Tuesday, February 07, 2017

Immigration Policy

I'm practically an "open borders" guy, but I recognize that immigration policy is a reasonable thing to be set by the state in response to our usual imperfect democratic process. If Trump and the Republicans want to severely cut legal immigration and continue or worsen Bamz's deportation policies then I would disagree, but it wouldn't inspire the kind of outrage and protests that we have seen (there are protests about deportation, as there should be, but even those are mostly directed at the clear injustices of sending home non-legal resident people who came here as kids and breaking up families which include citizen kids). There's a big difference between "let fewer people in" and "oh, by the way, that green card you've been on for the last 8 years while building your life and career and family? never mind." If Trump had just said "no more new visas issued for these 7 countries," then that would have been pretty stupid and I would have disagreed with it (in part because of course some people from those countries would still have been able to get visas), but it still would have been a policy choice that was not outside the normal bounds. But playing calvinball with people's lives, and abusing them in the process, is a clear injustice.