might make it in.
(Some of the later Japanese emigrants to Brazil must have been kicking themselves a few years onward).
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Or you could put your skills to use making your home country less of a shithole so that you don't need to immigrate
This is simply not doable in Venezuela, short of an armed takeover. Mexico has some bright spots but it’s not the sort of thing talented individuals can improve.
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Seriously? Your advice to someone born in Venezuela or in Mexico is to stay and use their skills to fix their countries? Those places are like San Francisco on steroids. The government stops any value from being built or protected, and if against all odds you do manage to build some wealth it will immediately get stolen from you by the government or by criminals.
Just because it is in our best rational interest to stop them from immigrating doesn't mean it isn't in their best rational interest to try escape from those hellholes. Even if, democracy being what it is, a large enough number of them will turn first world countries into more of the same, much like Californians escaping to Texas and Florida vote for the same policies that made them leave.
From "Policy Debates Should Not Appear One-Sided" by Eliezer Yudkowsky:
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Nobody's got that much skill in some countries (e.g. Haiti), and almost nobody has it anywhere.
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