You can't track and control only immigrants. Any such system would include tracking and controls of citizens, simply in order to sort them into the "not immigrant" category.
Hence all the "papers please".
(Not to mention the false positive problem!)
I don't like either of those alternatives, but those seem to be the only options that are being advocated at the moment. Is there a better option?
And if not, are you really content to advocate for one of those two options? (Either of those two options? Because personally, no, I am not willing to advocate for either one.)
If you don't check papers (or an equivalent), you automatically don't control immigrants at all once they're in your borders. To control them requires everyone has an ID, because otherwise some immigrant who doesn't want to have ID for whatever reason can just say "of course I don't have papers, only immigrants have papers and I'm not an immigrant".
The entire point of papers is to determine if someone is or isn't in some category (including but not limited to "immigrant").
What you can do is automate ID checks. So long as you don't mind your ID being tested at random, and the way that such systems have a tendency to randomly fail and deport people who were actually allowed to remain.
It’s purely about terrorizing people and expanding the power of ICE. Citizens and non-citizens.
Acting like showing ID to an immigration official is some unprecedented intrusion is absurd. Fly domestically, shop at Costco, or buy a 6 pack of beer and you’ll end up showing more “papers” than a typical interaction with Customs/ICE, assuming you’re not illegal.
I can't not interact with law enforcement, which is why we have things like the Fourth Amendment to protect us in those non-consensual scenarios.
If I answer "yep, I'm a citizen", and ICE says at one of the internal checkpoints "well we don't believe you, prove it", what now?
If ICE doesn’t have probable cause to believe you’re an alien, you’re free to go.
Things could be different based on state-level stop and identify statutes when interacting with state LEO.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trump-ice-detained-c...
"In 2017, Stevens began studying cases like Watson’s, combing through court records for instances of ICE detainees being released after the government acknowledged they were citizens. She connected with dozens, including many who had been deported before the government could correct its error, and who got in touch with her from other countries. 'This is happening all the time,' she says. In her study, she found that, on average, U.S. citizens detained by ICE spent 180 days behind bars. Deportation is always a real possibility. At a mass removal hearing she attended, Stevens remembers the judge declaring that all 50 defendants would be deported; as the bailiff cleared the room, a man stood up and shouted, 'I thought I’d have a chance to speak to a judge!'"
"It took years, but eventually the BIA, even with the naturalization papers in front of them, denied his request for a stay, concluding the government could deport him. The court’s argument was arcane: It maintained that Watson couldn’t prove his father had custody of him when he was naturalized."
"A court would eventually rule that Watson had been wrongfully imprisoned. But the statute of limitations to sue the government began the day he got locked in ICE detention; it had passed by the time he was released."
Legal immigrants to America for over a century accepted and complied with these legal processes, many of which were even more burdensome or discriminatory (quotas, Chinese Exclusion Act, Immigration Act of 1924, etc).
It's unamerican to undermine a core tenant of the US's national sovereignty: the "sovereign right of States to determine their national migration policy", by arguing that unregulated, irregular migration is the norm and that any action to enforce immigration law is unthinkable.
For basically the entire first 80% of our history, the most the federal government would do in regards to immigration was write down someone's name and nationality, then send them on their way. You're right that in the early 1900s, there were finally some restrictions passed, but by that point the national fabric of America was already sewn, and even those restrictions only applied to specific countries. Right up to the modern era, millions and millions of people have been moving to the USA, and only very, very recently has there been an extremely formalized process, or efforts to go out of the way to deport people that aren't committing actual crimes (overstaying visas is a modern thing, and isn't the kind of crime I'm talking about) (and before you get on me about breaking the law making someone a criminal, lemme know how many times you've driven over the speed limit, and whether you verify your turn signals, headlights, and brakelights work every time you operate a motor vehicle).
I grant you that the government is often at odds at our values, such as with the Chinese exclusion act or when they put Japanese in internment camps, but the American culture has been pro-immigration and pro-refugee for our whole history. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses..." No way in hell bureaucracy is more important to us than that value.
American conservative media are really good at repainting history, so they seem to have convinced some people such as yourself that American sovereignty is predicated upon a tightly controlled and monitored border, but that's basically the opposite of the truth of our history. My guess is that the conservatives need scapegoats to distract from the collapse of the living conditions of the working class from the true reasons (higher concentration of wealth) and so they've picked immigrants this time, a typical target. What genuinely surprises me is that people on hacker news, who I consider typically more media-savvy than the average person, are falling for this as well.
Anyway maybe take a quick scan of the wikipedia article to get a better understanding of our history in relation to immigration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_immigration_to_the_...
If you want to go back to a pre-1900s American system and return to that national fabric, sure! Repeal the NFA and free our 2nd amendment. Repeal the income tax and welfare state, and go back to funding the government via tariffs and excise taxes (the liberal media sure convinced some people tariffs were an anathema to America, right?).
Your idealized “America the melting pot” thrived on the basis of people actually working for what they had, both immigrant and 3rd generation American; rather than sitting around drawing Social Security, disability, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, WIC,TANF, EITC, and housing assistance. I think you’re on to something!
In an advanced society where citizens are tracked, and receive the benefits of that tracking, why is it somehow okay for others to not be yet to reap the benefits? Why should others immigrate the 'proper way' if one can simply walk across? I can wait until anyone here who defends the lawlessness of the past ways answers.
"Show me your papers" is not something I think most Americans think is acceptable to be asked of them.
Do you think all Americans are just running around bartering for corn with bullets? Showing ID when engaging in modern society has become common - except when voting, of course, oddly enough :P
It's not just sovereign citizens asserting their rights to not identify themselves out of turn to a cop. You're right that cops in America are becoming increasingly authoritarian and trying to intimidate people into giving up their rights, but check out any youtube channel that's essentially just a reuploader for full cop chest cam videos, and almost every encounter with a cop has people pushing back on unlawful search and seizure.
Anyway, your examples are all not exactly good faith, since we were discussing random "show me your papers" stops, which is what ICE has started doing. Needing to prove you have a legal right to drive is relatively uncontroversial. As for showing your passport at a random DHS stop, I've refused every time (over 20 times, I'm a Texan), and everyone I know does as well, and we're certainly not sovereign citizens. "I'm an American citizen, thank you." On my way. They're completely used to it so I know we aren't outliers.
> even ID when swiping a credit card at Walmart.
I've never had to do this lol, not sure what this is about, but again irrelevant when discussing government overreach.
> Do you think all Americans are just running around bartering for corn with bullets?
Ok, this might be a rural American thing, but, yes, many people are basically doing this. Maybe this is just a Texan thing but there's whole ass grey market economies around this.
IDK man maybe we just roll in different circles, maybe it's a redneck thing, but my perception of American values is hot rodding cars so as to escape the cops, not welcoming federal agents into your city to deport your neighbor that watches your kid when you gotta run to the post office real quick, just cause of some frivolous bullshit paperwork.
Instead of letting the economy do the work, simply enforce the laws we already have on the books. Don't let employers employ non-verified citizens.
The problem is that a common sense solution solves the problem and removes a platform for politicians to yell about and continue to do nothing over.
Step one: enforce labor laws. Step two, watch the system drain itself. Step three, look to naturalize and or remove those left behind.