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Yes, I think that Trump's camp is doing a lot of damage to the pro-ICE position, and is raising tensions in the country, by going with the "fuck you, we're sending ICE in and by the way, fuck you again" optics. I don't know why they're doing it that way. My only guess is that it feels good to them and it delivers quick cheap optics wins to serve to their base, because it feels good to many in the base as well.
The left is also very much to blame in many ways for raising tensions in the country, so it's not like I'm just blaming Trump's camp. But Trump's camp is certainly choosing to display, frame, and discuss their actions in an inflammatory way.
My personal theory is that while the Trump base legitimately wants to put an end to illegal immigration due in large part to the economic consequences, those economic consequences are actually extremely beneficial to a lot of republican donors. When you remove illegal immigrant labor and force the farmers to hire Americans (legally) the price of everything goes up. Ultimately society and the economy would be healthier after this gets done, but the political consequences for Trump in the short term would be disastrous. "All basic staples are now twice as expensive, but in exchange your wages will improve permanently in 9 months" might be a great deal for his base in the long run, but it is suicidal for someone who has to care about daily opinion polls and work around congressmen and senators who are taking vast sums of money from the people who benefit from illegal labour.
So, between deportations and self-deportations, a purported 2 million illegal immigrants have left. What percent of the "twice as expensive" are we up to?
Well they're explicitly not going after farm workers, even though a huge % of illegals work on farms. I'm sure the Mexican nanny labour market has gotten much tighter, but that doesn't effect as many people.
So, literally nothing you can point to. Thanks, you made my point abundantly clear.
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Is there actually real, serious and muscular enforcement of immigration law against migrant workers? I was under the impression that Trump was explicitly preventing this from happening because illegal immigrants can be treated badly and help keep the costs of produce down.
If I'm wrong and Trump has been aggressively enforcing the laws against the employment of illegal immigrants I'd be happy to hear it.
It's hard to gauge. Here's an article claiming that the raids have devastated the industry, but journalists/hate/insufficient/etc.
That article seems to suggest that I'm correct.
70% of all your farm workers are foreign born and I have zero doubt that the vast majority of those would be illegal immigrants, because the entire reason they can get those jobs is their lack of labor protection and inability to protest terrible conditions. Remove them and the price of staples like milk will double - which is why I believe Trump and ICE are focusing on getting deportations into the news rather than actually fixing the problem.
Again, 2 million immigrants are gone in the last 9 months. Where price doubling?
It seems possible that there are simply so many illegal immigrants in the US that even herculean efforts at mass deportations will take years, e.g. enough time to gracefully offramp most industries.
The price doubling will happen when the illegal immigrant laborers and workers are actually removed. The Trump administration just isn't doing anything about the immigrant workforce because keeping the costs of basic staples down is a higher priority than actually delivering on removing immigrants - remove the migrant workers and prices will increase because the jobs currently being performed by illegal immigrants will have to be done legally, which means paying at the very least minimum wage and respecting basic workplace health and safety laws. If an American breaks their back working on your farm, you're actually responsible. If an illegal immigrant breaks their back working on your farm they're fucked and you don't have to pay anything, which keeps costs down.
Look, I'm extremely pro deportation of illegal immigrants and foreign workers/scabs - but you actually have to do it! Trump just isn't removing the illegal immigrants who are the biggest problem because the entire American domestic economy is resting on their backs. The "deal" that society accepted with regards to illegal immigrants in the past was that they would dramatically drive down labor costs by being exempt from employment law/minimum wages etc, which would in turn make all sorts of things less expensive. It was a bad dead, it was always a bad deal, but you're just being dishonest if you don't think there are real tradeoffs involved here. In order for the working class and heritage Americans to have good jobs picking fruit, that fruit is going to have to cost more than when it was picked by an imported serf.
(edited for clarity)
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Yeah, of course this is part of it. How could it not be? This is a political question being driven by political considerations for the consumption of audiences of political information. A government should deliver on its pre-election promises as best it can and make sure its voters know about it. Else it will lose to ones that do.
The optics, as you said, but also - why not? People interfering with ICE operations are in open defiance of Federal courts. They're deporting people with final orders of deportation. How much restraint is the Sovereign supposed to show towards internal unrest? (That's rhetorical, it's situational.)
Now we do live in a world of state level legalized marijuana so it's absolutely fair to call the administration hypocritical to choose to bring a sledgehammer to immigration law enforcement while playing dumb on marijuana. Completely true and fair and it doesn't change the fact that the Feds can enforce their law inside States up to Constitutional limits when and where and how they choose.
The best thing Dem elected officials could do (and to be fair, I assume basically are doing in many times and places) for the country would be to provide exactly as much assistance as legally required. This is not necessarily the best thing for them to always do electorally. Similar dilemmas exist on the Republican side.
Or, to invoke my proud heritage of a defeated people: why did the 82nd Airborne have to invade Little Rock?
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Proposition 1: it is impossible to deport millions of people by actually catching them and deporting them.
Proposition 2: People who are afraid will self deport.
Proposition 3: We want to deport millions.
Solution: Make illegals afraid they might be caught and disappeared.
Here in Texas we’re getting radio ads to that effect.
“If you’re in the country illegally, leave.”
Definitely in line with the strategy.
But those ads are in English. Might I suggest that they’re campaign ads for Trump and not actually targeted at illegals?
¿Por que no los dos?
It’s one of the more efficient and reasonable approaches of this initiative, in my opinion.
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There are Spanish versions of those ads. I suspect they're both.
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Illegals aren't afraid of being caught by ICE, they're afraid of having to leave America. The only illegals who will actually leave on their own are either rich enough to avoid the dysfunction of their home countries (in which case, they're probably not illegal) or so dirt-poor that it makes no difference. For the average Jose, living in America is such a massive increase to quality of life that he'll pay his life savings to smugglers for the chance to escape his shithole of origin[1].
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This solution would still work nearly as well if ICE just acquired a reputation of being very efficient, without the Trumpian "fuck the left" optics.
Lol, Lmao even. Why do you think ICE gets to pick their own optics? Like any federal agency, they get to wear whatever label the media slaps on them today. And the leftoid media industrial complex has decided "nazi storm troopers" is the label ICE gets to wear for the foreseeable future.
Compared to most feds, ICE seems to be undertaking an extremely difficult task, that puts them in quite a lot of personal danger, in a reasonably professional manner. That puts them in the top 5% of efficient agencies as far as I'm concerned. Lefty shitflinging will happen completely independently of how ICE is actually performing, because it mostly works at convincing the average lefty voter their country is turning into the Fourth Reich.
They literally posted a montage of dudes in masks blowing up doors and arresting people with the pokemon theme song.
No media bias required to look retarded
You did the meme.
I voted for this, actually. Deport all foreigners, especially the legal ones, especially the unnaturalized paper citizens, especially the anchor babies. I do not care about their rights, I do not care about their welfare, I do not care where they go when they leave here, I care that they are gone. The longer it takes to accomplish this, and the more resistance encountered, the less I'm going to care about norms, or laws, or rights, or anything other than what I want accomplished.
This is called being a reactionary. The thing is, you can simply fix what I'm reacting to and I won't be a reactionary any more. Neat trick.
I agree! That's why they're going after farms and hotels, two of the biggest employers of illegal immigrants and the main reason they come to America.
Oh wait, they explicitly said they aren't...
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"Gotta catch 'em [illegal immigrants] all" has long been a mantra of Trump and his his supporters.
You think its retarded because the media bias in this country has led you to believe Anarcho-Tyranny is an acceptable form of government. That montage was a cute little poke at the fact that its not, and times are a' changin.
No I think it's retarded because it looked bad and doesn't help them achieve their stated goals.
The economist shows his approval on immigration is down to -10% now versus +10% in January. Nate Silver shows him going from ~+9% to -4% with now (just) over 50% disapproval.
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You would prefer "Ride Of The Valkyries" or "Bad Boys" or "Paint it Black" perhaps?
None of the above. I take law enforcement seriously and I expect the government should too.
Well, "Bad Boys" is kinda hokey, but "Ride of the Valkyries" is serious and "Paint it Black" is in a minor key. So maybe you want no music at all, just ICE agents shouting and the sounds of the raids?
I would prefer 0 montages posted by law enforcement to tiktok, to be clear
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Because they're posting videos from their own raids, and those videos get lots of engagement, and the reactions to the videos that ICE posts is largely in line with what you'd expect given what footage ICE chooses to show and how they choose to show it.
Yes, but that is all far, far downstream of the media industrial complex's and the DNC's (but I repeat myself) decision to push the idea that immigration law doesnt matter and anyone who enforces it is a evil nazi. What options does ICE have? Attempt to arrest between 10-30 million illegals, give them multiple hearings, provide all legal care and shelter during said hearing period, while being fought tooth and claw by approximately half of the population? Lol, not a fucking chance.
ICE is doing the only thing it can do- demonstrate in a highly visible way that they will enforce the law, and the days of free-riding are over, might as well self-deport doe the thousand bucks and free plane ticket. If this offends the left, well, fuck it, they broke the system first.
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Consider the possibility that you are in a bubble. Twitter will show you what it thinks you want to see. When I look at the last "cruel" ICE post on twitter, it shows 161k likes and 10k comments, almost all of which appear to be positive on the logged-out, incognito-mode mirror I'm checking.
I don't think faul_sname meant that the reaction is overwhelmingly negative. But if the positive reactions are along the lines of "hell yeah! make illegals afraid!" rather than "ah, normal policemen doing their work normally, how neat and orderly" then it's still support for the claim that ICE is deliberately projecting an image of themselves as scary chaotic mofos. Which they are. You might very well think that's a good thing because it'll intimidate illegals into self-deporting, but "ICE are scary goons" isn't left-wing slander, it's the image they're deliberately leaning into because that's what Trump's base wants them to do.
I think the "chaotic" you slipped in with no justification there is doing basically all the work in holding up your position.
They're projecting themselves as competent, efficient, confident, inevitable, and actually having a great time doing it.
All of those things seem pretty fine for law enforcement.
That may be what they're attempting to do, but if so, I don't think it's working. "Chaotic", in the sense of "unpredictable; not reliably constrained by rules", is definitely part of the current image - see all the hubbub about their (supposed?) lack of respect for due process. I think if you're a legal immigrant, or indeed a birthright citizen who looks superficially foreign, you aren't currently going to have absolute confidence that ICE will leave you alone - or even let you go with an apology, if they should get you by mistake. To an even greater extent, if you are an illegal immigrant, I don't think you're going to be confident that ICE will guarantee you all the protections and legal counsel that you're entitled to.
And I… don't think this is an effect of left-wing smear campaigns? I get the vibe that these are, if not objectively justified fears, then at least fears that ICE are happy to encourage, presumably because they feel like it enhances their intimidation factor. They could certainly do more to fight that impression, if it is indeed a misconception. Hence, optics-wise - chaotic, not just efficient.
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I'm not saying that ICE is picking their own optics, I'm saying that the Trump camp are framing their immigration enforcement in a "fuck the left" way.
Okay, and I'm saying its only "fuck the left" because the left has abandoned any pretense of rule of law and embraced Anarcho-Tyranny. The left could end the controversy tomorrow, if they just said "actually yes, lets enforce immigration law and stop selectively chosing which criminals are good and which are bad. Then we can work on comprehensive reform."
"Fuck ICE fascists!" Is not the own the left thinks its is.
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Yeah. The mainstream media is definitely trying to make ICE look maximally bad, but also there's been a conspicuous decision from the people managing ICE to maximize the intimidation impact of their activities.
Which might not even be a bad idea, considering it keeps the Red Tribe happy that 'something is being done', makes the blue tribe wail amusingly and seems to have cut down on people entering the country.
Its not just not a bad idea, its the only idea that will work. Self-deportations greatly outnumber ICE deportations, and have to do so for anything meaningful to be accomplished.
The legal system in America is simply unable to deal with millions of deportation hearings, you have to set examples pour encourager les autres.
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No, it wouldn't because the optics are the primary deterrent and the right wouldn't control the bureaucratic infrastructure that would be overseeing this "efficient" process. Without the optics of swift deportation, left wing lawyers and nonprofits would be using every tool imaginable in order to become equally as efficient at delaying deportations.
Just go after American farm owners who pay illegals American money to work for them.
You don't even need to deport them, make it impossible for them to work, make them poorer in America than they are in Mexico, that will solve this permanently.
If you aren't targeting the employers of illegal immigrants, you aren't serious about immigration. If you aren't pushing e-verify, you aren't serious about immigration. If Trump EXPLICITLY says he's not enforcing immigration against farms and hotels, it's clear he's not serious about immigration.
Go after our agricultural industry and significantly increase food prices? What political benefit does that have?
Most in the Republican party don't actually care about getting rid of all illegal immigration. They care about progressives and democrats giving the entire planet a green light to migrate here.
Pause for a moment and try to disabuse yourself of the literalness of the argument you hold yourself to. Nobody who runs the country actually thinks they can get rid of all illegals and survive it politically, but if we can project an image that says "We will deport you if you come or stay here illegally." then the likelihood of people trying to come here illegally plummets. This is far more preferable than quickly creating or using a system that the left will then take and turn into an entry permission slip for millions of illegals, like they already have. If Dems and Republicans want to re-implement something like that, then ok, but it will fuck with the optics and people will flood the border, and the media will report on the humanitarian crisis, and Democrats will adopt policy to allow more people in than what was agreed to. Overall, you want to perfect or streamline something that is ripe for left wing overreach. We know this because we just got out of an admin that did it.
I actually agree with most of what you wrote but projecting an image of:
"If you come here, you won't make any money because every farmer/hotel/roofing company will be too scared to even talk to you, let alone give you american dollars in exchange for your time. You have more economic opportunities in Mexico than you ever will here."
Would be even more effective. In the current version if you can get to Texas/Florida/California and find a farm to work for, you know you're pretty safe.
Sure but then doing dumb shit that degrades personal liberty and stretches norms about acceptable government force isn't worth the marginal benefit of deporting a small % of illegals? That's a horrible trade.
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Given everything you say is true, who are my alternatives? Where is my better option?
I don't see one, and so I won't let perfect be the enemy of good, I'll take what I can get and ask for more.
That's fair enough, I guess I'd just hope you'd ask for more in general from your government and society
America is really down bad if that's where people's standard is lol
It is indeed, no lol. This is what it now takes just to see that the law is enforced. For decades, we've waited for another option, and tried many, and nothing has worked. Things will continue to get more extreme until either the law is actually enforced or America rips itself apart.
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I used to ask for more in general. I voted third-party in every presidential election from when I turned 18 through 2020 because I wanted more than what the two parties were offering.
Then I saw how Biden "governed." And how Mayorkas "defended" my homeland.
It was a tough lesson to learn, but not one I'm likely to forget.
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You have a point. I can see how that would be the case, although that doesn't mean I think that it's necessarily worth the damage it causes to society in other ways or that I necessarily believe that this is the Trump camp's actual motivation.
I can't help but see every counter proposal made thus far as anything other than favorable to progressives and detrimental to Republicans and their voters.
If they try to be legally efficient and spend months checking boxes for every potential deportee, it slows the process and works in favor of Democrats and progressives.
If they defer to local law enforcement overseen by Democratic mayors, it slows the process and works in favor of Democrats and progressives.
If agents remove their masks and get doxxed by the public, it endangers agents and slows the process and works in favor of Democrats and progressives.
If they kneecap ICE agents' discretion when it comes to use of force, it slows the process and works in favor of Democrats and progressives.
Democrats and Republicans working together on maximizing efficiency and morality of deportations would be something, but it simply is not possible. Democrats will resist every step of the way.
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