I’m out the rest of the day, but this piece from Greg Sargent is all over Bluesky so I thought I’d post it:
By all indications, at least nine Senate Democrats will vote to advance the Laken Riley Act, a sweeping measure that mandates the detention of undocumented immigrants who have committed nonviolent crimes, all but ensuring that it will move forward. This is a classic GOP “message bill”: It forces Democrats to either oppose the package, creating instant ad fodder against them, or swallow the whole thing, even though it contains some awful policies that most Democrats would surely oppose in isolation.
[…]The Laken Riley Act, which has passed the House with 48 Democrats backing it, would require the Department of Homeland Security to detain undocumented migrants accused of minor crimes like burglary, theft, larceny, and shoplifting, putting them on track to deportation. This is dubious policy: DHS already has the authority to detain such undocumented immigrants; the bill would merely require this. That could give DHS less flexibility to make enforcement decisions in these cases, forcing it to detain people accused of the most minor transgressions even if DHS determines that enforcement resources might be better used elsewhere.
What happened to Laken Riley—a nursing student murdered by undocumented migrant Jose Ibarra after he’d previously committed minor crimes—was a horror, and Ibarra has rightly received a life sentence for it. But as American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick points out, it’s extraordinarily rare for low-level offenders to go on to commit murder; now Immigration and Customs Enforcement would be required to detain every such offender, a potentially huge waste of resources that could be used to pursue more serious criminals. His case should not be the basis for such massive policy changes.
Regardless, another part of the bill is potentially worse than its detention mandate. It grants state attorneys general standing to bring lawsuits against certain specific federal immigration policies if they claim their states are damaged by those policies, and to seek “injunctive relief” against them.
Reuben Gallego and John Fetterman are all-in on the bill, which has bothered other Democrats because they could support advancing the bill and then open it up for amendments that, for example, wouldn’t give Ken Paxton the right to sue to end certain kinds of immigration because it’s a (real or imagined) threat to Texas.
Gallego has declared that the bill would exempt Dreamers brought here illegally as children, which is not true. He has asserted that it’s necessary because the Biden administration took “no action” on the border after the Covid-related Title 42 asylum ban lifted, which is simply false. Fetterman has suggested that the bill is “giving authorities the tools” to prevent killings like Riley’s. But that’s misleading, obscuring the fact that they already have those “tools.” And Fetterman has trafficked in the same distortions of immigration data that Trump does to portray a system more out of control than it is.
What’s happening here is pretty simple: these guys are from swing states that swung towards Trump in this election. They don’t buy that Democrats can win their states back by turning out disaffected “couch sitters”, unreliable Democratic voters who share the Democrats’ positions on immigration. Since they’ve decided that immigration arguments can’t be won by Democrats, they’re just going to adopt the Republican position on immigration. That’s what “pivoting to the center” means in practice — adopting Republican positions on the big issues that Republicans make noise about (immigration is one, I’m guessing trans rights will be next).
I don’t think this works as a practical political strategy: if a voter agrees with Republican noise about immigration, transgender and other issues, why not vote for the real thing the next time these two Senators have a decent opponent? It’s also corrosive to the future of the Democratic Party, since casual voters just see Republicans vs Democrats as a choice similar to Vanilla vs French Vanilla, so why go through the bother (and it is a real bother, Republicans have seen to that ) of voting.
For those wondering what to do about this: call your Senator, especially if they’re Fetterman or Gallego.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
High levels of immigration is absolutely unpopular, including among parts of our own coalition (labor in particular). Going after trans people is not popular, though. Its just the GOP base is rabid about the issue. If they bend on one, but not the other, that isn’t GOP-lite. That is retail politics.
John S.
Ugh, that’s twice already that I’ve had to call Rep. Schrier’s office in the past few weeks about her voting like a Republican.
I hope she’s saving her mettle for some of the bigger fights ahead.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: There’s a difference between opposing high levels of immigration, and voting for a messaging bill that reinforces the message of “immigrants are criminals.” This is the latter.
Starfish (she/her)
I wrote Hickenlooper and told him to knock off his support for racist nonsense.
David Fud
I have come to the conclusion that if we don’t fix our information environment, I cannot blame Democrats for blowing with the puke funnel wind. At the end of the day, as we have all learned to our dismay, the average non-informed voter is voting on what the puke funnel put out there, leaving us always in a sewer-fulled swimming pool competing with the native residents. No one likes that we are in the muck. They love to be in the muck.
And, unless we wash the pool out with an ocean of clean water (our information environment), we are going to get folks riding the native residents of the muck-pool to keep from drowning. And I cannot blame them. As they say, only Democrats are going to vote for a Democratic leader. Survive today to vote for better overall policy at some point in the future is the least bad option they have, it seems. It is that or drown in the sewer-filled swimming pool.
Lee
Caving on the whole immigrant issue is abhorrent to me. Has no one read Niemoller? Fight the GOP. Turn the tables. Explain that it’s not the immigrants taking jobs, it’s the greedy CEOs outsourcing everything to China and India. That’s where the good paying jobs are going because it’s cheaper.
Anything! Like, literally anything. Be an actual opposition party.
Baud
I have no idea what will work and what won’t.
However, I have come to believe that our view that everyone who isn’t as liberal as we are on various issues is automatically going to vote Republican is an article of faith more than a substantiated fact. Gallego won a Trump state. We’ve seen ticket splitting in many areas. Centrist Democrats win elections. Voters are more varied than we’d like to admit.
But I have no solutions. I can hope that this bill fails, but that’s about it.
cmorenc
Not saying your point about the Laken Riley bill / vote is wrong, but a huge error by Biden & the Dems was not getting out ahead of border / immigration the first 2 years of his term by making reform / more secure border a top priority along the lines of the bipartisan bill Trump torpedoed, in which protection of dreamers could have been assured.
Steve LaBonne
Look at Denmark if you think climbing on the anti-immigrant bandwagon can’t work for center-left parties. To my chagrin and disgust, it definitely can.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@@mistermix.bsky.social: The voters they care about keeping only care that high levels of immigration are reduced. Those voters don’t care about messaging.
trollhattan
Mel Gibson has joined James Woods and for the most Mel Gibson reason imaginable–going on Joe Rogan while the fires kicked up. And it’s the governor’s fault, you see?
I’ll pause my sympathies for just long enough to say fuck you, Mel Gibson. If there’s one thing that could not care less about your politics, it’s wildfire.
Edmund dantes
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
“Hi guys. You really need to vote for us to protect you!!! If you don’t the gop will do all kinds of bad things to you. If you do, we can’t actually do anything substantiate to help you as that would be bad retail politics so we’ll still have to make sure your types don’t get any real substantial relief”
”stupid lazy voters. They won’t come out to vote for us. Don’t they know we are the only thing standing between everyone getting fucked by the gop and us throwing them under the bus the bus cause it’s good retail politics”
Baud
@cmorenc:
You’re not wrong, but the attempt would have split our coalition. In hindsight, it’s easy to say it would have been worth it. But harder in real time.
Almost Retired
On the same website where I checked up on my Congressperson’s vote on the Act (CBS news), a separate article notes that deportations in 2024 were the highest since the Obama Administration, slightly outpacing Trump’s peak year. We’re not soft on immigration (too harsh by far IMHO).
But, as so often with an inclusive party, highlighting this will turn off segments of our coalition while – I would imagine – not attracting enough independents, Democratic couch-sitters and squishy Republicans to offset the loss. The “Dems are soft on immigration” blather is just too baked in with the general public. Democrats are smart on immigration, but that level of nuance is lost on the border wall and tariff crowd. Day-drinking my way to January 20, 2029.
Another Scott
Leaving this here without much comment:
APNews.com (from January 7):
(The 2nd graph shows that about 32% of Democrats are in the “immigration is a priority” bucket, and that percentage has been rising over time.)
Our elected officials lead us, but they also represent us. Sometimes the public wants to be lead in a bad direction…
Best wishes,
Scott.
Professor Bigfoot
@Edmund dantes: WHITE voters.
NO OTHER DEMOGRAPHIC gave the mango MF more than 50% of their votes.
You really need to figure out how to get WHITE people to give a good goddamn about people who aren’t also straight white male Christians.
Professor Bigfoot
@Another Scott: As if November 5 wasn’t a clear indication of where Americans* want to go.
Miss Bianca
@Starfish (she/her): Hick voted for this?
cmorenc
@Baud: our coalition wound up eventually getting split anyways. As much as progressives are contemptuous toward the Bill Clinton “triangulation” tactic, sometimes that’s the smart way to defuse hot-potato issues that otherwise give malevolent opposition politicos fuel for politically potent demagoguery. Best to get out in front of some otherwise unpalatable issues rather than chase from behind mostly on the oppo’s terms.
suzanne
Nobody has yet been able to adequately explain to me why any Pennsylvanians would give a fucken pigeon fart about the border. It makes me crazy.
KatKapCC
I guess we gotta take what we can get, since the voters of this country are fucking morons.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Edmund dantes: If enough of them had voted for Harris and other Democrats, this bill wouldn’t exist. But even some of the people who will watch their family members get deported for minor things, voted for Trump. You know why? Most people in the US, including immigrants, want to limit immigration. Do I like this bill? No. I liked the one Trump torpedoed. It would have passed if they had tried it a year or two earlier and maybe Trump would have lost.
David Fud
@suzanne:
Because of all of those rabid Canadians that don’t want to become part of the United States shit-show, of course. Those future Canadian-Americans need to be deported to Mexico.
Duke of Clay
“I don’t think this works as a practical political strategy”
“Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, people will vote for a real Republican all the time.” Harry S. Truman
Duke of Clay
@KatKapCC:
“It’s good to be the king.”
cmorenc
@KatKapCC: The non-sentence doesn’t even amount to a slap on the wrist. It’s not even as strong as what the Mississippi state judge gave the three violent racists who committed arson to burn down a black man’s house in “Mississippi Burning”. At least he gave them unsupervised probation.
Another Scott
@KatKapCC: Someone (Emptywheel?) was saying that this was actually a good move by Merchan as it complicates appeals for Donnie. Kinda – “You got no punishment, but your’re appealing? What kind of lunatic are you??” And there might be some (small) risk that the unconditional discharge would be somehow changed on appeal. So it’s a way for the conviction to stick even more stickily.
Dunno.
He was certainly fighting it hard enough so he and his lawyers think it is a big deal.
Too bad, so sad, for Donnie.
(Maybe it will finally mean that he loses his liquor license at his NJ club??)
Best wishes,
Scott.
Baud
@cmorenc:
Ok, I hate to defend Trump, but that is a worse crime.
cmorenc
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: That is exactly the point of my earlier post.
Matt
At least in Fetterman’s case, it’s at least equally probable that he’s just that much of an asshole.
The only taste he loves more than Palestinian blood is boot leather.
Mai Naem mobile ¹
@trollhattan: Mel Gibson making fun of Gavin Newsoms use of hair gel while supporting Orange Moron who probably spends more on hair products daily than Gavin Newsom spends monthly. Hope Gibson stays in Texas. We’ll see then if he blames Abbott when his power goes down.
John S.
@suzanne:
I can’t imagine why any Washingtonians would care, either. We’re a couple hours from the Canadian border, but nobody seems too worried about that. Somehow the border thousands of miles away is a huge concern.
cmorenc
@Baud: True, but the underlying point is the same that in both instances, the judge effectively trivialized a felony to the point of vanishing nonexistence by imposing zero consequences.
Baud
@cmorenc:
We’re in for four years of injustice.
KatKapCC
@Mai Naem mobile ¹: They really need to get over the hair gel thing. He’s literally just using it the way it’s supposed to be used — to style his hair. He wears it back rather than loose, and that requires gel. What’s the big deal? This is like making a thing out of a woman using Chapstick. But I suppose Gibson prefers a more, oh what’s the word…hmm…think think…oh yeah!! A Nazi hairstyle! That’s it.
JML
@Mai Naem mobile ¹: the GOP clown show has learned the lesson from His Orange Assholeness that insulting the physical appearance of your foes and mocking some irrelevant characteristic of theirs will get picked up by right-wing media and repeated infinitum ad nauseum. These are all people who can’t feel good about themselves unless they’re pushing someone else down, something they have adopted from Der Leader.
different-church-lady
@cmorenc: You’ve got to be carefully taught.
suzanne
@KatKapCC: I could also point one to any number of Mel Gibson films in the 80s that were hair gel-enhanced.
KatKapCC
@suzanne: Yeah, let’s recall the damn Farrah Fawcett style wispy mullet he had back in the 80s.
eclare
@suzanne:
Same here, and I’m closer than you are in TN.
Steve LaBonne
@Professor Bigfoot: 🎯
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@John S.: @suzanne:
I think there are 4 reasons that people get bent about this issue:
We have a housing shortage which makes the cost of housing and rent higher. Yes, there has been a big impact from price collusion via software algorithms and the short-term rental market, but it is difficult to convince people that high levels of immigration aren’t making housing less available. They don’t believe you. They get especially salty about resettlement organizations that help immigrants find housing and help with rent, particularly when they or people they know are struggling to pay their own rent. That is just a fact.
2. Some people are genuinely concerned about border security and have been since 911.
3. When there is less immigration, there is more competition for labor. This means people can push for higher wages. Immigrant laborers (especially the undocumented) tend not to join unions.
4. Racism & xenophobia
TBone
@Another Scott: oooh good eye! A possible consequence!
pajaro
@cmorenc:
There were no consequences that the Judge could have imposed that could have been executed, given the immunity that Trump possesses once he begins his term. It’s the only sentence that he could have given that results in termination of the case. So it’s not at all like the cases you mentioned, where the judge’s hands were in no ways tied.
Professor Bigfoot
@Duke of Clay: See, for example, Senator Moreno.
TBone
@David Fud: I agree with this, being in survival mode
John S.
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
I suspect the main reason here in WA is just good old fashioned racism.
Although I have come across a fair number of Asian folks here who are also furious with immigration because their relatives have been waiting for years to get into the country while Latinos just come across the border whenever they want (their perception).
TBone
I’ve been worried about Dick Van Dyke for a while, glad to see his neighbors got him out!
https://www.msn.com/en-us/public-safety-and-emergencies/fire-and-rescue/dick-van-dyke-99-had-to-be-carried-from-raging-los-angeles-fire-by-heroic-neighbors/ar-BB1r9Tty
Fuck Mel, that fucking guy is just a stooge. I used to like him way back when. Dick Van Dyke is a human being!
pajaro
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
The “high level of immigration” that people supposedly dislike are not affected by any of the provisions that are cited in the post, at least directly. The provisions are about detention of individuals who are here and are apprehended by the government. As Senator Osoff stated, the requirement that anyone who is apprehended and believed to be engaged in criminal activity be detained, is a classic unfunded mandate, as we would need to create additional bed space if we deny the government the ability to prioritize who is jailed.
Geminid
@Miss Bianca: I think both Colorado Senators were among the 32 Democrats and one Independent (Angus King) voting for the bill. There were 9 “Nays”: Booker and Kim (NJ), Markey and Warren (MA), Schatz and Hirono (HI), Merkley (OR), Smith (MN), and Sanders (VT).
Five Democrats– Padilla and Schiff (CA), Hassan (NH), Murphy (CT), and Murray (WA)– did not vote.
The “Yeas” included Ossoff and Warnock, GA), Kaine and Warner (VA, Schumer and Gillibrand (NY), Gallego and Kelly (AZ), Van Hollen and Alsobrooks (MD);
Rosen and Cortez-Madto (NV), Durbin and Baldwin (IL), (Coontz(?) and Rochester (DE), Bennet and Hickenlooper (CO) and others.
Some like Warnock,Ossoff, Rosen and Cortez-Masto are from purple states and others like Durbin, Baldwin, Van Hollen, Alsobrooks, Schumer and Gillebrand hold safe seats.
Socolofi
IMHO Democrats have largely screwed themselves on immigration by trying to explain nuanced policy in sound bites and social media.
Nobody is for unchecked immigration, and even I, a super lefty leftist, don’t buy that the millions claiming asylum really need asylum in the US. I’ve been to these places; I’m in Mexico right now. It’s nice. Yup lots of bad places but not like New Orleans and Baltimore don’t have their share of murders.
The GOP position is simple. Wall. Deportation. With us or with open borders.
Dems need a simple position as well. High migrant worker tax. Jail for hiring undocumented. Citizenship through service. With us or with hiring illegals over citizens.
im under no illusion that there’s a ton of nuance and circumstances not covered by catchy slogans. I’m also very much for more immigration – both skilled and unskilled. I’ve helped file my share of H1-Bs & Green Card apps, & helped my housekeeper move from undocumented to documented and now running a housekeeping business – with company cars & wraps, uniforms, and all that.
But until Dems start offering better ideas, the only way to stay in office will be to at least follow the crappy ideas. If you want to call your congresscritter, ask them to propose something better.
lowtechcyclist
@pajaro:
So a suspended sentence wouldn’t have been a possibility for a normal defendant? And if would have been, why not with Trump? Could certainly write the order in a way that the sentence wouldn’t be un-suspended under any circumstances for the next, say, 54 months.
TBone
@suzanne: I trolled my friend in Delaware so hard: are the illegals swimming towards you right now? What ship did your Italian grandparents come over in again?
However, look at Kennett Square mushroom capitol of the world to see why PA people care. I have a friend that works with (hires) Mexican labor – they call him Uncle Tio.
lowtechcyclist
@pajaro:
But the private prison people are rubbing their hands in glee, I’m sure.
TBone
@lowtechcyclist: yep, and clamoring for investors to build more
campsprisons.Geminid
@pajaro: Senator Ossoff still voted for the bill, as did his Georgia colleague Senator Warnock.
Steve LaBonne
@Socolofi: We don’t have stupid fucking policies that can be proclaimed in a few words, nor should we. “Open borders” is short and sweet- you want them to go with that? There is nothing between that and “deport them all” that would make for a catchy slogan.
Josie
I don’t know anything about Fetterman, but I have been watching Gallego for some time now. He is a savvy politician who has been representing people on the border and winning elections. I’m pretty sure he would not be taking this stance unless he thinks his people want him to do so.
artem1s
this is the problem with the self-righteous ‘progressive’ recalcitrant hand sitters who want to hold the country hostage over their one issue. Fetterman has always believed in using a one-issue, one bullet, one trick pony to get elected. His statements about legalization of weed when he first started campaigning will tell you everything you need to know about who he will throw under the bus to get elected. He outright said ‘Dems can get Blacks to vote for them if they promise to legalize weed’. Of course he never considered how offensive that might be to law abiding black people who aren’t eager to see their neighborhoods become wall to wall dispensaries and suburban minivans of white people getting baked and speeding thru their neighborhoods and over pedestrians.
EVERY state AG, prosecutor, sheriff, and gun humper is wetting their pants today in anticipation of getting to stand their ground or do warrant-less raids of people’s homes just so they can jail, or even better kill, every brown person they don’t like the looks of. This is going to be non-stop ‘resisting arrest’ season now. They may well call this the “It’s OK for George Zimmerman to shoot Travon Martin” bill.And all POC will once again blame Democrats for not keeping state legislators and LEOs from abusing tough on crime legislation.
suzanne
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: I just want to note that the price algorithm software is only one of many causes that are affecting renters. We’ve underbuilt for a long time; new home starts dropped off a cliff after 2008 and then only got back to a normal pace recently. The housing shortage is multicausal and international, and affects both the rental and sales markets.
Apparently Canada’s housing crisis, which has been building longer than ours, is responsible for much of the displeasure with Trudeau. The Canadian population is really concentrating in four cities. We will probably have a similar pattern.
suzanne
A couple of fascinating and sobering statistics: in 2008-2009-ish, for the first time in human history over half of people on earth lived in cities rather than in rural areas.
It is projected that in 2050, 75% of people will live in cities rather than in rural areas.
Geminid
@Josie: As you say, Senator Gallego is very familiar with the politics surrounding immigration and the border, having just won a border state Senate race where immigration was a central issue.
Gallego is also very knowledgeble concerning immigration policy and was very active in this area as a Congessman. He knows as much or more about these issues as any Senator.
Ed. I think the poster was selling Gallego short when he said “What’s happening here is simple. These guys are from swong states that swung to Trump in this election.” An overly simplistic view in Gallego’s case.
TBone
@artem1s: PA Lieutenant Governor Fetterman:
https://www.pa.gov/ltgovernor/newsroom/lt-gov-john-fetterman-encouraging-pennsylvanians-to-apply-for-marijuana-related-pardons.html
karen gail
Seems every person who complains about illegal immigrants is white; the Americas were non white until the first illegal set foot and decided that “manifest destiny” gave them the right to claim the land. For years people have claimed “settlers rights” where they took land away from Native tribes, lest we forget some of those Native tribes are from south of the border.
Find a map that shows how much of US was Mexico’s and how much of US was Canada’s; whites are the illegal immigrants.
For the record I am so white that I can sunburn from full moon; my ancestors fled British takeover of land along with being shipped over to be sold as indentured servants. So I know that there are some whose ancestors had no choice when they came to US.
suzanne
@TBone: IMO, Fetterman is just a good old-fashioned weathervane and will do whatever he thinks is popular. That’s disappointing, and I’ll continue to call his office and make my opinion known.
They’re all careerists.
ETA: Maybe not all of them. Sigh. Frustrated.
Another Scott
@suzanne: That reminds me…
CalculatedRiskBlog – Lumber prices
They tripled last time under Donnie, then went nuts up and down during the pandemic, and the new baseline is around 2.5x as high as it was in mid-2015. It’s not surprising that we’re years behind where we should be on new construction when builders have little idea what lumber will cost.
But it’s hard to imaging housing will get more affordable with new tariffs, throwing workers out of the country, etc., etc. :-/
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
TBone
@suzanne: having worked in criminal defense, and also doing the arduous, expensive expungement process work, I’ve seen too many young lives ruined by marijuana convictions just for the sake of the legal system revenue stream…that pardon effort was really important.
Those pardons came with automatic expungement because most people won’t pay to have one or cannot afford it or don’t even know it’s possible.
gratuitous
When this new law is passed and implemented, I hope that constituents of Senators Gallegos and Fetterman remind those worthies of the part they played in the wholly foreseeable abuse of the law. So when asylum seekers are caged, families are broken up, and refugees are sent back to almost certain death in their home countries, the Senators can explain in detail how they missed this.
Josie
@Geminid:
I agree.
Steve LaBonne
@karen gail: Unfortunately lots of Latinos (especially near the border) who “came the right way” want to pull up the ladder behind them. This pattern of assimilation has been repeated by every wave of immigrants in our history.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Geminid:
I was interested to see if any of CO’s (D) House members voted for it. Much to my pleasant surprise, none did.
But, per MM’s comment above, the Senate vote sends this kind of message to the reich-wing:
Folks who voted against it or did not vote:
suzanne
@Another Scott: Yeah, I was thinking about construction material prices this morning, w/r/t the LA fires. Disasters also usually cause price spikes; Hurricane Harvey resulted in drywall prices shooting through the roof and huge schedule impacts on projects in almost every sector. It’s going to be chaos in residential and commercial construction for a while.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
And it’s always a tell when the same free-market, market-urbanists leave out the word “affordable” when referencing the so-called “housing shortage” because that’s what we have. The Commodification of Housing, which I’ve written about before, is one of the root causes behind this post-2008, and no amount of market rate, build-build-build nonsense will fix that. But the grifters keep on pitching that grift and billionaires like Theil and developers all over are laughing at them from their mansions in Telluride, Aspen or a yacht.
Read Patrick Condon’s book on how this has played out in Canada, specifically Vancouver:
https://www.amazon.com/Broken-City-Speculation-Inequality-Crisis/dp/0774869550
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@pajaro: Detention is a prelude to deportation. It makes it easier. That is what this bill is intended to facilitate.
Geminid
@gratuitous: It’s not just Senators Gallego and Fetterman, the two malefactors the poster singled out. Don’t forget Jon Ossoff, Raphael Warnock, Tammy Baldwin, Amy Klobucher, Tammy Duckworth, Elissa Slotkin, Peter Welch, Angela Alsobrooks and the other 23 Democratic Senators who voted to advance this bill
Ed. If you are going to compile a shit list you at should at least make it a complete one.
suzanne
@Steve LaBonne: It’s been upsetting for me to see who within my educational and social circle broadly supports immigration and who doesn’t. I grew up in a very working-class area that was roughly 50% Latino at the time, and probably half of that cohort was undocumented or had undocumented parents.
Let’s just say it is not just white people who want stricter immigration policy. Another sigh.
Matt McIrvin
@TBone: Dick van Dyke is a really good guy and on the ball–I saw him posting little vlog-type videos about the election during 2024, and he was a Biden/Harris supporter and made salient points about the terrible media environment.
Soprano2
@Another Scott: I keep saying, over and over, that we need complete immigration reform to allow the people who want to come here and work to come here legally, because it’s too hard to come here legally so they come illegally. For example, it’s ridiculous that it takes so long for a foreign-born spouse of an American to get what they need to work here legally. The system we have now doesn’t serve our needs any more. I think the majority of people would agree with this. I don’t know why it’s so hard for Democrats to say it, over and over again.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Not surprisingly and purely from a conversational/anecdotal angle, business owners in Denver, regardless of politics, are typically mum on immigration for obvious reasons. The (R) ones fully realize they couldn’t do shit if they didn’t have immigrants of all kinds, documented and undocumented. Talk to a couple of them when no one’s around and they express outright panic at the thought of how Hair Furor’s policies would impact them if they played out the way they’re portrayed.
They still voted for him. Putzes.
Matt McIrvin
@karen gail: I recall Dinesh d’Souza trying to draw some kind of fine distinction between settlers and immigrants, basically arguing that we weren’t a “nation of immigrants” because most of us were instead descended from colonizers and it’s somehow better to be a colonizer than an immigrant. It was truly pathetic.
Baud
suzanne
@Soprano2:
Yeah, this is the core of the issue. We’ve enforced scarcity on citizenship. And instead of reworking the whole system, we end up squabbling amongst ourselves and ladder-pulling. I hate it.
TBone
@Matt McIrvin: yes, I saw that too, he’s such a mensch!!! Love that guy!
TBone
@Baud: good!
Anyway
@Matt McIrvin: Ann Coulter was the first I heard banging the “nation of settlers not a nation of immigrants” drum.
Won’t be surprised if history textbooks written in TX start adopting that phrasing under the RThugs rule.
Dinesh D’Souza is the vilest of the vile.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Anyway:
That is something that 110% of the BJ commentariat would agree on.
Actually, we could probably debate who is the ‘vilest of the vile’ but that would be pretty much like debating how many angels can dance on the point of a pin.
Tumbrels for all of em.
suzanne
@Anyway: I saw assholes on Xhitter referring to white Americans as a “nation of conquerors”, which is even more offensive.
I also don’t know how they reconcile that with the conquistadors, but my best guess is that they don’t think about this too hard.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@suzanne:
Easy. The conquistadors were white Europeans.
Matt McIrvin
@suzanne: But they also regard undocumented immigrants as an “invading army” of conquerors trying to conquer us. It’s basically all about some sort of race war to them. We want to be the winner race and not the loser race.
It’s the same way the Nazis analyzed everything–I recall someone talking about Mein Kampf and how the world for Adolf Hitler was just this clash of giant abstractions, the people involved being an afterthought.
laura
The thing that enrages me about the whole Laken Riley Bill the most is that one is incarcerated based on charges- not a bail hearing, not on a conviction, just “he looked dusky and shifty.” One would have to be a sweet summer child to think that this wouldn’t be an invitation to vigilantism, a profit center for private prisons, for inmate labor, for terror. That it is wrapped in a ‘protect our white women’ gauze makes me want to vomit- it was what Dylan Roof explained to nine Black parishioners just before he executed them.
There has been two bipartisan immigration plans since Bush the lesser and both times they went poof because republicans want and need and enjoy the absolute power to knuckle an unprotected portion of people.
I’m sick of seeing manufactured consent and concensus- here, about immigration, but on everything but the malign power of unaccountable wealth and white privilege. (Please do not at me about not all white people.)
Regarding extension of TPS, why not extend that to our Haitian friends?
Jinchi
@Matt McIrvin: But D’Sousa is literally an immigrant. He wasn’t born to immigrant parents, he wasn’t brought here as a child. He was born in Mumbai and arrived in the US as an adult college student.
How is he a settler and not and immigrant?
karen gail
When the reservations in South Dakota closed during COVID a former friend and her neighbors were all pissed, about how could “those savages” closed the roads that went through reservations. After all the ranchers would have to travel hours longer to get to big cities (her cases was Rapid City) to do their shopping. Became former friend when I pointed out that reservations were sovereign nations and permitted roadway travel through those lands; she ranted about “rights” and how the Homestead Act gave the land to whites not savages.
I realized then that she didn’t see the Native people as human and wanted nothing to do with her.
Matt McIrvin
@Jinchi: Oh, he’d freely admit to that, I think. He was submitting to his “betters”. It’s a large part of his act.
I’m not the one to psychoanalyze how all this relates to his background…
suzanne
@Matt McIrvin: I was noting here in comments a few days ago that I can definitely feel a change in myself in recent years. I bet others can, too. The pandemic, the 2016 and 2024 elections, and just this constant slide into entropy has made me much more scared, less fun and joyful, and less sociable. I now understand the allure of the idea of fucking off into the woods alone.
lowtechcyclist
@suzanne:
When you say ‘cities’ what definition are you using?
I remember learning in U.S. history class that it was roughly a century ago now that the U.S. had more than half of its population living in urban rather than rural areas. The definition of ‘urban’ was a town of 5000 or more, IIRC.
lowtechcyclist
@suzanne:
Damn. We really want to get the basement finished this year. Gonna be lots of fun, huh?
Matt McIrvin
@karen gail: I heard about similar things happening during the pandemic with whites vs. Maori in New Zealand (a place that often prides itself about being way better with treatment of indigenous people than we are).
suzanne
@lowtechcyclist: That’s a good question about what is the exact cutoff. I have always heard 10,000, but that that could be a US definition. I just checked the World Bank and the UN sites briefly for a numeric definition and didn’t see one. (Both of those organizations have slightly different projections for the percentage of the world population living in urban areas in 2050, but both of them represent rapid worldwide urbanization.) I will continue digging.
Note that this is a worldwide stat, not just the US. I saw a map of projected megacities in 2050, and they were almost entirely in Africa and south/east Asia.
Matt McIrvin
@suzanne: Part of this is just the damage that living through any kind of events brings to you. I think with every generation, if you ask what event ruined the world and made everything go to shit, you’ll hear something.
For me it feels like it was 9/11. For my parents it was the JFK assassination. I’ve heard people say that when Kennedy was shot it killed the soul of America. If it’s true, I’ve never known an America with a soul.
suzanne
@lowtechcyclist: Go buy metal studs and drywall this weekend!!!
MomSense
@David Fud:
Today’s Bangor Daily News had an article about Mainers saying they would like to join Greenland and get the benefits of being a Danish citizen. Even changed the r name of our state to Majn! I’m thinking that hooking up with Canada would be easier. The comments with the article were all about wanting the universal healthcare and free tuition.
rikyrah
@Another Scott:
They don’t know shyt about actual immigration.
Messaging?
Maybe.
But,.I am tired of stupidity when the.actual numbers do not point to an ‘open/overrun ‘ border during the Biden Administration.😡😡
jonas
Not really true. Plenty of Asians and Latinos will go off on this, too, if you ask them. The assumption that older immigrants and POC automatically empathize with more recent immigrants, especially the undocumented, based on some kind of ethnic solidarity or whatever, is very misleading.
It’s not entirely unreasonable for more established Latinos or Asian immigrants in cities, or who work in industries like landscaping or agriculture, to view large scale undocumented immigration as a threat to their jobs and wages on some level. What I do find ironic is seeing rednecks in places like the UP of Michigan, where you can probably go your entire life without encountering an immigrant or Latino person, get their dander all up about border crossings 1000 miles away. They’re racist about a purely theoretical problem.
karen gail
@jonas: I said “seems like” but then I live in Maine and moved here from Wisconsin about 10 years ago. I expect that those who were once careful about their racism are now Trump supporters and vocal about it.
Where I lived in Wisconsin I saw only white people unless I went over the Dells and saw tourists. Now living in Maine I don’t remember the last time I saw someone who isn’t white; for a time one the apartments next door had a black family and the police would stake out and patrol heavily past that building. Their only crime was color of their skin; I had police tell me to call if one even showed up at my door.
karen gail
Have been side tracked on reading news to fires in LA; but this caught my eye. Charlie Kirk and Don Jr in Greenland and Kirk claiming US has “manifest destiny” to fulfill. Or whatever bullshit he is spouting now.
Found at least one article, there are more but one made me sick so not checking out others.
Charlie Kirk tells Glenn Beck what he and Donald Trump Jr. found in potential US territory Greenland | Blaze Media
azlib
It never ceases to amaze me how politicians react to a short term potential problem. I do not understand how any Dem politician can believe voting for this bill actually helps them not lose the next election. With the nationalization of the immigration debate just having a (D) next to your name instanly identifies you as being on one side of the issue regardless of your voting record.
Geminid
@azlib: Some of the Democrats who voted for the bill hold safe seats, so I don’t see how this question is simple matter of self-preservation.
Chris
@David Fud:
Have been screaming this for four years. Our media is as bad as it’s ever been, a majority of the public remains locked into the “the media is either reliable or liberal but in any event it is not anti-liberal” and therefore continues to be led around by the nose every time, and until one or both of these problems are fixed, I have no goddamn idea what any politician is supposed to do.
JMG
Gallego just got sworn in as a Senator last week! He won’t run again until 2028!! He knows damn well this bill will not be an issue by then. So he must have some other reason besides simple self-preservation.
Note: “Some other” does not mean nor imply “good” in the last sentence.
jefft452
This bill protects the hard working American criminal from having immigrants take their jobs
gene108
Sen. Bob Casey, a middle of the road to conservative Democrat, was too liberal for PA voters in 2024.
I don’t know what to do when 45%+ of the electorate will believe any lie Republicans push out and ridicule reality.
Matt McIrvin
@jonas: I think it’s over-extrapolation from the way Pete Wilson’s nativism fucked the Republicans forever in California–there was an assumption among Democrats that Trump’s nativism was going to do the same thing nationwide, because of our growing Latino population.
But the US today is not California in the 1990s. “Latinos” broadly construed are a lot of disparate groups, they’re different in different parts of the country, and immigration itself is different.
Glory b
@Steve LaBonne: Also, a lot of black people have complained about the immigrants/asylees getting debit cards, jobs, etc, even if it wasn’t true.
In a couple cities, the local government closed local community centers so they could be used as shelters for them.
I hate to say it, but there’s a lot of Hispanics AND black people who are on the Republicans’ side with this issue.
And yes, I think it was more of a factor in the minority drift to Trump than we realize.
Even though the border enforcement was a better issue for Biden/Harris, the fear of a progressive backlash kept them paralyzed on the subject. Remember the Hispanic activists calling Obama the “Deporter in chief? He still had enough black support to overcome it. Harris didn’t.
Matt McIrvin
@Glory b: Just judging from troll activity on my representative’s Facebook page, Republicans have been trying really, really hard to drive a wedge between Indian immigrants and every other kind of immigrant, with, well, not huge success but some success.
Matt McIrvin
@Chris: My parents are pretty liberal but they think I’m nuts when I tell them the Washington Post is not actually a liberal paper. It’s not the Washington Times, but that bar is low.
tam1MI
I went to high school and college in Stevens Point, and in a high school that had around 2000 students we had a grand total of 1 POC. The college got most of their minority students through the foreign exchange program.
taumaturgo
Geminid
@JMG: Ruben Gallego put a lot of work into immigration issues as a Representative. He knows a lot about immigration policy, certanly more than you or I. Have you considered looking up what he has to say about this bill? He’s fairly outspoken for a politician.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
…the Washington Post is not actually a liberal paper.
Is a perception widely held by the vast number of liberal/progressive normie voters. Same people that listen to Totebagger Radio.
And yet, when I tell my normie friends who say “Well, I only listen to NPR because it’s balanced or liberal”, that “No, it’s not”, they think I’m nuts.
It’s a really hard perception to counter. It’s taken years if not a decade +for my normie wife to acknowledge the framing and editorial content bias in Totebagger Radio but even then, she’ll tune me out when I start in on a Driftglass-esque screed about any given media outlet.
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
That, but it’s also an extrapolation from the way immigration politics have always worked. It’s not possible historically to sustain such a high-profile and violently racist brand of politics towards a given ethnic group without losing its vote by enormous margins (and as much as people say “not all Latinos are the same,” Trump’s rhetoric explicitly doesn’t differentiate), which isn’t really surprising. The ur-example is the way Catholic “white ethnics” broke hard for the Democrats after the anti-immigrant hysterics of the 1920s – it didn’t mean that were all-around liberals, it didn’t mean they agreed with the party on everything, it certainly didn’t mean they were fated to vote Democrat forever, but Republicans had stop being explicit WASP supremacists before they started getting these groups in large numbers again. And Latino voter trends reflected that so far – Republicans did reasonably well in the Latino vote under Dubya, then less well under the uber-racialized teabaggers, for example.
If that’s no longer how it works, and it’s possible to ramp up the racism and ramp up your shares of the groups you’re demonizing, that’s something pretty new in U.S. politics. It’s really not that unreasonable that Democrats didn’t see it coming.
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
It’s genuinely batshit insane that the wall-to-wall “but her emails!” of 2016 didn’t shake some awareness loose somewhere in the average Democratic voter’s brains. Even more insane that the last four years haven’t done it.
But no, most of us are good little readers who assume that if the media says there’s smoke, it can only be because there’s fire.
brantl
This shit is going to get people deported for littering and jay-walking.
EarthWindFire
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I tell liberal friends that MSNBC isn’t a liberal channel and they should demand better if they want one. Because what liberal channel has Joe Scarborough on 4 hours a day, Monday through Friday, and as many ex-Republican panelists as Democrats? They all look at me like I’ve grown an extra head.
gene108
I may be wrong, but this Laken Riley Anti-Immigration Bill is passed, and if state AG’s can sue over what immigration laws they feel are a threat to their state, what is stopping one of them initiating a lawsuit stating birthright citizenship is a threat and causes harm to their state?
I feel like birthright citizenship will have carve outs such that U.S. born children of illegal immigrants will not gain citizenship. I wondered how Republicans could find a reason to sue over a baby being born.
I think this law opens the way to sue.
devilsandwich
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: exactly, the way out of this was to win the senate. We need to elect enough liberal Dems so that the swing state ones can vote the way they need on certain issues. They are there to represent their voters, after all. And the best we can hope now is that their pro votes can get some mitigation.
Socolofi
@Steve LaBonne: If we can’t describe our policy, even if it’s super smart and nuanced, in a simple way, it means we won’t have it as we will lose. Again.
Jail Bad Jefes.
citizenship for law-abiding and hard-working.
immigrant worker tax.
Not saying these are great / what we should use but better than the non-existent “uh no there ain’t a problem” head in the sand we’ve had.
Gvg
@gene108: it doesn’t change the Constitution and a law doesn’t either. The Supreme Court could interpret it differently throwing everything into chaos however. They could also ignore the suit and just not take it up.
We need to reform the court, and have control of the appointments. If we could win back the Senate in 2 years by a wide enough margin, we could refuse to approve any more batshit insane justices at least. I personally think it’s time to impeach the ones we know took bribes, except not while Trump appoints the replacements….but when he doesn’t, it’s an example that needs to be set.
pabadger
@Baud: The way I feel about it is Gallego and Fetterman probably knows more the coalitions they need than politics than most if not all of us.