In basically no other country and in no other time in American history do you have the birthright citizenship and tolerance of illegal immigrants to the level the 20% remaining Democrat approvers have.

These are the politics of 2008 Barack Obama.

This is not a dichotomy. Border and deportation reform can coincide with accepting the practical reality of undocumented residents currently in the US.

Republicans allowed this willingly, too.

Ripping apart millions of families and snatching peaceful residents off the streets, out of churches, off of farms and out of courtrooms with masked agents is not the only way.

Separately: Birthright citizenship is a fair topic to debate. What is not normal is pretending it isn't one of the most plain and direct clauses in the Constitution.

There are other paths.

> is not the only way

> There are other paths.

But there aren't if no one walks them. How did Trump manage to almost instantly shut down the 10k (or whatever it is) a day crossings the previous administration said was impossible to stop?

Because if you're the party of illegal immigration and you oppose voter ID (because your core voters have such low expectations of African Amerticans that you can claim it's about them not being able to get an ID) then you can import voters.

And then you can indeed also claim "well they're here now; nothing can be done", and indeed do nothing. But that is also not the only path. No path is the only path, so using that criticism selectively is deliberately misleading.

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

Yes, indeed. When the wild west was a meat grinder bodies were needed. And no one was paid benefits from other peoples' taxes, so it was real freedom (and responsibility), as adding people didn't add cost.

Both of those things have radically changed.

> In basically no other country... do you have the birthright citizenship

I see plenty of countries on here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_soli#/media/File:Jus_soli_... what're you talking about?

Whenever I hear anything about the US in the last months it sounds like from a bad movie.

Trump always wanted to be in show business, not real estate. Now he runs the government like he's playing the role of Mafia boss on The Apprentice.

Growing up reading cyberpunk, this is both expected and welcome.

if this app is the "hmm" moment for anybody, god help us.

This is very American, The Green Book guided Black travelers to safe businesses during Jim Crow. The Underground Railroad was literally an information network to help enslaved people reach freedom. During WWII, communities helped hide Japanese Americans from internment. LGBTQ+ people created networks to find safe spaces during decades of criminalization. Native communities have long shared information about safe passage and resources.

Perfectly put. American as in the historic reality. Unamerican as in the marketing ideal.

Well said. A few days ago I made a response to a comment in a thread, where I laid out a list of some aspects of American Culture [1]. And, 2 of the BIG ones in the Beliefs category were, "fundamental distrust in government and a shared collective identity in those against it, free-speech absolutism"

1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=HaZeust#44411990

Except they don't believe in free-speech absolutism. They say they do, but they obviously don't, because every time one of them gets in control of speech, they make it substantially less free.

They don't believe in fundamental distrust of government either, they're a little more forgiving of interpretation and purpose of policy when they're in charge - nonetheless, these virtues are in the American zeitgeist for better or for worse.

Reminders like these are strangely comforting to me. It tells me we've been through this and worse, and have come out intact or even better afterward.

This to me isn’t comforting at all because what we’re seeing now is a regression. We haven’t dealt with a regression before.

I'm wondering if the West Bank has such a guide to avoid settlers.

I was going to write expletives. But lets rather reflect. When is this ICE stuff going to end?

Well, they just got like $170 Billion budget passed, so they've got plenty of money to stay busy for a while.

3x more than the Marine Corps, for those at home keeping score.

A military branch (either de facto or de jure) that exists for the majority purpose to directly target, round up, and imprison or deport individuals on U.S. soil - especially with a proven record of limiting due process - should have NEVER happened. I cannot stress enough, we're a few bad days - and more and more likely 1 executive action away - from at-scale "Tree of Liberty" stuff.

Over what timeframe and earmarked for what?

Let's figure out accurately what scale and scope of damage and harassment is coming.

See also: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ice-budget-big-beautiful-b...

When there aren't enough illegal aliens left to warrant it. If you think those people have a right to be there then campaign for that but meanwhile the government should not just give up the rule of law.

> ...but meanwhile the government should not just give up the rule of law.

Isn't due process a rule of law? How about laws against bribery?

The self-unware irony...

The mission creep of the ICE Gestapo will eventually include deporting (forced disappearance and exiling) US citizens who don't agree with the cult^H^H^H^Hadministration.

Source?

Trump himself said he would like to deport citizens.

Well, perhaps if there's a Democratic president in four years, and they aren't afraid to break laws as much as Trump does, they could abolish ICE by withholding Congressional funding, destroying it the way this administration destroyed USAID, and reorganize other agencies to pick up the slack, which is how it was before 2003, when ICE was established.

I don’t believe we will have another free and fair election in this country.

I'm pessimistic about it, too.

Past performance estimates future results, and it shows that while Democrats don't actively make things worse, they also don't actively make things better. This is illustrated in the "ratchet and pawl model.

When the Republicans are in power they move things rightwards. When the Democrats are in power they don't move things in either direction. The net effect is a move to the right, and you cannot influence that by voting, and the overall rate of movement depends on how often each party wins, which you can influence by voting.

The chance that a third party wins and moves things leftwards is zero.

Never? Both parties have voted to fund ICE always. Perhaps if one party or the other was entirely voted out and replaced?

Yes, having enough illegal aliens to make such an app worthwhile is concerning.

There was an 18 year old legal resident in my city that was forcibly pulled out of his house by ICE, was ignored when he showed his papers, and was shipped from Kentucky to Louisiana where they tried to "deport" him for literally no reason. After a bunch of unnecessary judicial stalling, they just kicked him out on to the street 600 miles from home and he would have essentially been homeless if the community hadn't rallied around him.

It's not a unique story.

How is this still your stance after everything that’s happened?

I mean you could definitely argue that from the other side as well.

“We should note that in 2025 we need an app to help people breaking the law avoid law enforcement”