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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   7777 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 26, 2026

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This sudden received indisputable wisdom that going after the employers is the best and only reasonable way to do anything about illegal immigration and, as a result, going directly after illegal immmigrants is cruel and should be verboten is not credible.

Granting somewhere on the Internet someone has probably said this, this looks like a straw man to me.

Multiple honest posters here have claimed that the lack of E-Verify mandate means that everything else is unserious and that failure to do so is why "many conservatives who actually care about immigration are pissed at Trump".

For the specific combination that employer mandates are the only reasonable approach and that going after illegal immigrants is cruel :

Why won't Congress pass any number of measures that would criminalize, fine, and prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants? If the economic opportunity were much more limited, nobody would jump the border if they couldn't feed themselves after!

...

how and why do they have the time to go get this guy who appears to be causing no issues, other than being illegal? I understand that in the minds of many, that is sufficient, and that anyone who's illegal should be deported - ok, but what is pursuing that goal worth? Is it worth sending agents of the state to chase people down? T

...

No - they're simply sweeping up whomever they can find, arresting people with valid paperwork, who entered lawfully, on the basis that the government has decided it wants to re-think prior decisions. This policy is illegal, cruel, arbitrary, and capricious. This is what ICE is doing in Minnesota - illegally kidnapping lawful migrants. If this alone is not worth taking to the streets to protest, what is?

Do you think any nuance exists in these objections? Perhaps something less absolute than "going directly after illegal immigrants is cruel and should be verboten"? Is it possible the presence or absence of certain qualifying adverbs might impact the meaning of such statements?

I think nuance could exist in objections similar to the ones provided: a post that considered things like how sanctuary city policies have actually interacted with enforcement of deportation orders rather than The One Time Someone Got Caught, or whether immigration lawyers might lie in pleadings or asylum filings. I don't think it was shown, here, or that it'd be consistent with PmMeClassicMemes' other recent public positions.

There's nothing wrong with holding those positions. There's nothing illegitimate with arguing them! But they exist, in their strongest form; they are not strawmen.

I do not think @The_Nybbler was referring to "their strongest form." I am aware there are people who genuinely believe immigration laws should not be enforced and everything ICE does is illegitimate. @PmMeClassicMemes does not seem to be saying "immigration laws should not be enforced" (in fact he says the opposite), and I don't know of anyone other than the most radical leftists who'd agree that literally no one, not even a convicted felon, should be deported ever. @The_Nybbler seems to be merely taking a shit, as he usually does, on people who have moderate-to-strong opposition to the maximal position.

The other posts you quoted seem to be generally agreeing with my own personal position, which is that immigration laws should be enforced, but the administration is unserious about really doing that because they are more interested in setting up confrontations on the streets than applying any pressure at all on the businesses who continue to incentivize illegal immigration.

The other posts you quoted seem to be generally agreeing with my own personal position, which is that immigration laws should be enforced, but the administration is unserious about really doing that because they are more interested in setting up confrontations on the streets than applying any pressure at all on the businesses who continue to incentivize illegal immigration.

But this is the claim you were responding to:

This sudden received indisputable wisdom that going after the employers is the best and only reasonable way to do anything about illegal immigration and, as a result, going directly after illegal immmigrants is cruel and should be verboten is not credible.

Which is perfectly consistent with what you're saying now. Notice that you changed "going directly after illegal immigrants" to "immigration laws should be enforced".

The two statements you quoted are not perfectly consistent.

Adjectives, adverbs, and qualifiers alter the meanings of sentences.

Rhetorical flourishes don't really change the meaning. The way you changed the terminology was much worse in that regard.

I wasn't using rhetorical flourishes. I was using words to communicate things that I actually believe.

You read my statement and your conclusion is that I believe "going after the employers is the best and only reasonable way to do anything about illegal immigration and, as a result, going directly after illegal immigrants is cruel and should be verboten."

Is that correct?

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