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Comment by assimpleaspossi

16 days ago

Were these thousands of people all legal US citizens?

>Glad things are comfy for you though.

Things for my family, my relatives and me are great! When I was in my early 20s I often went hungry. Now I'm worth a lot of money. Couldn't be happier as a normal, decent, everyday US citizen.

As someone completely unaffected by both the protests and deportations, I still feel quite sad about the current situation.

I feel like we should still have empathy, not only for the people who are completely clean legally, but also for the illegal immigrants. Sure, they made a choice which put them at odds with the legal system, and yet I still don't want them beaten up, stripped of any of their rights (as non-citizens), with their families destroyed. I keep thinking, if I was in their situation, I could've made that same choice, it's certainly possible, if I was just born somewhere else.

Now I don't think illegal immigrants are guilt-free I suppose, some of them are horrible people I'm sure, and they still deserve humane treatment, I have a lot of faith that that's still one of the most important pillars of a good society.

Obviously we can argue about numbers, maybe abuse doesn't even happen often at all, maybe every single person abused has committed a crime. It could be, and even then we should try to be humane, if we can...

I am always happy to hear when people are doing well though! Most of us won't be directly affected, luckily, and I really hope it will stay that way as well. The less people in duress, the better.

  • You are free to spend your own money to make those people's lives better in their own country or even to get them US citizenship or residency through legal channels if applicable. Turning developed countries into a welfare system for the world's desperate is not a solution to anything and will only result in those developed countries regressing to lower standards of living if not outright imploding as you end up importing the root problems causing the desperation along with the immigrants.

  • Continually pandering to "humane" bullshit is why the country has become the way it is.

    • And what exactly is that way? Semi-official paramilitary groups harassing americans? Desperate attempts to demonize minorities? Threats to prevent future elections? Trade wars that fuck over the american economy and moronic foreign policy that pisses away decades of power accumulation? That's all the fault of asking people to be humane?

      5 replies →

Wrong question. The right question is, "were any of them US citizens or legal residents?" And the answer is yes, some of them were. For some of them the use of past tense is particularly appropriate because they are no more.

  • That is not the right question because a) zero mistakes is not a reasonable standard for any country-scale operation and b) legal residency does not preclude there being a valid reason for deportation such as violating the terms of that residency permit.

    • What we’re seeing isn’t mistakes, it’s deliberate abuse. You don’t accidentally tackle somebody and shoot them in the back ten times.