America's criminalization of immigration has proven itself an abomination to humanity

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Last edited Sat Sep 20, 2025, 09:59 PM - Edit history (1)

...it doesn't matter that it's republicans who have bastardized the process and turned it into a Kafkaesque nightmare that threatens Americans' own rights and protections, pitting all of us today against the undue force and abuse of our government, police and military.

Illegal immigration wasn't actually criminalized until 1929 when prohibitionists and anti-Asians made laws criminalizing Mexicans crossing the border illegally; giving preferential treatment to white, Anglo-Saxon Europeans, much like today.

That edict has become the tool that this republican administration is using to dehumanize ALL immigrants in America as the federal government's new Stasi-like state security service and secret police which has no apparent limits on the brutality with which the mercenary-like new, mostly white recruits hired with the appeal to "defend your culture," as if we were still back in 1929 and the KKK was the driving force in our politics again.

It's weird, because the KKK in 1929 virulently opposed the immigration of Europeans, mostly because they were protestants and the favored influx of the millions of Europeans were mostly Catholics; and they were white and able to vote.

Catholic immigrants from Ireland, Italy, eastern Europe, French Canada, and southern Germany had poured into the country by the millions in the previous decades, competing with native-born American workers for jobs and driving down wages. Worse for the Klan was that immigrants voted, particularly in the big cities where they supposedly supported crooked political machines, most prominently New York City’s notoriously corrupt Tammany Hall. The Klan also associated immigrants with drunkenness and saloons (in an era of Prohibition), as well as with being un-American because of their languages, foods, and customs.

The great majority of Klan members were Protestants who feared Catholics because they were convinced the average Catholic was completely under the thumb of his or her parish priest or (worse) a foreign, authoritarian Church hierarchy led by the pope. “Most Klansmen,” noted historian David Chalmers, “did not believe that they were opposing the Catholic because of his religion but because hierarchical control from Rome prevented his assimilation.” Or as Alabama’s U.S. Senator J. Thomas Heflin put it: “God has raised up this great patriotic organization [the Klan] to unmask popery.”
https://billofrightsinstitute.org/essays/the-ku-klux-klan-in-the-1920s

Weird, isn't it? Racists, bigots, and demagogues who get the most attention, and the most support in America for their views and campaigns against 'illegal' immigrants have become just fine with the Anglo-Saxons who have become a large part of the fabric of America and their votes; and have turned the majority of their hatred, fears, and self-interest against Mexicans and Latin Americans voting in our elections and competing for jobs.

I could be wrong, but I don't believe most people in America are racists and bigots, but many have bought into the hysteria and outright lies about the impact of 'illegal' immigration in the U.S., most completely unaware that even undocumented migrants contribute much more to our economy and even our government coffers than they cost Americans; even less of a financial burden if you take away the billions spent, and set to be spent on enforcement.

The only justification left for supporting criminalizing these people coming to America to live and work, often seeking protection against danger or abuse, is some antipathy toward them, coupled with some desire to see them punished; well aware of how the U.S. immigration authority abuses and mistreats these working individuals and families.

Now that we can see that there are very few limits to the terror inflicted on immigrant communities; that we can see the inhumane and degrading conditions they're being held in; that we can see the courts are allowing these detentions and removals to even countries where deportees have no ties at all; that courts are allowing masked, armed, unidentified agents in unmarked vehicles to snatch people off the street, from homes, from schools, from hospitals, from churches, even from outside courtrooms where they've just been granted asylum; mow that we can see these people who contribute so much to America being treated like animals and labeled members of drug gangs IN OUR NAME.

All for what? How many of the people who agreed with our politicians to harass immigrants in the U.S. along with republicans are directly affected in a negative way by any migrant?

They aren't displacing Americans, they're supplementing a declining rate of population growth that is straining to keep up with a growing economy.

Some environmentalists and “degrowth” advocates see population decline as a benefit. On the plus side, shrinking populations mean reduced pollution and congestion, and new opportunities for technological change or societal transformation, Yet depopulation clearly poses significant challenges. Fewer people mean fewer workers to pay taxes and support retirees. Dependency ratios – measuring the number of retirees supported by working-age people – are set to worsen. Currently, every old-age person is supported by three working-age people, on average. But that ratio is projected to drop to just two workers per retiree by 2050 in high-income countries. And this trend threatens the sustainability of pensions, welfare systems, and economic growth as fewer people innovate or address global challenges.
https://goodauthority.org/news/politics-economics-of-population-decline-japan-us-world/

I propose that we decriminalize much of immigration, abandon support for an immigration stance that has proven to be an anathema to almost everything this nation was founded on, and is actually an outgrowth from turn-of-the century racism and bigotry.

Americans haven't come up with a more moral or even a credible economic justification for our attitudes against people migrating to our country, and in so many ways, our criminalization of a human need or desire to migrate to opportunity, or away from danger is at odds with the stories we tell ourselves about the goodness of our people and the justness of our society.

We have a mob action against immigrants today, sanctioned and exercised by the federal government in Americans name. We don't need defense against the people we work and live among everyday; brought to fear our neighbors because of politicians' opportunistic lies behind the brutality they and the courts allow.

Take away their fucking power! They have lied to Americans about the danger from these working people and families coming here to live. Decriminalize most of immigration and put an end to this abusive regime needlessly dehumanizing people in our name.

Disband this state police force terrorizing migrants which operates in secret and is unaccountable to the American people. Put an end to this inhumanity. It's unconscionable and morally abhorrent to almost everything America claims to stand for.

[Ping Tung]

1. We are not North Korea....Gavin Newsom. See post below.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220661340

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2. he'll have trouble enforcing that - already has had

"California has failed to block federal officers from arresting immigrants based on their appearance, language and location. An appellate court paused the raids, which California officials alleged were clear examples of racial profiling, but the U.S. Supreme Court overrode the decision and allowed the detentions to resume."

The only solution is to completely reverse course, and this tome force the opposition to come up with more than just the cherry-picked anecdotal justifications that aren't backed up by overall figures or the reality on the ground.

What we have now is the courts allowing this travesty of humanity to proceed, even allowing rank discrimination by giving permission for ICE to profile based in skin color and day work in a faltering economy.

End the criminalization and dismantle this construction of repression and dehumanization before it envelops us all.

It's the ONLY way to thwart the courts, and it's past time that we demand this immigration push be based on more than just the antipathy or hatred toward our dark-skinned neighbors, the outright unproven unevidenced falsehoods that are the criminal laws' ONLY basis for the votes they got in the legislature and for the fealty politicians give this prevaricating abomination to humanity.

[Orrex]

3. Some people feel very strongly that illegal immigration is a terrible crime.

Those same people also worship a rapist and felon and probable pedophile.

Go figure.

[LymphocyteLover]

4. the whole GOP has authorized this horrible operation and funded it with more money

than most militaries in the country get. Sick evil fucks.

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6. apparently a new Democratic administration can dismantle it

...the same way this autocrat has dismantled entire agencies with impunity.

[LymphocyteLover]

8. they sure can-- just cut their funding to $0 in Congress, the constitutional way

[ReRe]

5. K&R

What needs to be criminalized is THE criminalization of immigration! This country was created and built by immigrants. The majority of today's Americans are descendants of those immigrants (and I am one of them). Immigrants of all nationalities and all colors. I, too, do not believe that the majority of Americans are bigots. Nonetheless, we are presently ruled by a depraved bigoted administration.
The only way I see out of this horrible nightmare is for the Democratic Party to rise up in the 2026 midterm elections and take control back in both the House and the Senate. Wouldn't it be grand if every single Republican House member was replaced in 2026? By candidates unsupported by Oligarchs. (In both parties for that matter?!)
In my heart, I do believe we can stop this unlawful deportation of our immigrant citizens.

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7. you've got a good and smart heart

...this war against immigrants reminds me of the drug war in the ridiculousness of the lies that have been told to us by politicians and rw activists about the harm to Americans from people who most of us can see with our own eyes aren't any different from the rest of those in the country; and are good neighbors, good customers, and the undocumented actually contribute to our government with the consumption and other taxes they pay without the benefit that citizens enjoy from those same contributions.

And the insidiousness, and the opportunity to right this, is in the way the lies have been successful in perpetuating unfounded and false fears and concerns that propel even Democrats to politically acquiesce to this detrimental and counterproductive war against what are essentially political projections to win elections.

The laws are demonstratively unjust and allow the worst of abuses which belie justifications and reveal the roots of all of the arguments in favor of criminalizing migration to America to be nothing more substantive than rabble-roused racism.