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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 31, 2025

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This actually makes me feel better than after reading the other fake news. This guy was supposed to be deported to somewhere besides El Salvador, but we couldn't find any other country in the world willing to take him. So he had no legal status and should be deported asap. I'm gonna call it a happy accident.

Meanwhile the other fake news says:

the man had protected immigration status in the U.S. ...

a judge granted him withholding from removal.

On Wednesday, March 12, Abrego Garcia learned his immigration status had changed

Also, it appears that "withholding of removal" is not in the statute but just agency regulation. So hopefully Trump can just EO nuke the entire section after a nice APA rulemaking, and then be done with it.

the government is still allowed to deport that person to a different country if the other country agrees to accept them.

https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/asylum-withholding-of-removal

All Trump needs is a backup country to deport everyone to who can't be deported to El Salvador. Any ideas?

But you should have some damn sympathy for a fellow citizen's suffering.

Progressives, especially post-Hart-Celler, have diluted and deconstructed the meaning of citizenship to such an extent that there are tens of millions of individuals in this country with whom I share almost nothing in common except for a legal fiction. There’s a good chance that the people you’re talking about do not even speak the same language I do, nor have they even needed to learn to do so in order to be considered citizens. They and I have no common bonds of kinship, of culture, of social context. Nothing!

I extend to them the basic human empathy I’d extend to any non-American, and I wish the situation were not such that this sort of nothing needs to happen to them. But the fact that they have a piece of (digitized) paper saying they’re as American as I am means nothing to me.

Progressives, especially post-Hart-Celler, have diluted and deconstructed the meaning of citizenship to such an extent that there are tens of millions of individuals in this country with whom I share almost nothing in common except for a legal fiction.

Can you give some examples of "diluted and deconstructed the meaning of citizenship?"

There’s a good chance that the people you’re talking about do not even speak the same language I do, nor have they even needed to learn to do so in order to be considered citizens. They and I have no common bonds of kinship, of culture, of social context. Nothing!

I'd be open to making the naturalization test English-only, but why isn't having passed the naturalization test evidence of commonality?

What does being an American mean to you?

My great grandfather came here on accident- the royal navy blockaded his home country- and he assimilated into a shotgun wedding and becoming a self made millionaire before the war ended. Was he American? How about the intentional Ellis islanders? A third generation Mexican American who speaks English and Spanish equally poorly?

They are not American to you.

Your attitude makes you unworthy of being an American to me.

So goes our country.

  • -16

I mean I think there are limits. A real, legitimate citizen, naturalized absolutely should have every right in America as a native citizen. But when this get brought up, basically anyone who gate crashes the border is now a de facto citizen in the eyes of much of the left and of course only those terrible people on the right think such gate crashes should leave. And I don’t think that’s unreasonable. We can’t do that because we don’t have room for billions of people to come here and simply squat. They need to go home.

This reads as if you are trying to paper over how Hoffmeister and others on your side do not care about actual citizens.

Deporting illegals. Fine, that's a total valid outcome for Trump winning an election.

Celebrating the cleaving of an American citizen from their spouse and parent? That's wrong, and I think you know it.

I’m not sure what you’re even talking about. The man who was deported is not an American citizen. His wife, who is, married an illegal immigrant — presumably aware that she was doing so — and bore him a son. Don’t you think she should have foreseen, as a reasonable outcome, that he would eventually be identified as an illegal immigrant?

We separate criminals from their spouses and children every day. Inmates don’t get to bring their wives and children to prison with them, and presumably you would not advocate for them to be permitted to do so. Similarly, we separate illegal immigrants from their citizen spouses and dependents when we deport them. This is a totally reasonable outcome. Don’t marry illegal immigrants!