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Comment by tgma | Hacker News Reader

The system is actually quite resilient. What you are describing is a specific impact the system might have on someone's situation. That makes a specific situation non-resilient, not the system. Everyone in the whole world who is on a visa knows that is not the most resilient situation, by definition.

Also, it is well-settled that visa is a discretionary benefit. Green card is more nuanced, but still not a panacea. Some of the "scholars" that debate these things know full well what the case law is but they want to stir the pot in the media.

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Sure it's discretionary.

But to (a) Revoke it with no warning (b) Instantly making your presense illegal, and you a criminal, and due to your new criminal status(c) immediatly abducting you by masked, unidentified "officers" in an official capacity and sending you on a plane anywhere but here, seems to, I don't know? "stir the pot" as you say?

These revocations could be done far more graciously than they are. It certanly reveals how the people in charge feel about their fellow humans. It's being done this way NOT to be efficent. They're doing it to send a message.

"See how quickly we can disappear you for dissent."

I mean, I was discussing the law, now we pivot to emotions? The "masked" guys immediately showed their badges if we are talking about the same incident. When you come to the US on a visa, you should not be under any illusions that is not the case. In fact, a US visa is not even guarantee of entry to the US as you are reminded when you get one.

I am not aware if any other country behaves differently if they want a foreigner gone. It's not a right to be in another sovereign country.

Regardless, this has pretty much nothing to do with the resilience of the system at large.

In Finland (and I guess in some other European countries) deportation in itself is not a sufficient reason for arrest. Once you have been informed of the decision, you get some time to leave voluntarily, or to challenge the decision in the administrative court system. But you won't be arrested until the decision is final and you have failed to leave voluntarily, unless there are specific reasons to the contrary. And those specific reasons are typically ones that would justify arresting a citizen as well.

I believe they are free to challenge the decision in an administrative court in the US (under Attorney General, not an Article III court) but they can be arrested. In any case, most countries would reserve the rights to kick you out. That's the deal you make with the country when you choose to get their visa and go there.

I don't think the controversy is about deporting people who are no longer wanted in the country. It's about the use of unnecessary force. The principle of minimum necessary force is pretty integral to Western societies. It includes the idea that the authorities are not allowed to arrest anyone until more reasonable options have been exhausted.

Unless there is an imminent threat or you want to send a message and act as a deterrent.

You would normally at least be entitled to due process. My understanding is that Trump is citing a law that allows the President to deport nationals of a country we are at war with without due process, except we aren’t at war with Turkey.

I believe you are mixing up different cases. That is not the statute used at all for the Turkey case. The Alien Enemies Act you are referring to was exclusively used for the designated foreign terrorist organizations (i.e. TdA & MS13; Venezuelans who went to El Salvador prison).

You also aren't at war with TdA or MS-13.

A war is not an essential requirement for invocation of AEA. Read the statute.

(The steel-man for your case would be on TdA being tied to a foreign government, not that it is not a war--an invasion or predatory incursion is enough. We will soon see how SCOTUS rules on that.)

You started with "Stir the pot in the media", and brought emotions into it.

But the point still stands. Legal does not mean moral. And there is a legal obligation to represent the will of all the people of the country, not just those that elected you.

Clearly, the law needs to spell out exactly what legally needs to be done in the case of an expideient deportation, so it codifies some sense of common morality.

But to your point of resilience: The resilience breaks down when people lose their faith in it. Why trust a system that can act aribtrairily like this? Do we really want our guests to fear that speaking in solidarity with nearly half the country is grounds to be treated like a criminal, and be subject immediate and expedient deportation? That's not the way a "great" country behaves.

The law spells out exactly what can be done. Your issue is you don't like the law and want more leniency for the alien, which is a fine position to argue, but that is not the law that has been on the books for 30+ years.

I don't want to debate my opinion on the merits of the current law; clearly we can agree/disagree on some of the points on how it should be written, but I will respond your questions with a different one: do you really believe that there are absolutely zero foreign actors/implants on student visas? If not, you should at least give some deference to the US government intelligence apparatus to know what they are doing. They have reportedly cancelled 300 visas? If it were 10x more, I would start to worry, but 300 sounds like security apparatus functioning properly.

Here in Argentina, legal immigrants' visas cannot be revoked, and illegal immigrants generally can only be deported if they are accused of a crime. (Being present illegally is not itself a crime.) They have several weeks to challenge the deportation in court.

Nearly all other countries behave differently. The kind of "immigration law enforcement" we're seeing today in the US is far outside the norms of liberal democracy.

Debating morality rather than legality, any policy that gives thugs free rein to grab people who are not harming others off the street, and imprison them, is immoral, and should be stopped. Even if it were the policy of every country in the world, it should still be stopped.

>that gives thugs free rein to grab people who are not harming others off the street, and imprison them, is immoral,

What's harm? Do they have to have harmful intent, or would you object if their presence was unintentionally harmful? Does the harm have to be grievous bodily injury, or is economic harm enough? Why am I allowed to evict trespassers from my home even if they're causing me no physical injury, but the government isn't allowed to evict trespassers to our country unless they can prove some violent felony? It isn't some fundamental human right to live within the borders of the United States.

The issue is many are not trespassers. This is the equivalent of a guest in your house. They have paperwork and are working jobs, are legal residents and PhD students. The guest opposes a political policy you like. Instead of ending it in a reasonable fashion and showing them out sensibly, you call your son, a boxer and drug addict, to show up, handcuff them and take them somewhere. I never elected Rubio to decide on such things, and people that defend such decisions make me very uneasy.

>The issue is many are not trespassers.

No, because trespass refers to a smaller scale and a personal property sort of circumstance. But if we can extend that to the national level, just because they were invited (or in many cases overlooked and ignored) doesn't mean the property owner can't change his mind and uninvite them, or to decide that enough leeway has already been given and that they must be evicted.

>Instead of ending it in a reasonable fashion and showing them out sensibly

They were shown out sensibly. There's no need to give them extra time so they can go making public appeals and trying to weasel their way into staying. In fact, if they can do that long enough, a judge might just decide they're a tenant and allow them to stay indefinitely. No thanks.

>I never elected Rubio to decide on such things,

But you were fine with Democrats when they were elected? Isn't that just you being upset that public opinion swung a different direction and now the majority doesn't agree with your views?

Exactly. It's discretionary, but for reasons I won't go into here, I had to have an immigration attorney for my green card adjustment. Her constant refrain was that I was not to worry as it was "discretionary but presumptive" - my previous efforts and process laid it that the onus was on the USG to show that my green card was or might be fraudulent or in bad faith.

Now? The same applies, but the current administration's attitude is "So stop us."

My friend was married to a USC (bona fide legit marriage) and they almost fucked them over during Biden administration casting doubt on their marriage. In San Francisco, not some red state. Many examples of that nature regardless of the administration.

Almost always if your case is legit, you'll be fine in the end and nothing to worry about, just as your lawyer says, but it does not mean there won't be a bumpy ride. I genuinely doubt Trump administration is any worse or better unless you affirmatively have anti-Western ideas or from Travel Ban countries. In fact, the anecdotes I have heard so far on the consular processing of Immigrant Visas is better than Biden era.

Except the people I cited were legal permanent residents and not "visitors" or "solely here as students". A legal permanent resident is by definition a national. In most forms, you will see US citizens/nationals refer to born or naturalized citizens AND legal residents. So your point is fabricated.

> A legal permanent resident is by definition a national

You just pulled this from your ass. Absolutely not true.

I stand corrected. US nationals refers to something else, but is sometimes used to include permanent residents alongside citizens. I am not familiar with the terminology, but my point stands. A legal permanent resident is very different from the situation you are citing, and I think if you believe they are not entitled to free speech (in particular, for offending a foreign country), we have a much bigger problem here.

Given now that EU and Australia have decided that free speech is incompatible with public order (hecklers veto), what are these fabled other places left that do have free speech? While I’m sure they’d be free to criticize Israel in their home countries I’m also sure there are others they are not free to criticize.

I’m an old school free speech absolutist and would prefer unfettered free speech but when neither side of politics supports it I have to be realistic as that battle has been already lost.

The terminology makes all the difference, though. You cannot just handwave it away. A US National is not removable by the discretion of U.S. Secretary of State, but a LPR can be found deportable based on that. The law could not be more clear. This is not a First Amendment concern. You don't have to commit a crime or to be charged with one. Even your mere presence is enough to trigger the statute. You can debate if Rubio should exercise that right and vote for a different President to elect a different cabinet to execute the law differently, or to elect a different Congress to change the law, but to say he does not have the right or that it is vague is preposterous. It is just that some people are not aware of the details and may have a different expectation compared to the status quo.

If you don't like that status quo, that's fair enough, but that's not a proof of non-resilience. The system is supposed to operate based on some approximation of will of the people and it has been quite resilient in approximating it.

As for me, allow me to be skeptical of you having a coherent, well-thought-out alternative of an immigration system with all the consequences and corner cases covered, especially if you are not familiar with the basic terminology of the current one.

In general the people making appeals to freedom of speech as a traditionally held cultural value are the same ones who not long ago espoused that freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences.

It was a bad idea then, it’s a bad idea now, but I would have much more sympathy for the left had they maintained a tradition of freedom of speech as a cultural value throughout and not only when its convenient for them.

Your point in hypocrisy of appeal to Freedom of Speech (cultural, not constitutional) is well-taken, but I would argue it is a red-herring: unless you have studied their intelligence files, it is not at all clear to the general public whether the deportees are merely selected because of a speech concern or some more nefarious intent or association.

Keeping secrets from the public is a good way to lose the public trust which they’ll need to stay in power. Otherwise their replacements will have their own secret reasons to be deporting people.

I’ve already resigned myself to the reality that freedom of speech no longer exists and hasn’t existed for some time. I think only the times when we thought we had freedom of speech was when information was very tightly controlled and the few cranks in the periphery were not a threat to government legitimacy. An increasingly weak and illegitimate government cannot afford to allow free speech.

I believe they stated that for at least a few of the cases: dude came to the US to dismantle western civilization and acted upon it.

Good riddance. They are free to exercise their Freedom of Speech and Due Process under Sharia Law in their home country (or the UK).

If the right loses the culture war then those deported will just be invited back to finish the job.

Either do a ‘dewokification’ on the scale of Germanys ‘denazification’ or do not. This half measure is sure to fail, exercising power may be cathartic but it comes at the cost of legitimacy which in the long run will come at the cost of power. The Trump administration should focus on governing well not on capriciously punishing weak individuals in raids. The right wing is split on the issue of Israel and the pending war with Iran is already unpopular and it hasn’t even started yet.

Sometimes I wonder if the only thing that could save the right would be if AOC gets the democratic nomination - I wouldn’t put it past them.

I would also disagree very much with your point including for visitors. Individuals visiting America value our free speech. Renouncing it in favor of a foreign country (most of those arrested were deported for anti-Israel sentiment), is not something we should be proud of. It makes me sad that fellow Americans turn down those who wanted to be here, in favor of a hostile nation that couldn't care less about any American and that has gained immensely from grift on our taxes.

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