[999900000999]

If anything everyone else is under reacting.

You have ICE officers randomly abducting people off appearance alone and then detaining them for days if not weeks. If you were a citizen the whole time, cool who cares.

No one in America has any rights.

That aside, even as someone who's been in this country for generations, I've been exploring options to leave.

America is behind most of the developed world in terms of standards of living. I was in Asia for a while and I felt a fraction of the fear I constantly do at home.

It's not getting better.

[Underphil]

The reason I think I'm overreacting is because I'm a natively English-speaking straight white guy. If I wasn't I'd have already fled.

[BowBun]

GC holder of 25 years with citizen parents. I agree with you and I stress about this daily. It's always been a shitty deal though - we are taxed with no representation in government.

[joe_mamba]

>we are taxed with no representation in government.

In which country can you emigrate to and be allowed votes in government representation just because you pay taxes? I'm an EU citizen and living in another EU country and am not allowed to vote in that country's government elections, just local ones. If you want to vote at government level then you need to apply and get citizenship which also comes with the responsibility(or obligation more accurately) of military draft.

Everything about this seems pretty fair to me. I'm not sure why not to you. If you're not a citizen you shouldn't be allowed to vote at gov level since you're not subject to a draft, because in case the shit hits the fan militarily, unlike citizens, you can just pack your bags and go back to your home country and avoid dying in the front lines. So why would any country let people who aren't subject to draft vote? Makes no sense. You don't have the same skin in the game as citizens who are draftable just because you pay some taxes.

Now if you're paying taxes in a foreign country where you can't vote, it means you're there voluntarily because you're getting a much better deal than being in your own country where you can vote. Probably you're in the US because you make orders of magnitude more money than in your own country, but nobody in the US dragged you there against your will to work and pay them taxes, you agreed to this situation voluntarily because it also benefits you personally, and you would just as easily leave if it stopped benefiting you.

[doix]

> In which country can you emigrate to and be allowed votes in government representation just because you pay taxes?

There are a few, with varying degrees of residency time (and possibly other conditions) required. New Zealand requires being a resident for a year.

The UK is particularly interesting, if you're a citizen of a common wealth nation you can vote in national UK elections if you're a resident.

Personally, I agree with you though. I didn't vote in the UK despite being able too. Let the citizens decide the future of their nation, I have the privilege to leave (and have done so already). Feels wrong for me to influence the nation when I'm not fully invested in the outcome.

[geodel]

Indeed. Entitlement on immigration issues is through the roof here.

[eschaton]

As a person, why should you not have a say in how things are governed where you live?

The idea that you should be required to swear some loyalty to a government before you get a say in how the place you live is governed is the position that’s actually absurd.

(Yes, I do think there should be a global republic and that there should be full freedom of movement. It’s way past time for that.)

[decafninja]

Because as a non-citizen, you are technically still a guest?

If you love the place you're living in and want to actively participate in its governance, including implementing any changes, you should obtain citizenship.

And even if you do, your stake would still be less than those who've been living there all their lives, across many generations. Maybe the natives actually don't want the changes that the immigrants want to see implemented.

(not going to argue the finer details of ethics like racism or xenophobia, etc. which I acknowledge can often come up in cases like this).

[auyez]

It make sense, you don't want to give voting rights to someone who might decide not to continue living in your country anymore. If they are serious about it, then they must go through the process of obtaining citizenship. I have same issue with dual citizenships, it is absurd that someone holding foreign passport can have major decision making roles in your government.

[throw-the-towel]

Genuinely curious why didn't you pursue citizenship though? (No pressure to answer of course, that might be a deeply personal thing.)

[BowBun]

We did not meet continuous residency requirements for 10-15 years due to travel for my dad's work. Afterwards, it took me nearly 5 years to meet that requirement due to the fact that I lived and graduated abroad for highschool. I tried around COVID, was denied based on truthfully admitting I had smoked some weed in the previous 5 years while I lived in Colorado. That reset my clock for another five years. I constantly wrestle with whether I even want to be associated with this country for the rest of my life. I'm prideful and a high earner, there's only so much I'll accept before moving my family and assets somewhere else.

Hope that provides some color. To all the fans of the current immigration policies - you are throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

[throwaway2037]

    > we are taxed with no representation in government

This is true in most highly-developed democratic nations. If it is so important to you, then you should become a citizen, or return to your home country (so that you may vote). And curiously, does your home country not have the same rule? Do you find that position hypocritical?

[BowBun]

The choice is not so binary, as anyone seriously discussing this topic should immediately recognize. There are indeed ways for foreigners to participate in local politics in many countries, here is some data if you're interested in learning - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-citizen_suffrage

My country does in fact provide this right to foreign residents who live a certain amount of time in the country. Even if it didn't, it would not be a hypocritical position to state something is bad. Do you think I wrote the laws? Hardly seems like a good-faith argument or even a sound one!

[fweimer]

It's certainly possible to make different arrangements. Some European countries do that for local elections, for example.

[bubblethink]

>we are taxed with no representation in government

You have representation. Perhaps you mean suffrage.

[gjm11]

Or perhaps they mean the same thing as was meant by the slogan when it was first coined, around the time of the American Revolution, and the same thing as was meant by the women's suffragists who used it in the late 19th century.

Maybe in some sense "no taxation without suffrage" would be more accurate, but it would be a worse slogan. In any case, "no taxation without representation" is a well known phrase, it's been around for over 250 years, and I don't think much is achieved by nitpicking its wording.

[bubblethink]

You do have congressional representatives and senators who represent you and your interests and can take action on your behalf just as they would if you were a citizen. I have had decent luck in getting assistance from them despite not being a citizen.

[greycol]

Yes and colonial Americans had personages they didn't choose representing their interests at court so clearly that was not what they meant by it, let alone as members of the British empire their interests were represented by the king the highest position in the land...

[itsmek]

The person you're replying to knows this. You're missing their point.

[bubblethink]

To exist is to be taxed. If you exist at all in the US, you will be taxed. You may even be taxed even if you are not in the US. So saying that taxation somehow implies voting ability would be quite absurd. This doesn't hold true anywhere in the world.

[matthewdgreen]

This is probably the most embarrassing comment I've ever seen on HN.

[lotrjohn]

Perhaps they live in DC?

[tdeck]

America is also run by a cabal of pedophiles and despite that being pretty out in the open at this point, there have been no consequences for them at all. It's not a good looking situation when even CSA and genocide are met with an "eh, what can you do?" shrug by a populace that has been led to accept worse and worse every year.

[matwood]

Don't forget the blatant corruption at a scale we've never seen. Literal crypto scams are being run out of the Whitehouse, and no one seems to care. Complaining about Hunter Biden being on the board of some company seems so quaint at this point.

[JuniperMesos]

If this was actually true, there wouldn't be so many people from the developed world trying to immigrate to the US, and upset about the US government making this harder.

[anon7000]

That just means the US is better than the place they’re moving from. It doesn’t mean the US is among the best places in the world. Also, public perception of how good things are through US media (Hollywood) is different from reality.

[salomonk_mur]

Many, many people immigrate for an imagination of what life in the US will be. Objectively speaking, the US really is far behind most of the developed world in standards of living .

Also, money. Salaries are simply higher in the US (even if life is worse and less fulfilling overall)

[wyclif]

I'm an American currently living in the Philippines, and that's utter nonsense and I know it. Developing world countries are so far behind the US in infrastructure, clean water, food quality, pollution, overpopulation, waste disposal, cleanliness, littering, open public spaces, and numerous other vectors that your comment blithely ignores.

The only possible way you could write a comment like that with a straight face is that you've never walked through a barrio in a developing world country with brick block contruction and tin roofs with tires holding the roof on, or favelas in Brazil with crowding, unsanitary conditions and resulting disease, drug crime, and gang warfare.

The standard of living in the US is vastly better than in these third-world shitholes, and it requires a stunning amount of out-of-touch suicidal empathy to project that it doesn't.

[xboxnolifes]

They said behind the developed world, not the developing world.

[wyclif]

The US is not "behind the developed world", it's literally the developed world. The lightbulb. The airplane. The telephone. NASA. Space X. Tesla. And on and on...

[xboxnolifes]

When people talk about being behind or ahead the developed world, they are talking about the average person's availability of food, housing, internet, AC, transportation, healthcare, education, culture, day to day life, etc. Not century+ old tech or the handful of Billionaires' pet projects. Or, well, really, most of the time people just mean "The US is not like a subset of European (Likely Nordic) countries".

But that's besides the point, because I'm not the person making the argument. I was just pointing out that the comment was misread and misresponded to.