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Comment by estearum

1 day ago

There are plenty of people the administration is trying to deport who neither entered nor remained in the country illegally.

For example, Rumeysa Ozturk who was arrested for engaging in 1st Amendment protected speech and put into deportation proceedings despite entering the country legally, staying in the country legally, and breaking none of our country's laws.

Do you think that such a deportation would make the US more or less appealing for immigration? After all, every immigrant has to suspect that they might become a target of such an enforcement action as well.

  • Of course it would make the US less appealing, which means the immigrants with the most optionality of where to go (like researchers, engineers, and high value contributors in general) are disproportionately likely to seek other destinations.

    It would have the least deterrent force on those who are already criminal and otherwise lawless or desperate.

    Back to your claim about this being an "effective" immigration policy: no it's not.

    • I think it is pretty dishonest how you are asserting that I am making arguments, which I never made.

      >which means the immigrants with the most optionality of where to go (like researchers, engineers, and high value contributors in general) are disproportionately likely to seek other destinations.

      >It would have the least deterrent force on those who are already criminal and otherwise lawless or desperate.

      Completely agree. But I want the "researchers, engineers, and high value contributors" even less than the rest. Those groups are actually harder to remove, they often have institutional support in the form of corporations and other associations and might feasibly be positive fiscal contributors. With "the rest" the argument for deportation is far simpler and has far more support in the population. Also my labor competes with the "researchers, engineers, and high value contributors", while "the rest" only depresses the wages of the proletariat who now have to compete with black market labor.

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  • Notably, deporting US citizens would also make the US less appealing for immigration. Would you agree with that? Since fewer people would want to travel to a country where even its own citizens are not safe living there.

    Considering your other arguments above, I assume you are also volunteering to be one of the people deported from the EU for the sake of making it less appealing for immigration?

    • I am sure that my vitriol against immigration more than makes up for me (having no "immigration background" at all) continuing to stay in the EU :P