Trump won't rule out family separations during his promised mass deportation of migrants

MicroWave@lemmy.world to politics @lemmy.world – 365 points –
Trump says he will make 'provisions' for mixed-status families but doesn't rule out separations with mass deportations
nbcnews.com

The former president also told NBC News that spending billions to execute mass deportations of undocumented immigrants is justified because allowing them to remain would cost more.

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So its gonna cost a fuckton and damage our nation irreparably in the process? Hate is a hell of a drug.

Because the goal of Russia is the balkanization of the US. This would probably cause it.

Don't forget the billions of dollars they pay in taxes. Something the billionaires don't even do.

damage our nation irreparably

How so? There'll be no shortage of new people who want to come to the USA if the government eventually decides deporting the current illegal immigrants was a mistake.

How much do you know about the legal immigration process? Because it is barely functional and hanging on by a thread right now.

I know plenty about it and it would be very different if I were in charge, but that's beside the point. What I'm saying is that the damage to the USA from an overly restrictive immigration policy is not "irreparable" because any immigrants denied or deported now can easily be replaced by other immigrants later. I don't anticipate a scenario where the USA wants to allow in more immigrants but no one wants to come. (Even if that did happen, I'm not sure accepting immigrants in advance would help because they can just leave if it gets so bad here.)

Do you support hefty prison sentences for anyone caught hiring undocumented immigrants?

What does that have to do with anything?

You clearly support deportation of immigrants. Please correct me if my assumption based on your repeated, explicit statements is incorrect.

So if you think immigrant workers are evil and should be prevented, that makes the white people who exploit and profiteer from their labor an entire order of magnitude more evil, right? Therefore we should cut the problem off at the source?

I didn't express any opinion about whether or not the deportation of illegal immigrants is a good idea. Can you quote my statements that make you think I did?

any immigrants denied or deported now can easily be replaced by other immigrants later.

This shows a total callous disregard for the real human beings involved with this statement. Throwing away the “other” and ripping apart their life, family, and community is what you are supporting, intentionally or not, with your statement.

You are mixing up two separate questions.

  1. Will deporting these people do irreparable damage to the USA?

  2. Will deporting these people be morally wrong?

The answers to these two questions are independent of each other. The first question is about objective reality (if "irreparable damage" is clearly defined) and the second is about moral beliefs which are ultimately a matter of personal opinion. I'm only talking about the first question but you can still oppose deportation on moral grounds even if it turns out that mass deportations wouldn't decrease American prosperity.

One type of irreparable damage that could occur to the USA as a result of mass deportations could be reputational or our morality therefore these two questions are not independent of each other.

In that case, you’ve still left room in the discussion to address my original question that you haven’t answered: aren’t the white people profiteering off of exploited immigrant labor the real perpetrators that deserve punishment? You can answer that without stating an opinion on the morality of deportation.

I can talk about my views on that issue if you'd like to hear them, although I still insist that they have no bearing on the truth or falsehood of my original claim in this thread.

With that said, I don't see the issue in terms of perpetrators and punishment. Many, many people in the world are much poorer than even a poor American is, and so their desire to come to the USA by whatever means is available to them is quite reasonable. Employers want to hire labor at the cheapest possible price, which is also reasonable. Finally, the general public wants cheap stuff but does not want either competition for jobs or taxes spent on supporting immigrants. That's all reasonable too.

I think a well-designed guest-worker program combined with increased measures against illegal immigration would maintain the rule of law, protect national security, and satisfy American employers and the American public while still providing economic opportunities for some foreigners who want them. This sort of approach works in other countries and it used to have some bipartisan support but I don't see it going anywhere in today's political climate.

I'm dealing with the legal immigration system right now. Your claim that we can "easily" replace anybody with more immigrant is laughable. It's like a 4 year waitlist right now.

When I say "we" I mean the US government or the nation as a whole. Right now you or I as individuals cannot easily have people immigrate legally because the government has deliberately made it difficult. If the government wanted to replace a bunch of deported people, it could change the rules about legal immigration. There are so many people who want to immigrate legally but aren't allowed to that by changing the rules, the government could get as many immigrants as it could want.

If the government wanted that, they'd have been making steps towards that goal over the last several years. Instead, they're thwarting any attempts at a path to citizenship for the people already doing these jobs and actively contributing to our economy.

I'm not saying that the government wants that. I'm saying they could do it if they did want to. The original claim I responded to was that the damage would be "irreparable" and I'm arguing that the USA is such a desirable place to live that such damage could be repaired by allowing in some of the many, many people outside of the country who do want to immigrate.

(A side note: I acknowledge that amnesty for illegal immigrants may be the best policy in practice, but I think that it is a "crime does pay" policy that rewards people for breaking the law and therefore encourages more law-breaking. I would rather deport the people who were willing to break the law and replace them with people who respected it, but that's probably both expensive and politically unfeasible.)

How is the Republican party still able to get votes?

Seriously how is our country fucked up enough that we only have death to all non whites and we can compromise with them parties

Their are a loooot of poor white people who are too indoctrinated to realize who is stealing the profits of their labor and have been successfully redirected to blaming other powerless poor people.

You have to hand it to the superrich. They did an excellent job cutting funding for education around the world for the past decades. And now they can reap the benefit.

I feel like a 'Trump won't rule out 'x'' headline is kinda moot as he doesn't do policy ideas in the first place, so he doesn't rule, and consequently doesn't rule out either.

Besides he has shown not to have any moral framework, so he'll do anything his current in crowd may infect his short term memory with.

Yeah, it doesn't matter what he says. He'll decide later based on the direction the wind is blowing.

He put almost half a million children in cages last time, family seperations are tame compared to that.

The cages are still on the border, being used by various state governments (Abbott's been zealous about entrapping, imprisoning, and torturing migrants until they "voluntarily" agree to federal deportation).

One of the more frustrating aspects of the Democratic immigration platform has been their blasé attitude towards state fascism and brutality. Hatred for migrants runs far too deep in the US, and liberals are terrified of running counter to it especially during an election season. So Trump can run around on the border cheering, while state troopers harass, illegally detain, and torture spouses of US citizens. ICE staff do less than nothing, often facilitating state officials in their efforts to inflict abuse and cover it up afterwards.

Meanwhile, the DNC platforms a congo line of anti-migrant Republican politicians in an effort to appease this block of single-issue voters.

We are truly entering a new era of facsism, led by Democrats normalization of these ideals.

The path has been clear for years, though I maintained hope at first the libs would see what is happening, now it just seems too late to stop.

Yeah, fuck em right? Citizen children don't need parents. Just put em to work in the mines. Precious if they're unborn, though.

I guess this is why we didn’t ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child…

Why would he, they love that shit.

Nobody gives a shit what this goon felon is lying about today, NBC?

Just publish this each time, "trump lied again today in public, more on the actual plan from the actual adults making the decisions (or closest equivalent) [link to project 2025]"

Lol how did removing people who are in the country illegally an even remotely controversial view.

No wonder the right are gaining votes all over the world. The left are their own worse enemy.

Because arbitrary lines in a desert ought not invalidate peoples freedom?

Because there is no valid metric other than skin color to initially round all these people up and put them in camps where we can concentrate on if they are actually supposed to be here or not?

Because some of those people put in camps where we can concentrate on whether they are supposed to be here or not will be American citizens deprived of their rights based on their skin color?

Because trains will run 24-7 for 5+ years to deport 15+ million people?

Because a subset of the population is convinced central America = Mexico and we can just dump them in Mexico?

Because just that transportation alone will cost over half our GDP even before we get in to detention and feeding, investigation and appeals processes?

Because if we don't do the above then we are denying people the right of due process, and what does that say about us as a society?

Because most people are here illegally because of expired visas, so they can just reapply anyway?

Because in 2022 undocumented immigrants paid 96.7 billion dollars in taxes, and the right wants to just do away with that and God forbid someone making millions has to pay a little extra?

Because it's a buzz word used by the right so people can be openly racist when there is zero plan in place because then they lose their wedge issue?

Because this zero-plan maneuver will decimate our economy, just so a certain subset of the population can feel that their skin color wins because Jesus said so or something?

What a load of horseshit.

I pretty sure the people that fought and died for those lines, the people that spent a lifetime building up something they love on one side of that line wouldn't call them arbitrary. In fantasy land they might be arbitrary but in the real world they mean a lot. People who break the law shouldn't be rewarded.

People aren't suppose to be there. They should go somehow. If there are 15 million people and they largely seem to be one skin colour as you make out. That's seems like a good starting point to me. How else would you do it?

Because trains will run 24-7 for 5+ years to deport 15+ million people?

That's genuinely mindblowing. 1 that the trains are that bad. (Some lines hit 1.5 million per day). 2 That the situation is that dire it will take so long to fix it under ideal situations.

You don't seem to be making any point but rambling from then on. Paying taxes says nothing without taking everything else into account. It's literally meaningless. If they just need to reapply then it seems like they need some convincing. 15 million! Of course something needs to be done to convince them to stop breaking the law either ship them out if they aren't meant to be there or convince them to do their civic duty