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Comment by AlgorithmicTime | Hacker News Reader

I... don't really see the problem with this?

Replacing "undocumented immigrant" with "jew" or "same-sex couple" or "interracial couple" or "movie torrent pirate"... surely one of those substitutions triggers a reaction in even the most law-and-order out there.

edit: And most of those categories have been illegal in some states in the US's history.

Are jews illegal per se?

Are illegal immigrants illegal per se?

> Are illegal immigrants illegal per se?

Sure. So how do we determine who is an illegal immigrant? By looking at an illegally-obtained list of names and picking out the Hispanic ones for background checks?

The majority of European (and other) countries require everyone staying at a hotel be reported, so it doesn’t become the hotel’s job to determine illegal vs legal, it just becomes a huge privacy issue for everyone because the government knows everywhere you stay.

In the context of Nazi Germany - the Nazis passed laws to strip Jews of German citizenship, so technically Jews were illegal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Laws#Reich_Citizensh...

People are never illegal. People perform acts which may or may not be illegal. “Illegal immigrant” is a dumb term. We don’t describe speeders as “illegal drivers.”

>> We don’t describe speeders as “illegal drivers.”

that's not apples to apples. "illegal driver" would be someone who is breaking the law by the very fact of them driving - ppl with no DLs for example. same with illegal immigrants - they are breaking the law by the very fact of being present in the country they are not permitted to be in.

Illegal refers to the immigration status, not the person.

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