So let's all agree: Trump actually did something ethical and morally correct

[Blalron]

@RivkahChaya

The theory is that we don’t want people who will sign their names to things they know to be false, even if the falsehood is petty, because we want citizens who are too honorable to do that.

We value honesty in this country. Which is why we elected Donald Trump to be President. Because he’s such an honorable truth teller.

[Algher]

Here is NPR’s reporting on the involvement of the Trump administration:

Last year, some members of Congress from New York wrote to then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to ask for his “personal intervention” to push for Palij’s deportation.

The U.S. ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, says he had recently been raising the question of Palij’s deportation in every meeting he had in Germany, based in part on President Trump’s particular interest in the case. After a new government was installed in Berlin, there was “new energy” for the negotiations, he says.

Alleged Nazi Labor Camp Guard Deported To Germany

[BeepKillBeep]

@Algher

Here is NPR’s reporting on the involvement of the Trump administration:

Alleged Nazi Labor Camp Guard Deported To Germany : NPR

Good to have it confirmed that the real factor was the new German foreign minister.

[PastTense]

Updating this thread, less than 5 months later he is dead:

A former Nazi labour camp guard who was stripped of his US citizenship and deported in August, has died in Germany aged 95, the US ambassador in Berlin announced Thursday…

Palij had been living in a retirement home in the north-western German town of Ahlen, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper reported on its website.

Ex-Nazi prison guard deported by US dies in Germany aged 95

[clairobscur]

@Jackmannii

The overriding purpose should be to send a message that horrific crimes have no statute of limitations, and that no matter how long someone has gotten away with them they should never stop looking over their shoulder.

The ability to prosecute (or even deport) Nazi-era war criminals is pretty much over, but there are lots of others culpable for more recent mass murders/ethnic cleansing who need to be relentlessly tracked down and punished, and potential killers who might think twice if they knew they’d never be off the hook for their crimes.

Except that these people aren’t relentlessly tracked down. I guess we will have to wait for some decades until someone find a 90 yo guy who might or might not have been involved in a massacre in Yugoslavia when he was 17 (I know that people have been sentenced for these, but it’s not like every single person involved has been relentlessly tracked). If you want to make an example, then prosecute and punish them when most of the main culprits are still around, the memories are fresh, and the evidences available. It wasn’t done properly with the nazis, it’s too late now.

And besides I’m opposed to not have a statute of limitations because after so many years, it is impossible to mount a proper defense, and even the reliability of the prosecution becomes very disputable. And especially so for horrific crimes. The more severe the potential sentence, the more we should guarantee the rights of the accused.

[clairobscur]

@Pantastic

He was supposed to… not be a concentration camp guard. This isn’t really a rough moral decision, he chose to participate in the holocaust and now he’s paying the price. If you think it’s unfair for him to get deported, just think about all the people he killed and how unfair it was that he chose to kill them.

He is suspected of these things. Germany say they don’t have enough evidences to even prosecute him. It’s isn’t proven that he killed those people, and in my opinion, at this point in time, it is impossible to prove.

[griffin1977]

@RivkahChaya

If you commit a crime, then lie about it on your application, you can later be stripped of your citizenship. This has been done to lots of people, not just people who have committed war crimes. In fact, if you committed even a fairly petty crime in the US while you were a legal resident waiting for your opportunity to apply; something like, for example, unarmed petty theft, and you are found out, you can be stripped of citizenship if you lied and said you never committed a crime. Even misdemeanor drug use can get you into trouble if it comes to light after your paperwork goes through, and it turns out you lied about it.

Crimes committed in your home country generally have to be more serious, because some countries have pretty effed up justice systems, but you are better off telling immigration and naturalization abut the time you stole food because your children were starving, then lie about it, because if you lie, and it comes to light later, the lying itself can get you in more serious trouble than the initial crime.

The theory is that we don’t want people who will sign their names to things they know to be false, even if the falsehood is petty, because we want citizens who are too honorable to do that.

The entry forms when I first came to the states (early 2000s) still had the “did you commit any Nazi war crimes in the period 1933-45” on them, for that reason.

Not that they expected to catch any war criminals that way, but so if it was later shown you were a Nazi war criminal, they could deport you for lying on the form.

[Mijin]

I resent the implication of threads like this.

The reason I dislike Trump is because of the things he says and does. Not because of the trump name or because he’s republican.
So if he does something right, then sure, he did something right. I can say that without pause.

Or if the point is that from now on we should say something like “OK, Trump has screwed up a lot of things, but hey he deported that ageing Nazi”, I disagree. Something like this does not rise to the level of beginning to balance out any of the other shit.