> Congress can debate immigration laws on the books, but this cultural shift seems to be something else entirely. Instead of measured enforcement, it appears to be the normalization of cruelty.

That's because Congress has been promising "measured enforcement" for 60 years, but in that time the foreign-born population has ballooned from 4.7% in 1970 to 15.6% in 2024--higher than it ever was in the 20th century. The goal is big, visible enforcement actions that will disincentivize people from immigrating above the limits set forth in the law.

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dtjb 2 days ago | parent [-]

I fail to see how the percentage of foreign born citizens is a problem in any way.

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dfxm12 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

It's only a problem for white supremacists.

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rayiner 2 days ago | parent [-]

It's only "white supremacy" if you'd object to, e.g. a majority-Bangladeshi town or neighborhood where people behaved indistinguishably from people in Idaho, Wyoming, or Vermont. But if assimilation was real--if people could be transplanted from one cultural context to another seamlessly--opposition to immigration would be almost non-existent.

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ViewTrick1002 2 days ago | parent [-]

It is interesting how far the American Overton window [0] has shifted. With white supremacy now being featured on HN.

I truly never could comprehend how Hitler got to power. Now we’re seeing it in action, and it scares me.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

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jacquesm 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> I truly never could comprehend how Hitler got to power.

There are two great movies about this. 'The Third Wave' and 'Er ist wieder da'.

Of course we have reality now and we see how ostensibly smart people are lured in by soundbites and simple solutions to complicated problems. The dumb ones I can't really blame but the smart ones are a much bigger problem. They twist and turn like eels on a hook to try to justify that which can't be justified at all, not even in the abstract. And yet, they persist. And in doing so they normalize the language and the attitude that goes with that. It's like watching something viral replicate.

> Now we’re seeing it in action, and it scares me.

Yes, it scares me too. It scares me in ways that I did not think I could be scared. It scares me to the point that I wonder if we're not already past the point of no return, that this - like WWII - has to burn out before things can get better again. Assuming there will be anything left. Too many forces are working really hard to destabilize the world that we've come to take for granted.

What I have realized though is that at the head of these movements are a relatively small number of people, each with their own agenda. And you have to wonder: if it hadn't been Hitler, who would have come to power there? None of the cast that we know had the power of oration that Hitler had, his ability to make people believe that he had the answers, when he clearly did not. The dissatisfaction of the German populace with the outcome of WWI and the finger pointing are very much reminiscent of what is happening right now in many places all over the world. The exact same patterns. And instead of radio (which never lost its power) we now have the TV and the internet to push our buttons and make us act against our own interests.

'May you live in interesting times' always was a curse, not a blessing.

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onetimeusename a day ago | parent [-]

What are some solutions to the complicated problems?

I don't mean to put words in your mouth but what you are describing is an anti-Fascist worldview. To be clear, that means you believe Hitler-esque figures and fascism leading to mass destruction are recurring patterns to be avoided. So would being anti-Fascist require a commitment to more immigration? Would you say criticism of immigration should be suppressed because it's being used by demagogues to gain power?

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jacquesm a day ago | parent [-]

> What are some solutions to the complicated problems?

You want a book sized comment? And it would be a different book for every country on the planet. And it wouldn't matter because people will vote based on their fears anyway.

> I don't mean to put words in your mouth but what you are describing is an anti-Fascist worldview.

Oh, Golly, that is just terrible.

> To be clear, that means you believe Hitler-esque figures and fascism leading to mass destruction are recurring patterns to be avoided.

No shit.

> So would being anti-Fascist require a commitment to more immigration?

I can't quite follow your logic here.

> Would you say criticism of immigration should be suppressed because it's being used by demagogues to gain power?

I can't follow your logic here either.

See, that's the problem. You ask for what my solutions would be to complicated problems and then you ask questions on the order of 'when did you stop beating your wife' expecting a simple and short answer to a problem that requires much thought and reflection on root causes and what can be done about them.

With that mindset I'd say you are no longer arguing in good faith anymore but just looking for ways to win silly points. If you really want to have a discussion about what could be done about this it would require you first to get off that horse that you are on that assumes that progress can be made by answering dumb questions like those.

Let's start with some more intelligent questions:

- What is the root cause of emigration for the people that choose to emigrate?

- Are those root causes amendable to change or are they givens?

- If they are amendable to change what is the timescale on which that change would need to take place for it to have an effect on emigration?

- What other parties are required to effect this change, is it just two countries or is it more of them?

- What budgets would be required to effect these changes?

- Is there political and societal buy in in the countries that will end up paying for that?

And so on. And each of those is a project of multiple months and can most likely only be properly researched in any two countries so that makes this a vastly complicated project requiring significant resources. Unfortunately the organizations that could - and to some degree have done - do this kind of work have been pretty much dismantled in the USA.

	▲	onetimeusename 17 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Heh. Ok I think it seems like there is a vested interest in maintaining and expanding what I will call multiculturalism. Like on the one hand we get people with power saying things like "we have to solve the problem at it's root" and on the other there are very very lenient laws when granting asylum. At a certain point you have to look at things and say that an organization is what it actually does, not what it says it will do.

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rayiner 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

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ViewTrick1002 a day ago | parent [-]

Thank you for proving my point.

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rayiner a day ago | parent [-]

I'm genuinely struggling to understand your point. What do you think "white supremacy" means? I understand it to refer to the belief that white people are genetically superior.

	▲	lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 21 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> genetically superior Genetically and culturally. Here's the white supremacism in your first comment: > a majority-Bangladeshi town or neighborhood where people behaved indistinguishably from people in Idaho, Wyoming, or Vermont Immigrants want to actually keep their culture, and that's okay. They should be allowed to keep their culture, even if it is unfamiliar to white folk in Idaho.

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rayiner 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

You're welcome to your belief, but that puts you in an extreme minority not only among Americans, but among people anywhere in the world. It's simply a fact that culture is real, that it shapes the society, and that immigrants bring foreign culture with them in ways that change the destination society. https://www.sup.org/books/economics-and-finance/culture-tran... ("In The Culture Transplant, Garett Jones documents the cultural foundations of cross-country income differences, showing that immigrants import cultural attitudes from their homelands—toward saving, toward trust, and toward the role of government—that persist for decades, and likely for centuries, in their new national homes. Full assimilation in a generation or two, Jones reports, is a myth. And the cultural traits migrants bring to their new homes have enduring effects upon a nation's economic potential.").

I'm a foreigner myself. Even though I grew up in the U.S. since age 5, the cultural difference between me and my wife (whose family immigrated here from Britain before the American Revolution) are stark. I think most Americans have a hard time understanding just how foreign their foreign-born acquaintances are, because many of the differences are below the surface: https://opengecko.com/geckoview/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/C....

	▲	ericfr11 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		This argument has no weight. First, a lot of people in the US are in favor of multi-cultural society: from St Patrick's (Irish) to Cinco de Mayo (Mexican), ... If anything, the US is a multi-cultural nation from the beginning: German was almost the official language of the US. Railroads would not have been built without the Chinese. NY pizza wouldn't exist without the Italians. And more. We need some laws obviously, but let's stop pretending the US is a single culture