I mean, if anyone should have some stake in the definition, it should probably be Holocaust survivors. Which is one of the reasons (to pop context back to the up-thread post) I find the claim the comparison cheapens the memory of the Holocaust somewhat worthy of skepticism.
That's not how language works. People can't just redefine things to suit their political needs (even if something terrible has happened to them in the past).
It's 100% expected that people who break the law will be imprisoned if caught. A prison is not a "concentration camp", a detention center for illegal aliens is not a "concentration camp". People end up in those places because they broke the law, not because people rounded them up out of their homes and shipped them there.
And what judicial ruling from the day in court of the people you claim are breaking that law justifies their internment in mass camps in conditions substandard to people who have been found guilty of breaking a law? You're forgetting that law enforcement officers aren't judge and jury; they may arrest, but a person has presumption of innocence until their day in court (even if border patrol physically observed them clambering through a hole in a fence).
You may also note that the penalties for breaking the law you've cited include limits on the term of incarceration. So while we hold these people on suspicion of breaking these laws, are we letting them out after 6 months or 2 years? The answer is no.
They have not had their day in court; the US is holding people indefinitely under suspicion of having committed crimes, on purpose, in probable violation of habeas corpus, to maximize people's fear of crossing the US border. It's industrial-scale terror and the US can and should do better.
A detention facility is not a “cage”. These are people that entered the country illegally so yes, they will be detained in some fashion. Do you expect them to be kept in single family homes?
That's certainly an option if people were to offer. There are several charities that do offer such things. This administration will not entertain that suggestion because the goal is to maximize the pain inflicted on immigrants and refugees in an ill-conceived attempt to stem the tide via fear.
The goal is to minimize illegal immigration. And yes, that looks like a pretty standard detention facility to me. Every person in there knew the risk before deciding to break the law.
> Every person in there knew the risk before deciding to break the law.
That's a delightful lie Americans can tell themselves to try and absolve their personal consciences of responsibility for their part in their country making people miserable on purpose. It falls apart pretty quickly with any investigation (I'm sure that shoeless toddler on the left weighed all the pros and cons before crossing the border), but even if it didn't, it acknowledges the goal is to make people miserable on purpose to deter them from seeking a better life.
Used to be, the United States stood for more than that. At least, it aspired to.
No wonder Github has employees walking over the company voluntarily buying into that shitty behavior.
> we can't support millions of refugees flooding into the country
[citation needed]. It's certainly the terror gripping some percent of Americans these days that maybe we can't, but why? We're spending a fortune on deterrence. What if we retargeted for naturalization and education instead? Flattened the complexity of the process and increased the legal caps by a factor of 10 or 100? What's worst case scenario, and how probable is it?
It's weird to think a country that is generating enough surveillance to trigger some of the other threads on HN doesn't have enough resources to track immigrants on their process to becoming permanent residents or citizens without caging them.
Our infrastructure is already in bad shape, a bunch of shanty towns is not going to help. The same people that want open immigration also want free healthcare for all and student loan forgiveness. Who pays for all of this?
Millions of American's are struggling, it's totally logical that people would look at this situation and say "why not help people who already live here before letting millions of more people pour in". The reason we don't help people who already live here is because we can't afford to. I'm skilled enough to make a good living but I'm taxed to the hilt and can't take on any more burden. Many others rightly feel the same way.
It's logical that people react that way, but it's a fear-based reaction that fails to acknowledge possible solutions. For example, people who are working on the fringes of society as undocumented immigrants aren't paying as many taxes into the system because they legally can't, not necessarily because they don't want to. How much tax money is bad immigration policy leaving on the table?
If you don't want your taxes to go up, you ought to consider advocating for making more undocumented immigrants into taxpaying citizens. Spread the burden.
If one doesn't approach these problems as sorted and stack-ranked (i.e. "we can't help immigrants if we can't even help our own population"), solutions open up.
Housing is not actually as big a concern as people make it out to be. Housing in major population centers is a concern. The federal government has programs to help immigrants establish communities around the country, including neighborhoods with more housing than people (which we have quite a few of as our population ages and people move towards the cities). Those programs, of course, are targeted to help documented immigrants; making it easier to be a documented immigrant makes it easier to minimize the risk of shanty-town glut.
Historically, it's rare for a country (especially an empire, which the United States basically functions as de facto due to its sheer size and impact) to encounter problems that can't be ameliorated by more hands and minds. Barring people from participating in society when they're already in society doesn't make those problems easier to solve.
I actually think it should be easier to become a legal immigrant. Not "walk across the border and you're a citizen" easy but easier than it is. The fact is illegal immigration helps no one though and until there's legal means to come to the country, coming illegally is not a good idea and I don't see those tasked with stopping that as amoral.
Remember this discussion isn't about if immigration policy should change. It's if Github is "evil" for working with ICE, an agency currently tasked with enforcing existing laws and policy.
We're in agreement on the need to change immigration policy.
On the topic of the morality of working with the current system: evil is something people decide by their conscience. But if a person feels the actions of ICE are evil (and those photos generate a real visceral reaction that is hard to ignore, at least in my conscience), refusing to perpetrate that implementation, facilitate its perpetration, and walk away if one's company does so and one lacks the power to change their policy is the moral option. We know the opinion history has of people who choose complicitness or complacency in the face of evil.
We appear to be in agreement that the cruelty is the point---it's intentionally harsh and dangerous to the immigrants as a deterrant. When the system actively engages in cruelty, refusing to aid that system diminishes its ability to inflict cruelty. While I don't think it's true that evil would not exist if people did no actions, I do believe that a system architected to perpetrate evil (which I believe "cruelty as the goal" qualifies as) starts to break down if people don't support it.
Those people wouldn't be in cages if nobody showed up to put them in the cages. No reason Github staff should feel compelled to help that process go easier for the people perpetrating it.
We are in agreement that we should change immigration policy.
We are not in agreement that "cruelty is the point". When I look at those pictures it doesn't cause a visceral reaction. It looks pretty much exactly how I imagine it would look. They're dealing with hundreds of thousands of people flooding across the border illegally. That seems like a reasonable way to house them until they can be sent back or processed.
We're also not in agreement on who's fault it is that those people ended up like that. To me and many others, it is 100% their own fault. They took the risk and now they have to pay the price for getting caught. That's not cruel, it's just sensible. Advocate for legal change, don't break the law if you can't handle the consequences.
I don't really care about fault regarding the immigration waves any more than I care about fault for a natural disaster. On the one hand, we have people arriving with the clothes on their back. On the other, we have a country with a federal tax revenue of $3.6 trillion gross. It's obvious where the power balance lies in that relationship. To be blunt, "they took the risk and now they have to pay the price" sounds a lot like justice without mercy, and most schools of faith and philosophy I'm familiar with would call that "cruelty." It doesn't breed positive outcomes; it breeds resentment. Nobody knows all the rules of the games they're playing by; we only get by globally as a species by being merciful when we can afford it.
And we can afford it, collectively, if we get creative. Three point six trillion dollars. This Congress and administration passed a big tax cut package.
I believe you did agree the cruelty was the point; that it was intentionally a harsh process to deter further attempts at illegal immigration. Apologies if I misunderstood you and am putting words in your mouth.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/holocaust-survivor-yes-the-bor...