I can think of many uses for "surveillance state technology" that have nothing to do with immigration: It can be used against citizens and legal residents too.
But the sorts of ICE actions that are causing this controversy only have political support because the US immigration laws have been flouted for 30+ years. Regardless of what you or I think of it it’s the reality that lots of the electorate wants deportations and lots of them and that likely isn’t true in a world where the laws on the books were more strictly enforced in the past.
What political support? Is there evidence to back that claim? The most recent polls I've seen about this are Gallup's polls from July and they suggest that 62% of Americans disapprove of how Trump is handling immigration. This includes a majority of Dems and Independents. The trend is more and more people disapprove of Trump on this topic as time moves forward.
They want deportations because... because someone told them that immigration is the cause of all of their personal problems, which is a lie.
It doesn't matter about the "support" for it when that support is predicated on a complete lie, that immigration is bad for America when it demonstrably is good for America.
They don't have majority political support. Even many Trump voters are against it. Also Trump has repeatedly violated immigration law, hell Trump tower wouldn't exist without the work of unauthorized Polish workers
Red herring. Political support is due to mass media narrative campaigns, in this day and age groundswell politics is simply infeasible with the power that narrative has in today's culture.
on the books immigration law has been broken for decades. do you expect people across the border wait a decade to get their turn for an immigration interview only to be turned down, when they can just cross the border?
When laws become impractical, they create 11 million law breakers.
Hundreds of thousands to millions of people have come to the US legally each year for the last thirty years.[0] How is that impractical? In fact the share of immigrants in the US has increased significantly (by 3 times) in the last 50 years, and is above the level of the EU, and is at the highest level in the last 100 years in the US.[1][2] Even if legal immigration was set to zero, that shouldn't give people the right to come here illegally.
To be clear I am not making an argument that mass surveillance is needed to solve any problem.
US vs EU vs OECD: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SM.POP.TOTL.ZS?most_rec... - I'm pretty sure the values here include illegal immigration as well, so if you factor that in the US may be lower than the EU, but again still at historically very high levels.
The biggest illegal immigration source is the southern border. Yes, lots of people have immigrated, but they're a tiny fraction of those who wanted to immigrate. H-1B is a good example, it counts as immigration but it is really not, it is residency contingent on specific employment contracts. Those people with H-1B have no way to gain permanent residency without their employer sponsoring them, which would let them leave the company so employers don't tend to do that a lot.
The comparison with EU is not meaningful, especially since it isn't even a country. The population growth of the US and the world as a hole has also risen by more than that factor, even in the past two decades or so it has more than doubled.
The entire point is that they legally in fact may not do so, and have only been doing so because of the lack of enforcement GP cites.
> When laws become impractical, they create 11 million law breakers.
We don't have nearly the same scale of problem in Canada. That probably has much more to do with only sharing an unsecured land border with a rich country.
It isn't. 2/3rds of illegal immigrants come to the US legally (and then overstay). Unless you make it illegal for non-citizens to visit the US, you can't stop most illegal immigration.
employers hiring illegal migrants is also an option for them. those employers are not being targeted by ICE. It's the DEA arresting drug users but being buddies with drug lords all over again.
> on the books immigration law has been broken for decades. do you expect people across the border wait a decade to get their turn for an immigration interview only to be turned down, when they can just cross the border?
No, I don't expect that at all. However the problem with your scenario isn't that they need to wait their turn, it's that they can "just cross the border". That fact that that has been allowed was an intentional policy decision.
How? As a migrant to the US I have generally found the rules quite reasonable, the UX of the websites is poorer than say the UK but the rules seem fine.
> do you expect people across the border wait a decade to get their turn for an immigration interview only to be turned down, when they can just cross the border?
Well yes, that's what following the law means. They can't complain about it, it's not their country, and they don't have a say on the rules.
In a similar vein by your logic, if you are in a hurry, why should you obey traffic laws when you can just run a red light or a stop sign right?
Hierarchy of needs. People want to follow the law, they need food,shelter, medicine,etc.. You can punish law breakers, but if you don't provide a way to lawfully do the thing, you're only breeding law breakers and nothing more.
A missing perspective here might be that even long term imprisonment isn't a deterrent for many migrants. The disparity in living conditions is just that steep.
Ah, the paper tiger crisis. Clearly the misdemeanor of being in the country illegally requires new technology to be developed for state surveillance to enforce those laws, police cannot possibly be expected to do their job without it /s.
The expectation of privacy and personal freedoms of 350M people seems to be an inconvenience for the state wanting deporting a few more people per year.
as opposed to the big gate across the border being closed? you people are insane, do you realize that even democrats have been deporting people, separating families, locking up illegal immigrants,etc...?
They are not being enforced now. In fact the current administration is actively trying to circumvent the law. Which should not be surprising considering how much Trump has violated immigration law in his personal life
Not strictly enforcing the speed limit wouldn't justify the use of secret police to crack down on that either. But there's no xenophobia for speeders, so we don't see this action for them and we don't have to see specious takes like this defending it.
Excessive speeders in the absence of speed-limit enforcement just creates neighbors that don't mind their neighborhood being consumed by speed bumps/dips, I think there's an analogy here in residential areas. And if you have a lot of children in your neighborhood, there IS a 'xx-phobia' for speeders. But speed bumps and dips are an absolute nuisance and sometimes dangerous, so just having cameras identify and a system willing to punish speeders would absolutely be the preference.
I can think of many uses for "surveillance state technology" that have nothing to do with immigration: It can be used against citizens and legal residents too.
I don’t buy that for a second. Governments always want more control, and this is just another way for them to get it.
But the sorts of ICE actions that are causing this controversy only have political support because the US immigration laws have been flouted for 30+ years. Regardless of what you or I think of it it’s the reality that lots of the electorate wants deportations and lots of them and that likely isn’t true in a world where the laws on the books were more strictly enforced in the past.
What political support? Is there evidence to back that claim? The most recent polls I've seen about this are Gallup's polls from July and they suggest that 62% of Americans disapprove of how Trump is handling immigration. This includes a majority of Dems and Independents. The trend is more and more people disapprove of Trump on this topic as time moves forward.
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They want deportations because... because someone told them that immigration is the cause of all of their personal problems, which is a lie.
It doesn't matter about the "support" for it when that support is predicated on a complete lie, that immigration is bad for America when it demonstrably is good for America.
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They don't have majority political support. Even many Trump voters are against it. Also Trump has repeatedly violated immigration law, hell Trump tower wouldn't exist without the work of unauthorized Polish workers
Red herring. Political support is due to mass media narrative campaigns, in this day and age groundswell politics is simply infeasible with the power that narrative has in today's culture.
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But if they hadn't been flouted, the US would be a dirt farm specializing in the farming and production of dirt. Hacker news wouldn't even exist.
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They'd find a need (or excuse) for it regardless of the state of our immigration system.
This is actually true, since there’s no need for it now and there would be no need for it in your silly hypothetical too.
> your silly hypothetical too.
The stats for Southwest Land Border Encounters are available at https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/southwest-land-border-enc... and the HN guidelines are available at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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on the books immigration law has been broken for decades. do you expect people across the border wait a decade to get their turn for an immigration interview only to be turned down, when they can just cross the border?
When laws become impractical, they create 11 million law breakers.
Hundreds of thousands to millions of people have come to the US legally each year for the last thirty years.[0] How is that impractical? In fact the share of immigrants in the US has increased significantly (by 3 times) in the last 50 years, and is above the level of the EU, and is at the highest level in the last 100 years in the US.[1][2] Even if legal immigration was set to zero, that shouldn't give people the right to come here illegally.
To be clear I am not making an argument that mass surveillance is needed to solve any problem.
[0] https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/green-card-holders-a...
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2024... via https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/09/27/u-s-immig...
[2] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SM.POP.TOTL.ZS?most_rec...
US vs EU vs OECD: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SM.POP.TOTL.ZS?most_rec... - I'm pretty sure the values here include illegal immigration as well, so if you factor that in the US may be lower than the EU, but again still at historically very high levels.
The biggest illegal immigration source is the southern border. Yes, lots of people have immigrated, but they're a tiny fraction of those who wanted to immigrate. H-1B is a good example, it counts as immigration but it is really not, it is residency contingent on specific employment contracts. Those people with H-1B have no way to gain permanent residency without their employer sponsoring them, which would let them leave the company so employers don't tend to do that a lot.
The comparison with EU is not meaningful, especially since it isn't even a country. The population growth of the US and the world as a hole has also risen by more than that factor, even in the past two decades or so it has more than doubled.
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> do you expect people across the border wait a decade to get their turn for an immigration interview only to be turned down
The backlog isn't a consequence of the law.
Is there a country that doesn't expect people to go through some kind of qualification process in order to immigrate legally? Here's what it looks like in Canada (where I live), for example: https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/se... It's actually quite complex, and depends on additional provincial legislation. And then there's citizenship on top of that: https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/se...
> when they can just cross the border?
The entire point is that they legally in fact may not do so, and have only been doing so because of the lack of enforcement GP cites.
> When laws become impractical, they create 11 million law breakers.
We don't have nearly the same scale of problem in Canada. That probably has much more to do with only sharing an unsecured land border with a rich country.
>when they can just cross the border
This is also a choice for the people in charge of the border. Enforcing a border is a solved problem for a rich, large-population nation.
It isn't. 2/3rds of illegal immigrants come to the US legally (and then overstay). Unless you make it illegal for non-citizens to visit the US, you can't stop most illegal immigration.
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employers hiring illegal migrants is also an option for them. those employers are not being targeted by ICE. It's the DEA arresting drug users but being buddies with drug lords all over again.
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> on the books immigration law has been broken for decades. do you expect people across the border wait a decade to get their turn for an immigration interview only to be turned down, when they can just cross the border?
No, I don't expect that at all. However the problem with your scenario isn't that they need to wait their turn, it's that they can "just cross the border". That fact that that has been allowed was an intentional policy decision.
How? As a migrant to the US I have generally found the rules quite reasonable, the UX of the websites is poorer than say the UK but the rules seem fine.
> do you expect people across the border wait a decade to get their turn for an immigration interview only to be turned down, when they can just cross the border?
Well yes, that's what following the law means. They can't complain about it, it's not their country, and they don't have a say on the rules.
In a similar vein by your logic, if you are in a hurry, why should you obey traffic laws when you can just run a red light or a stop sign right?
If the light never turned green you'd bet your butt that plenty of people would run the light.
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Hierarchy of needs. People want to follow the law, they need food,shelter, medicine,etc.. You can punish law breakers, but if you don't provide a way to lawfully do the thing, you're only breeding law breakers and nothing more.
A missing perspective here might be that even long term imprisonment isn't a deterrent for many migrants. The disparity in living conditions is just that steep.
1 reply →
Ah, the paper tiger crisis. Clearly the misdemeanor of being in the country illegally requires new technology to be developed for state surveillance to enforce those laws, police cannot possibly be expected to do their job without it /s.
The expectation of privacy and personal freedoms of 350M people seems to be an inconvenience for the state wanting deporting a few more people per year.
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1. No it wasn't
2. It's not any less open now
as opposed to the big gate across the border being closed? you people are insane, do you realize that even democrats have been deporting people, separating families, locking up illegal immigrants,etc...?
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They are not being enforced now. In fact the current administration is actively trying to circumvent the law. Which should not be surprising considering how much Trump has violated immigration law in his personal life
Not strictly enforcing the speed limit wouldn't justify the use of secret police to crack down on that either. But there's no xenophobia for speeders, so we don't see this action for them and we don't have to see specious takes like this defending it.
Excessive speeders in the absence of speed-limit enforcement just creates neighbors that don't mind their neighborhood being consumed by speed bumps/dips, I think there's an analogy here in residential areas. And if you have a lot of children in your neighborhood, there IS a 'xx-phobia' for speeders. But speed bumps and dips are an absolute nuisance and sometimes dangerous, so just having cameras identify and a system willing to punish speeders would absolutely be the preference.
Because American citizens and documented immigrants never commit crimes? Nonsense.