The leading reason to oppose immigration is racism. But people are embarrassed to admit it. Nobody opposes anything because it's illegal.
You can force anyone to admit they don't care about what's legal by simply asking what if we changed the law?
this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2026
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I both love and hate asking this question to anti-immigration chuds.
100% of the time, the first answer is "Well it wouldn't be legal, we need laws to keep people out."
And then you go "Okay but what if they DID legalize it, would you be accepting or not?"
And then it's 45 minutes of arguing with someone about what a "hypothetical" is and what it means to imagine something, because they don't actually have an answer, the choices are to say they will oppose the system and oppose the government or that they would be fine if the law changed, either way makes them look bad by their own flimsy values, so they will stick to spinning around the definitions of words and what's "real" or not.
You might enjoy the phrase "Constitutional border protection." The US had no immigration laws whatsoever for nearly a century, and none are in the Constitution, so it's fun to push the same button that right-wingers do with the Second Amendment, but for immigration.
The Constitution is not the totality of law nor was it ever intended to be. It is the guide rails that establishes the scope that the rest of the legal system exists within.
How would framing immigration in comparison to the Bill of Rights even push the same buttons as the Second Amendment? The Constitution grants Congress the authority and requirement to protect the country and to set naturalization law, which is immigration. There is, as you said, no constitutional right to become an American citizen.
Piss off right-wingers with Due Process, because Constitutionally everyone on US soil or in US custody for any reason, and that means Everyone with a capital E, is covered under Due Process.
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Shouldn't that be an easy question to answer though?
If a supermajority left-wing government changed immigration law to free and unrestricted passage across borders, making anyone who sets foot on US soil is legally a resident if they wish and further entitled to a pathway citizenship if they want it, then that would be the law and must be followed.
Anyone would still be free to run their campaign on changing immigration law back, or to something else. Economic and societal performance under that hypothetical law change would determine if a supermajority of "change immigration law to XYZ" then gets elected to do that.
There is always a possibility that putting no or too few limits on immigration causes irreversible damage to a country before course correction can happen, but the same is true for extreme polarization and unresolvable political divide.
I used to have that perspective too.
In my older age I'm completely in favor of an entirely borderless world. I know that's unrealistic in our lifetimes but I understand a lot more now about how much of our actual division and fear of "flooding people" in one direction or another is entirely socially constructed and cemented by capitalism, so while I know that we currently live in a world of borders, my firm belief is that people should be free go where they want, and governments need to learn to respond. Got too many people flooding in from country X? Lets go see what's happening in country X that's making people leave and fix the situation. The only time you should look at your neighbor's plate is to make sure they have enough.
When you say that you don't want "too many" people from other places, you're saying that your own value as a person is higher than theirs, that your culture is more important, that you're too scared to adapt to change that will happen anyway. And yeah, this has become policy now so here we are.
I am less and less compromising on this attitude too, because in my decades, every time we cede too much ground to conservatism, their fear and anxiety towards change turns the compromise into walls and barbed wire all over again.
I am not going to expect us to get that world overnight, but I will always advocate for fewer immigration controls and greater international support and partnerships, even if we go back to how it was in whatever years when the markets were flourishing and you could enter a country with a smile and a nod, I still will push for us to tear down barriers between building much larger communities.
So yeah, we will have borders and checks and security and all that lip service to logically unnecessary systems from thousands of years, but I think we need to keep the end-goal of not needing it as our collective, shared value.
A peaceful and united world without borders would be awesome. I wish I could be as optimistic as you, but when we have so many examples of one culture completely wiping out another I can't get there. Tibet is a "recent" example, all Native cultures in North and South America are more. Most of Africa as well.
I do think that not all cultures are equal because all cultural institutions are not equal. Child marriage, caste, women's rights, LGBT rights, etc. are components that make up cultures, and everyone thinks their culture's interpretation of these is superior and should be enforced as the norm. This will be THE blocker for a united one world society without borders.
Looking into why there are too many people coming from country X to fix those problems, no matter how generously you are trying to make sure their plate has enough, will invariably run into cultural clashes with fixes. International solidarity and support should increase, but at what point is that cultural colonialism? Can for example Sharia Law coexist perfectly with liberalism? Can a society made with conflicting ideas about autonomy exist?
Not to counteract that there is definitely a decent amount of racism involved, but isn't your point about law changing hypotheticals basically useless? If the government changed any law making any currently illegal immoral thing legal, wouldn't anyone not care about what's legal? And just because something is legal doesn't make it right. Some states still have legal child marriage, that doesn't mean anyone should like it and there should be mass efforts to make it illegal.
There is definitely a middle ground between open border immigration and what is happening now. Not everyone who is against illegal immigration is racist, and I would hesitate to even attempt to claim racism is a majority reason. It's has become a thought-terminating cliche the same way "woke" or DEI is for the Right.
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Wanda Sykes put it best:
"If someone broke into my house... and vacuumed?
*shrug* same time next week?"
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Conservative: “We just think that laws should matter. These people are here in violation of the law.”
Liberal: “Our immigration laws are a mess though and don’t meet anyone’s needs. Don’t you think we should overhaul that whole system?”
Conservative: “Sure. We can agree on that. But before we talk about new laws, we have to obey the laws we have.”
Liberal: “Let me get this straight: we should take a law everyone agrees is totally broken, go out and fully implement it, by force if necessary, and THEN fix it?”
Conservative: “You don’t understand. This is about rule of law. You either respect the laws of this country or you don’t.”
Liberals: “Laws like Roe v. Wade?”
Conservative: “Well that’s not a law that’s a court ruling.”
Liberal: “I see. So that one loses on a technicality. But a completely broken set of laws gets you out into the streets, up in arms?”
Conservative: “Here’s the part where you call me a racist.”
Liberal: “…”
Conservative. “We just think that laws should matter.”
"Kidnapping people, separating them from their family, locking them in prison and then exiling them from the country? That's a horrible thing to do! Unless of course they happen to have not done some paperwork correctly and were born on the other side of this line we drew in the dirt, then its just common sense." /s
Hell even if you did all the paperwork correctly, as an asylum seeker you would have a small window of 5 years where.
- If you leave the US your process is cancelled.
- If you don't show up to the 3 random court calls in time your process is cancelled.
- Court takes place in the USA.
- You are not a legal citizen in the USA until you finish all the courts.
Additionally.
- You aren't allowed to have a job until you pay a fee and wait 6-12 months for the EAD.
- You still pay taxes and can't vote.
And if you do show up on time, ICE might just arrest you at the court appearance and sell you into slavery!
A huge factor in my change from my conservative upbringing was when I escaped the family cult compound and got my first job working in a warehouse with a lot of illegal hires. I learned spanish, I had my lunch sabotaged with chili peppers, I got in insulation-foam swordfights with guys my age who were here in the US working 12 hours a day to support their families and start new lives.
I made friends, I learned spanish, I laughed and cried with my fellow humans from far away places.
My boss was a right-wing narcissist who enjoyed torturing these folks with withheld pay and criminal working conditions, and would sometimes call immigration services himself as punishment. I remember coming to work and people I knew were suddenly gone.
edit: the final straw was watching innocent people die in a war the US started for made-up reasons. (This one was Iraq, the second one.) Not just the civilians that were getting blown to pieces by ooh-rah US power while FOX news cheered on, but also I had friends who went to that war and came back in bags, or couldn't deal with the things they saw and ended their own lives. The lack of compassion from the right was outright evil. This isn't the first dance we've had with evil in the US. I've been falling further and further to the left ever since.
It always seemed obvious to me that the real criminals here are the owner class who are exploiting undocumented immigrants. They didn't want to give amnesty because that would mean they would have to follow rules such as minimum wage, etc. They have a business incentive to keep these people "illegal". Of course these people overwhelmingly vote Republican.
Also, if conservatives don't want refugees here, perhaps they could stop supporting US interventions in Latin America? Oh, and why not do something about climate change too because that will create even more refugees?
I've had people complain to me about how many Puerto Ricans there are in the area... my friend, you realize that Puerto Rican are Americans and that is because of imperialism right? The people of that island likely didn't ask to be colonized by Spain and then ceded to the US.
So they're trespassing? Jesus has something to say about that
For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you:
But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
Companies hire them illegally and nobody goes after them! Why aren't we enforcing the law for them!? Until you are willing to go out into the fields and pick crops for poverty wages, or advance legislation to enable them to do it legally, STFU about illegal immigration...
But they’re here illegally? Sounds like it’s time to legalize immigration, then.
In the UK and we talk about people smugglers like we don't have a navy that could provide the transport ourselves
It's all racism, all the way down, everywhere people are moving across our imaginary lines on the dirt.
Lots of people are deeply, childishly afraid of being surrounded by people who look and talk different, and that teeny, undeveloped personality flaw has had catastrophic consequences on our whole species, leading to some of the worst atrocities humans have ever committed.
And as the climate changes and weather becomes more extreme, crops will be harder to raise, clean water will be harder to find, and more and more people are going to move further towards milder climates and more developed nations out of desperation. I shudder to imagine how we're going to treat these people broadly.
Calling it all racism is a thought-terminating cliche. Not all groups of humans have the same societal values, and that is not intrinsically tied to race. It is economic in origin. There certainly are racists like you describe, but they are most likely a vocal minority.
The wealthier a society becomes, the more picky it can afford to become. Personal autonomy can be selected for easier when hand to mouth subsistence isn't taking up 100% of your time. Things like Abrahamic religious laws arise from subsistence societies. This doesn't make cultural friction any less real or impactful.
Women's rights and abolition of child marriage is the result of privilege, but that doesn't mean they are bad things. When "most" people talk about integration, they are broadly talking about adoption of those values.
To your final point, sadly a mass reduction in habitable land will almost inevitably result in reciprocal population loss. Probably violently through wars of conquest for the remaining resources.
I didn't use it to terminate thought though, I explained the source of the position and what it means. That was half the comment. We don't have a better word for it, it comes down to races.
Not all groups of humans have the same societal values
Yah, lets bring them in and help them get out of harmful values like child marriage by making it a less desirable outcome by making sure their needs are met and there's no excuse to keep practicing things that harm kids. (And of course, make it fucking illegal like we do with a lot of other things. Do you think it's just brown people from "over there" who traffic children and other horrible acts? Is it only people with "different societal values" who dedicate entire islands to raping kids?)
But if you really think if borders fell tomorrow your neighbors are going to be selling child-brides, you're also deluded by the completely societal construct that is borders broadly.
Everything you're scared of foreigners about is a fear that's been placed there BY the borders, not the other way around. The lines aren't protecting you from them, the lines are protecting you from valuing the lives of others as much as your own.
No, it's clearly not "brown people from over there". What you are describing is assimilation into your culture. That requires that the people immigrating want to assimilate and join "you". Also, a subset of sickos within "Western" culture being pedos is not the same as a society that believes child marriage is normal (or preferable).
Fundamentalist Christianity (any denomination or offshoot) is generally a "white people" culture and is also fundamentally incompatible with Western liberal society just as much as Islam is or Hindu caste is etc, so no, it is not just a "brown people" thing. White Christians don't need to keep practicing things that harm kids, but it is part of their culture so they still do. And they influence or attempt to set the law to conform to their cultural beliefs. That is the concern with non-assimilation and mass immigration of any kind, anywhere.
The reason all the problems you describe exist, in this comment and others, is because people in country Y are scared of people in country X changing things. It's entirely conservatism and racism, either malignant or benign. All the concerns you bring up are products of governments not making their people's needs met.
I refuse to believe that because one culture does bad things that it's not welcome, we will never solve all the problems in our OWN fucking culture that it makes me wonder why a bunch of people looking for a new home are so much worse of an issue, the only way it would make sense is if you believed our ability to manage and enforce liberty and equality and personal rights is a finite resource and you can only spend it on your immediate surroundings. Which again, you may be inclined to say that's exactly the case, but again that's a product of societal influence by the people managing the lines, we can easily expand our working systems to include more people. (Which we don't do even in our own island culture because it would mean taking away sex-slave money from wealthy elites.) I would be more charitable to this argument if you believed that people broadly can't be managed and we need to reduce populations. (something that happens anyway when you meet people's needs, look at modern birthrates as quality of life increases.)
Christianity is waning. Religion is waning. Quality of life is increasing. It feels distant right now but there are a LOT of graphs and studies that will put you squarely on an incline despite a few "dips" here and there. That incline is coming from globalizing our cultures, our information and our beliefs so different people are less alien and foreign and we start depending one each other.
There was a time when people were so segregated that black men and women and kids had to use separate water fountains. The people who designed that segregation said "We respect them as humans, but our cultures will never mesh, they are too different."
Fuck ALL of that. At some point there will be homogeny whether you like it or not, it WILL happen, we will have a whole new slew of issues to deal with a larger, more integrated population, and that will be a far better fight than the ones we're having now.
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Native Americans have entered the chat
Based Cozmo frfr
(His creator is not very based tho)
Really? Huh, I hadn't expected that, and I hadn't heard. What happened?
Hartman is an evangelical grifter.
Least morally bankrupt Nickelodeon creator
I can oppose illegal migration/support going through proper channels while opposing military action.
The leading reason for hiring illegally is to exploit people in an undesirable position. In my country it's the leading reason legally as well.
Want to know what being "illegal" constitutes as? It's a civil misdemeanor. That's it. It's a low offense. But the system is made so you either get ground to a pulp to get in or sneak in then deal with the system afterwards.
But they’re here illegally!
While doing everything they can to make it as difficult and expensive as possible yet enjoying the economic benefits of exploited (illegal) labor.
Idk...you could pay me to do it. I'd just be "quiet quitting".
There's a huge difference between hating an individual, and wanting the rule of law respected, I think. What's going on now is hatred and destruction, which abuses the name of the law. But saying, "this person is self-evidently in this place illegally, they should be tried and ejected", is not hateful. You can respect a person while saying they shouldn't be in a place.
I don't believe in borders man
wanting the rule of law respected
As an American, I would be mortified to use the phrase "rule of law" outside of a joke.
Any law that criminalizes behavior that does not cause anyone harm is unjust, and we therefore have a moral duty to disobey it. Your insistence that "respecting the rule of law" is not hateful is no different from using "just following orders" as an excuse for immoral actions. You cannot be seriously suggesting that it is respectful to tell a person they don't belong in this country because they don't have the proper paperwork. Fuck borders, fuck ICE, CBP, DHS, and fuck the rule of law. I refuse to accept inhumane treatment simply because the law demands it.
The problem is that even then it's such a tiny "infraction," so victimless, that going out of the way to enforce it is fucking insane. It's like if we shot all jaywalkers dead on sight. It's like if we arrested everyone who ever went over the speed limit and kept them in jail for 90 days waiting for a hearing.
If someone is visibly committing a dangerous crime, and it turns out they should be deported, that's one thing. Breaking into people's fucking houses, fucking taking people while they are in the process of going to the courthouse to go through the legal immigration process, dragging people out of fucking cars, none of this is necessary, and moreover, it's fucking reprehensible.
"But dey broke da lawwww" a kid who smoked a joint doesn't deserve the electric chair bro. And they are fucking executing white, born-here American citizens in the streets in broad daylight for NOTHING.
So in closing, fuck that, fuck all of that.
Good points. I just wanted to add even Pre-Trump the fact people need to go to court to argue their right to live in a country is stupid.
The immigration process should be nothing but a security check and be given ID in a civilized society
yea, the problem is that it’s a shitty, hateful law that is enforced for shitty, hateful reasons
"You can respect a person while saying they shouldn't be in a place."
"This person is self-evidently in this place illegally, they should be tried and ejected"
On behalf of the queer community this sounds really bad. I've seen similar rhetorical lines a lot, typically to defend the removal of queer media and other forms of expression.
I have never seen these be used to argue anything good.
There is a difference between the more liberal "enlightened" enforcement and the more brutal (and much worse) fascist enforcement. But the liberal apparatus (while comparatively considerably better) was still never just
What would happen if there was suddenly no border policy whatsoever in the US? That anyone could come in at any time they like and stay as long as they like.
I would try to find another place to live, because that would lead to chaos.
Good riddance.
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