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PaperclipPerfector  14d ago (text post)   29647 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 17, 2025

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The protections afforded to illegal aliens are basic. They can't be robbed, enslaved, raped, or murdered with impunity — nominally, as these happen precisely because of our lax immigration law. Plyler notoriously asserted a nonexistent right to education extending to the children of illegals, now schools in communities with high numbers of illegal hispanics are full of children who don't speak English. Texas has been thoroughly vindicated for the burden they feared, and this problem has spread far beyond Texas.

That's beside the point. The most fundamental authority of a sovereign is "who gets to be here." SCOTUS rulings, and everything else, is downstream of this authority. This authority is the basis for the expulsion of any foreigner at any time and for any reason. It is subservient to nothing, it is inalienable and immutable. The only question is whether this power is vested, past the people, in the legislature or the executive, but the power remains absolutely. Illegal aliens in particular are owed no due process and enjoy no protections from summary deportation. The courts can try to stop it, despite having no true authority given illegals are, again, here in violation of American sovereignty, but their efforts if not stopped will provoke the radical solution over the current moderate solution.

The protections afforded to illegal aliens are basic. They can't be robbed, enslaved, raped, or murdered with impunity — nominally, as these happen precisely because of our lax immigration law. Plyler notoriously asserted a nonexistent right to education extending to the children of illegals, now schools in communities with high numbers of illegal hispanics are full of children who don't speak English. Texas has been thoroughly vindicated for the burden they feared, and this problem has spread far beyond Texas.

I agree.

That's beside the point. ... Illegal aliens in particular are owed no due process and enjoy no protections from summary deportation. The courts can try to stop it, despite having no true authority given illegals are, again, here in violation of American sovereignty, but their efforts if not stopped will provoke the radical solution over the current moderate solution.

I disagree. Even if you want to parse the letter of the due process clauses in such a way as to exclude illegal immigrants, they're still entitled to the presumption of innocence, which logically requires due process.

Due process is reciprocal. The court presumes innocence by giving the accused the opportunity to defend themselves. That defense must be substantiated, claiming "I have an alibi" and then failing to provide that alibi is not a defense, and the court will not treat that claim as evidence. Same for immigration. Immigration enforcement presumes innocence by giving the accused the opportunity to provide documentation. In practice, any person who cannot provide such documentation is here illegally. Show a state ID, you're good, assuming it isn't from a state that issues IDs to illegals. "Difficulty in acquiring an ID" is, same as voting, inadequate. Functioning states do not express special concern for those so lazy they can't be bothered to get something so universally required as ID. That is highly aberrant behavior, it's something deserving institutionalization or apathy. Relevant for the one valid defense, "I am chronically homeless." Okay, permanently institutionalize them.

The court presumes innocence by giving the accused the opportunity to defend themselves.

This is not how the presumption of innocence works. The presumption of innocence means an accusation is not sufficient; the state must prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt even if you make no attempt to defend yourself (beyond a not guilty plea) at all.

Immigration cases are not criminal, and work differently, but still there is a burden on the state to demonstrate you are here illegally even if you make no attempt to defend yourself.

That's not how presumption of innocence works in theory. It is how it works in practice, just look at the number of juries who convict on obviously ideological lines (not to mention it's not even close to the standard held in many civil suits). That burden the state does indeed have of meeting a preponderance of evidence is met in full when dealing with a person of obviously foreign birth who cannot provide proof of their legal residence. That itself, as in even otherwise legal aliens failing to keep identifying documents on their person, is a crime.

It's not realistic or justified to expect ICE to prove the citizenship or lack thereof for every person they apprehend. Not stop, apprehend. Fortunately, the claim of epidemic-level lack of documentation among citizens is even less realistic. It's why every individual illegal alien deported from this country doesn't receive a full jury trial. ID requirements are ubiquitous, people who don't provide them, can't provide them, and that's all ICE needs. They don't need a reason to deport someone, they need a reason not to.

It's certainly true that the presumption of innocence is often violated. That does not make "giving the accused an opportunity to defend themselves" into a presumption of innocence. If you must defend yourself against a bare accusation in order to be found not guilty, you have in fact been presumed guilty.

As for civil cases, "presumption of innocence" is a criminal law concept, not a civil one.

Illegal aliens in particular are owed no due process and enjoy no protections from summary deportation.

The right to a fair trial exists for the benefit of the innocent, not the benefit of criminals. A US citizen who gets picked up by mistake gets the same due process an actual illegal gets - certainly in the UK this turned out to be the problem with a "deport them all" strategy - that a country with no citizen register and no papieren bitte culture doesn't know who is and isn't there legally accurately enough to do mass deportations without deporting an unacceptable number of citizens and legal immigrants by mistake. If you are deporting people who haven't done anything wrong except being illegal in the first place, the politically acceptable number of citizens deported by mistake is close to zero.

Realistically, the Anglosphere countries are going to have to become papieren bitte cultures if we want effective in-country immigration enforcement.

What is true is that (apart from the existence of a law passed by Congress, implementing the USA's obligations under a ratified treaty, protecting refugees, and people with a credible claim to be refugees until it is adjudicated) once you have established that someone is an illegal immigrant they have no right whatsoever to stay in the US - for example it is wicked but not illegal to prioritise immigration enforcement based on 1st amendment protected speech.

Realistically, the Anglosphere countries are going to have to become papieren bitte cultures if we want effective in-country immigration enforcement.

You're coupling two things where that isn't necessary: the culture of being ID'd by the officials randomly and the practise of having a central registry and thus some national ID number that uniquely identifies you. You can have the latter without having the former. Eg. There is no requirement to carry an ID with me but I've had a national ID number since birth as has everyone else here in Finland since 1962.

All you have to do is to make it effectively impossible to get a bank account, phone number, get paid and other necessities without having an ID number and then freeze those functions for people who have are illegally in the country and they'll end up largely deporting themselves.

All you have to do is to make it effectively impossible to get a bank account, phone number, get paid and other necessities without having an ID number and then freeze those functions for people who have are illegally in the country and they'll end up largely deporting themselves.

You're vastly underestimating the scale of Social Security Number (the closest the U.S. has to a "national ID number") fraud and the difficulties of enforcing it.

I don't really think it's that difficult, it's just that zero effort has been put into it. I know a guy who has repeatedly found that someone has signed up to receive benefits using his SSN. He's never even received so much as a letter in the mail to inform him that his benefits are being used.

You need to tie the national ID number to a person, and before modern online biometric verification that meant a document (the "ID card") with a biometric (signature/photo/fingerprint) that could be checked against the person presenting it.

You can get large numbers of illegals to self-deport by cutting off services, but empirically there are plenty of illegal immigrants in the US who don't have legal employment or bank accounts. In any case, the right-populist voter base wants to see visible deportations as a show of good faith. I do not think the MAGA base would consider "Universal e-verify and deport foreign criminals when you catch them" to constitute effective enforcement without more.

The MAGA base knows what e-verify is and expects it as a means of encouraging self deportation.

The problem, in the US at least, is that the people most interested in mass deportations are also the people most hostile to any kind of centralized database/identification system for citizens.

in the US at least

That's very much a US specific issue (so much that there should be a whole string of very's there).

It's also a pointless concern. The IRS already knows who you are.

I was under the impression that we do have a identification system for citizens. My newborn has to get a SS# to be added to my health insurance

We kind of do. As others noted, Social Security covers more than just citizens. It's also not actually an ID system. Your SSN is a unique identifier, but there's nothing about it that verifies your identity. It's just a number.

I should clarify that I misspoke in my prior comment - I'm talking more about a national identification system rather than merely a list of people with citizenship. A list that tells you John Smith, Fictional Nation ID# 123-456-789, is a citizen isn't much use for identification purposes (immigration enforcement or otherwise) unless it also tells you how to identify John Smith.

I should clarify that I misspoke in my prior comment - I'm talking more about a national identification system rather than merely a list of people with citizenship. A list that tells you John Smith, Fictional Nation ID# 123-456-789, is a citizen isn't much use for identification purposes (immigration enforcement or otherwise) unless it also tells you how to identify John Smith.

As soon as you have a database that assigns a unique ID to every person, other databases can (and should) use that ID as the person identifier. John Smith uses a bank account? That ID is in the bank's database. Phone number? Same thing. IRS records? Again, same ID. Drivers license? Same deal.

As long as John Smith has had any ID at all, the national ID is inherently linked to it and the ID number now tells how to identify John Smith (even if the information is outdated assuming John Smith goes off grid).

It is not only citizens that have SSNs, though. Legal Permanent Residents also get one.

Even people on work visas have SSNs.

The right to a fair trial exists for the benefit of the innocent, not the benefit of criminals.

Correct. Which is why so many of the process-related objections to what Trump has been doing are disingenous. They're NOT about protecting the innocent. The intention is not to benefit the innocent caught up in a general sweep, but to prevent the guilty from being dealt with, because those making the objections don't think the people involved should be expelled from the country.

Realistically, the Anglosphere countries are going to have to become papieren bitte cultures if we want effective in-country immigration enforcement.

That's already happened.

Correct. Which is why so many of the process-related objections to what Trump has been doing are disingenous. They're NOT about protecting the innocent. The intention is not to benefit the innocent caught up in a general sweep, but to prevent the guilty from being dealt with, because those making the objections don't think the people involved should be expelled from the country.

What about the presumption of innocence?

It's to make sure something like this doesn't happen:

No, it isn't. Assuming that happened (and we have only his attorney's claims that it did), it's not the reason for the objection. The "proper" procedures get slow-walked, delayed, gamed by NGOs who provide stories for people to tell, by immigration "judges" who don't want to expel anyone, etc. So now neither side has an actual interest in proper procedure.

To me the issue is that none of these calls are really about what they’re claiming. It’s about creating a situation to be exploited by people looking to game tge system for people who are not even plausibly legal. And it happens all the time. Delay for extra discovery, delay for looking for documentation, delay by forcing the LEO to defend himself from baseless accusations that he didn’t follow every procedure to the letter. A good defense lawyer can tie up a case for months on procedure. And as the system crumbles under the weight of having to spend months on each case, you end up overcrowding the holding facility. Annnnd we’re back to catch and release with almost no progress on the backlog.

If we want to actually deport some of the estimated 15-20 million people who snuck into the country over the last four years, you have to do so at a pace of probably 10,000 a day. You can’t do that if everyone gets the liberal definition of a fair hearing.

No. It may have happened, and if it did it was a bad thing. But it is not the reason for the objections. The objecting side has spent years if not decades corrupting the "proper process" and fighting for catch-22s like "you can't separate migrant children from their parents nor can you detain them together", and they have now lost any claim to good faith.

It has only partly happened, which is even worse. We are full on papieren bitte, except where it would help deporting the illegals.

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