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Comment by wiredfool | Hacker News Reader

Maybe.

Here's the thing. Think about this as an MVP slapped together in a weekend, about to hit the biggest batch of software testers around. They're going to find show stopping bugs. And every one of those bugs is going to be someone's life, uprooted.

Visa allocation changes _going_forward_ are certainly a reasonable thing. Fully within the realm of policy.

But I'm going to bet that these changes are going to be of a far wider scope than expected and include people on current visas, and I wouldn't bet against visas getting revoked and workers having to go home the next day or get deported.

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> I wouldn't bet against visas getting revoked and workers having to go home the next day or get deported.

As a software engineer on H1B (as is my fiancée) currently at Google, this scares the shit out of me.

I've lived my entire adult life in this country. I've got many amazing friends here, I've worked hard, built great products that I'm proud of, paid my taxes, and bought a home here with my fiancée. We're planning to get married and have a baby this year. This is our version of the American dream.

And all of that could be destroyed in an instant by an orange monster full of xenophobic rhetoric and wielding immense power. I'd trust a "normal" American president to not accidentally / maliciously destroy everything I've worked for over the past decade, but from the evidence this week, I'm scared. Really scared.

That has some huge problems which we've all seen this weekend, but in the long run, is that really worse than the old style of decades of inaction and debate topped off by an ineffectual bill that does nothing?

It's pretty similar to the disruption in the tech industry. "What do you mean you deploy bugs to production and then fix them after end users report them? Haven't you heard of QA?!!"

Yes. The process you described is called democracy. Unilateral executive action of the top cabinet alone outside times of declared war (and even sometimes within a war) would be called dictatorial or authoritarian. The debates, compromises checks are not just a tradition to be distrupted.

That's not how representative democracy works, in general. Direct democracy may work like that, but I don't see a way to run direct democracy on US federal scale, and even if there were a way, US is not one. In US system, there's debate, there's vote, representatives are elected and then they have power to act (within the bounds of law, of course, and within limitations like due process, procedures, judicial review, etc.) without further debating anyone. Of course, if they act poorly, they will soon find themselves out when the next election comes. But executive action is always "unilateral" and if it is consistent with the law and mandates given to the executive, not dictatorial.

I'm talking about the checks like judicial review, which is not being enforced in dulles currently as CBT continues to bar lawyers from visiting with detainees in violation of court order. I am talking about the disregard for Geneva refugee convention the United States was committed to. I am talking about looping in people are supposed to enforce this and having a common sense discussion with them about what it means in practice. None of those are incompatible with the representative democracy we hold. Nothing there requires direct democracy. Those are the things that make this "unilateral"

So can you explain to me, how this is not democracy, if Trump was elected, democratically?

Without saying the election was rigged by Russia.

I never said this government was not a democracy, but that this administration's MO is inconsistent with the limitations set forth by our democratic government. For example, being elected does not give you carte-blanche to ignore federal court orders.

Dictatorial and authoritarian are not necessarily negatives. Calls for a businessman to cut through the red tape and run the government more efficiently are almost as old as American democracy itself. Call it whatever you like, we knew that's how this candidate wanted to operate and voted for it anyway.

The problem is that many people thought they needed to take Trump's plans & pronouncements metaphorically when they voted for him. People who worked for him even http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/trump-symbolically-ant...

The problem more generally with that is that once you give that much power up with out an expiration date it will be very hard to restore back to a moderate position.

And even the proponents of banning muslims to cut back on terrorists entering should be upset at the implementation, because the ban hits none of the countries who have sent us actual real successful terrorists like Saudia Arabia or the UEA. So even if you think it's worth stretching out our democracy to get a no-nonsense strongman into fix border security, you should be upset that this ham handed approach hits the wrong countries, generates backlash, and will likely be repealed by federal judges, making it ineffective and worse than nothing at all.

I don't think the policy itself is good either, I'm just saying that the idea of implementing policy now, even if it has bugs, might be preferable to letting the perfect be the enemy of the good to the point where we do nothing about problems - even if they are merely imaginary problems.

As for electing someone because you don't believe they will follow through on their campaign promises, only to be disappointed when they try to do what they claimed they would, that is the culmination of a whole mess of other problems.

It sounds like we are almost entirely in agreement :D I just think this order should be the new textbook example on why move fast and break things should not be executive policy.

Interesting, I would have called it a good example of how moving fast and breaking things is OK even for government action. It's only been two days and it's already been amended to allow green card holders to enter again, and several courts have ordered it to not be enforced. Before this, I and most people I know would not have guessed that government could move to amend broken policy this quickly.

But meanwhile

1. We look capricious and incompetent to international allies, especially Iraqis.

2. The federal judges decision to stay parts of the order is not being enforced in its entirety. CBP refused to allow lawyers to meet with those being detained, in Dulles and in LA, even with Members of Congress attempting to enforce it in Dulles. This confusion among the rank and file about what a federal court order means is really worrysome and shows the checks aren't as strong as they should be. Real people are being harmed as a result of not at least explaining it in full to people who have to enforce it before it took effect.

3. The underlying motivations for the rule include discrimination against Muslims, as evidenced by Rudy Guilloani's statements that they were instructed to write a legal "Muslim ban". The word is out that the president, who is also a symbolic head of state and not just an acting office, is anti-Muslim in policy as well as rhetoric. No longer can we claim to take the high ground against ISIS or other radical Islamic group. (Edit: wrt religious freedom. As a commentor points out this obviously does not make us equivalent to ISIS)

This order will be mostly rescinded, leaving nothing but backlash.

The fact that CBP has very wide powers and very little supervision has been talked about for ages. Unfortunately, nothing is being done about it. Refusing to execute a court order should be grounds for immediate dismissal, and possibly following contempt of court proceedings, but I suspect CBP has a union which would fight that tooth and nail and probably win.

> No longer can we claim to take the high ground against ISIS or other radical Islamic group.

That's pretty grand claim. While Trump's order indeed caused a lot of trouble, I think trouble of being detained for a day or even sent back to the port of origin is not the same as trouble of being murdered, raped, sold to sexual slavery, having head cut off, burned alive, etc. which ISIS routinely does. The position of "is US government does something wrong they are the same of ISIS" is idiotic. Of course US government will do a lot of things wrong, they are as imperfect as huge bureaucracy composed of hundreds of thousands of imperfect people can be. It doesn't mean they are the same as terrorist death cult.

What of the Iraqis who helped the US in exchange for promises of asylum? Sending them back to Iraq very well may get them murdered and/or raped.

Of course they have to be admitted. New Secretary of Defense agrees too[1]. Since Trump's EO has specific provisions for that (DHS can accept anyone they want if deemed necessary) I hope that would be resolved quickly.

[1] http://www.redstate.com/sweetie15/2017/01/30/defense-secreta...

I edited my comment to clarify. I did not mean to imply that we are equivalent in all regards, or that this is the one thing that broke the camels back (guantanamo, predators bombing civilians in Pakistan, etc have been far worse for example). I just mean we lost something real and tangible there for no gain. This is not a good MO for the government.

Even with the edit it's not right. First of all, immigration EO has nothing to do with religious freedom. 7 countries are targeted not because Muslims live there (though of course they do, but Muslims live in a lot more countries than that) but because they are either failed states or states actively supporting terrorism (of course, that doesn't mean they are only failed states or only ones supporting terrorism).

While a lot of people in US certainly think some aspects of current practices of some Muslims are problematic, there's no law in US that limits Muslim practices, exercise of their religion or any aspect of their life based on their religion. It's not even on the same planet with what ISIS does - where not only being a non-Muslim but even being a Muslim not devout enough by their standards means death sentence. You might compare it to Saudi Arabia maybe, which bans anybody who ever visited Israel from entering, it still would be way wrong and misguided, but at least it would be regular wrong, not insanely wrong.

In fact, I think this overblown rhetoric is exactly why immigration debate is getting so insane in the US - each time somebody says "ok, let's discuss how risky is to import people from Yemen or Syria and what precautions we may want to take so that good people get in and bad people stay out" people are screaming "you bigot, you hate Muslims, damn you, filthy Nazi!". So people start thinking "sigh, we can't really discuss it anymore in any sane way, so let's just elect Trump who would ban it altogether without discussing anything - at least it's more safe that way".

And the other side takes it as a confirmation that it's all plot to oppress Muslims. And so on. So the choice we get is between two insane extremums instead of a sensible policy in between. We need to get down from that tree and we need no more to see anti-Muslim bigot in each person that wants immigration to be more controlled than we need to see anti-Western terrorist in each Muslim. It just doesn't help anything.

Before I derail into attempting to refute your points, I'm going to just restate that regardless of where you stand on immigration policy, this administrations execution of their intentions does not deserve to be emulated. My original point is that they botched the execution, not that the idea itself is wrong. That being said I also don't agree with you at all about Trumps intentions or the political environment around immigration.

> 7 countries targeted not because Muslims live there

This nonsense has got to stop. Those nations have sent us exactly 0 terrorists to my knowledge. Meanwhile plenty of nations like Saudia Arabia have clear links to terror groups and remain free to travel to the US. What they all have in common is they are convenient Muslim bogeymen without the ability to strike back internationally and with plausible deniability about this being a Muslim ban in some circles. [0]

It can be discrimination against a group without targeting the entire group if it disproportionately affects that group and if there aren't other reasonable explanations- this does fit that bill.

Trump also promised a shutdown of muslims entering the country on the campaign trail? Are you saying he just happened to sign this executive order based on other unrelated principles?

You use a false analogy to equate people calling Trumps policy bigoted with muslims being bigoted against westerners. We aren't painting an entire class of people as bigoted. Trump has said bigoted things about muslims. That is reason to believe that orders Trump gives mean exactly what he has said they would mean on the campaign trail. There is no extrapolation from a few to a whole group.

Furthermore Rudy Giuliani's description of how the ban came to be should put this point to bed. [1]

We can have immigration reform without people calling you a Nazi. Obama put into place some very strict immigration controls on those same countries without outright banning.

[0] conveniently also no Trump company interests in those states [1] http://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2017/01/30/political-panel-on-t...

1. That was a lost cause as soon as Trump was elected. Or arguably, nominated. And although I can appreciate that it might be better for the country if we didn't look capricious and incompetent even when we are, if we are, then it's hard for me to feel too bad about it.

2. I'm fine with that. It's a work in progress, and the "harm" of travel delays that everyone in the world is aware of is pretty overstated. I think focus here is mostly a consequence of people being willing to place blame for harm caused by government action while giving harm caused by government inaction a free pass.

3. Same as 1. I'm pretty sure everyone already knew Trump, and by extension, the country, hated Muslims. As for ever having had the high ground, that's largely a delusion fueled by blind patriotism.

Re 2, You are fine with judicial review not being enforced?! I feel like I am in a burning room and everyone is simply saying they are glad someone finally turned up the heat to a more comfortable level. These checks and balances are important.

Your original argument even stated the courts functioning as a reason that things could continue like this.

> Dictatorial and authoritarian are not necessarily negatives

Yes they fucking are.

> we knew that's how this candidate wanted to operate and voted for it anyway

Most didn't vote for him.

Most didn't according to a metric that's not the metric that is actually used to select the president and thus candidates and parties don't try to optimize for. As for the other point, agree to disagree.

Use "elected" instead of "voted" in the future and you're more likely to avoid this kind of semantic distraction in the future.

Good advice. Thanks for the tip.

You don't get to "agree to disagree" about literal numbers. You are literally and inarguably wrong. There is a difference.

Literal numbers that are unproportionally skewed by two overpowered population centers. It isn't just about proportionally capturing the interest of the individual voter. That individual voter in each state represents a sum total of different interests than a individual voter in another region of the States.

California and New York have different exports and interests than say, Wisconsin.

You would feel quite different about granting power to overpopulated areas if they were conservative rednecks, wouldn't you? Of course you would.

Literal numbers that would probably be very different had they been meaningful.

Which is why I specifically said that about the other point.

The difference is bugs in the current ad-tech darling or "uber for tindr dogs" won't ruin people's lives. There are good reasons why most professions (and even most difficult software) can't act as flippantly as "test it in prod".

There are plenty of examples of accounts getting accidentally banned by Google/Amazon and someone's livelihood vaporizing overnight.

That's not true at all. Most tech companies, like uber or tindr, are fundamentally aimed at ruining certain people's lives. And even when it's not intentional, it still happens, whether it's a bug that is effectively slander without a guilty party to bring suit against, an ad that infects you with malware that destroys your life's work, or just people being people.

There's also a third option.

Also if not discussed properly, there is a possibility of trade war.I am all for better VISA policy, but I am sure US doesn't want India to go China route and block american companies or apply more tarrifs(India also has a somewhat populist leader).

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