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To be clear, I don’t “support the regime”, at least not unconditionally. I’ve criticized Trump many times in this very forum, calling him an idiot, a retard, a fat Boomer braying incoherently. I voted for him in 2020 and 2024 because I believed he was best positioned to achieve the major policy goals I have regarding immigration and policing/jurisprudence, but I think most of the other things he does and says are somewhere between empty bluster and actively harmful.
I don’t believe I’m immune from deportation because I’m pro-Trump; I believe that there would be both no legitimate motivation for any regime (far-right or far-left) to deport me, and nowhere to deport me to, given my extremely deep ancestral ties to this country. Other than shitposting online under a nom de plume, I don’t participate in any political activity, and may even forswear voting in future elections. I’m a normal middle-class educated person, I pay my taxes, I don’t give the regime (or the previous regime) any grief. The vast majority of the people currently quaking in their boots about being sent to El Gúlag are similarly situated to just shut up and live a normal unobtrusive life, if they chose to do so. And Trump has shown no indications of wanting to take any political action against average citizens who are not themselves immigrants.
Yes, I believe that individuals whose families have lived here for multiple generations should be treated preferentially by the government, relative to those who are immigrants, even if the latter have obtained legal citizenship. I don’t believe that mere legal citizenship — let alone temporary residency — entitles one to be treated as precisely morally/legally equivalent to a Heritage American. This doesn’t mean I have any animus toward any given immigrant! There are probably a few million immigrants whom I would consider better people, and better contributors to this country, than millions of Heritage Americans are!
That is not what has happened, and I believe that there is zero compelling reason to believe that it will happen. There have been temporary residents who seem to have been treated differently based on political affiliation, and I think this is basically fine. I believe that immigrants to this country, and any other country, should basically be expected to act as apolitically in their public-facing lives as possible. If I immigrated to Japan, it would be absurd for me to believe that I should have any say in the political life of their country. My responsibility as an immigrant would be to present myself as unobtrusive. Not to attend public anti-government rallies, to accuse my host country of perfidy, etc.
I don’t care if immigrants are patriotic. I’m not especially patriotic. I think there are certain foundational ideas enshrined in the Constitution which are naïve and basically disproven by history. I don’t care about “our national identity”, I don’t subscribe to the “propositions” which supposedly define our “propositional nation”. I simply believe that immigrants’ obligation to their host country is analogous to a house guest’s obligation to his or her host. There are things I would say about people in privacy, behind their backs, which I would not say out loud if I were invited into one of those people’s homes.
Now, one potential outcome which I do think is plausible is something like: Trump offloads a large portion of American death row inmates, and even potentially prisoners with life sentences, to El Salvador’s prisons. There, they would be exempt from many of the onerous protections and endless appeals which they enjoy here in America, due to our absurd squeamishness about the remotest possibility of false conviction. This outcome would be ontologically good, but could potentially produce a massive backlash which would have the potential to permanently discredit the Law And Order coalition in American politics. While I believe this outcome to be unlikely, it’s at least more plausible than the outcome of Trump deporting liberals who criticize him on Bluesky.
That is perfectly fair, and I agree it's unlikely (though not quite out of the question for people who do more than post on Bluesky, on causes as sensitive as Israel/Palestine). But I am still uncomfortable with the MAGA base's unwillingness to denounce the scenario as beyond the pale. I think Trump - or Vance, or someone else who speaks for him - ought to be making the point clear. Ought to be actively pledging not to deport citizens. Instead, they're dodging the question. I think this is for PR reasons, to avoid looking soft, not because Trump actually intends to deport liberals by the plane-full. But it's still not a good look.
I think our other point of disagreement is that I see a much starker difference between someone with mere residency, and a naturalized citizen. I'm totally with you on temporary residents needing to abide by the rules of hospitality and remaining broadly apolitical. But as a matter of fact, I consider the most important part of citizenship to be that it's a license, and indeed an encouragement, to get involved in your country's politics. Involvement in the affairs of the polis isn't just a privilege, but also an expression of a citizen's civic duty. If we don't want an immigrant to get involve in politics then we shouldn't naturalize him in the first place.
And in a similar way, I think one of the things that go hand in hand with legal citizenship is the right to be tried and sentenced as a citizen. An immigrant who has earned American citizenship, then takes political action perceived to be against the American state and/or in the interest of a foreign power, is not a hostile alien. He is, instead, a member of the opposition so long as he abides by the law, an ordinary ciminal if he doesn't, and a traitor in extreme cases. But never again can these actions be judged as those an alien. (And of course, that's a double-edged sword! In many cases, actions which would be perfectly expected of a foreign national are despicable if they come from a traitor. But the difference is massive and meaningful.)
It's the difference between a babysitting gig and adoption. If you agree to babysit a kid and he's a bratty little hellion who breaks all your furniture, then with reasonable notice you get to send him home to his parents and refuse to take him in again. But if you've adopted the kid outright, however much he misbehaves, however much you regret your choice, that kid is now your son, and you would be culpable to treat him any differently from a biological child who misbehaved in the same way.
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