[_blk]

As a rather conservative foreigner in the US I find this to be a very presumptive statement. We've made good friends, conservatives and liberals alike - we're people, that's what matters not the policitcal orientation. No conservative I know "hates immigrants." Consider what the policy intends to do rather than blanket-blaming it on hate.

[lumost]

I have a family split along classic ideological lines between the northeast and southeast of the US. If you are unfamiliar with conservative's hatred toward immigration, I suggest you travel more.

[_blk]

I just went around the circumference of the US by RV. Kinda hard to travel more.

What I do notice is a clearly liberal HN bubble that does not represent the country I see and the people I talk to and I'm not selective. You're of course entitled to your views, just don't take others' views as unfounded just because you don't agree. (Collective you). I love the US and the values it stands for but dialogue and the "I'm right, you're wrong" has to improve on both sides.

[daveidol]

I grew up and live in the southeast. I also lived on the west coast for a decade.

I find your comment completely off base.

[bakies]

I constantly travel the whole east coast, I suggest you take a look around

[RHSeeger]

> Consider what the policy intends to do rather than blanket-blaming it on hate

It looks like the policy intends to prevent immigration in every way possible, and (along with other policies that have come about recently), kick out as many people as possible; even those that are immigrating here legally (or have already done so).

So, other than a hate for immigrants/immigration, I don't see another possible explanation.

[_blk]

When you come as a non-immigrant, you agree to not stay permanently. If you want to stay (because life happens and the US is a great country after all) you go through the proper channels. That may mean exiting for the duration of the process - that's entirely legitimate given the amount of abuse. No reason to invoke "hate" of any kind to justify the need for the policy. I know it's not the popular view here on HN and anti-HN-mainstream views get downvoted really fast. Think about that if you value democracy.

[RHSeeger]

Only, we've seen

- People that didn't go through the proper channels, but have been here contributing peacefully to our society - hunted down, incarcerated, and/or kicked out, even though they're valuable members of our society

- People that are trying to go through the proper channels -hunted down, incarcerated, and/or kicked out

- People that are currently going through the proper channels - hunted down, incarcerated, and/or kicked out (sometimes literally _at_ the court houses while trying to go through proper channels)

- People that have already gone through the proper channels and have their greencards, hunted down, incarcerated, and/or kicked out

- People that are natural born citizens, hunted down, incarcerated, and/or kicked out

So our willingness to give the benefit of the doubt to the crowd that is claiming "we're just trying to get them to do it the right way to prevent abuse" is... just gone. It's not believable. Are there _some_ people that are honestly trying to do things right? Sure.. but the ones with the actual power, the ones out there taking action? They're not. They're out there causing harm just for the sake of causing harm.

[wwweston]

This may not be the intent of some conservative voters, partly because some are plausibly immigration friendly, partly because many movement conservatives have more of a opinion-vibe than a policy position on immigration (among other things).

But conservative voters that don’t want much immigration at all (especially from some places/backgrounds) absolutely exist, and more to the point so does leadership that’s determining policy with that goal in mind.

Perhaps you and your circle reflect the more egalitarian policy-driven view. Commendable if so. But it’s not commendable to deny that conservatism has a xenophobic streak a mile wide right now.

[rattray]

GP seemed to be commenting on the Trump administration, not necessarily individuals of conservative persuasion. The Trump administration diverges materially from traditional conservative doctrine in many ways.

[foo-bar-baz529]

Do you believe the immigrants in Ohio are eating the pet dogs? Because Trump sure does.

[caconym_]

> No conservative I know "hates immigrants." Consider what the policy intends to do rather than blanket-blaming it on hate.

If you look at the rhetoric from the Trump people over the years, they absolutely and clearly do hate immigrants, or are doing their best to seem that way. As an example, consider the following quote^[1] from Trump just a few years ago:

> They let — I think the real number is 15, 16 million people into our country. When they do that, we got a lot of work to do. They’re poisoning the blood of our country [...] That’s what they’ve done. They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America, not just to three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world. They’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world.

It's trivial to find more like that. Weird white supremacist-adjacent rhetoric. Equating immigrants with animals. Etc.

American conservatives may not hate immigrants, but they sure love a guy who fervently expresses his hatred and disdain for immigrants every chance he gets. They've voted him into our highest office twice, and immigration was a central pillar of his campaign both times. I fully understand that many people who voted for him did so for reasons besides immigration, but at this point if they aren't willing to disavow him after the catastrophic first year-and-change of his second term then I am done giving them the benefit of the doubt, because there must be some reason they still support him, and at this point it sure isn't his performance on inflation, general affordability, etc.

In fact, looking at the Silver Bulletin charts^[2] as of right now, immigration is the only macro issue they track where his approval isn't in free-fall.

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-says-im... [2] https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-approval-ratings-nate-sil... (paywalled i think, unfortunately)

[kortilla]

That quote you pulled is about illegal immigration. Conflating undocumented immigrants with “anti-immigration” is a false equivalence.

There are no doubt people against immigration entirely but the majority opinion I hear from conservative leaning people is that legal immigration is great and people that skip the system are the problem and the drag on social safety nets.

[tablarasa]

But the legal immigration system is broken and they did that on purpose. And how is your immigration status relevant to your contribution to taxes?

It is not a false equivalence. Both legal and undocumented immigrants are net positive for our economy, less likely to commit crimes, and part and parcel to the American experiment. This “we only disapprove of the illegal ones” continues to be a disingenuous and ignorant point of view.

[kortilla]

It’s still a false equivalence and the concern isn’t paying something to taxes. The bottom 30-40% of all federal tax payers contribute less than they receive back. So even in a tax argument, adding additional low income earners is not a good thing for the system.

But taxes aren’t the point, we have a process for legal immigration that works for millions of people a year. This is just like every other country (with even less stringent requirements than many other countries). Why should undocumented immigrants be granted the privilege of ignoring the law? Do you argue that Japan, China, Singapore, Australia, and/or Norway should do the same?

[anon7000]

It’s fine that many conservatives still feel this way, but they are not electing officials implementing fair, mature immigration policies. They’re electing immature people who aren’t willing to systematically think through immigration policy, and instead say whatever hateful blurb gets them the most attention.

It’s frankly despicable, and I don’t respect conservatives who continue voting for politicians who are obvious liars and at a minimum are not campaigning on bringing level-headed reasonable ideas to immigration policy — only on how much they hate immigrants. Which reflects very, very poorly on conservative voters.

[kortilla]

There are some that try and they get roasted as “RINOs”. The problem with the two party system is that you either vote for a despicable person that implements your major beliefs or someone pleasant that wants to implement policies you think directly result in murder/famine/societal collapse.

Trump can get far worse before the calculus changes for someone who thinks abortion is murder to start voting for Elizabeth Warren.

[caconym_]

Whatever man. Do you remember his comments last year about Ilhan Omar ("garbage") and Somalis?

> I don’t want them in our country. I’ll be honest with you, OK. Somebody will say, ‘Oh, that’s not politically correct.’ I don’t care. I don’t want them in our country. Their country is no good for a reason,

> Their country stinks, and we don’t want them in our country,

> I am recommending a full travel ban on every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies.

> We always take people from Somalia, places that are a disaster, right? [...] Filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime. The only thing they’re good at is going after ships.

> [Minnesota is] a hellhole right now. The Somalians should be out of here. They’ve destroyed our country. And all they do is complain, complain, complain,

Some other selections I found with zero effort:

> I’ve also announced a permanent pause on Third World migration, including from hellholes like Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia and many other countries,

> Our country was going to hell. And we had a meeting, and I say, 'Why is it we only take people from shithole countries, right?' Why can’t we have some people from Norway, Sweden, just a few? Let us have a few from Denmark. Do you mind sending us a few people? Do you mind?'

> I think allowing millions and millions of people to come into Europe is very, very sad. I think you are losing your culture. Look around. You go through certain areas that didn't exist ten or 15 years ago.

> And I think [Europe] better watch themselves because you are changing culture. You are changing a lot of things. You’re changing security. You’re changing — look at what’s happening. I mean, you take a look. I mean, look at what’s happening to different countries that never had difficulty, never had problems…. I do not think it’s good for Europe and I don’t think it’s good for our country.

What do you call this rhetoric if not anti-immigrant? None of this is specific to illegal immigration; he commonly targets legal immigrants with his denigratory, hateful rhetoric (see above), and his second term immigration policy has in several high-profile instances targeted legal immigrants for deportation, as well as making it more difficult to obtain residency/citizenship (see: the subject of this post).

I guess he's specifically calling out immigration from "shithole countries" (brown/black people) while he is explicitly (though apparently hypothetically) fine with white people ("people from Norway, Sweden, just a few") coming in. Maybe he's just openly racist? Is that better, easier for "conservative leaning people" to swallow? When they say "legal immigration is great", is "legal" just a wink-wink shorthand for "white"?

---

Edit: I alluded to this in a reply below, but thanks to everybody replying to this comment for demonstrating that the theoretical "conservative I know" and "conservative leaning people" are, apparently, not universally representative of conservatives.

I hope you will not be offended if I don't reply to you individually, but I'm just not interested in having a conversation about whether these attitudes are valid. It's off topic, for one thing—the fact that they exist, that they surface in this context, is the only relevant takeaway here.

[userbinator]

Research the cultures of those places and it's clear there are huge differences which are going to make assimilation very, very difficult.

[Epa095]

So it's not about illegal vs legal immigration after all, but about where the immigrants come from?

[userbinator]

Where they come from also correlates with how likely they are to try entering illegally vs legally.

[caconym_]

In my original comment in this thread, I said this:

> American conservatives may not hate immigrants, but they sure love a guy who fervently expresses his hatred and disdain for immigrants every chance he gets. They've voted him into our highest office twice, and immigration was a central pillar of his campaign both times. I fully understand that many people who voted for him did so for reasons besides immigration, but at this point if they aren't willing to disavow him after the catastrophic first year-and-change of his second term then I am done giving them the benefit of the doubt, because there must be some reason they still support him, and at this point it sure isn't his performance on inflation, general affordability, etc.

Thank you for demonstrating what this looks like, I guess?

[userbinator]

What a complete non-sequitur.

[tardedmeme]

Like what?

[defrost]

Like US culture perhaps.

In Australia it's not uncommon for Somali immigrants to get econ and business doctorates and spawn commercial enterprises: https://thewarsan.com/the-somali-australian-success-stories-...

[raverbashing]

Cool, may I suggest you spend your next holiday there then

[bigfudge]

By most accounts Somalia is a beautiful country. It’s currently at war, in part because of its colonial legacy. But if that stopped I would love to visit.

[raverbashing]

Funnily enough the blame always falls back on the "western countries"

It's the perfect crutch, great way to never take responsibility for nothing

Though I do wish you well on your holiday plans

[mlinhares]

Interesting that nobody on the conservative side hates immigrants but continue to vote on politicians with platforms built upon the hatred of immigrants. It’s almost as if they’re lying.

[blizdiddy]

I’m tired of people acting so naive past the point of zip-tying entire apartment buildings and building concentration camps. White supremacist manners and politeness are disgusting.

[etc-hosts]

Every conservative I know centers their politics around hating and demonizing immigrants. I blame Youtube and Elon.

[cess11]

In the nineties usian professor of philosophy Rick Roderick produced a series of lectures for The Teaching Company called The Self Under Siege. Perhaps they might change your view that this is a recent development.

https://rickroderick.org/

In 2011 the usian professor of political science Corey Robin published a book on conservative thought, which is a pretty succinct and easy read. Here's the second edition:

http://digamo.free.fr/coreyrobin2017.pdf

[awesome_dude]

Just FTR conservatives aren't the only ones on the Right

https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/left-vs-ri...