mozz

So here's where it breaks down for me: I read your citations. It's fuckin terrible. But it sounds like you're traveling from "some things with our immgration system are very very bad" to saying Biden is making it bad on purpose.

Things are way way better than they were before, and Biden is pushing to make things better than they currently are. (E.g. -- the immigration bill, for as many pretty nasty concessions as it made to the Republicans, contained things like massively increasing the number of asylum judges to clear the huge backlog of people who are stacking up because we can't process them, that is at the root of a lot of this terrible human suffering in the specific ways you're listing out from The Guardian etc.)

What are you proposing he do? What specific actions under his control would resolve something like the Haitians being sent back, or the people waiting to be heard on asylum with nowhere to go in the meantime?

Oh, also what's your assessment of what Trump will do with a situation like Gaza? Do you think he would provide humanitarian aid, do you think he would pressure Netanyahu to stop, do you think he would continue weapons shipments?

I have family who are undocumented

I've had friends who were undocumented.

Corporate needs you to find the differences between this picture and this picture.

Actually, let me rephrase:

I have family who are undocumented

Because of friendships I've had with people who would be particularly and intensely vulnerable under a Trump presidency, including some who were directly impacted in life-changing ways by Obama "deporter in chief"'s specific reforms, this particular type of bad-faith effort to claim Biden is bad on immigration is particularly infuriating to me. Coupled with your claim to have authority to speak on it because you allegedly have a direct association with a vulnerable person, it led me to feel it's relevant to tell you that I actually have one of the associations you're alleging (unconvincingly, to me). So if we're going to claim that that gives extra authority to speak on it, then yes, I have that authority too.

There we go! Now they're different pictures.

(Side note, I will say -- Zaktor's point about being connected to an immigrant community being in no way a guarantee that your opinions on this kind of thing will be good ones, is actually a pretty fair argument. So maybe it's unfair for me to say that I'm skeptical that you have undocumented family solely because of the opinion you're expressing here.)

I have family who are undocumented

I've had friends who were undocumented.

Corporate needs you to find the differences between this picture and this picture.

For the curious

There's a massive pilot shortage right now. Even if they had a lack of money such that paying the pilots would be difficult, which isn't the case, it'd be worthwhile bending over backwards to try to keep their pilots happy, since they can easily find work elsewhere any time they feel like it.

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Yeah, that’s honestly a fair point. I assumed that 100% of serious immigration advocates would recognize it for the bullshit that it is, so that feeding into this transparent grandstanding mythology about what Biden said and meant and neglecting to observe his actual record on the issues would be a tell of someone who wasn’t a real advocate for immigrants, but apparently that’s not true. Live and learn, I guess.

I make no claim to authority; I'm explaining what I think and why, including why I think juicy is lying. Maybe my experience with probably-shills has made me jaded but that's what I think.

You're obviously within your rights to think that Ramirez, Chuy García, or the Immigrant Justice Center are right and I am wrong about why Biden said "illegal". I think the transcript speaks for itself and I think they're being foolish and self-defeating if they're falling into the trap of attacking him over it.

Already happened in 2018

Whether they get upset about it in 2029 will depend on who is president and how badly things have deteriorated, in terms of how much sense the things they get upset about need to make

I feel like we had this conversation already today

I've had friends who were undocumented. One was actually in and out of custody before the Obama-era immigration reforms came along; long story short he was able to stay in the country. I still remember talking with people about how to get up bail money to get him out, and him talking about a bunch of things about being in jail in a not-real-friendly part of the country.

I don't believe you. I think you're lying to justify your grandstanding. I already sent you a pretty long list of what Biden has done factually on immigration. Seizing on him quoting back to someone hateful, a hateful word that they used, in order to make a point back to them, and spending any amount of energy saying that means anything, is a bunch of bullshit. That's actually one reason I don't believe you -- I've seen people in this community who take the viewpoint that all US politicians are basically the enemy with no particular reason to pick good ones or bad ones or get excited about this Fox News bullshit about any of them, and I've seen people who actually study in detail what's going on factually, but doing this Judge Judy level determinations of who it is that's good and bad on immigration policy and then getting all excited about it, I haven't seen too much of except from outsiders to the community.

REPRESENTATIVE GREENE: What about Laken Riley?

(Cross-talk.)

AUDIENCE: Booo —

REPRESENTATIVE GREENE: Say her name!

THE PRESIDENT: (The President holds up a pin reading “Say Her Name, Laken Riley.”) Lanken — Lanken (Laken) Riley, an innocent young woman who was killed.

REPRESENTATIVE GREENE: By an illegal!

THE PRESIDENT: By an illegal. That’s right. But how many of thousands of people are being killed by legals?

I have no problem with anything he said there, no; and if you do, I would say that you're deliberately making an issue from nothing of substance, in very Republican fashion.