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Throwing in a quick post because I'm surprised it hasn't been discussed here (unless I missed it!), Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago sets up "ICE-free zones" in Chicago.
This comes on the heels of Trump sending in the national guard after Chicago PD apparently wouldn't help ICE agents under attack. I haven't read all the stuff about this scenario, but on the surface level it seems pretty bad, I have to say.
There's a video clip where that mayor is saying that Republicans want a "redo of the Civil War," amongst other incredibly inflammatory things. The Governor of Illinois is apparently backing the mayor up.
This refusal to help ICE and even outright claim that you're fighting a war with them I mean... I suppose Democrats have been doing it for a while. This seems... bad. I mean sure you can sugarcoat it and point to legal statues and such, but fundamentally if the local governments of these places are going to agitate so directly against the President, I can't blame Trump for sending in the national guard.
Obviously with the two party system we have a line and such, but man, it's a shame that our politicians have fully embraced the heat-over-light dynamics of the culture war, to the point where they really are teetering on the brink of starting a civil war. Not the social media fear-obsessed "civil war" people have been saying has already started, but real national guard vs. local pd or state military type open warfare. I just don't understand going this far, unless the Mayor of Chicago thinks that he can get away with it and Trump will back down.
Even then, brinksmanship of this type seems totally insane!
I suppose Newsom in CA has been doing it too, now that I mention it. Sigh. I hope that we can right this ship because man, I do not want to have to fight in a civil war I have to say. Having studied history, it's a lot more horrible than you might think.
Everyone throws oil into the fire and kicks mud around. From one perspective:
The government is deploying the military because of civil violations. Other types of civil violations involve running a red light, building a deck without a permit, accidentally spilling a small amount of pollutants, filing your taxes late (this is closest), letting your dog roam unleashed. If they are merely enforcing the current law, why in this manner? Does or should the military repel down helicopters to clear entire buildings and check everyone's tax documents on the presumption of guilt? Why is it doing differently here? If the law is wrong, why are they not changing regulations etc.?
From another perspective, sure, mass immigration is a threat against Western civilization and the other side hates patriots. But again, why are they not changing the laws to deal with this more thoroughly and why is all effort directed towards more pious coreligionists instead of Muslims or Hindus or Jews etc.?
From my own perspective, I have little idea what anyone's actually doing. It all seems like incompetence or self-sabotage, randomly flailing around with no coherence. I don't think anyone benefits besides China and goldbugs.
If this kind of violence was being deployed against the EPA enforcing its anti-deck regulations during the Obama administration what do you think the result would be? I expect multiple governors would already have been arrested.
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Because border security has always partly needed to be an optical illusion for economic reasons. It needed to be flexible: A scary bark with a less scary bite, to be tolerant of the massive illegal labor force that propped up multiple industries in this country. Republicans and Democrats alike projected the image of being somewhat strict on immigration all while allowing millions to work here for cheap. It was beneficial for both sides. Illegals got to bring home more money and the country could maintain an image of strictness that would deter massive amounts of other potential migrants, all while we benefitted from low wage labor. That cat is out of the bag now because progressives, through their oppressor lens, shed a light on it and started demanding more rights for "undocumented" workers.
The Republican tactic still appears to be optical, but they are cracking down harder on people overstaying their visas. This projects to other wannabe migrants that if you come here illegally, or temporarily, your ass will be deported when your status expires or you are caught and people have miraculously stopped showing up at the border.
The problem is that we have so many people on the left who are hellbent on pointing out the hypocrisy of the right for not deporting people in certain industries, or pointing to how racist they are, or pointing to how fascist they are, or pointing to how illegal their actions are that their 'all or nothing' game of immigrant chicken pushes a growing number of Americans to be in favor of 'nothing' and to upgrade border crossings to criminal offenses.
What is the issue with this? It's a clear sign that the administration doesn't actually want to fix this. If they did, they'd go after the obvious places illegals were working. They come here because they work. Stop the people who pay them from paying them.
Why are hotels being told explicitly they won't be cracked down on? How does that make ANY sense with the stated goals of removing illegal immigrants?
They don't actually want to fix this, which makes the enforcement they are doing feel pointless and stupid
I think I answered this in my other reply to you, but if there's something you want me to address more specifically, let me know.
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Refusing to follow court orders to desegregate a school or stop administering poll tests was also a civil issue. Failing to show up for Court is a civil matter.
At the end of the day, the relevant issue is not the category of violation but its social importance. It is not necessary or desirable to criminally charge most immigration violators. It is more than sufficient to support them. But it is necessary and important that this enforcement occur. We got to this point by permitting far too little enforcement of the law. Imagine a society where it was rare to arrest people for failure to appear. Consider how little respect for the courts there world be and how this might affect the orderly administration of society.
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Whether those are valid reference class comparisons to illegal immigration is almost the entirety of the debate. Rightly or wrongly, people feel much more strongly about immigration than other items you listed. It may be an area where the law is lagging popular opinion.
However, assuming that they are valid I think the missing dimension is scale and state capacity. It would be wrong to bring down the military on a jaywalker, yes. But if instead of a jaywalker it was a sufficient number of jaywalkers to significantly impede the operation of a government building, jaywalking in that location not for the sake of jaywalking but for the sake of impeding. Then you might send in the military to ensure that the government building is clear of jaywalkers so that the building can operate according to its function. It would be technically true in such a scenario that you were "deploying the military because of jaywalking" but the military doesn't care about and isn't enforcing the laws against jaywalking as such.
And I support the use of the military in such a case.
But there is the possible complication - what if the majority of the people in the area of the government building would prefer that the jaywalkers successfully prevent the government building's operation?
That's the point the top comment is making. If popular opinion is in line with Trump, then the votes should bestow enough power onto the Republicans to formally change the regulations. That's the whole point of a democracy.
Instead, Republicans have slim filibuster-able majority in the House and the Senate. The House can user the nuclear option, eliminate the filibuster and pass whatever law they want to pass. If a sufficiently large majority agree with you, then win 59% senate seats and pass what you want.
The fact that Trump isn't doing that, shows that the popular opinion may not be fully onboard with this style of aggressive ICE deportation.
Given that 7 Republican house members explicitly oppose this style of ICE raids for non-violent illegals, I'd argue Trump is operating below simple majority on this issue.
"Should," according to a civics textbook model of how our "democracy" works, but, as we can see, it clearly doesn't. Yes that's "the whole point of a democracy," which is why its absence demonstrates that our "democracy" is a sham.
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Interesting, thank you. The midterms are the proper test of the electorate's views - even as coarse a signal as elections is vastly more reliable than my opinion of the vibes. I could definitely be wrong, I'm eager to find out.
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There is no need for new law. Immigration enforcement is already legal. It is already legal to deport aliens unlawfully present. If Tony Gonzales objects to this, it is up to him as a Congressman to change the law.
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The government is deploying the military, not to enforce immigration law, but to protect the Federal officers who are charged with enforcing immigration law from organized violence on the part of civilians. Normally this violence, if it was greater than the amount the Feds could easily handle themselves, would be dealt with by state and local law enforcement, but several cities have decided that they will not provide this service. This is the "protective power", which Trump is using to deploy the National Guard without invoking the Insurrection Act. I think this power is dubious, but it's not new with Trump. It is possible he will actually lose the cases based on this, but if he does, he could (and I think he would) use the Insurrection Act (as he has threatened)
That unlawful presence is not criminal isn't really an issue. Why would it matter?
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Because it has been established that blues ignore laws they dislike or find inconvenient, and that this is one such law. There is no reason to believe that making illegal immigration double-illegal will result in Blues actually enforcing laws they don't want to enforce and perceive great advantage in not enforcing. This is an invitation to waste political capital on "process" that has already been subverted.
From where I stand, the main difference between blue and red seems to be that one generally does not like to deport illegals, and the other is only deporting illegals in sectors where it will not wreck the economic sector of their constituents.
Also, prosecutorial discretion is basically the name of the game of Trump's DoJ. Why waste taxpayer money on prosecuting crypto traders when it is so much more lucrative to make them just buy Trump's shitcoins and see their legal trouble evaporate?
The idea that it is imperative to enforce any law on the book seems silly. Sure, I would prefer if laws just got struck (ideally automatically unless the legislature re-ups them) when they fell out of use, because selective enforcement is a tool of the tyrant, but it if a law is bad then it is better to ignore it than to enforce it.
The US had sodomy laws in force until the SC put an end to them in 2003 (and are still kept on the books by 12 states, including your usual suspects). Blasphemy laws remain on the books in six states, also unenforceable
I may be going out on a limb here, but from the context of Lawrence, it does not sound like even Texas had a big Butt Sex Prevention Task Force in 1998. My guess it that GWB mostly did exactly what you accuse the blues of doing: not enforcing a law which he found not to be politically relevant to enforce.
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Is your claim that Reds generally are unconcerned about Muslim or Hindu illegal immigration? That would be a surprising take, given a number of past incidents.
Most effort is being directed toward South and Central American illegal immigrants because these are by far the most numerous cohort of illegal immigrants, also generally the poorest, and at least arguably the most criminal.
My own opinion is that they should openly state their position and attempt to modify the laws to fit it (or at least draft laws they would like). I see no reason why they couldn't act at the same time. (Really, what incompetence would limit the entire administration to only doing 1 thing at a time?) If all civilization is truly at stake, I don't see why they should restrict themselves to laws beholden to their enemies. So again, why are they attacking Christians first?
We did that decades ago. We passed laws, and stopped laws we did not want from being passed. We won the legal argument fair and square. Only, it turns out that the legal argument doesn't matter because the other side, broadly speaking, is willing to ignore or actively subvert the law sufficiently to preclude all enforcement. There is no reason to believe that passing additional laws will force Blues to actually respect them.
Did you miss this part?
Considerable effort has been expended against Muslim and Hindu migration as well, but it is the southern border that represents the core of the problem. What part of this is confusing?
I don't believe hardworking Christians represent a civilizational threat. So clearly the current administration aren't Christian nationalists like the supporters I know and see. But I don't know what they actually are or what the purpose of such measures are.
I'm also confused by the legalism (caring if they are legal or not) mixed with antilegalism (why bother trying to change the laws).
Most illegals are nominally Christian, but they’re not really more religious on average than Americans.
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