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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 4, 2023

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This requires admitting that immigrants are "undesirables"

No, it requires admitting that TX regards them as such.

The whole issue here seems to be that states other than TX, such as CA, finds it undesirable that TX give these people bus tickets that have places like CA as the destination. I'm not sure how it's possible to frame this in a way that doesn't fully admit that the decisionmakers in places like CA that are complaining or at least pushing back at this action by the decisionmakers by TX are seeing these immigrants as "undesirables."

"We don't want to establish a precedent that other states can just ship people they don't want here without our prior consent. If migrants want to come here on their own that's fine, but we don't want the TX government deciding next week that since we're not doing anything about immigrants they can save money on vagrancy or prison facilities as well."

We don't want to establish a precedent that other states can just ship people they don't want here without our prior consent.

Then why call yourself a sanctuary city?

We don't want to establish a precedent that other states can just ship people they don't want here without our prior consent.

That precedent was established a long time ago when CA and TX (and other states involved) joined the United States with the expectation of free movement of people between the borders. If TX officials are handing out bus tickets to people, and those people are voluntarily choosing to use those bus tickets to transport themselves to other places within the United States as they have a right to do, then the Union is working as intended.

If TX officials are using coercion, manipulation, or even just the slightest bit of pressure to these migrants to "ship" them off to other states, that's certainly an issue, though it's one between the individual migrants who have been wronged and the government officials who have wronged them. From what I can tell, there's likely some evidence that something like this took place, and justice for these wronged migrants seems worth pursuing. But if the objection is to a different state handing out resources to its inhabitants which then free them up to voluntarily choose to move within the United States to one's own state of residence, then, again, I don't see how to interpret that objection as anything other than the declaration that those people are "undesirables" in some meaningful way.

From what I can tell, there's likely some evidence that something like this took place,

What evidence? Assertions from people who don’t want to have to deal with them?

It doesn’t seem likely that significant numbers of migrants illegally hop the border to take up residence in places like Eagle Pass and McAllen, and the state governments shipping them off are able to produce signed consent forms on a regular basis.

I didn't say it was strong evidence or good evidence.

Sounds like they should petition the Federal Government to intervene in some way.

if the migrants want to come here on their own that's fine

But it also sounds like if the migrants sign a simple form in their own language that says "I consent to being shipped to California" that this concern goes away.

And absolutely none of this avoids the fact that the source of the problem is unfettered migration across the Southern Border, which could be fixed if there were action taken at the Federal Level, but that the Democratic Party has decided is not worth addressing. Indeed, they will take photo-ops next to the 'cages' where they keep the kids at the border to make you feel bad about current immigration restrictions.

So in essence, if your policies are creating a problem for another state, why do you get to complain when they make it your problem as well? Especially if you have been previously denying up and down that it was actually a 'problem' and saying it was, in fact, desirable.