Immigration issues are misdemeanors. The officers working on finding people who have committed misdemeanors should not have guns as standard issue. There’s zero legitimate reason for that
ICE agent: But these are illegal immigrants who are gang members trafficking drugs into the country!
Sane people: So why aren’t you arresting them instead of children, and shooting white people even?
ICE agent: … takes out gun
Until the punishments are targeting the people hiring undocumented workers, it’s all just racist bullshit.
If I were running the nation, I would offer universal healthcare to documented immigrants, regardless of whether they hold a job. Also, a bounty program where workers receive a stipend between jobs if they report on employers who underpay workers.
Companies should exist to serve society, not to be profit maximization engines.
Companies aren’t living beings so exploiting corporations is moral.
Oh really?! Like the giant green metal lady says, eh?
Abolishing ICE is not even the bare minimum, that is a center-right stance. Having literal SS Nazis roaming the streets is a far right stance.
Abolishing ICE is the bandaid fix, putting them all on trial is the compromise
The latter comes after the first tbf.
Obama absolutely deported a massive number of people, historically high numbers, enough that immigration advocates at the time openly called him the “Deporter-in-Chief.” That part is not a myth.
The difference is how those deportations were carried out. Under Obama, enforcement was largely focused on recent border crossers and people already in custody, often through expedited removals. It was bureaucratic, procedural, and mostly invisible to the public. There weren’t constant interior raids, and long-term residents were increasingly deprioritized later in his presidency.
Trump, on the other hand, did not surpass Obama’s totals, but he radically changed the operating philosophy. Interior enforcement was aggressive, highly visible, and deliberately public. Priority categories were loosened to the point of meaninglessness, and the enforcement itself became part of the political messaging.
So if you’re talking about raw numbers, Obama qualifies. If you’re talking about tactics, visibility, and the lived experience inside the country, Trump’s approach is what most people actually mean when they say “mass deportation.” Same machinery. Very different mode of operation.
I’m literally shocked how many people on Lemmy actually believe establishment Dems are functionally different from the GOP.
I would get it on some liberal fortress like Reddit, but Lemmy was supposed to be some far-left, socialist bastion. I always feel very suspect of sudden shifts in community attitudes as elections grow closer, and I’m seeing it ALL OVER Lemmy right now.
You don’t have to think they are functionally different, or even think that the Democrat party is good on the whole, to recognize that it’s better that one administration mostly worked within the spirit of the law while the other went the violent nazi route.
That doesn’t even mean Obama’s deportations were the right thing to do. Something can be morally wrong and strategically ill-advised and there can still be WAY worse options.
And as for the attitudes here, I don’t have an argument either way. What I can definitely say is that the argument of whether you are an evil capitalist genocide supporter for voting for Biden or Harris in order to avoid the current Trump administration was all the rage in '23-'24.
edit to add: I forgot my conclusion that thanks to our right-leaning culture and flawed voting system enforcing the 2-party thing, in addition to the electoral college being biased in favor of red states, every election in this country is like the trolley problem! You can vote for somebody who is actually kinda against your values, or you can do nothing and watch Putin’s plans come to fruition or whatever the hell this country is now.
I’m shocked how little americans understand politics and how everything is either “liberal left” or “far-right”. Pick up a god damn book. Everyone has issues they are left-leaning about and others where they are right-leaning. It goes for every single human being and no political party is perfect, but you choose which is most important to you. It’s not supposed to be a black and white thing where one party is to be hated and the other is to be loved. Atleast not in a normal world.
The vast majority of Americans don’t even really understand these labels anyway. The way labels are used here is designed to point the average moron at the enemies of the party, and while I would love if people had more nuanced views, it’s just not where we’re at.
The vast majority of voters in our 2024 election had no idea who to vote for. I actually read the exit polling and it’s depressing as fuck. The lack of understanding of what different parties and ideologies represent is what’s causing ALL of this. People who voted for Obama and supported Bernie Sanders voted for Trump because they just had no idea what he represented, in HUGE numbers. So in this context, we definitely need labels so people who work 6 days a week and get all their news from Facebook memes sunday night for 30 minutes have a clue who represents what.
The labels aren’t the problem, it’s the atomization and tunnel-perspective that makes people ONLY see their own feelings validated and have that tied to a label or 'team" they can get behind like sports fans. People need a standardized, required way to see who does and says what with neutrality and fact-based reporting, but people don’t want that, they want their goddamn feelings stroked.
They are both turds. It is just one is dressed in a snappy tan suit, and the other is a orange shitgibbon.
Nations have a duty to protect their borders, that said give people who have been here for many years, with no criminal record, a way to get expedited citizenship. We need a better work permit system for people who want to work here temporarily.
The nation in question here is based on stolen land, so it’s hardly even “their” borders.
Check a calendar.
Ok, it’s 2026, another great year to return the nation’s stolen land to its rightful caretakers.
I hope we get 16 years of presidency between AOC and Mamdani.
The current DNC will never allow AOC to take the Iron Throne, they have the same donors as the Republicans. If we want actual change, we need to vote out all incumbent democrats in midterms, vote in fresh ones, and most of all GET INVOLVED IN YOUR LOCAL ELECTIONS.
That’s where we got Mamdani. (who was not born in the US and not eligible, I don’t care if you see Trump stomping on the rules, see above, the people maintaining the rules want it this way. To say nothing of the fact that someone like Mamdani isn’t going to try to break the system in the first place, perish the fantasy.)
You want more Mamdani’s in seats of power? Go find them in your community and support them. Progressive Victory is a very well-established platform for finding candidates in your area and organizing public support for campaigning, phone banking and volunteering and have been a major force in getting the recent wave of Democratic/Socialist mayors and governors elected in the US. We need more of it.
Could make a good president.
It’s a shame morons will cheer for the california guy over Mamdani or AOC.
I was looking at Democratic polling for 2028. Newsom and Kamala Harris are apparently leading the polls. Pete Buttigieg and AOC are a bit behind in 3rd and 4th place:
I would be interested to see primary debates between Newsom and AOC. But I guess that’s 2 years away.
Gross. Americans literally never learn, lol.
I think that’s half of it. The other half is the people so disconnected and living on auto pilot that it’s just a name recognition thing.
I would be interested to see primary debates between Newsom and AOC.
Yeah do we want the person who sent money to genocidal Israel and got paid for doing so (Newsom), or the person who sent money to genocidal Israel apparently without any incentive at all (AOC)?
Could make a good president.
For all the same reasons that he would be a good president, make him someone who will never try to break the rules to become president. (He was not born in the USA.)
Really unfortunate the only public figure that has stepped into the void left by this DNC is not eligible to run for president.
There’s still Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I’d vote for her in a heartbeat.
I guess the only problem is that the voters of the US have proved themselves to still be a bit too sexist, with Clinton followed by Harris.
Personally, I put that at the feet of conservative women. When Obama ran, the African American vote showed up, he got a lot of support from voters that often leaned conservative. When women run, all too often it’s the female vote that doesn’t show up.
My problem is that AOC voted to stop the rail unions from striking. Funny how democrats can do so much nothing now, yet can flex so hard when a working class movement has momentum.
I think AOC would be able to overcome the sexism because she actually cares about the working class, unlike the establishment plants that reinforce the notion that our government doesn’t serve us.
I’m not following the sexism part. Why do you say that?
Claiming “sexism” is how you obfuscate that the candidates were garbage people.
Ouch… So then you must be of the opinion that Trump won the election on his merits?
Perhaps it was his fiscal responsibility that won him the day?
Dems lost in 2024 because Kamala Harris reached out to Republicans and ignored the left, and because the primary theme of her campaign was “Things are pretty good,” when things were not. Sexism was a very minor part of the end result.
If we want people to vote for Democrats, we need better Democrats.
If the government actually was doing what they claimed — targeting violent criminals — basically no one would push back, assuming they’re not violating anyone’s rights. But of course they won’t do that and it’s clear as day the whole thing is pure racism.
Fascists always want a thin veneer of legitimacy applied to their brutal oppression. Also gives the bootlickers something to parrot rather than actually thinking about what they’re doing.
The MOST Popular Democrat in America supports ABOLISHING ICE? Quick! Write down “BODYCAMS!”
-Democrats with No Primary Challengers in the Midterms!
Is he going to backpedal?
