A few follow-ups because on my commute to work I could think of practically nothing else.
My son (straight, white, privileged, liberal, his girlfriend uses they/them, his older sibling is non-binary) thinks Democrats are too damn sensitive. Stop with the PC culture already. Lecturing people isn't going to bring them over to "our" side.
Me: it's the economy stupid, per my comment several pages back; but also stop being so sensitive.
Also, anti immigrant sentiment has long been very popular as a political issue. Californians are like the inverse of the French regarding the Resistance. My liberal (I'm liberal, too, in case you hadn't noticed) friends don't know anyone who possibly could have supported Prop 187 back in the 90s (which denied all state benefits to undocumented immigrants), but it passed with flying colors (then was invalidated by the federal courts). FWIW, I voted against it, but I remember a lot of people who normally vote like me who thought it was a good idea.
There's no practical way to deport 14 million people. The government would basically need to stand up a big new agency to do it. It would be very expensive, and it would cause
tons of problems with policing powers--show me your papers and all that.
That said, during the war on terror, my south Asian friends were targeted because of how they looked and their names. There's no question about it. Particularly close to ports of entry. One of my friends (home state: Arkansas) was detained for about three hours in Texas (near the border, but not crossing it) because he didn't have his passport with him (a U.S. citizen, inside the U.S., having never left the U.S.--how often do you carry your passport within our own borders?). That stuff is going to happen to people who look Latino near the border and in places where there are known concentrations of undocumented folks (like the guys hanging out in the Home Depot parking lot). It will very likely not happen to many white people (side note, when California passed Prop 187, the second largest group of undocumented people in the state was from...wait for it...Canada, but they were never part of the advertising campaign). It won't be hard for ICE to become more aggressive about detaining people within US borders, and if you've watched enough youtube, you know that ICE can be really difficult to deal with when they are suspicious of you (think about our discussion of IRS audits a while back). They can also be very aggressive in "detaining" you without "arresting" you. ICE will also undoubtedly make mistakes and deport American citizens. This has already happened, and will happen more. It won't be a huge number, but the politics of that will make ICE look ridiculous and will lead to some push back.
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-487 ("
Available data indicate ICE and CBP took enforcement actions against some U.S. citizens. For example, available ICE data indicate that ICE arrested 674, detained 121, and removed 70 potential U.S. citizens from fiscal year 2015 through the second quarter of fiscal year 2020 (March 2020).")That is the government saying "potential," but we know that it happens: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/04/29/the-deportation-machine
But "illegal immigration" is--and always has been--a great political tool for those who wield it. (And as I've said, we
do have an immigration problem; I just think it's a lot more complex than build a wall and deport 14 million people.)
