by dathinab | 2025-07-24 15:46:20+00:00
but this doesn't require to:

- de-humanize people

- use over the top violence

- persecute people which have integrated well and are hard working

- tear apart family without care for the child

- severely undermine the US constitution and put _supposed_ "organized crime" criminals basically into life long forced labor prison without trial in some far way country outside of the eyes/oversight of US citizens (the constitutional right for a fair trail says _anyone accused_, not just US citizens!!)

There is also the whole thing that the situation of illegal immigrants was for a long time tolerated and even wanted by politicians of _both side_ (but not voters of both sides). And funnily it matches the "American Dream", i.e. you come to the us and will have a shit live by being abused for labor no one else will do without being able to call in any labor rights BUT int turn you children can have a better future. And how is that so different to the initial US settlers which came to America knowing their live will be shit but in turn they can create a better future for their children, which also technically where illegal immigrants in many situations.

So what did change outside of a very very far right fraction in the republican party taking over, and more populism and more fear mongering?

1. the new US citizens (e.g. children of immigrants) tend to not vote republican anymore with increasingly little chance to convince many of them

2. the left tries to extend worker rights to illegal immigrants

3. for quite a while having lost nearly every presidential election, if they where concluded by majority vote (which they aren't, but it still sets a clear trend for your party and yes, except for the elections Trump won), it shows shitty stuff like biased Gerry meandering will be increasingly not enough anymore to reliably secure future wins

so in other words the right wing realized that they where losing power badly; realized that one group they could push all the blame (IMHO mostly undeserved) and villainify (also IMHO mostly undeserved) and also act ruthless/inhuman against to show they do something (even if it isn't fixing issues) are illegal immigrants. And the best tool to archive this turned out to be a populist named Trump, problematically for them that populist also took over their party/camp and now not falling out of line with him might risk their carrier more then the Democratic party ever had or would.

And that's where we are today and that's why it's dangerous.

Gaining election through populism and fear mongering and blaming most issues on a minority(1) which might be tangentially related to some of the issues but isn't the root cause and claiming you fix it by ruling with a iron fist i.e. fear (of retaliation), violence(of law enforcement) and disregard (of the actual meaning of laws and the humanity of whoever you victim is) instead of ruling by law and order has in history very seldomly ended well.

(1) This is slightly oversimplified, modern media allows quite a flexible multi prong propaganda warfare where you can use information overload and targeted advertisement and information bubbles to victim blame the right group for every recipient in a automatized scaling way where you don't need to manually target any individuals (so it scales to US population size and beyond). You are jobless -> it's the immigrants, you have a job but children and are religious -> the evil LGBTQ people want to brain wash them, etc. etc.

> This is the law. It is finally being enforced. Force is justified.

A lot of the action taken are NOT the law. They often are incompatible with the law, sometimes even the constitution. And often based on a pretty despotic reinterpretation of law and abusing some very old very badly written laws meant for other situations. Its a pretty common opinion of lawyers that, when it comes to civil rights, the US is no longer a state of law and order but one, not half a step, but half a pinky toe away from being fully despotic and autocratic

if you tolerated illegal immigrants for decades and even incorporated them into you economy then you have to take responsibility for that,

And taking a baseball bat and hitting your problem until it stops twitching seems to be pretty much the worst possible solution.

Its not that there aren't human solutions to the problem, it's just that the Republican Party really doesn't like them, because they don't really fix _their_ problem (the one I listed at the beginning). Problem is that this a problem of a small circle of politicians, not the people as a whole. But the side-effects of their approach to fix it has long eclipsed just being a problem for illegal immigrants. And now causes suffering for many US Citizens too in all kinds of way.

So it's very egoistic, egocentric and short sighted to a point I personally would call it evil, some others wouldn't.

The philosopher who created the quote "the end justifies the means" made it very clear that this is only true if you act selfless for the grater good and all other solutions will lead to far more suffering. So even under the standard of the "end justifies the means" the current means aren't justified (as the actions aren't done selfless and there are alternatives).