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I think in general ICE defenders want the perception of unpredictability, even if they don't admit it. The fact that it's sometimes ICE itself posting the videos of sloppy and menacing looking raids that serve as both content for those on the right and outrage bait to ICE opponents speaks volumes. Some here will be more open about the usefulness of this perception, arguing that it's only by creating a climate of fear among immigrant communities that you can defeat the pull factor causing people to come to the country. They believe 'I am here but at the pleasure of capricious forces' is what we want going through the heads of all immigrants, legal and illegal, as well as anyone who might be somewhat 'bad guy' presenting (e.g. tattoos, ethnicity, employed in a precarious and peripatetic part of the economy). They want a sense of order that comes through establishing, with shows of force, who is in charge. I understand the motivation behind that attitude, though I disagree with it. What I find insulting is people trying to claim that what we are seeing is genuinely intended just as efficient implementation of rules, and it's the media doing all the scaremongering.
My primary issue is that I have yet to see a left-leaning person espouse a position in favor of immigration restrictions that actually work, in any country. The mention of e-verify by left-leaning posters is a good example here; Going specifically after the working illegals is the stupidest option possible, and would result in not only still having the illegals in the country, but now they can't earn anything except through crime or charity. You can't imagine an approach better optimized to cause a surge in crime and welfare abuse, and I'm 100% sure that the left would have made fun of the right if they actually had done it that way around. This is pretty much the situation in germany right now, btw. I mostly consider myself in the center, and all I want is a working border enforcement and the deportation of immigrants who aren't working after several years of being here. But no matter what the right tries, the left will even make a mockery of it and blatantly work around it (like "help navigating how to get access to the german welfare system" by telling people who are currently in poland how to get past german checkpoints) and if not successful, they will complain until the right stops whatever it is that is actually working. I can see how, to a genuine right-winger, this will translate into "If the left complains, that means we are doing something right; the harder, the better". I'm still sufficiently worried about right-wing dysfunction to really be in favour, but the ICE situation seems like the logical endpoint of this game.
Yes, I think this is a fair criticism of the left. I don't think it's terribly surprising the left would recoil from a position that seems to excuse companies profiting by employing illegal immigrants, but punishes being an illegal migrant. It seems a bit downpunchy, and to constitute an acknowledgement that government policy is to deliberately cause people to want to come to the US, and then deliberately punish them when they do. However I think the left should be working to find a policy package that resolves these tensions in a way that it is more thoughtful than the right-wing version.
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