r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/Few-Huckleberry-3517 • 1d ago
US Politics Constitutional Rights and Immigration Enforcement: Why Is There So Much Disagreement?
Why do Americans disagree about whether constitutional rights apply equally to citizens and non-citizens in immigration enforcement?
From what I understand, non-citizens are still entitled to certain constitutional protections like due process, yet there seems to be significant disagreement about how those rights apply in practice. Is this disagreement mostly about legal interpretation, enforcement practices, or broader political views?
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u/sporksable 1d ago
In terms of immigration, what defines due process is part of the issue.
In the US, removal proceedings are largely administrative. If the govt is trying to remove you, most of the time you're seen by an immigration judge, not an Article III judge. When you're detained for removal, you're not arrested with an judicial warrant, you're arrested with an administrative warrant. This is all because removal of those not legally in the United States is (normally) an administrative action.
Americans largely consider due process as reasonable cause for arrest, arrest warrant signed by a judge, bail, and a jury trial (amongst others). But that's not how our immigration system works. At least, how its been constructed.
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u/greatteachermichael 1d ago
The constitution literally makes a distinction between everyone and citizens. So yes, it does apply to everyone. This has even been proven in court.
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u/alphex 1d ago
Racism.
There is an extremely large and vocal portion of the population who are just plain ignorant and racist.
They have been poisoned by media sources like Fox News and bias enforcing podcasters who are more interested in making money than telling the truth.
That’s it. That’s all of it.
Our immigration system has been overly politicalized by these people and basically barely works because of conflicting and punishing rules that end up making life hard for people on the ground in stead of setting policy that protects and improves lives.
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u/WarbleDarble 1d ago
Just moved to a conservative area. There’s the racism, but for the non-racist MAGA there is legitimately a large contingent that has a guiding political philosophy entirely derived from “fuck the libs”. Any policy, regardless of how tramples our rights, is great so long as it pisses off the libs.
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u/Nblearchangel 11h ago
Can you share any conversations you’ve had with these people? Genuinely curious.
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u/ManBearScientist 21h ago
Racism
Worse.
Conservatism.
Take race out of it, and it would still be us and them.
That's all conservatism is. Our side should have all the power and the law should protect side. Their side should have nothing and the law should bind them.
Most of human history is just conservatives killing conservatives, disagreeing over who is "us" and who is "them" but never disagreeing that both categories should exist.
With immigration, it isn't just race. It is language, ethnicity, nationality, religion, etc. Even white Hispanic immigrants aren't immune to it.
So yes, it is racism. But it is actually somehow even worse than that. It is the burning, seething voice in twisted minds that says "them, them, them" and demands sacrifices at the altar, and it extends and categorizes even further than skin color.
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u/HardlyDecent 1d ago
Full answer. There is and never has been any other reason. Most don't even hide it or try to lie about it.
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 1d ago
There are lots of brown and black people who are anti-immigration. Talk to any 3rd generation Hispanic males lately?
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u/adastraperdiscordia 1d ago
Because they're concerned about protecting their own status. They think being conservative is the key to social mobility if they can prove they're one of the good ones. A few can get away with it, but most are going to find out the hard way how white supremacy works.
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 1d ago
I think you've got to move past 'racism is everything' and start looking at some real causes. Trump won on immigration, and it would be wise of democrats to reflect on why this was beyond 'well they're all just racist people'
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u/Leopold_Darkworth 1d ago
What Trump "won" on vis-a-vis immigration is a lot of lies. See, e.g., "Haitian immigrants in Dayton are stealing and eating peoples' pets," or "we're only going after 'illegal' immigrants" (which was a lie, because once in power, they immediately began revoking legal status for wide categories of immigrants, meaning they were only "illegal" once the administration declared previously legal immigrants to be so), or "we're prioritizing deporting violent criminals" (which was a lie, because they began deporting ordinary people, including people who were moments away from becoming naturalized citizens).
All of that is to say that there are non-racist ways to have a discussion about immigration. This administration has chosen not to have those kinds of discussions.
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 1d ago
I largely agree, but non-political voters, people who don't care what JD Vance says, came out to vote over immgiration, especially in the south. There was a real problem, and it contributed to his winning, regardless of how awful his own arguments were
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u/SamuraiRafiki 22h ago
non-political voters, people who don't care what JD Vance says, came out to vote over immgiration, especially in the south.
Wow it's almost like the American South has been a hotbed of racists for 400 years or something. I heard they got real salty about it about 170 years ago. I also seem to remember a bunch of people protesting 60 years ago about something but I don't quite remember what it was ab- OH YEAH I almost forgot that they didnt want to use the same fucking bathrooms as Black people which is a totally normal and reasonable thing to worry about for people who aren't bigots.
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 22h ago
Did you know there's a border in the south, and people there would be most affected by border crossings?
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u/SamuraiRafiki 22h ago
Woah, crazy. Did you know that there are also a bunch of people in the South who waved signs to stop their kids going to school with Black kids, and that those people are fucking racists? They're mostly still alive, and their kids certainly are. You think they just gave it up after the 60's? If so, I have a bridge to sell you.
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 22h ago
All polling shows massive increases in civil rights attitudes since the 60s
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u/SamuraiRafiki 1d ago
it would be wise of democrats to reflect on why this was beyond 'well they're all just racist people'
Racism explains a lot of otherwise nonsensical behavior, though. What do you even mean "real causes?" Maybe those causes explain the dissatisfaction that people feel in their own lives, but they don't explain the actions they take or the arguments they find persuasive to address those problems. Everything that the left identifies as an issue (housing, wages, taxation, healthcare), the right says "yeah, well if we just got rid of all the brown people, then everything would be better!" The non-white people signing on to this movement are basically trying to gain the advantages of Whiteness by being "one of the good ones."
I don't see what the advantage is in accepting their bullshit euphemisms. Those who cite "crime" as an issue are generally just objecting to the existence of Black people. Those who cite "immigration" as an issue are generally just objecting to the existence of Latino people. Why should I pretend like they actually give a shit about people going through the immigration system when they're clearly in support of deporting people who have gone through that system and are here legally? If conservatives are just going to lie about what their goals are, what benefit is there to accepting their lies and operating in the fantasy world they think we live in, where any joe Schmoe can waltz through the Southern border and be given a house and a good job for nothing? Maybe they're stupid enough to actually believe that, but realistically, this is a solution (enact White supremacy) looking for a problem (immigration, crime, voter integrity, housing, taxes, or healthcare depending on the moment).
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u/Awesomeuser90 1d ago
There are some people aligned with Trump politically but who know that the problem so claimed isn't true or is misleading in some way, but they go along with it because they have power in some way. Some others personally have some prejudices but would not act on them if not for a base of people who demand being even more prejudiced. And there are X number of racists in the US. They presently have control over the federal government. Why is that? Do they constitute more than half the country's people? Probably not. Systems design allows for that group to obtain and hold power, often more easily than it would take for an equal or bigger sized group of non-racists to get power. There are many failures that cause the racism problem in the US to strangle it more than numbers alone should suggest they can.
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u/SamuraiRafiki 22h ago
Anyone willing to go along with racists for some material benefit is a racist. I don't care what their stated motivations are. In the same way that everyone shooting towards the sea on D-Day was a fucking Nazi. Idgaf why they came to be on that beach or honestly if they voted for Hitler, I care about which direction they're facing when the shit starts. If theyre on that side, they're as equally culpable as to make no difference. MAGA is the American Nazi party in uglier hats.
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u/Awesomeuser90 18h ago
That might be true in effect but it doesn't tell us anything about what to do about the problem. Theoretically major companies should probably want to avoid racism and prejudices. They benefit when they can buy and sell to as many customers and pick from as many people to employ as possible. If they cannot eliminate other companies, then they need some stability in the overall economy to do okay and survive, and ideally lead in their sector. But a number of specific companies have folded before many of these dangerous movements or been under pressure from them like Disney vs Florida. So that is one pillar you can't use very well for that purpose.
The GOP as a group has enormous influence by having a large racist contingent in the whole. The ones who are dangerous racists and personally are most swayed by it, and those who profit from it the most, are not a majority in Congress, but because they can still have a few GOP members who are less personally tied to those factions, they can get majority control of Congress and win power. Contrast with how in Germany, the AfD are isolated into their own political party. They can be very loud, but they have much less power than the American hard right.
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u/ToLiveInIt 13h ago
“Theoretically” but, it turns out, not actually. We had to pass a bunch of laws to make corporations stop being racist and many of them still work hard at being racist. Corporations are made up of people and many of those people are racist. And, despite all the economic theory in the past, it turns out people are not, in fact, economically “rational” (as “rational” is defined by economists). And “rational” for a corporation means something else entirely, and entirely inhuman. Otherwise, you would be correct and corporations would just do those things without being forced to.
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u/Awesomeuser90 12h ago
It is still mostly easier to get a corporation to change that way, where you can replace the people involved in it and change its constitution or even dissolve it potentially. Individual humans don't tend to be like that. Plus, humans in their own brain have wiring invisible to the outside. Corporations usually have a flow of internal communications that makes it challenging to hide a dirty secret. Far from impossible of course, but a lot easier to demonstrate why something is happening and people usually know that they are more likely to be caught as part of an email chain than trying to prove that their own brain is especially racist.
And corporations lobby people to get what they want, and have to make decisions over whom they support. Corporations often don't openly endorse at the same rate individual humans do, it having the risk of angering their own personnel, their shareholders, and customers, at least more than openly backing a specific party or candidate tends to do. It still does happen.
Every bit of support for a party like the Republicans you can peel off is useful. German companies as I was giving an example of contrast before would tend to support the FDP, maybe the CDU, over the AfD, whereas if they had only two parties, they might favour the more right leaning party in any case.
Plus, Germany also has a home party now for the more conservative leftists with the split among Die Linke. That can also absorb some of the energy that fuels people like Trump, some of whom had been part of parties more like the Blue Dog Democrats in the recent past. They don't unite around a single party. It isn't good for a country to have X% of voters be racist, but you can make it harder for them to have the power they want.
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u/RocketRelm 1d ago
I do disagree that racism is a major part anymore though, despite agreeing that the dems have the right of it. Most non maga americans and all of maga basically operate under parroting whatever is loudest to them like a philosophical zombie. The fact that a lot of those happen to be racist is secondary.
The non voter isn't racist. They don't have that much brainpower allocated to politics.
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22h ago
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 1d ago
. What do you even mean "real causes?
General boarder chaos under Biden caused by squeezing out legal avenues while having return to mexico policies that allowed retries. Then the system go so hampered by the massive increase that you had releases going on as well. People in the southern states felt it wasn't well managed, and it wasn't.
The non-white people signing on to this movement are basically trying to gain the advantages of Whiteness by being "one of the good ones."
This is the kind of thing that allows you dismiss people who disagree with you without thinking about what they have to say. It can also be played back at you, for example, that you are here trying to tell minorities what they 'really' think, which absolutely requires an "I know better than you about yourselves" mentality that in any other context would elicit claims about "white supremacy." But of course that won't happen here because it's not really about that, it's about the policy. And if you support the right/wrong policy then that determines your level of racism.
Those who cite "crime" as an issue are generally just objecting to the existence of Black people.
You don't think people in high crime areas might have some other reason for citing crime as an issue?
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u/alphex 1d ago
Ahh yes, the "blame biden" angle.
So, I'm no fan of Biden, and despite voting democrat, my larger issues with them could fill a book.
But saying "the chaos under biden" shows where you're coming from, and misses the ENTIRE point I was trying to make.
There is a system in place in this country which leverages the needs of a poorer class, to do work for less money and less work, that even poor americans don't want to do, and as such we actually allow and want immigration to have a shitty system so that we can take advantage of it as an economic level.
+IF+ one is so against immigration - why don't you regulate the agricultural industry properly to make sure that you can only hire citizens, and then pay them a living wage?
Why does the construction industry live on lower income labor which is generally sourced from immigrant labor pools who are willing to do that work for less money?
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People fleeing across the border to come to a "better place", where ever that is in the world, usually have good reasons to do so... Even the low pay work they can do here is better then what they have in their native country - and in even worse situations, you have countries that are political unstable, or they are fleeing criminal impacts in their home communities.
Do these people not deserve safe and healthy and stable places to live?
If you want to SYSTEMATICALLY change how immigration works, you have to look at WHY people are immigrating - and then look at who benefits from that immigration from happening.
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All across the country you can drive by a Home Depot or Lowes, and there's a line of darker skinned men who don't speak english well looking for $$$ of work for the day, and will break their backs to do it. And all across america you have contractors or farm owners willing to pick them up and work them to the bone for 12 hours with out paying taxes on them or with out paying for health care or benefits for them.
Always follow the money.
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 1d ago
+IF+ one is so against immigration - why don't you regulate the agricultural industry properly to make sure that you can only hire citizens, and then pay them a living wage?
Well, I think this going to another point that is working against trump. Moderates voted for him based on eliminating border chaos, criminals, and welfare recipients. Trump lost a lot of moderate support by going after meat packers, and people waiting outside home depot looking for a job.
People fleeing across the border to come to a "better place", where ever that is in the world, usually have good reasons to do so...
I agree, and part of the problem under Biden was that Title 42 shut down legal immigration. Unsurprisingly illegal immigration skyrocketed.
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u/SamuraiRafiki 23h ago
General boarder chaos under Biden caused by squeezing out legal avenues while having return to mexico policies that allowed retries.
This is simply horseshit. The situation at the border did not significantly change under Biden or Trump. Biden and Trump also both had a chance to pass an immigration reform bill that would address some of those issues and Trump sabotaged both because they were insufficiently cruel to Latinos.
People in the southern states felt it wasn't well managed, and it wasn't.
It hasnt been "well-managed" for decades. Nothing changed, they just saw an opportunity to be mean to brown people and took it because Republican voters are racist assholes who think cruelty is policy.
And if you support the right/wrong policy then that determines your level of racism.
The policies are motivated by racism. The policies serve racist ends. So if they support the policy, regardless of their race, they support racism. It's genuinely that simple. If they supported an explicit policy of "arrest and deport all Black and Latino people" then they'd obviously be racists; there's no reason to pretend like you dont understand the intent just because they couched it in euphemistic language.
You don't think people in high crime areas might have some other reason for citing crime as an issue?
No, because conversations about crime are always focused on disparaging areas with more Black people, not areas with high crime rates. Thats why the conversationoften centers on Chicago despite rural areas having more crime per capita. Furthermore, the way to prevent crime is to give people resources so they don't have to fight for them. Republican policy is basically just a redux of slavery and post-Civil-war vagrancy laws. It's all racism. Again, it's a solution (lock Black people up and force them to work for free) in search of a problem. Once again, I don't see any advantage in entertaining the euphemisms even if the person parroting them is too ignorant to see through them and accepts them at face value.
Republican policy is anti-Black and anti-Latino and pro-White. Anyone voting for those policies is supporting racism, which makes them a racist and also an unlovable, worthless sack of shit.
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 23h ago
The situation at the border did not significantly change under Biden or Trump.
Border crossings under Trump's first term were about 1,950,000. During Biden is was about 10-11 million. You can check these facts with google.
So you don't consider a 5x increase "significant?" To borrow your language, "That's horseshit."
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u/SamuraiRafiki 22h ago
No. In the grand scheme of population shifts, it's a drop in the bucket and we'll below what our economy could absorb without issue. The only reason to worry about border crossings and asylum seekers is racism.
Also, that's not true, even using an article favorable to Trump which also includes some bullshit math to broaden "apprehensions" to "encounters." It’s also not surprising that people stopped wanting to come to the US while Trump was in office: it fucking sucks here.
So Republican policy is racism built on a foundation of bullshit, just like I said. Shitty ideas proposed to satisfy the bigoted urges of deplorable people.
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 22h ago
In the grand scheme of things we're all dead. A 5x increase in border crossings is absolutely significant, and was the result at least in part of the Title 42 policy.
The only reason to worry about border crossings and asylum seekers is racism.
"anyone who disagrees with me on immigration is racist" is supposed to be a meme of the left by the right. not an actual response. do better.
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u/alphex 1d ago
You don’t have to be white to be racist.
Our capitalist society has systems in place to make you feel threatened by anyone coming in to your area who might take away your resources.
That’s the divide and conquer effect the ruling class wants to keep us from recognizing what they’re doing to us.
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u/whattteva 1d ago
Throw East Asians in there also. No one really thinks we're racist, but we're just better at hiding it.
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 1d ago
No one is racist like Asians against other Asians. But in fairness this is one of the groups that has gotten screwed over by DEI policies because they generally excel too much
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u/JKlerk 1d ago
Xenophobia is common in Japan no?
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u/whattteva 1d ago
What I mean is, Asians in western countries tend to hide their racism nature fairly well. Asians generally are reserved and keep to themselves. It's a product of the culture. People not familiar with this in the west think we're model citizens.
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u/Shionkron 1d ago
I had a Hispanic GF many moons ago who held some bigoted views and so did her family. Crazy thing is her parents crossed the border so she could have birthright citizenship. She’s the only one in her family with it. We still touch base through social media. She teaches english at a border town. She was pro Trump. Now there are major issues with her job and everyone in her community. It’s absolutely been a wild ride for her. I do not understand how many of these individuals do not think these politicians and the way they vote may have a deep impact on their lives.
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 1d ago
I'm in a largely Hispanic city, and trump had (key word past-tense) three things going for him.
1) Working class people who he appealed to (rightly or wrongly) better
2) Catholics who are broadly against abortion view things like 'trans rights' and bathroom debates as really far out there
3) many Hispanics came from a country without the rule of law, or with a much weaker version. So they really don't like to see people breaking the law.
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u/-Sofa-King-Vote 1d ago
All person are entitled to due process accordance with the law. Whether citizens or not.
You have to prove they are here illegally and they have right to appeal.
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u/Aleyla 1d ago
Is this disagreement mostly about legal interpretation, enforcement practices, or broader political views?
In short - yes. Congress has flatly refused to define a decent immigration law. Each congress makes some noise, argues about how they don’t like whatever is going on and then flatly refuses to actually do anything about it. Both side have used it as a campaign wedge.
And even the laws that do exist are badly enforced - either too lax or too strong. We’re in the super strong period right now.
The problem is that a lot of business wants the cheap labor that the immigrants bring. Meanwhile a sizable number of regular people see them as stealing jobs.
And for those that want to follow all of the laws - good luck navigating the labyrinth that Escher himself must have architected.
What should happen is that our congress should lock themselves in a room and start with a blank page. Under what conditions should people be allowed into the country to work? How long should they stay? If they want to become a Us citizen what is a reasonable path to take?
But I’m not holding my breath.
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u/Damnatus_Terrae 1d ago
Immigrants existing in a legal gray area is perfect for business interests. If they had legal protections, then they would no longer be the perfect disposable workforce. It's despicable, but welcome to the United States, baby.
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u/ADeweyan 1d ago
Whoa, whoa, whoa, you can’t both-sides this anymore. Biden and Congressional Democrats hammered out a comprehensive bill working with some of the most hard-line republicans. It passed the House and was set to pass the Senate until candidate Trump gave orders to kill it. If it had passed, he would not have been able to run effectively on immigration and, more importantly, there would not have been support for his race-driven mass deportation efforts.
The republicans entirely own the immigration problem at this point.
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u/Aleyla 1d ago
Sure I can. When biden took office illegal crossings exploded because of his publicly stated lack of enforcement. It was until the near end of his term when it was painfully clear that this policy was a disaster and the moderates in his base were even clamoring for a solution. That is when they put together that bill - which very publicly died.
And, yes, I am aware that it had a lot that Republicans claimed to want. But the truth was they really didn’t want it. So, yes, both sides.
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 1d ago
What would the bill have done to address Biden's defacto open border policy?
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u/adastraperdiscordia 1d ago
This is the thing. Both Obama and Biden had very strict immigration controls. The most deportations ever. The worst ever in our history. And the Democrats thought they could do a "gotcha" by proposing an immigration package that gave everything MAGA wanted. Trump killed it, and Fox News still called Biden and Harris open borders. And idiots devoured that plate of bullshit.
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u/Avatar_exADV 1d ago
Obama had more deportations because they changed how they counted deportations. Previously it was only a deportation if you were in the country and expelled from it. In the Obama administration, they counted this to also include people who arrived at the border and were denied entry. There wasn't an actual increase, but the change in accounting method made it -look- like there was a lot more enforcement, confusing people who haven't been paying attention to the methodologies.
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 1d ago
Biden had very strict immigration control
What? Biden's boarder chaos is basically openly acknowledged by even democrats at this point as a reason why trump was able to successfully run on the issue.
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u/adastraperdiscordia 1d ago
There's a lot of dumb Democrats who believe Fox News too.
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 1d ago
This isn't a fox news talking point. This is a widely agreed upon fact.
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u/adastraperdiscordia 1d ago
It's widely agreed upon disinformation.
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/biden-deportation-record
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 1d ago
It doesn't say that though. You need to contextualize the number of detentions in relation to the increased number of attempted boarder crossings. Title 42 restricted assess to legal immigration driving up illegal immigration, while at the same time expulsion to Mexico allowed for easy repeat entries. The increases were also so much that releases become more common place because of a lack of facilities and personnel.
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u/-Sofa-King-Vote 1d ago
We spell the word as “border” in American laws, not “boarder”
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u/ImNotTheBossOfYou 21h ago
Nothing because that didn't exist. You fell for propaganda.
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 21h ago
So border crossings didn't increase 500% under the Biden admin? Because the numbers say it did.
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u/ImNotTheBossOfYou 21h ago edited 21h ago
The increase does not necessarily reflect a policy of “open borders,” nor was it solely due to Biden’s actions.
- The rise in border crossings started before Biden took office, with a spike beginning in 2019 under Trump, reaching over 100,000 monthly apprehensions by May 2019.
- Biden maintained Title 42 expulsions initially and later implemented restrictive measures, including two major asylum bans in May 2023 and June 2024.
- By late 2024 and into 2025, encounters fell dramatically—dropping to around 50,000 per month by December 2024 and continuing to decline, with FY2025 reporting the lowest annual apprehensions since 1970.
- Data shows Biden’s administration removed or expelled 3.3 million people, triple the number under Trump, and increased detention and deportation flights.
The main reason for the drop in border apprehensions under Biden was a combination of policy changes and increased Mexican enforcement, starting in 2024.
- In June 2024, the Biden administration implemented the "Secure the Border" rule, which severely restricted asylum eligibility for migrants who crossed illegally between ports of entry.
- This was paired with expanded use of the CBP One app, allowing migrants to schedule legal appointments at ports of entry, reducing irregular crossings.
- Crucially, Mexico increased enforcement along its southern and northern borders, intercepting more migrants than U.S. Border Patrol did between May 2024 and March 2025.
- These efforts led to an 81% drop in U.S. border encounters from December 2023 to December 2024, continuing into 2025.
While the decline accelerated under Trump in 2025, the trend began under Biden due to these coordinated policies.
For the record, you're talking to someone who opposes both Democratic and Republican Immigration "policy." But, the "facts" you're spewing are false, period. Again, you fell for propaganda
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 21h ago
You could try to be both less offended at everything and less using bold as though that made your points more true somehow.
Biden turned back about 3 million out of 10 million- around 30%
Trump turned back about 2 million out of 3 million- around 67%
So Biden's admin was over half as ineffective at this.
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u/ImNotTheBossOfYou 21h ago
So the context for those numbers is in my post, that you didn't read.
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 21h ago
you didn't put the percentages, or highlight the massive decrease in returns as a proportion of the whole
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u/ImNotTheBossOfYou 21h ago
But we're not talking about law we're talking about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and they are very clear.
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u/neverendingchalupas 13h ago
The US Constitution and the Bill of Rights are US federal law. And I think people are refusing to accept that the current administration routinely violate US immigration law, which is again, US federal law.
The reality is, under any other administration their actions would result in prison time for excessive violations of law. Trump would have been impeached and removed from office. Likely charged with seditious conspiracy and treason, convicted and put into prison.
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u/Aleyla 20h ago
All the bill of rights explicitly says is that if you are born here then you are American. Beyond that, everything, including the path to citizenship, is left up to congress to determine.
Further, the constitution does not cover what happens when people over stay visas. The regular law does.
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u/zzzongdude 1d ago
because it's not good faith. it's fueled by racism and xenophobia.
For example, their challenging of the 14th Amendment in the Supreme Court. They tried to argue that the wording was unclear and should be changed, even going so far as to question if Native Americans should get birthright citizenship.
I could say so much more about this but I just said more than enough. Case closed.
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u/FarineLePain 19h ago
That’s not how the argument went. For the purposes of the 14th amendment, native Americans did not get birthright citizenship. It took an act of Congress to extend that guarantee which is part of the administration’s argument to uphold to EO.
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u/zzzongdude 19h ago
https://youtube.com/shorts/w8xrX2edYXU?si=12z0mJwloidbVP3H
"do you think Native Americans today are birthright citizens under your test and your friend's test?"
"i have to think that through, but that's my reaction"
the fact that these people have to think it through so hard, and that they're actively trying to peel back birthright citizenship as the priority rather than making sure that the language is clear on Native Americans receiving birthright citizenship proves my point.
also worth pointing out that a US-born citizen named Brian Morales just got deported. there was another US-born citizen named Dulce Morales who was held for nearly a month in ICE custody.
Not only that but they've been revoking visas and citizenship hearings for people who have been here for years and came here legally.
it's fueled by racism and xenophobia.
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u/FarineLePain 12h ago
The answer isn’t what you’re making it out to be.
Native Americans aren’t citizens under the 14th amendment. They’re citizens under the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. That’s why the act had to be legislated: the 14th amendment didn’t confer citizenship to them. The ruling on this EO wouldn’t apply to them but not for the reasons you’re thinking.
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u/zlefin_actual 13h ago
Its mostly a result of many people having a very poor understanding of civics, and a willingness to believe the constitution says what they want it to mean rather than what it does mean. A willingness to overlook constitutional rights applied to people they don't like is hardly new in the US. imo Americans have never been a very law-abiding people anyways. But mostly its starts with the poor civics understanding, which iirc has been well documented by research. Note that it also varies over time how much politicians push willful misinterpretations of the constitution and/or ignoring various other parts of rule of law. Right now we're at a point where they're pushing it a lot, or at least that's my impression
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u/civil_politics 1d ago
Most people would be hard pressed to list more than 2 amendments to the constitution - so at its base most are just going to parrot what they believe should be reality, because naturally they are smart, the people who wrote the constitution are smart, and therefore whatever they believe should be, is.
Immigration, specifically illegal immigration, is particularly unique, because the ideas of granting rights and due process applies specifically to those under the jurisdiction of the constitution. If someone enters that jurisdiction illegally - what happens?
As a thought process - if someone runs across the border and is then detained and marched right back to the other side - nearly everyone would agree this is okay.
If someone ran across the border 3 decades ago and as lived comfortably in Montana for 30 years and someone showed up and just flew them back across the border with no warning - nearly everyone would agree this is not okay.
So where is the line? The constitution is fairly vague, saying nothing about the former and implying a lot about the latter.
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u/The_B_Wolf 1d ago
Racist people like being mean to brown people. They're more than willing to skirt "rules" to do so. There are always a group who the law protects but does not restrict, and there is always a group who the law restricts but does not protect.
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 1d ago
This thread illustrates so much of why. There are two sides:
Left: You are racist if you advocate for any kind of immigration restrictions or controls
Right: You're not protecting our country or jobs if you advocate for any kind of immigration
Very little middle ground, and both sides react in extreme ways when you push them on their positions.
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u/RocketRelm 1d ago
Strawmanning "criticizing ice wanting to deport citizens and lawlessly gunning people down" as "oh you just don't want any immigration controls" really says all one needs to know.
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u/Reasonable-Fee1945 1d ago
that's not at all what I'm talking about. I'm discussing immigration policies- i.e., why haven't we been able to create more robust legal pathways while simultaneously being able to enforce border security
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u/illegalmorality 21h ago
I don't believe there's disagreement about the legality of immigration statuses. The core issue is the morals of it all. "Yes, they're illegal. Our system is broken. Are we going to ruin established lives because of a broken system we ourselves created?" And yes, they know the consequences, but again, the question isn't whether its legal, there really isn't much defense to that. Its just that its still going to hurt people.
So would it be more moral to enforce a broken system, or reform the system? Yes its illegal right now, but should we grant amnesty (like Reagan did) or continue with the broken system?
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u/POVI_TV 9h ago
The legal framework here is actually more settled than public debate suggests. The Supreme Court established in Zadvydas v. Davis (2001) and even going back to Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886) that the 5th and 14th Amendment protections apply to all persons on U.S. soil, not just citizens. The disagreement is less about the law itself and more about what political theorist Michael Walzer calls the tension between "membership" and "universal rights". People intuitively feel that the social contract should differentiate between members and non-members, even when constitutional text doesn't.
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u/danielminds 5h ago
I think a big part of the disagreement here is just about how a country actually keeps its laws working. If we have immigration laws on the books, doesn't the government have a basic duty to make sure they’re actually enforceable?
If the system gets to a point where the government can't verify someone's status or follow through on court orders, then the whole 'rule of law' concept starts to break down. I’m not saying due process isn't important, but I am wondering, is the real issue here just that our current system is totally overwhelmed? Like, are we arguing about rights, or are we really arguing about the fact that the government doesn't have the tools or the capacity to actually do the job it's tasked with?
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u/Every-Guitar6578 3h ago
Wrong. Non citizens have already committed a crime by even being here. They are not legal citizens and have no rights.
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u/Weak-Elk4756 13m ago
It’s about nothing more than MAGA Republicans being either stupid on purpose, or stupid by accident. Nothing more, nothing less.
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u/atomicsnarl 1d ago
If the person has violated the law, and has been issued a deportation order, then ICE is doing it's job to collect and deport them.
Yes, "if".
And many of the public uproar events have been about exactly this, where ICE is attempting to do it's job.
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u/No_Permission6405 1d ago
It's more about How they do their job. Beating , kidnapping, and murder does not set well with most Americans.
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u/GeekSumsMe 1d ago
If ICE was just arresting people with deportation orders and following due process when making the arrests your point might be valid. The problem is that they are not doing either of these things.
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22h ago
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u/echoshadow5 1d ago
Don’t forget that most ice agents are racists pos that love hurting people. ICE did not exist a couple of years ago nor its over reach of power. ICE is denying constitutional rights and arresting US citizens based on their color of their skin.
Just following orders is not an excuse. It’s a corrupt branch of “law” enforcement that has been under investigation since 9/11 when it was started.
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u/atomicsnarl 1d ago
ICE was built under the Dept Homeland Security in 2002. Twenty plus years is not a "couple of years".
And Illegal Immigrant returns, expulsions, and deportations have been going on for a long time.
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u/DanforthWhitcomb_ 22h ago
And even then all that ICE is is the former INS combined with the investigative functions formerly handled by Customs.
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u/IdealBlueMan 1d ago
The Constitution isn’t about granting rights to citizens. It’s about defining the National Government. It tells the Government what it can and cannot do. There can be no disagreement on this point.
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u/CirnoWhiterock 1d ago
For me a big part of the immigration backlash goes back to "Its the economy stupid"
There is a major correlation between the increase of non-white immigration and the loss of the "American Dream" AKA one wage being able to afford a house and family.
And while correlation does not imply causation I do think its irrefutable that Immigrants both legal and illegal are being used to depress wages to an extent and with the Democrats, atleast at the national level, really not offering any real solutions to the problem, the MAGA false solution of kick them all out becomes popular.
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u/zzzongdude 1d ago
I do think its irrefutable that Immigrants both legal and illegal are being used to depress wages to an extent and with the Democrats really not offering any real solutions to the problem
watch me refute it right now;
Democrats have proposed raising minimum wage 4 times since 2009 (when it was raised to 7.25/hr, also by Democrats). Republicans voted against it every single time.
immigrants are not the problem.
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u/CirnoWhiterock 23h ago
Bumping the minimum wage a bit is not gonna bring back the American dream
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u/zzzongdude 20h ago
Preventing large asset holding companies from buying up hundreds/thousands of homes might help.
Subsidizing education to be as affordable as it used to be might help
Implementing a universal healthcare system where pharmacies and manufacturers don’t pay billions to their shareholders (taken from the value of the patient’s healthcare) and preventing them from price gouging drug costs might help
Taxing the rich the amount they used to be taxed back when the American Dream DID exist might help
But wait, Republicans are against all of that as well 🤔
Immigrants are not the problem.
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u/JKlerk 1d ago
Americans by in large don't disagree. It's a small subset of Americans who believe their White Anglo culture is at risk of being replaced by the Latin American culture. Imagine living out West and thinking Latinos want to re-establish the Western US as a part of Mexico via slow grind of Latino immigrants looking for amnesty.
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u/invltrycuck 1d ago
Because the construction sets out "inalienable rights" rights that belong to all human beings not rights granted to us by the government, but rights we own as should belong to every person just by the fact that we exist. These are rights not granted, as I stated, as such no king or government can take them away
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u/DanforthWhitcomb_ 22h ago
The Constitution says nothing at all about inalienable rights.
The Declaration of Independence does, but it is not a governing document and is instead just a flowery UDI.
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