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I agree, but let us also remember to pin some blame on Trump for doing the ICE raids as flamboyantly as possible.
Obama deported 410,000 people in 2012 and managed to avoid cameras far better.
I am convinced Trump wants liberals to overreact because it's the best campaign ad and the mobs are happy to take the bait.
Yes, black bag the illegals in the dead of night and try to suppress news coverage of the "dissappearances."
Quiet, stealthy operation.
Do you believe the left would sit quietly by for such tactics?
There's a huge gulf between that and what Trump is doing currently. Trump is making these raids as much a spectacle as possible.
Did we forget the Studio Ghibli rendition of the crying handcuffed deportee tweeted by the White House? What about videos captioned "ASMR: Illegal Alien Deportation Flight"?
He even has fucking Dr Phil accompanying raids now.
And I'm suggesting that it wouldn't really matter.
The riots in 2020 were triggered by one guy dying under sketchy circumstances.
If Trump didn't give them am impetus, I think they'd find one.
It's not particularly surprising for Trump to run on a mass deportation platform... then make a big deal about fulfilling that promise.
This seems like a spectacular failure to grasp the deep, unresolved tension in the US over how law enforcement conducts itself. There were anti-police protests in 2014 under Obama as well. You can't attribute these things to a single police murder.
This is not making a big deal out of enforcement. It is ostentatious cruelty (one might even say the cruelty is the point :v).
You've also got things like ICE going after valid visa holders, calling immigrants "invaders", and the DHS declaring intent to "liberate" LA from the socialists.
So what's the deep, unresolved tension surrounding keeping noncitizens in the country?
Is there any reason other than "it helps us win elections?"
The competing interests and preferences of nativists, anti-nativists, employers, consumers, etc... combined with a deadlocked political system that effectively leaves immigration policy up to the caprices of executive discretion.
What is that supposed to mean? Illegal immigrants can't vote, so the "importing voters" theory doesn't hold up so well, and their mere existence alienates the xenophobe vote, so it's hard to call it a winning electoral strategy. Even if you think they're wrong, you should probably take immigration advocates at their word when they offer humanitarian and economic justifications for supporting immigration.
I do not like @Fruck's antagonism (borderline, but saying your argument is dishonest is allowed even if I wish he'd be more charitable). However, while I think immigration advocates mostly do believe in humanitarian and economic justifications, your arguments that there can't possibly be any self-serving motives seem either naive or, well, the less charitable option Fruck pointed at.
I will make three counterarguments:
*. "Illegal immigrants can't vote." This is true, and I tend to mostly think claims of widespread voter fraud are unsupported. That said, to claim it absolutely does not or could not happen, and cannot be an intentional policy, is to ignore history. I've mentioned this before (because it's one of my favorite books) but Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson talks a lot about his 1948 Senate race in Texas. It was quite eye-opening. At that time, shipping large numbers of Mexicans across the border to vote illegally was in fact something party bosses did routinely (both parties). Everyone knew this. And it certainly wasn't happening only in Texas.
I'm going to say this probably doesn't happen today, at least not on a large scale, but the fact that it did happen within living memory, and clearly there are politicians who would be quite happy to game the system like that if they could find an exploit, means I do not think you can so casually dismiss the possibility, and the concern. I don't know if pro-immigrationists are finding ways to get illegals to vote in significant numbers, but I believe they absolutely would. Especially given that many pro-immigrationists basically believe in open borders and we've seen more than one politician openly advocate for letting illegals vote, since they literally don't think anyone should be "illegal."
*. Even charitably assuming most of them aren't angling to get illegal immigrant votes, most of them do expect anyone who comes and settles here illegally to eventually be legalized. They don't want anyone to ever be deported, and again, they don't actually believe anyone should be illegal. So yes, people who can't technically vote now are very much seen as future votes, at least.
*. "The xenophobe vote." This assumes they would not advocate for more immigration and illegal immigrant rights because it would hurt them electorally; the "xenophobes" would vote against them. Sorry, but Fruck is right here. The xenophobes are already not going to vote Democrat (or Green, or Peace and Freedom, or Socialist). They aren't losing any votes they might otherwise have gained. Maybe if the Democrats were actually the party of the working class again they'd have to worry about blue collar and farm workers worried about their jobs, but they don't actually care about those people anymore, and haven't for a generation.
It's not that I think there couldn't be self-serving motives, but I don't think the actual reality of American politics actually support any of them. All in all, I just don't think there's a very good reason to believe that opposition to mass deportations or other restrictive immigration policies is a cynical ploy as opposed to a fundamental values difference.
I have no idea why @Fruck is accusing me of being dishonest, other than that they have totally misread my argument.
I'm not saying that the incident rate is literally zero, but I am saying that it is not high enough to be political relevant or be a serious motive for immigration advocates. As a self-interested motive it lacks substantial payoff (and would be risky to boot).
I don't think the historical point has much relevance. It strikes me that when you're talking about mid-century American politics, there's a lot more general bad behavior when it comes to election integrity. I don't really know enough about Texan politics in the 40s and 50s to fact-check you, but it doesn't strike me as especially distinct other forms of election manipulation that were common then and are far less common now.
I don't think this is true. Hopes might be high, but expectations for a general amnesty are generally pretty low. I think there is an expectation that 2nd gen children of illegal immigrants will lean left, but - again - I don't think it constitutes a significant motivating factor for pro-immigration advocates. Pushing a controversial position now in the expectation that it's going to pay off for different people in a generation is a level of long-term planning that I do not buy from people who will throw allies out of the tent for 75% agreement.
There's a feedback loop were pro-immigration/anti-immigration parties (reasonably) expect that immigrants will vote for/against them. That doesn't tell you much about their reasons for being pro/anti in the first place. (Ironically, both views appear to be at least partially incorrect.)
Margins matter. Indeed, in the current political environment they matter quite a lot. Diehard nativists are not going to vote for the Dems no matter what (both because they won't trust them on immigration and because hardcore nativist is strongly correlated with other conservative beliefs), but the typical anti-immigrant voter isn't nearly that committed.
I agree that there's a significant body of immigration advocates who think any immigration skeptic is a write-off. Probably more than there are people pushing for moderating on immigration on the basis of marginal electoral gains, but I think that points away from cynical motives and towards ideological ones. It's taking on board the added risk of losing an election (and thus all your other issues of concern) because you prefer to avoid compromising on this particular issue when you could safely move right.
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