You’re espousing is kind of libertarian absolutism, but there’s a second half - most who come here are indigent. They require assistance. They need room and board at border communities and where ever they’re sent. The second part of the libertarian ideal you’re promoting is - you’re on your own. You can come here, but you better have family or some other means to care for yourself.

That’s not the case. Public welfare apparatus is being overwhelmed from coast to coast and border to border. We can’t live in an imaginary libertarian utopia. Step 1 absolutely has to be to end the chaos at the border. If you want rules allowing unfettered entry to absolutely anyone who wants to come here, you gotta pass laws allowing for that to happen in an orderly, legal fashion. Not streams of people making perilous treks up the continent to sneak in, get arrested, and then “paroled” with a court date years later. And you’d better define how much aid you plan to allocate to all these people who are coming here because they are desperately poor.

I don’t think your viewpoint’s constructive. I think it’s pie in the sky libertarian idealism which ignores reality. One of the more rational voices I’ve heard on this belongs to Malliotakis, who I don’t really love. She doesn’t reject a senate compromise out of hand, but assumes the house repubs will try to negotiate it (I think that’s fine). She agrees legal immigration needs to be liberalized, so doesn’t sound like a reactionary “replacement theory” TomK clone, but thinks the border needs to be secured first.

I consider myself an immigration dove, but it can’t be “all comers welcome”, and unless this senate deal changes things dramatically, this is my personal top candidate for “issue that brings us Trump 2.0”.



[Post edited by hoolstoptheheels at 02/01/2024 10:15AM]