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PaperclipPerfector  10d ago (text post)   32821 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 31, 2025

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From what I can tell, most of the accusations here are very minor, though. Using immigration laws to sidestep due process is wrong, though.

In many of these conversations, the term "due process" is doing a ton of work that isn't consistent with my understanding of it. Without looking anything up and prior to these arguments, if someone asked me what "due process" meant, I think I would have said that it refers to having a clear and legible legal standard that can't be circumvented to achieve an end goal. That doesn't actually mean that it must take particularly long, that there is no discretion involved, and that there must be some remedy to having it executed. In the case of the Hamas-sympathetic immigrants, I do not interpret "due process" as meaning that they're entitled to anything other than the explicitly laid out statutory considerations, which include discretion for removal at the behest of the Secretary of State's judgment. That's it, that's the due process, it's that when you're a non-citizen in the United States, the Secretary of State has discretion for your removal. If you think that's a bad law, that's fine, but the law exists and was passed legitimately by the United States Congress and signed into law by the President.

As a matter of principle, I am completely fine with the due process leading to deportation being pretty short and shallow. You just don't have any actual right to live in countries that you're not a citizen of (Schengen and other arrangements notwithstanding). If the host country simply thinks you're really annoying, they can tell you to leave.

I think there should be a taboo on citing "due process" as a concern without articulating what process you think is due in this particular case.

For example, I don't think that anyone is claiming that countries may never expel someone short of a full criminal conviction. Nor do I think anyone is claiming that countries don't have discretion when to renew temporary visas or confer discretionary status.

Rather, it just seems like a free-for-all term.

I think "due process" has come to be a Russell's Conjugation: "I am a peacefully requesting my due process rights recognized by law, you are raising procedural hurdles to ensure the law is respected, and that guy over there is claiming 'due process' to indefinitely forestall judgement against himself."

And I can see why some are frustrated this only seems to apply in some directions: some legal decisions can get handed down quickly and hamfistedly (vaccine mandates, forcing closed houses of worship), while others (asylum claims, death penalty appeals, cashless bail) can get backlogged indefinitely to the clear benefit of the party claiming "due process."

Sovereign is he who decides on the exception.

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