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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   30024 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 17, 2025

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This author is... "not even wrong?" In addition to the other problems already commented on:

Illegal immigrants do not have access to Article III courts under federal law. Nor do they have ordinary rights under the Constitution. They have no right to free speech, no right to own and bear arms, no right to a trial by jury, and no right to protection from warrantless search and seizure!

This is because illegal immigrants are not members of the American social compact. They are not subject to our laws in the same way that legal migrants and citizens are. They have neither the duties nor the rights of American citizens.

This is an obvious point. If the Constitution gave rights to everyone on the planet, then American citizenship would have no meaning. We would not give a trial to a member of a foreign military who crossed our border in hopes of conquering our country. We would simply shoot him.

Illegal immigrants fall in the same category as enemy troops. They have crossed our border contrary to law. They represent an existential threat to our sovereignty. Thankfully, however, we do not need to use lethal violence to protect ourselves from illegal Mexican farmworkers.

We can meet the threat they pose simply by loading them onto planes and placing them (gently) back in their countries of origin.

The Constitution gives rights to practically everybody within US territory, with few exceptions. SCOTUS has ruled that illegal immigrants are not one of those exceptions. Illegal immigrants do not fall into the category of enemy troops. And "loading them onto planes" may not itself be violent, but its dependent on the credible threat of violence.

The protections afforded to illegal aliens are basic. They can't be robbed, enslaved, raped, or murdered with impunity — nominally, as these happen precisely because of our lax immigration law. Plyler notoriously asserted a nonexistent right to education extending to the children of illegals, now schools in communities with high numbers of illegal hispanics are full of children who don't speak English. Texas has been thoroughly vindicated for the burden they feared, and this problem has spread far beyond Texas.

That's beside the point. The most fundamental authority of a sovereign is "who gets to be here." SCOTUS rulings, and everything else, is downstream of this authority. This authority is the basis for the expulsion of any foreigner at any time and for any reason. It is subservient to nothing, it is inalienable and immutable. The only question is whether this power is vested, past the people, in the legislature or the executive, but the power remains absolutely. Illegal aliens in particular are owed no due process and enjoy no protections from summary deportation. The courts can try to stop it, despite having no true authority given illegals are, again, here in violation of American sovereignty, but their efforts if not stopped will provoke the radical solution over the current moderate solution.

Illegal aliens in particular are owed no due process and enjoy no protections from summary deportation.

The right to a fair trial exists for the benefit of the innocent, not the benefit of criminals. A US citizen who gets picked up by mistake gets the same due process an actual illegal gets - certainly in the UK this turned out to be the problem with a "deport them all" strategy - that a country with no citizen register and no papieren bitte culture doesn't know who is and isn't there legally accurately enough to do mass deportations without deporting an unacceptable number of citizens and legal immigrants by mistake. If you are deporting people who haven't done anything wrong except being illegal in the first place, the politically acceptable number of citizens deported by mistake is close to zero.

Realistically, the Anglosphere countries are going to have to become papieren bitte cultures if we want effective in-country immigration enforcement.

What is true is that (apart from the existence of a law passed by Congress, implementing the USA's obligations under a ratified treaty, protecting refugees, and people with a credible claim to be refugees until it is adjudicated) once you have established that someone is an illegal immigrant they have no right whatsoever to stay in the US - for example it is wicked but not illegal to prioritise immigration enforcement based on 1st amendment protected speech.

Realistically, the Anglosphere countries are going to have to become papieren bitte cultures if we want effective in-country immigration enforcement.

You're coupling two things where that isn't necessary: the culture of being ID'd by the officials randomly and the practise of having a central registry and thus some national ID number that uniquely identifies you. You can have the latter without having the former. Eg. There is no requirement to carry an ID with me but I've had a national ID number since birth as has everyone else here in Finland since 1962.

All you have to do is to make it effectively impossible to get a bank account, phone number, get paid and other necessities without having an ID number and then freeze those functions for people who have are illegally in the country and they'll end up largely deporting themselves.

The problem, in the US at least, is that the people most interested in mass deportations are also the people most hostile to any kind of centralized database/identification system for citizens.

I was under the impression that we do have a identification system for citizens. My newborn has to get a SS# to be added to my health insurance

It is not only citizens that have SSNs, though. Legal Permanent Residents also get one.

Even people on work visas have SSNs.

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