immigration – Stenonymous

I’m a lifelong New Yorker and we’ve had a terrible immigration crisis on our hands. It’s been reported that Mayor Eric Adams of New York City stated undocumented immigrants — that is, illegal immigrants — aren’t owed due process.

Notably, Eric Adams is enjoying due process as this is being written. He’s under federal indictment and presumed to be not guilty under our law.

But there is a growing bellowing of those who believe that the American Constitution should be for Americans only, and that due process and the rights afforded to people within the jurisdiction of the United States should be reserved for citizens only.

It sounds good on its own. America is for Americans! Those illegals broke the law to come here, we should just send them back where they came from without the expense of trial!

Well, least importantly, let me make an appeal to history.

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”

But who cares about our history? We want results. We want to end the immigration crisis. And our politicians promise us that we can do that if we just give up a little due process. Problem solved.

Now let me make an appeal to your self-preservation.

Succinctly, if you take away due process rights from any one subclass of people, bad actors in government could simply declare people they don’t like as part of that subclass, and the accused would have no right to contest the government.

And this is something that the government likes to do. Back when it was popular to prosecute terrorists, the government charged a young man that wrote rap lyrics that it didn’t like with terrorism-related charges. Due process saved that young man, Carmen D’Ambrosio — though I swear I’ve also seen his name butchered as Carmine or Cameron, so who knows? But he’s real. It really happened. I was in my 20s when the grand jury told the prosecutors to back off.

Back when it was popular to smear people as terrorists, the government put in legal papers that Carl Malamud was a terrorist for — checks notes — publishing legal annotations to the internet.

What I’m getting at here is… if someone in the government doesn’t like you or something you’re doing…. It’s pretty easy for them to fuck with you. The only thing that keeps them in check is that you have a right to due process of law. A right so embedded in our culture, history, and Constitution that up until recently politicians dare not threaten that right out loud.

Just for a glance at how people around the world feel about having such rights taken away, President Yoon of South Korea recently attempted to declare martial law in his country. People took to the streets, there was a tank parked outside Parliament, and Parliament voted to rescind the emergency declaration. Now they’re looking at impeachment for the poor bastard.

Fans of the Suzerain game also noted that this was eerily similar to when Anton Rayne suspends the constitution to deal with internal and external threats to the fictional country of Sordland.

So both in real life and fiction we have a very serious understanding of what the actual suspension of rights — under any scenario — might mean for Americans.

To allow the suspension of due process rights of any one group, you have to assume no one in government will ever have a bone to pick with you, people like you, or people they perceive as being like you for the rest of your life and the lives of everyone you will ever care about. That’s a lot of trust in government and the people that habitually seek power.

To be honest I’m not very hopeful. People don’t seem to understand this concept that government shitheads can just shoehorn anyone into the subclass and then that person would be presumed, under the law, to have no rights. You’re a conservative? No. You’re actually an illegal immigrant with no rights. You’re a liberal? No. You’re actually an illegal immigrant with no rights. Now get in the truck, you filthy illegal, and watch all these people cheer your arrest because we told them that’s what you are.

We’re so insulated from having a government like that, that we don’t even imagine it could happen here. We laugh at the idea. Remember the Canadian family that moved to Russia? Their bank accounts were frozen on their arrival. Again, an issue that is resolvable in a country with strong due process protections.

I can only hope that reason wins the day here. The more we are willing to trade freedom for a facade of security, the more good and innocent people will suffer.

Government is trustworthy-ish because there are limits on its power under the law. Start putting in loopholes that increase its power and you’ll see the most vicious people in government start ramming those loopholes wider and wider until there’s just nothing left to protect you, me, or anyone else. That was true under Obama and the right to detain American citizens indefinitely, and it’s true today.

Amendments to ban indefinite detention of American citizens suspected of terrorism were defeated — politicians gave away the freedom of citizens in the name of safety.

Know what it is to be free.

You take it for granted.

It was never granted. It was fought for.

People died for this moment.

People died so that you would have the choice to give it all away.

Give not your freedom!

To the enemies of America:

We who choose not to give away our freedom will ensure our children have the same choice!

I started to hang out in the various New York City and Staten Island subreddits. I long to find people with similar political beliefs here. Now that I’ve seen the power of one firsthand, I’m immensely curious on the power of many.

So I spotted this right after I said I last said I was going to take a writing break.

Malliotakis defends Trump’s comment about immigrants poisoning the blood of our country.

I even read the article a little.

I responded, but I feel this one deserves a “permanent” place somewhere on the internet. Staten Island is deeply conservative. But conservatives suffer from the same problems libertarians, liberals, progressives, and more do. Nobody can be apprised of everything. We must constantly act on incomplete information. And politicians take advantage of our blind spots — including the blind spots of our various news media — to get themselves elected.

So I wonder if throwing this pebble into the lake might one day cause a ripple that people remember. If not, what’s it matter? My life is headed in the same direction as everyone alive today, everyone that has ever lived, and probably everyone that will ever live. I’ve taken the position that we might as well use our time to make the world better. “A society grows great when old men plant trees under whose shade they will never sit.”

You want the next Bezos to be born in your state and bring lots of money to your local economy? Create a system that gives the most kids the most opportunity to succeed. Humans are really, really good at destroying our enemies. There’s no animal on the planet we couldn’t hunt to extinction if we so chose. Why don’t we make our enemy human suffering? Teach our children that the next big frontier is ending suffering in our communities. Kind of like the oxygen mask on the plane. You help yourself first, because you’re no good to anyone dead. Then you make sure the people next to you are okay. And then you can worry about the rest of the plane.

I mean, on a political level, we’re not even really taking care of ourselves. When I was a kid, it was all about respecting the armed forces that defend our freedom. When I was an adult I learned that we don’t really take care of our veterans and never really have. They commit suicide at higher rates than the general population and have roadblocks to care and reintegration in society that should be top priorities for society.

They’re not. Add that to the list of probably millions of things that should be getting addressed at any one moment and you start to realize that this stuff is way too complex to expect a legislative body of 12,500 people to keep up with it, let alone the measly 535 voting members of Congress. It’s painfully obvious they can’t keep up. They devolve into mudslinging any chance they get.

Maybe I’m romanticizing lawmakers of the past, but it seems like in the past there was actually some attempt at bettering society. Gangs were brutalizing gay people so there were laws enacted to enhance sentences for crimes against people for their sexual orientation, race, sex, religion, etc. But when people started targeting cops and homeless people? Nada. It wouldn’t even be hard to cover, just grab something like our NYS hate crime law and modify it to cover people’s employment, employment status, or housing status. I wrote to State Senator Andrew Lanza about that. Guess we’ll see if it ever goes anywhere.

Anyway, my response on social media to the immigrants thing:

Stenonymous commentary on Malliotakis defending the comment that immigrants are a poison in the blood of the United States.

Sometimes I wonder if I am alone.

///

A loving memory of a veteran I knew, gone too soon. Would that I could have taken away the pain.

A deep respect for a family I knew.

You are all the blood of this country.

Addendum:

Stenonymous lets Nicole Malliotakis know there’s work to be done.

Stenonymous votes to abolish the senate and let Emperor Palpatine have a little more responsibility.

Filed under: Things that are classy when you’re rich but horrifying when you’re a regular dude with a 9 to 5.

1/8/24 update:

Shortly after this posted, several readers remarked that Italians were treated like poison when they were first immigrating. This emphasizes my point some.

Another reader remarked that “democracy” is credited as having originated in Greece, meaning “people power.” Having a father from Greece and a mother from Cuba, perhaps the irony will not be entirely lost on Nicole Malliotakis.

Tag: immigration

Why Don’t We End Due Process Rights For Illegal Immigrants in America?

Political Immigrants Poisoning the Blood of Our Country?