Columbia is also a district, and Trump is very busily working to turn it into a shithole, too.
Isn’t “outright” a significant word here? He has done a lot to damage it and the result might very well kill it.
He’s already expressed a clear desire to jail opponents, to punish businesses for simply making business decisions, and day-after-day affirming his support for a white supremacist system. His intent and desire is clear. Why wouldn’t you take it seriously now?
People are actually suffering every day because of this administration. And there’s clearly more to come. And this is “caterwauling”? That’s a pretty shameful attitude.
I guess this is the thread I was looking for.
Can he go after naturalized citizens? Because my understanding has always been that, once a citizen, you have all the same rights as any other citizen, and that there is no mechanism by which citizenship can be revoked.
This is currently really freaking out people on my Facebook page, and I said I would talk to some people I know who really know this stuff. I’d have started a thread myself, but this one looks like it’s already discussing this, so I thought I’d try here first.
So then do you believe that Trump will not be able to deport naturalized citizens? Because, if he can, then I can’t see why that wouldn’t be the line.
I’m no expert in immigration law, so I can’t say. But in general our legal system works through a combination of unspoken and spoken conventions. This administration, with the acquiescence of the Republican Congress, has chosen over and over again to reject those conventions. So, even if there were some precedent saying that naturalization cannot be revoked, all it takes is for the administration to start revoking them, a Congress unwilling to take action, and a federal court system that acquiesces or throws up its hands, like in the Hawaii case.
What the experience of the Trump regime has shown us is that everything is up for grabs, that there are limits to power only to the extent that there are individuals in positions of authority willing to take action to enforce those limits. All the protections of the Constitution and due process that we have relied on are institutions that work only when everyone agrees to abide by them.
And now we have a regime that has signaled over and over that it has no intention to abide by limitations that get in its way. There’s no need to wait for the worst to happen, because what we see now is that the regime will do whatever it wants. That’s the precedent it’s setting. Our institutions are made of paper. All that is left now is direct action.
I’m one of those “socialists” more or less, and I’m more American than that half-Scottish oaf in the White House. If he doesn’t want me in the same country as he is, he can leave.
Yeah, it doesn’t have to be the same exact list in the same exact order. :smack:
It’s pretty insulting to call those countries “white.” They may have had light-skinned rulers, but they are countries with mixed colors and proudly so, not white colonies like the USA and Canada.
And Libya presumably wouldn’t be such a mess right now if the USA hadn’t bombed it illegally. You on the right side of the aisle are allowed to criticize that policy, you know; Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton did it. So go ahead; criticize it.
They’re Hispanic. I mean, you could argue Colombians are white, but that’s just a portion of their society. Now, Columbia on the other hand, is fairly white, so Quartz got that right. Go Lions!
Trump is going after naturalized citizens, and I’m guessing that he can. 75 years ago, during the McCarthy era, a few citizenships were revoked and the former citizens deported. Not many though.
NPR: White House Launches Effort To Take Citizenship From Those Who Lied To Get It : NPR
[INDENT]…last month, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services started a task force to review cases where people may have lied in order to get citizenship. And now the administration says it could be denaturalizing potentially a few thousand people. [/INDENT]
That’s right now. Last month the economist and Bloomberg columnist Noah Smith posed a thought experiment on twitter: [INDENT]
1/You know what’s more productive than calling Trump a Nazi?
Trying to imagine the worst that Trump might conceivably do to this country.
I thought about this a bit after the election, and here was my conclusion.
[/INDENT] Noah Smith then notes that the GOP controls 32 state legislatures and with 2 more they could call a constitutional convention. What would they do? [INDENT] 5/Would Trump legalize slavery or strip women of the vote? I highly doubt it. But here is what I do think he - or a similarly minded successor - would do: End birthright citizenship.
6/Now, what does it mean to end birthright citizenship?
It might simply mean that no new birthright citizenships can be handed out.
OR, Trump might try to make it RETROACTIVE. [/INDENT] Does Noah think this is likely? No. Does he think that Stephen Miller has thought about it? Oh yes. Very much so.
The flaw in this theory is that, while Republicans may be able to call a Constitutional Convention with 34 states, they need 38 states to ratify any amendments that come out of said convention. Do you really believe 38 states would ratify an amendment ending birthright citizenship?
It’s been done before.
List of denaturalized former citizens of the United States
ETA Many from the WW2 era due to a special investigation of war crimes and associates.
He sure has but think of it this way: despite having both houses and a conservative-leaning SCOTUS he doesn’t have enough political clout to fulfill the number one item on the GOP agenda. All he can do is nibble on the edges.
As I said in my OP, if Trump could do all the things that momentarily flit through his pea-brain we’d be in trouble. But he can’t. If he actually jails a political opponent then we can talk.
To me the shameful attitude is drumming up baseless fears, making people anxious and despondent. I disagree strongly with almost everything Trump is doing but let’s focus on the real problems and not waste our energy trying to convince ourselves that Trump is as evil as Hitler.
According to Wikipedia, Republicans did, by a margin of 63.2 million to 61.8 million, which is proportional to a 220-215 GOP House majority.
Meanwhile, in the three elections that elected the current U.S. Senate, the Dems racked up a huge majority of the votes, 122.4M to 104.4M, which would be proportional to a 54-46 Dem majority.
Just sayin’.
This. For all the alarmism about a Constitutional convention, it’s just a workaround to Congress’ role in the amendment process. However challenging it might be to get a proposed Constitutional amendment through Congress, the really hard part is getting one through 38 state legislatures.
I don’t think anyone in Congress really wants a Constitutional Convention. That would put everything on the table, not just your least favorite parts. And if there ever was one, it would go on for years and years and years before something would come out that could get ratified.
Just sayin’…what? Our system doesn’t really work that way, so it’s kind of a meaningless comparison.
What they are coming for is people who are in the US illegally. Trump made very clear in his campaign that he would try to stop illegal immigration and he won the election on that platform. In a democracy presidents are allowed to try to implement policies they campaign on.
Who they are is more than Trump:
Bill Clinton ““All Americans, not only in the States most heavily affected but in every place in this country, are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public service they use impose burdens on our taxpayers. That’s why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens.In the budget I will present to you, we will try to do more to speed the deportation of illegal aliens who are arrested for crimes…”
Barack Obama “Real reform means strong border security, and we can build on the progress my administration has already made – putting more boots on the Southern border than at any time in our history and reducing illegal crossings to their lowest levels in 40 years.”
Hillary Clinton " “‘I voted numerous times when I was a senator to spend money to build a barrier to try to prevent illegal immigrants from coming in,’ Clinton said at November 2015 town hall in New Hampshire, ‘and I do think that you have to control your borders.’”"
Bernie Sanders “it makes no sense to me to have an immigration bill which, over a period of years, would bring millions of ‘guest workers’ into this country who are prepared to work for lower wages than American workers,”
This. In 2008 Dems got 53% of the vote and 59% of the House seats. We don’t do proportional representation. Small shifts in the vote totals can shift a large number of seats, precisely because we have quite a few competitive seats.
The usual response to that would be, “well of course not - a convention bypasses them.”
Tru dat.
But again, for it to matter, they’d still have to come up with an amendment that could pass the legislatures of 38 states.
Not sure anything would ever come out that could get ratified, but presumably it could go on for years.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. The number one item on the GOP agenda is fundamentally unworkable. You cannot get further to the right than Obamacare and still have anything remotely resembling universal healthcare. People were rightly appalled by the GOP’s proposed solutions - it’s hard to package “take healthcare away from tens of millions of people” in a popular way - but there’s no real way to go further right on Obamacare. This is the free market solution. The alternatives are further to the left, or will throw millions off their healthcare.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that a policy that was kept intentionally vague and which the republicans never put much thought into couldn’t be enacted. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that a fundamentally unworkable policy never was enacted.
As to the OP, I think it’s a bit over the top to be honest. It goes from relatively solid ground (Trump is certainly trying to halt immigration from some countries, and crack down on illegal immigrants in the country) to the fanciful (the final article on going after naturalized citizens was pretty much horseshit…and even they admitted it might be a ‘couple thousand’ who had ‘lied’ to get their citizenship. Even if true, the US has over a million legal immigrants a year. It makes the claim that Trump et al would seriously be going after naturalized immigrants to send them back ludicrous).
The thing is, this sort of over the top hyperbolic screed really doesn’t help. It’s so easy to dismiss that it hides the real issues that Trump can be brought up on. Just like the thing with the separation of children from their families hides the underlying issue…and issue that’s been ongoing for decades, and that our government hasn’t dealt with in any meaningful way. The fact that Trump et al fucked up by the numbers shouldn’t be surprising, nor that it’s a total cluster fuck to rectify. It’s what he does best…fucking up by the numbers. The real issue of how the US is to deal with illegal immigration is what we should be focused on. I’d start with…is this really a major issue, and is the issue growing or declining? WRT the Muslim ban thingy, I’d ask…how many of those legally coming into the US from the list of banned countries have been an actual issue?
Instead of OPs riffing on Martin Niemöller and trying to make tenuous connections to the Nazis I think we should look at the actual issues and discuss them instead of trying to score points.