Comment by marcusverus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by marcusverus | Hacker News Reader

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> Who cares?

The vast majority of people care.

> We were nomads before we settled in cities, and it's only the designs of the empowered few that ever made the idea compulsory.

Reasoning from pre-agrarian living patterns is, quite frankly, hippy nonsense. And no, we didn't settle in cities because of "the designs of the empowered few", but because agriculture leads to more permanent, prosperous settlements, which attract raiders, and settling close together allowed for common defense. In other words, as soon as people earned a living by their own planning and sustained effort, (as opposed to merely collecting the bounty of the earth) they settled down and drew borders to protect what they had built from people who wanted to just show up and reap the rewards of their effort, at their expense!

> I also lived where I could see Tijuana from my back yard and all the pearl clutching and self-fanning over "illegal immigrants" is a giant crock of blustery nonsense.

We can't have borders because you could see Tijuana from your back yard?

> We have bigger problems than normal folks just trying to live their lives.

Defending borders is the most basic function of the state. It quite literally does not have anything better to do than to defend its borders.

> Defending borders is the most basic function of the state. It quite literally does not have anything better to do than to defend its borders.

Fundamentally, everything in your post down to this ending boils down to whether or not you think that immigrants coming into the country is a good thing or not. People will try to split hairs over "doing it the right way," when until the 1900s doing it the right way was basically just having enough financial stability to make it here - many states had nothing beyond 'means testing' that would easily be passed if you could afford to make it to America rather than stowing away, and many states had less than that. For most of American history, immigrating properly was literally just showing up.

For the overwhelming majority of illegal immigrants, the only difference between them and the legal immigrant is the amount of paperwork on file. And many of us arguing that that paperwork matters are beneficiaries of a time where that paperwork wasn't necessary.

It's very explicitly a case of "Fuck you, got mine."

You can be butthurt all you want, we don't owe foreigners access to our country.

If the people in the country had that sort of mentality when your ancestors came here, there's a decent chance you wouldn't be here.

You know, ideological differences aside, there are some brass-tacks reasons that this particular brand of rhetoric does you no good, and actually hurts you.

Bought groceries lately? Kind of expensive, no? A significant portion of that is due to the central valley labor shortage. Which is a direct result of ICE enforcement. Same goes for price increases in restaurants across the country. Those increases in prices at the grocery store also translate to inflationary pressure across the board. People have to spend more to eat, so they demand bigger salaries, so their companies raise prices. Not rocket science.

Which makes me wonder - what exactly do you think the value prop is, here? Are you directly benefitting from this or is it just a balm for some vague jingoist need to feel superior? I'm genuinely curious. The common arguments like 'they're importing rapists' is... well I don't even know where to start with that one it's just preposterous and demonstrably false. Immigrants aren't taking your job, are they? Like what is it?

Deportations aren't causing the cost of food to rise:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIUFDSL

> Which makes me wonder - what exactly do you think the value prop is, here?

I want to leave my country to my children and theirs. Whatever America would be after the endless waves of third world immigrants (most of whom are grasping collectivists who value none of the things that have made America worth preserving, and would happily neuter the bill of rights and tax every dollar out of my pocket) it would not be my country. Bored cat ladies and wishcasting liberals are apparently happy to roll the dice with the futures of our children on the line, but I'm not. Let Canada or the UK or whoever carry the experiment to its conclusion, and if it works, then by golly let's jump in with both feet. But a blind gamble? Hard pass.

Perhaps it would be different if I thought we had good faith partners on the other side, but I don't. Biden tried to bum-rush millions of illegals into the country with the full stated intent to amnesty them, enfranchise them, and use them to control the congress, admit new states (DC/PR), and cement permanent demographic-guaranteed progressive/collectivist majority. The democrats attempted most of these steps during his tenure, but were 1 vote short in the senate.

I was hesitant to even support deportations before the Biden regime jumped the shark. (Remember when they said we needed to pass a new law to "seal" the border--and explicit lie--when the law actually codified mass, unvetted illegal immigration at ~10X historical levels? I doubt it.) Knowing now that the left (the leadership, if not the rank and file) clearly intended to weaponize demographic change for their political benefit, of course I oppose them.

Again, the entire commentary you have here is all more FYGM.

If the Native Americans had this attitude (and Europe didn't just go to war) we wouldn't be here at all. If earlier European-descendant Americans had this attitude, a huge chunk of us wouldn't be here.

People said all of the same things here that you're saying about Irish, Italian, Chinese, and many other immigrant classes over the years. None of your rhetoric is new or unique.

> Again, the entire commentary you have here is all more FYGM.

Typical progressive inversion of reality. If you think it's selfish for Americans to expect the American government to put them first, I'd hate to hear what you have to think about the foreigners who demand the same!

> If the Native Americans had this attitude (and Europe didn't just go to war) we wouldn't be here at all.

The Native Americans did have this attitude, which is why they consistently resisted the colonization of their territory.

> If earlier European-descendant Americans had this attitude, a huge chunk of us wouldn't be here.

Earlier European descendant Americans brought in immigrants to further their own goal of colonizing the North American continent. It wasn't a welfare policy for the benefit of foreigners, it was a policy enacted by Americans for the benefit of Americans. They also drastically cut immigration when it suited them, as with the Immigration Act of 1924.

> People said all of the same things here that you're saying about Irish, Italian, Chinese, and many other immigrant classes over the years. None of your rhetoric is new or unique.

Are you suggesting that earlier European-descendant Americans did, in fact, share my attitude? Pick a lane.

> Typical progressive inversion of reality. If you think it's selfish for Americans to expect the American government to put them first, I'd hate to hear what you have to think about the foreigners who demand the same!

Because I don't think it's actually beneficial for Americans to do what you're suggesting we do. America became what it was through accepting immigrants from all over the world.

> The Native Americans did have this attitude, which is why they consistently resisted the colonization of their territory.

Did you ignore the part of the message that literally covered that? Or is your stance that might makes right? Alright Mr. Redbeard

> Earlier European descendant Americans brought in immigrants to further their own goal of colonizing the North American continent. It wasn't a welfare policy for the benefit of foreigners, it was a policy enacted by Americans for the benefit of Americans. They also drastically cut immigration when it suited them, as with the Immigration Act of 1924. > Are you suggesting that earlier European-descendant Americans did, in fact, share my attitude? Pick a lane.

Are you suggesting that I believe that Americans are monolithic in thought? I believe it is quite obvious that I am speaking to the overall attitude of the country on the broader level - obviously there are groups that have held a wide variety of views. But for the majority of our history - as you pointed out, only the last 100 years or so have had particularly strict immigration laws - the prevailing view as evidenced by the actual laws of the country was obviously not a country that felt that restricting immigration was the right thing to do for her citizens, despite the fact that many people obviously had the same sentiments then that you do today.

if you look at that chart, there's a price spike between jan-march of '25, precisely when ICE started cracking down in CA.

Biden also famously did not do what you are saying he did. He continued the work on the border wall, much to the chagrin of everyone who sees immigration differently than you do. The idea that immigration was "10x historical levels" is not backed up by the data - see, I found a chart too [0]. True that we now have a greater percent of the population than any time in history [1] - around 16%. If that's "they're taking over the country" then I'd say you're just being dramatic. Since it also looks like we're talking about legal immigrants here, let's take a look at what they provide because you did mention taxes.

So we've already identified that 16% of our population is immigrants, more than ever before, sure. In 2023 we made about $2.2T from individual income taxes [2]. Of that, immigrants paid $651B [3]. So despite being 16% of the population, they paid nearly 30% of our total individual tax revenue. I'd say that's a pretty good deal!

0 -https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/imm...

1 - https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/08/21/key-findi...

2 - https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59730

3 - https://map.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/locations/nationa...

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