If We Build It, They'll Probably Still Come

[Mo]

It pisses me off when conservatives say that illegal immigrants are committing a crime. Illegal entry into the US is a civil, not criminal, infraction.

[JasonL]

My favorite/not favorite iteration of that is the "crime wave" that rolled across the EU "directly traceable to illegal immigrants and refugees". To get the crime wave they counted the infraction of being in the country without paperwork. Look a crime wave. Ugh.

[Dangerman]

I bet working without papers is a crime too.

[Jennifer]

It pisses me off when conservatives say that illegal immigrants are committing a crime. Illegal entry into the US is a civil, not criminal, infraction.

I'm especially horrified by how very many of my fellow Americans -- who no doubt think of themselves as "good people" -- justify putting kids in tent cities and other concentration camps precisely because their parents committed this "crime."

[Highway]

I also like (no, not really) how the act of presenting yourself at the border to request asylum is counted as "illegal immigration". There are so many people twisted up in knots trying to justify these atrocities it looks like Hanover, PA.

[Ellie]

I'm frustrated by how many arguments I see (genuine bad reasoning or just being assholes?) conflate opposing a certain type of punishment with saying "there shouldn't be any punishment at all." You try to say the government's actions are unacceptable and the response is "Well, those people broke the law." I don't think shoplifting should be legal but I don't think we should chop people's hands off for doing it. Likewise, I can say "the government should stop tearing kids away from their parents" and not actually be commenting on whether or not immigration of this or that type should be legal. For fuck's sake.

David's mom posted a particularly flip comment about it, and admittedly I read it right after the whole cancelled-driver's-license incident so my patience was in tatters, but I ended up in this one-sided argument with him where he was calmly saying, "People on both sides think they're doing the right thing" and I was yelling, "People who support this are genuinely EVIL! Your mother is a BAD PERSON! I can't respect her any more!"

[Jennifer]

I'm frustrated by how many arguments I see (genuine bad reasoning or just being assholes?) conflate opposing a certain type of punishment with saying "there shouldn't be any punishment at all." You try to say the government's actions are unacceptable and the response is "Well, those people broke the law." I don't think shoplifting should be legal but I don't think we should chop people's hands off for doing it. Likewise, I can say "the government should stop tearing kids away from their parents" and not actually be commenting on whether or not immigration of this or that type should be legal. For fuck's sake.

David's mom posted a particularly flip comment about it, and admittedly I read it right after the whole cancelled-driver's-license incident so my patience was in tatters, but I ended up in this one-sided argument with him where he was calmly saying, "People on both sides think they're doing the right thing" and I was yelling, "People who support this are genuinely EVIL! Your mother is a BAD PERSON! I can't respect her any more!"

By your mother in law's logic, your kids should be locked in cages (or housed in tent cities in 100+ degree heat) because you committed the "crime" (read: civil infraction) of driving without the proper paperwork. If you can pull of the proper faux-innocent attitude, you could try asking your wretched MIL if she thinks her grandkids should be separated from all of their relatives, and the twins separated from each other (because they have different naughty bits), and locked up in Walmarts or tent cities because their mom committed a non-criminal traffic violation.

[Jennifer]

ProPublica got audio recordings of kids inside one of Trump's child-prisons.


In my late teens I briefly worked as an assistant in an at-home day care, and I remember one kid -- might've been a "new" kid, who started at the day care after I was already there -- anyway, I think it might've been the kid's first time away from Mommy (and with strangers, as opposed to "an afternoon at Grandma's" or whatever). So I had to help pry a screaming unhappy toddler off her mother's leg -- with the mother's assistance, and the knowledge that this genuinely was necessary, not in any amoral "I'm just following orders" way, but in the sense that Mommy really did need to go to her job to earn money to support herself and her kid and etc., and furthermore I knew (even if the toddler did not believe) that this separation was only temporary, and Mommy would come back in a few hours and the little girl would sleep in her own bed that night -- and it STILL freakin' shredded me inside.

What the fuck kind of person can take and keep a job pulling kids away from their parents when they know NONE of those mitigating factors are in play? What the fuck kind of government creates jobs for such people?

[Ellie]

If you can pull of the proper faux-innocent attitude, you could try asking your wretched MIL if she thinks her grandkids should be separated from all of their relatives, and the twins separated from each other (because they have different naughty bits), and locked up in Walmarts or tent cities because their mom committed a non-criminal traffic violation.

This is a good point and I actually used it on her, as well as linking to the really good Reason article about it (http://reason.com/volokh/2018/06/17/enf ... dium=email). Hopefully she'll at least understand what point I'm trying to stress instead of going straight for her "the Bible says we should follow the law and immigration restriction is the law and so they broke the law the end."

I'm soooooooooo not clicking on that video, by the way. Maybe I can make David share it with her or something. My mental health is definitely making me stay in this weird space where I'm thinking and talking about the issue but also constantly telling myself it's not really happening because if it gets too real for me I will lose my shit completely (and some people would say this is privilege and blah blah; all I can do is take care of myself, and I'm not a well woman as it is, let's be honest.)

[Jennifer]

I'm soooooooooo not clicking on that video,

I only got less than halfway through, myself. Supposedly, in the part I didn't hear, there's a part where it changes from heartbreaking conversations (subtitled in English-- that's most of what I saw/heard), to even more heartbreaking crying -- and a Border Patrol agent who joked that they sounded like an "orchestra."

Here's a good Twitter thread Julian Sanchez put up yesterday (plus a plain-text rendering for those who don't want to click through and read:)

[Quoted/retweeted comment from Sean McElwee saying "Democrats need to call for a full investigation of possible white supremacist, militia and neo-Nazi infiltration of ICE and CBP."] Julian's comment thread/response: "Who else would sign up at this point? We’ve finally succeeded at creating a government body so inherently monstrous that anyone who agrees to work for it is pretty much automatically garbage. So of course it ends up behaving horrifyingly; what else can you expect from a staff comprising exclusively shit humans? Or, if we craft something gentler NYT can quote: There’s a feedback loop. When an agency openly creates opportunities to enact strategic cruelty, it attracts the cruel."

[Mo]

I caught the video of the kids crying and calling for their parents and my eyes definitely filled up with tears. FFS who can think this shit is a good idea?

[Pham Nuwen]

I caught the video of the kids crying and calling for their parents and my eyes definitely filled up with tears. FFS who can think this shit is a good idea?

I'm glad I didn't watch it/listen to it. Positive I would have teared up and I don't know what to do about that.

[thoreau]

I listened to it.

I had a strong desire to commit several major felonies after listening to it. If somebody else were to commit those felonies I'd probably develop a keen interest in getting picked for jury duty.

[Mo]

I listened to it.

I had a strong desire to commit several major felonies after listening to it. If somebody else were to commit those felonies I'd probably develop a keen interest in getting picked for jury duty.

This.

[MJGreen]

I'm frustrated by how many arguments I see (genuine bad reasoning or just being assholes?) conflate opposing a certain type of punishment with saying "there shouldn't be any punishment at all." You try to say the government's actions are unacceptable and the response is "Well, those people broke the law." I don't think shoplifting should be legal but I don't think we should chop people's hands off for doing it. Likewise, I can say "the government should stop tearing kids away from their parents" and not actually be commenting on whether or not immigration of this or that type should be legal. For fuck's sake.

This response reaches its non-sequitur/assholish peak with the "if you don't have borders, you don't have a country" line. Objecting to any facet of the current law or its implementation means you want no law at all*.

*a true horror to libertarians

[Mo]

I suppose we had no country for the first 80ish years after the Constitution was ratified.

[JasonL]

“What if I told you every criminal conviction separates families?”

So maybe doing more of that doesn’t make you a good guy? If you changed enforcement of jay walking to mandatory imprisonment and we saw kids crying while parents in cages - that wouldn’t make you the hero of the story.

[Aresen]

If you changed enforcement of jay walking to mandatory imprisonment

The Correction Facilities Operators' Association and the National Union of Prison Guards commends you on your forward thinking in crime prevention.

[Warren]

If you changed enforcement of jay walking to mandatory imprisonment

The Correction Facilities Operators' Association and the National Union of Prison Guards commends you on your forward thinking in crime prevention.

That's not funny

[Aresen]

Oh, fuck. The GOP really has sold it's soul:

[lunchstealer]

What the fuck kind of person can take and keep a job pulling kids away from their parents when they know NONE of those mitigating factors are in play? What the fuck kind of government creates jobs for such people?

A callous near-psychopath True Believer that their power is the good because they are the law and fytw. All of them.

[Jake]

July 14th is Bastille Day. I bring this up in the midst of the current conversation for no particular reason, of course.

[Jennifer]

What the fuck kind of person can take and keep a job pulling kids away from their parents when they know NONE of those mitigating factors are in play? What the fuck kind of government creates jobs for such people?

A callous near-psychopath True Believer that their power is the good because they are the law and fytw. All of them.

If Trump wants people shoved in cattle cars, we know which of our fellow Americans will volunteer for the task.

[Jennifer]

Oh, fuck. The GOP really has sold it's soul:

Regarding the Republicans who support this, I'd be interested to see a further breakdown: how many identify as plain "Republican," versus "alt-right?" Pretty much all the alt-righters I've seen support Trump's activities (with a sizable minority insisting that "libs/Dems" don't really care about it, but are merely using this as a smokescreen to distract from the new about how awesome a job Trump's doing elsewhere).

[Jennifer]

If you can pull of the proper faux-innocent attitude, you could try asking your wretched MIL if she thinks her grandkids should be separated from all of their relatives, and the twins separated from each other (because they have different naughty bits), and locked up in Walmarts or tent cities because their mom committed a non-criminal traffic violation.

This is a good point and I actually used it on her, as well as linking to the really good Reason article about it (http://reason.com/volokh/2018/06/17/enf ... dium=email). Hopefully she'll at least understand what point I'm trying to stress instead of going straight for her "the Bible says we should follow the law and immigration restriction is the law and so they broke the law the end."

Dare I ask how it went? The overly optimistic part of me* hopes for a breakthrough, whereas the rest of me strongly suspects it was some variant of "That's totally different, either because my grandchildren are AMERICANS, or for some unspecified reasons I refuse to explain."

*For more glimpses of said overly optimistic part of me, please refer to the "My dipshit Facebook friend is squandering her entire inheritance" thread.