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Comment by newfriend | Hacker News Reader

This is not true. Maybe it's unpopular in your circles, but deporting illegal aliens is broadly popular with the American public.

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Deporting illegal aliens might be popular as an abstract concept but as soon as the question is about deporting actual people that they know, their opinion changes. It’s great politics to say you’re going to do it, but bad politics and a moral atrocity to _actually_ do it.

The only ethical way to do it is better security at the border and making legal immigration and visits much easier. You can’t just snatch people who are established in communities and put them into camps without leading to a thoroughly justified moral outrage.

I think that it's possible to deport people while still treating them with dignity and respect, without keeping them in horrific conditions, without sending them to random dangerous countries they've never been to, without murdering innocent citizens and non-citizens, and while affording the people you remove legal due process.

Our current president has intentionally created a system designed to be cruel, brutal, and unfair because his supporters get off on it and because every abuse of power makes his next abuse easier, but even though some people will inevitability be upset when the illegal immigrants in their lives are removed from the country, it doesn't have to be a complete moral atrocity to enforce immigration law. The way it's being done today is a choice.

Deporting someone who broke the law is not a moral atrocity. Is it unethical to arrest and jail a bank robber who has established themselves in a community?

These people knowingly and deliberately broke the law, and they continue to deliberately elude enforcement. The problem is that we've been too soft on enforcement, leading to millions upon millions of them assuming they are exempt from the law.

Deporting someone that arrived here 20 years ago, who has a family, whose spouse might be an American citizen, who might have American citizen kids, grandkids, friends, employers, they might own a company and contribute to the economy, etc absolutely is a moral atrocity. Violating border crossing laws is not a crime that is worth upending so many lives. It’s a misdemeanor and the fact that you have to elevate it to a bank robbery to make it seem reasonable tells you everything you need to know. Not all crimes are worth ruining lives over.

I am in favor of deporting people that have not been here long, but there has to be a way to fine people and get them documented after a certain amount of time.

You can say the exact same thing about a bank robber "who has a family, whose spouse might be an American citizen, who might have American citizen kids, grandkids, friends, employers, they might own a company and contribute to the economy".

Entangling yourself into society doesn't absolve you of crimes.

Illegal entry is a felony. Unlawful presence is a misdemeanor which carries the penalty of deportation. Trying to downplay it and liken it to minor infractions tells me everything I need to know.

I am in favor of deporting all illegal aliens. Apply the law equally.

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