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Deportations can be done easily and cheaply without any government involvement.
Require some proof of being legally in the US for opening a bank account. I highly doubt the banks don't know exactly who people are already. Make sure digital forms of payment as well as credit is impossible without legal paperwork.
Limit the time window that a Latin American driver's license is valid in the US and make Latin Americans registers when they start using that driver's license. Driving without a proper license should be punished.
In order to buy alcohol and cigarettes with a latin American passport there should be an American passport stamp in the passport.
Companies should be investigated for tax fraud if they hire illegals.
Make at least larger landlords verify the identity of their tenants.
Make it impossible to register illegals at schools, universities or other institutions.
When I was in the US I had to fill out information to register who I was when I stayed at a hotel. Make that process only go through for people legally in the US.
Create a miserable user mode for illegals in the US and they will leave. The US has millions of illegals because the US facilitates illegals in their country. Stop facilitating them and it will stop being fun to be an illegal in the US. Mexico is not Sudan, life there is not that bad.
Why is this seemingly so impossibly difficult to explain/implement to people? I genuinely don't understand unless people are using immigrants as a scapegoat to vent their rage upon.
Because the average voter is intensely stupid about these types of things. On the left you have fools cheering for images of burning Waymos and waving the Mexican Flag in US cities. On the right, the average Republican is at the level of Catturd, and they evaluate things based on what they see on Tiktok and Fox News. If they don't see armored goons manhandling immigrants then they think it's not happening at all. Trying to explain things like "employment incentives" to them will go in one ear and out the other.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Democracy simply does not work.
The form envisioned by American's founders might have, except for the fatal problem latent in democracy which leads to a race to the bottom to expand the franchise for more votes. Inevitably this will include people who really have no business getting involved with policy decisions.
Then again our (American) system was explicitly designed for a 'moral and religious people' and Adams openly admits that without those elements it all falls apart.
I don't know. We were given something amazing and ruined it. That much is clear. Whether such a thing can ever arise again remains to be seen, but what we have now is not headed in a viable direction.
Rightward leaning folks essentially re-inventing the Chinese government is potentially one of my favorite things about the mid 2020s.
I just listened to an interview with Oren Cass and you change about 10 words and this dude would have made Daddy Xi proud.
Can't wait for "the shining city on the hill with Chinese characteristics"
If not for the quote I'd think you responded to the wrong comment. You didn't engage with the substance at all and I don't know how you got to China from "moral and religious people".
Sorry I was being snarky, I actually quite like what you wrote and I agree with it.
I just keep seeing the same "democracy doesn't work because voters are dumb and unbridled capitalism has hollowed out the country. Therefore we need a strong and decisive government to use industrial policy to bring the heavy industry back!" train of thought and it's pretty adjacent to many of the thoughts you expressed there
The main complaint is that while a good electorate is possible, perverse incentives ensure that it will gradually be watered down. Not sure whether the Founders saw that coming or not but there is some ancient precedent and they'd surely have been aware of it. Would like to know more.
Anyway I don't really think our problems are solvable. We're so far unlike anything that's come before on so many levels. "We are trapped in the belly of the machine, and the machine is bleeding to death." Something will come after this but I don't think we'd recognize it as continuous.
To your point, many people do seem keen on comparing our current situation to that of the late Roman Republic (and the 'No Kings' protesting sure does help carry the vibe) but it's not clear to me that Caesarism is a viable option for us. The analogy only goes so far, and like I said so much is so different now.
It has been a really wild and wonderful time to be alive. As I enter middle life I wonder more and more how much I'll get to see of what happens next.
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