[nahzgah]

>A new agency with ICE's original charter would be a reasonable thing to have, but there's no way to get that under the current structure.

One of the strong points of the current president is kicking out illegals, so it could be argued that abolishing the ICE would be simply antidemocratic.

[throwaway98121]

Illegals? You mean undocumented residents?

Personally I don’t think the president has any strong points other than being a racist, misogenoist, pathological liar, and narcissist.

[i_am_nomad]

Few of them are undocumented. There’s plenty of documentation on them - in schools, emergency rooms, police reports. As you well know, your term “undocumented” is designed to trivialize the border and deprecate the very concept of American citizenship.

At a minimum, refer to them as unauthorized immigrants, since that is the distinguishing factor from a public policy perspective.

[throwaway98121]

Labeling people as illegals is merely meant to dehumanize them. I wasn’t trivializing the border and so your response is no more than a straw man.

[zeveb]

> Labeling people as illegals is merely meant to dehumanize them.

No more than labelling those who commit crimes as criminals.

Subjects of foreign states — i.e. aliens — who are present illegally are illegal aliens. That's what they are (in addition, of course, to being human beings, with parents and rights and hopes and dreams and all the rest).

Labelling them 'undocumented immigrants' is a bit too cute, since many of them do retain the identifying documentation issued by their states. It's also begging the question of whether they should be immigrating at all.

For myself, I philosophically tend towards completely open borders, but I do wonder about the practical implications, and I dislike the blatant dishonesty & appeals to emotion common on both sides of the issue.

[nahzgah]

No it's not. They are humans who are breaking the law and who shouldn't be in the US. Nobody is saying they are not humans. Just that they don't get to stay in the US without following the process.

[throwaway98121]

This is a political talking point to scare poor and uneducated white people. It’s why we are willing to penalize folks who were brought to this country as children and use this future for political gains.

[trothamel]

"Undocumented resident" is an even worse euphemism - it's not like these are people who simply lost their papers, or people who were entitled to those papers and just forgot them.

These are people who are inside the US in violation of immigration law.

[throwaway98121]

I don’t think it’s a worse euphemism. The people who I see angry about “illegals” are the same ones who think blacks are all criminals and it would be great if we could to to the good old days when blacks were segregated, women didn’t have the right to vote, and white men ruled supreme.

[i_am_nomad]

Now who’s dehumanizing people?

[yasp]

If you're committing visa fraud you're no longer undocumented and you are indeed there illegally.

[mcphage]

If your visa expires, wouldn't that mean that you're here without valid documentation, ie, undocumented? You were formerly documented, and you have been undocumented.