TBH, if being sent back where you came from is tantamount to being vaporized, then you probably ought to qualify for refugee status. Anyway, this is a somewhat silly discussion.

It's far more than just that, dude. You're underestimating how much it sucks to be forced to move on a whim, especially when you'll probably lose all of your personal possessions.

I was being hyperbolic, of course. You're being hyperbolic in the other direction.

Either you're a refugee, or you don't have an overriding need to break the law to enter the country in the first place. It's that simple.

It's one thing if they just came over the border yesterday, as well, compared to someone who's been living here for years.

No, it just plain isn't and if you put any effort into your beliefs you'd realize this.

I know, right? Anthony Johnson 'murica'd the **** out of it.

Note that I am not arguing that we shouldn't have a more lenient policy in practice. But so long as we are arguing in categorical terms...

I haven't actually said too much about my beliefs, btw. But based on your assumption that I have, I can understand you might have confused personal beliefs with the desire to run a democracy based on laws.

Sure. Statute of limitations should apply.

Sad as it might sound, "putting effort into your beliefs" is how you lose elections to conservatives, because by definition you are adopting views that take effort to acquire.

There still hasn't been a single reason provided for why we should deport other than "it's the law". Laws and their punishments need justification.

I've never met a single person who can answer this other than by just saying "it's the law".

It's called the rule of law. There's a process.

Ah, yeah, okay.



Hmmm well that is the case with the law and order types.

Now that we've found the real problem, who should we get rid of first? The conservatives or the capitalists? I say we send them both to the Congo and enslave them to Africans. At the very least it would be funny.

No, I mean why is it a good law? It being the law isn't a reason to require black people to sit in the back of the bus.

The reasons we enforce the law are different from why we pick the laws, is the distinction i'm trying to make.

The capitalists only. Once conservatives have been reprogrammed they will be useful defenders of the status quo again.

I think it's funny how both Democrats and Republicans like to undermine the rule of law: the former, by ignoring laws they deem immoral, and the latter, by making **** up about the constitution they find convenient and calling it originalist. Oh, it's definitely "original" alright.

the ancaps can go to the congo

But also don’t bother with a plane ticket. It’s not like they’d be useful slaves. Their best use is as fertilizer. Given how expensive it was to make that fertilizer, it seems like it would be a shame to give it away.

um. These are the same thing.

Oh wow. This actually makes perfect sense.

It's also interesting how they seem to coincide: "state's rights" vs. (e.g.) ignoring segregationist laws.

So Reid, if you find the immigration laws immoral, I am not going to stand in your way in advocating they be broken. Just be aware there is a certain electoral cost in this. Although I will say it is somewhat noble to stand up for the people who can't legally vote (that is, non-citizens), and somebody certainly has to do it.

One thing I do find rather offensive is the notion that the constitution only applies to U.S. citizens. I think people who believe that by definition completely miss the brilliance of what the Bill of Rights represents.

Are cops undermining the rule of law when they let jaywalkers by to focus on different crimes? Part of the sanctuary city thing is they would rather have cops not waste resources helping ICE bust people for no reason, instead of following up leads on murder cases.

Selective enforcement seems like a bad idea to me.

Well, there's only so much we can do to stop politicians from "politicizing" the government. E.g., with Trump (or Bush) EPA departments you're certainly going to see selective enforcement of environmental laws.

Re: all of the bull crap upthread about “it’s against the law and we gotta enforce the law”

Maybe try enforcing laws for rich white people too, bruh. “This Mexican dude keeps driving drunk!” well maybe he never would have been in America in the first place if an American domiciled bank hadn’t been helping the Mexican cartels kill people, and maybe they wouldn’t have done that if there was a more serious risk than a punishment blowjob.

Trump got caught owing hundreds of millions in evaded taxes from Fred Trumps estate and nobody’s talking about it anymore. Reagan sold guns to a rogue state and used it to fund South American death squads. George W Bush should be swinging in the breeze, instead of offering candies to women he’d normally lock his doors if he drove past. These are just your presidents.

You don’t deserve to get upset when people ask why you’re enforcing the laws on brown people when you literally never enforce them for anybody else. Sanctuary city? For rich people it’s a sanctuary country.

Well, having broached the topic of selective enforcement, I myself was about to ask when the Justice Department was going to start enforcing anti-trust laws. And I'm sure the list goes down.

FWIW, since Reid was originally discussing this with Wookie, my point was more about electoral politics than morality (they're kind of mutually exclusive).

if it talks like a goose and steps like a goose

I'm not racist, I just thought really hard about it and philsophically I think we should enforce all of the laws that punish brown people. But the laws that affect rich white people are all ridiculous, we can ignore those.

Don't you dare call me racist. Democrats are the true racists.

For better or for worse, those folks can vote.

wow imagine if laws were enforced against rich people like they are against poor people, and the proceeds of crime were actually confiscated from rich people like they are from poor people.

You wouldn’t need to worry about a socialist revolution. Rich people would have already been eaten.

For better or for worse, the rich are trying to make them the only people who can.

The obvious solution is not to allow people to become too rich the first place. But it's easy too to say the same thing about cancer cells.

Yup. Billionaires should literally not exist.

I was thinking about this the other day. Those who typically oppose conservatives (such as ourselves) have arrived at the conclusion that to really make further progress in American democracy, perhaps the most important thing is to toss out our current braindead system of voting. But then the craftier conservatives have also realized that the only way to do better than the electoral status quo is to likewise change the way we vote.

Kind of makes you wonder, which side really is right here? The side which wants to make voting maximally fair, or the side that wants to stop everybody from voting except themselves? Hmm

OK, that was fun. We can now resume the conservative bashing circle jerk.

Or, wait. You know, I learned something today: conservatives aren't the cancer, they're just the mutated cells. Bashing them isn't going to help cure the patient.

Are you being serious

All I’m saying is, conservatives sure seemed to be less nazi rape fan before Trump slipped on the GOP arm band.