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Comment by ben_w | Hacker News Reader

I’m also non-American, but my ex is an American who campaigns against ICE. Her memes state that the problems with ICE are the conditions that refugees are held in, and that they separate children from their families. She also states that ICE target people based on skin colour even when their targets are e.g. citizens of the USA.

She is also of the opinion that the cause of the refugees seeking refuge is the bad behaviour of the Americans government, and she fundamentally opposes borders.

As I’m neither American nor a resident of America, I cannot vouch for how accurate her beliefs are, only that those are her beliefs.

Edit:

Just remembered, she went to one of the child detention facilities as part of her campaign support efforts in… I think it was the most recent California governor’s election? So she’s probably quite justified in her beliefs.

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That is the extreme liberal belief, yes.

In reality ICE has a tough job of having to enforce borders when the extreme liberals have a belief of "no borders".

Unfortunately countries can't operate without borders.

All the other "evil" things listed in this thread can be torn apart one by one, it's a thin spin and morally it all falls apart when you realize that the main atrocities are the girls being raped (33% according to doctors w/o borders) that are dragged across the desert.

Blame the people dragging kids over, not the people giving them shelter.

To the "lock" comment below:

Child-locks on car doors are locks on the outside. It's for protection.

And they aren't dragging their kids, it's usually "a" kid.

They're doing it because they have incentive. Yes everyone wants a better life, but we can't support the world's population.

Every country has quotas, if you say otherwise you're living in a fairy tale.

Ever wonder why people drag themselves — never mind their kids — over a desert?

And “shelter” is what people like my ex want to provide. Shelters have the locks on the inside, though, and the detention centres have the locks on the outside.

Irrelevant.

No, she doesn't want to provide them shelter. She wants to make them citizens, by the millions, with no plan for how our economy and society will integrate them.

If she's really being honest, she'll admit that she's looking to import individuals who will be dependent on the state for support, thus securing a large new voting block for her political party.

> Ever wonder why people drag themselves — never mind their kids — over a desert?

Because life sucks in many parts of the world. Ever wonder how the borderless utopia your ex supports is actually supposed to scale?

> And “shelter” is what people like my ex want to provide.

She wants to provide it, or she wants others to provide it? How many people is she personally willing to host in her home and materially support?

> She wants to provide it, or she wants others to provide it? How many people is she personally willing to host in her home and materially support?

She wants to provide. And she’d break herself to support as many as possible at her own expense if she could.

If everyone like her was allowed to, there wouldn’t be any cost to anyone else.

Why doesn't she spend her time & money to build housing in Mexico? Surely it (the housing and the cost of living there) would be way cheaper than in the US...

No idea, never discussed it.

Out of interest, why not let the migrants build their own houses? It’s not like houses are a finite resource.

You can, but you need to do proper zoning and follow building codes. Otherwise shanty towns happen, then a hurricane rolls through and everyone dies.

It’s often not actually their kids. Using kids to take advantage of the system was and is a well known cartel tactic for getting across the border, and addressing this was the genesis of the child separation policy that began under the Obama administration. It is indeed terrible, but so is leaving kids with so-obviously-not their parents - especially girls, who have to endure a horrific rate of sexual abuse on the way to the US.

The people who are overly compassionate here are contributing to a human trafficking apparatus that is truly ghastly in its scale.

Regarding “can’t support the world’s population” — neither can Rhode Island support the entirely of the USA’s population.

I’ve never understood the attitude that a USA-internal-state border is really more important than an international border. I get the benefit of stopping smuggling and dealing with different sales taxes, but that applies to both.

The disparity in quality of life, economy, freedom, etc, between the 50 states is not nearly as great as it is between the United States and many Central and South American countries. There is no material reason, economic incentive, or political driver for an unsustainable mass of people to stream into Rhode Island. There are many such reasons for folks to try to enter the United States.

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