This is political warfare. War is cruel and inhumane. If you want to stop the cruelty, stop the war.
There’s a lot of discussion about whether this is cruel or justified or legal—whatever. This sucks for people who get caught up in our immigration fight and ultimately it’s bad for all of us because it makes the US a less attractive place for immigrants.
However, we are here (1) because US citizens voted for more scrutiny of the immigration process to make sure people immigrating are successfully landing in the US and not taking advantage of the systems we have in place. And (2) because a vocal minority is unwilling to enforce any of our existing immigration laws and is actively sabotaging the administration’s attempts to do so. Nobody has clean hands.
In the US we do not approve visas for immigrants who we suspect will become dependent on our welfare system. This isn’t some new rule Trump made up to get rid of immigrants because he’s cruel, it’s existed for over a century. Fun fact: the current statutory language Rubio used in January to limit immigration from 75 countries comes from the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, a Democrat sponsored bill.
The legal challenge honestly feels like a technicality which is probably why the state department responded as they did. A judge said we can’t limit the ban by country based on public-charge language, arguing that the public-charge consideration must be evaluated independent of nationality or in other words, it can’t be used to institute a country specific ban. So the state department removed the country specific ban and said fine all immigration is paused until we can properly train people to evaluate public-charge since the current training is ineffective.
The state department tried the surgical path, judicial activism, whether technically correct or not, vacated the surgical path. So the state department escalated with a tactic that more literally adheres to the judges interpretation but also has more collateral damage.
This bickering is dumb and shouldn’t be happening in the first place.
> Fun fact: the current statutory language Rubio used in January to limit immigration from 75 countries comes from the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, a Democrat sponsored bill.
This bill was originally vetoed by Truman, but overridden by both house and senate by a 2/3 vote. However, in the house vote, democrats were split about 50/50, and republicans overwhelmingly approved. (https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/82-1952/h165)
Note that this is pre southern strategy and post new deal era. There was a conservative coalition of both democrats and republicans against the new deal. The majority of the Democratic Yea votes came from southern states where the conservative coalition dominated.
Saying that it was a Democrat sponsored bill is missing some important nuances.
Do you believe the majority of immigrants come here specifically to leech and NOT work? The data that decades of policy across parties has been based on doesn't support that at all. Living on even the most generous state and federal government benefits alone is a terrible way to live, and not something you would leave your country for.
No. At the same time I do believe it’s a huge problem when even a small number come here fraudulently and abuse the welfare systems we have to unduly enrich themselves at the expense of American taxpayers.
If we have fair and just laws, there will always be some who try to abuse them. Authoritarians are the only ones who believe they can create a 100% perfect system, and the path that leads to is very dark. Communist Russia and China are some prime examples that you would probably agree with.
There’s a lot of discussion about whether this is cruel or justified or legal—whatever. This sucks for people who get caught up in our immigration fight and ultimately it’s bad for all of us because it makes the US a less attractive place for immigrants.
However, we are here (1) because US citizens voted for more scrutiny of the immigration process to make sure people immigrating are successfully landing in the US and not taking advantage of the systems we have in place. And (2) because a vocal minority is unwilling to enforce any of our existing immigration laws and is actively sabotaging the administration’s attempts to do so. Nobody has clean hands.
In the US we do not approve visas for immigrants who we suspect will become dependent on our welfare system. This isn’t some new rule Trump made up to get rid of immigrants because he’s cruel, it’s existed for over a century. Fun fact: the current statutory language Rubio used in January to limit immigration from 75 countries comes from the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, a Democrat sponsored bill.
The legal challenge honestly feels like a technicality which is probably why the state department responded as they did. A judge said we can’t limit the ban by country based on public-charge language, arguing that the public-charge consideration must be evaluated independent of nationality or in other words, it can’t be used to institute a country specific ban. So the state department removed the country specific ban and said fine all immigration is paused until we can properly train people to evaluate public-charge since the current training is ineffective.
The state department tried the surgical path, judicial activism, whether technically correct or not, vacated the surgical path. So the state department escalated with a tactic that more literally adheres to the judges interpretation but also has more collateral damage.
This bickering is dumb and shouldn’t be happening in the first place.