How this is happening, the exact trajectory of how much worse these things are (and its potential to worsen) is somewhat terrifying, especially when you consider the cavalier disregard and easy ignorance that this policy represents. I know classmates and colleagues and friends who are discussing, in their groups and communities, how to best help people stranded, whether or not vacations and returns to see ill family members must be postponed or canceled, and how future plans to stay, live, and work in the U.S., or abroad, must be changed.
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While it's been easy to think about many possible negative outcomes in the proceeding days, weeks, months, another subtle aspect of this policy's ramifications is how it weakens trust and faith in the concept of stability for future American policy — the likelihood of future government actions, executed with little to no foresight, warning, or serious consideration, with serious consequences. How this effects this country's current reputation as a place to study, travel, find work, and start families + settle down can't be understated.
> executed with little to no foresight, warning, or serious consideration, with serious consequences
I think it is easy to underestimate the ugliness and disorder such a reckless executive order can unleash unless you start to think about the details or put yourself in the shoes of the people affected.
NBC News reports[0]:
The Trump administration also has yet to issue guidance to airports and airlines on how to implement the executive order. "Nobody has any idea what is going on," a senior Homeland Security official told NBC News.
As James Gleick put it on Twitter[1]:
And how was it communicated to Customs and Border Protection? Or have they just gone rogue?
And then there is the gross conflict-of-interest reflected in this map:
The event marks a horrible landmark. It's the first time I can point to the tangible harmful impact of Trump's executive policy on actual people. Up to this point, it has been possible for supporters and apologists to waive away his vague or careless remarks during the campaign as political rhetoric, jokes, or leverage for future negotiation. Now we start to see the mean (in every sense of the word) instinct that informed them and the harm they can do.
I'm against this order and generally agree with you, but the conflict-of-interest article is BS. The list of countries is the same as was targeted under Obama for extra screening:
These countries were already hard for US citizens to do business in (hence no Trump holidings). I don't think Trump cares much about money - he is interested in Power.
"Corruption" is a distraction. I also think the thing about his tax returns is the same.
While I agree with your point, I disagree with this:
> I don't think Trump cares much about money - he is interested in Power.
It's hard to know what his true interests are. But based on his actions, and his lack of desire for publicly stating his net worth or tax returns, I think he is very interested in maintaining not only his worth but also his companies'.
Trump is the first President in a long time that can directly be influenced by foreign governments through his business and property holdings.
This is true to some extent of course. But it seems to me - based on the amount of debt his businesses carry - that it is the prestige and power that is associated with money that drives Trump.
I think that his tax returns are a huge distraction. When they leak, what will change? Everyone already knows he doesn't pay much tax. His fans see that as a good thing.
The only thing that could change out of it is if there is a line item "Russian bribes". But that's unlikely, especially since I tend to think his ties with Russia are philosophical, not financial.
Oh, c'mon. The scope and impact of the EO is totally unprecedented; the President obviously felt unconstrained by precedent, unintended consequences, and arguably even the Constitution.
So, let's not pretend that he was constrained by some list from the Obama administration. It's an executive order, and President Trump owns the whole thing.
I don't think that the parent comment disagrees with you. It's just pointing out that the business links thing is a distraction. This is a purely evil policy, unconstrained by financial concerns.
"Allied" in the sense that the Saudi crime family can sponsor 9-11 and their catspaw the Bush administration can exploit the occasion to supplicate even more to them.
And the opposition and the media are so deep in Saud pockets, they can't even call Bush out for it.
Up to this point, it has been possible for supporters and apologists to waive away his vague or careless remarks during the campaign as political rhetoric, jokes, or leverage for future negotiation. Now we start to see the mean (in every sense of the word) instinct that informed them and the harm they can do.
If you poll this issue, you'll find at least 80% of Americans don't care how inconvenient our immigration policy is for those countries affected. And a very large majority wants no immigration whatsoever from any of those nations affected nor from any of their neighbors save Israel. Probably a majority of Hillary voters would approve if they could be reassured it would go no further than that.
Since the actual facts seem so starkly in opposition to 'WildUtah's point, I'd be really interested in seeing what evidence he expected to use to support his argument --- if only to see whether I'm misunderstanding his point.
I'm sorry but I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. Which specific poll are you referring to and what specific problem do you have with its methodology? What poll more accurately describes public opinion, or is public opinion on this subject either "unknowable" or in some other way clear?
How are these polls unlike all the other polls that e.g. predicted Trump will lose by a large margin?
Most polls are quite vague approximations, when they aren't just lying with statistics. And you can easily frame them in all kinds of ways by how one asks the questions and how they present an issue.
Those polls were broadly accurate, as has been heavily reported. In particular, the outcome tracked the national polls, and upsets were targeted and involved very narrow margins.
But, of course, none of your comment answers the questions I posed. I'm less interested in litigating abstractions and more in the specifics. Care to take a whack at addressing them?
In any case, unlike you, I'm more interested in abstractions based on large historical body of evidence (for not trusting pollsters in general) than in specifics (evaluating a particular poll, especially in hot political and partisan issues, which presupposes that I can trust what those that created it say, that is not only trusting the methodology as they describe it, but also that they followed it -- and we obviously have no way of knowing the latter).
How did you verify the poll? Because this is not some scientific paper where one can retract the steps and redo the numbers. Just trusting the methodology reported (a meagre page with a 10-mile high view of the procedure and no specifics in the case of Pew Research Center, for example?) and having faith that no poll and/or research center would ever misreport or falsify?
Maybe my mistrust is wrong, but I don't see the trust as being any better, especially with so many off the mark polls that been shown in practice to be so (the actually verifiable and falsifiable ones, like the ones on voting preferences).
I'm really sorry, I'm not sure I follow what you're saying here, but I am confident that you're pursuing a different argument than the one I was, and I'm just not interested in it.
Which polls were so far in error? The presidential vote polls were ~2% out and I think most in this thread on this topic will concede a 2% error either way.
>And a very large majority wants no immigration whatsoever from any of those nations affected nor from any of their neighbors save Israel.
American immigration policy towards Israelis is essentially the same as towards anyone else. My (Jewish Israeli) coworker from grad-school wanted to work for Google in Mountain View, but the company couldn't swing him a visa. He stayed at Technion to do a PhD.
He now says that he doesn't want to come to the USA with Trump in power.
You tell me how a Jewish Israeli computer scientist poses a threat to the United States. And if you think you can, be aware that I'm such a person, on top of being American, so you had better explain to me how I'm a foreign threat to my own home country.
If you're one the best and brightest abroad, why would you trust staking a future in this country anymore? Even if what we're seeing now recedes and fades. Huge damage to our future of this country, beyond just the "temporary"-so-far order.
I agree, and that's what I have to say to my former (I graduated) coworker. I'm very much inclined to pack bags, ship my possessions, and leave this country myself. If this is how this government behaves one week in, violating human rights and the Constitution already, what can I expect as a minority who was born here?
And what about the people I know without second passports? Should a certain friend refuse to visit China with her parents because Trump might decide to ban her (with an American passport!) from returning home over some spat about trade policy?
The Department of Homeland Security should have refused this order.
I'm not sure it's that easy. For one, it might not be a lot better where you're from. But more importantly, your presence also can influence (small impact on an individual's level of course) where things are going. There's also the issue that depending on your field there's simply more interesting jobs available locally in the US than in a lot of other countries.
I moved to the US ~a year ago, now as a permanent resident. Debating on what to do if things continue going down along the current course.
> I believe Google would be happy to have him in London, Zurich, or Canada. We have solid engineering teams in all of them.
As I understood it, he had gone through the interview process and been offered a specific role in Mountain View, for which they then couldn't get the visa. This was back in 2015, so no Trump craziness yet then, just the ordinary bureaucratic stuff.
And just to express my butthurt, Israelis don't even get visa-free tourism to the United States.
I doubt a Jewish Israeli computer scientist poses a threat. But posing a threat isn't the criterion. We don't just take anyone that isn't especially dangerous.
America is a nation and only those that further the aims of the existing nation should come. Even then it should be very few of those because America is already full.
We can't build enough space to live and infrastructure for the people that are already here. And our natural environment is already threatened by overdevelopment.
What do you mean "America is full?" Our population density is 182 of ~250 on a global scale. We have more space, money, and food per person than almost every other country on the planet.
The world is ridiculously overfull and Americans didn't make it that way. And the rest of the world is headed for rapid population increases to make it much worse. Americans shouldn't have to suffer for that; we've got a little space left and we should guard it jealously.
And just try driving in any major prosperous city at rush hour or riding the subway. Or renting an apartment in SF or NY. We can't expand housing or infrastructure in those cities and we're admitting millions of foreigners overfilling them even further.
The Hart-Celler Act abolished the national origins quota system that had structured American immigration policy since the 1920s, replacing it with a preference system that focused on immigrants' skills and family relationships with citizens or residents of the U.S.
Democracy is not a stable form of government in the long term. There are a lot more former democracy's than current ones, and the US seems to be heading down a very dark path.
That's the interesting thing, maybe Trump won because he was a smooth talker but why did the Democrats lose all those seats in the legislature? Does it just mean Dems never even voted? I guess why
bother putting the shoes on when CNN and NBC have been showing a solid blue map for months on end and experts discussing grabbing of genital parts for days and days.
In all the discussions I heard so far on Facebook and media I noticed a lot blame, name-calling, despair and so on. But I haven't seen enough solid self-reflections. Specifically focusing on why did the Democrats stay home that day. Without it we will have another Trump and then another ...
The rational thing to do for any single voter is to not bother voting; and the US doesn't make it easy for people to vote, especially with election day not being a weekend or a public holiday and requiring most of the day.
In the US the "blue map" does really matter except psychologically since everyone votes in a specific state, but the predictions from the media probably didn't help.
Hopefully Trump will drive democratic midterm voter turn out.
Yes, the Republicans complained incessantly every time Obama broke the law with EOs. Nobody cared. Now the shoe is on the other foot and you're wondering why Republicans aren't leaping to help you?
Not sure where you got that information, but it contradicts everything I've ever heard.
Cuba's been for a long time the only country the US won't allow its citizens to visit (head, meet desk); North Korea is, so far as I know, the only country that actively prevents US citizens from visiting, although that may be a misrepresentation of the facts on the ground.
US tourists visit North Korea; Vice magazine did an interesting doco on their experience. Tourists are chaperoned and experience cartoonish levels of propaganda, but they're not blocked.
If you actually watch that video, Vice had to bribe a Russian border official to gain entry to the country. It's generally known as the only means of getting in with a reasonably high odds of success.
The typical experience for Americans who have applied for visas to visit North Korea is a very long wait, with only gaining approval (sometimes after years of applications), only to have the approval revoked sometimes as late as hours before their flights depart. Some people report having had their travel visas revoked three or four times before finally being granted entrance.
"Not blocked" doesn't seem like the right term for whatever that is.
I didn't recall their issues getting in, but watching it again, there were no Russians involved. They ended up going to the North Korean consulate in Shenyang, China. No other embassies would help them get in.
US citizens can visit Iran—at Iranian discretion—with a state minder the same way US citizens can travel to North Korea. You can't travel freely and you can't travel without personal scrutiny ('extreme vetting') from Iranian officials.
TL;DR: Visa applications take longer (but still usually <30 days) and you must be accompanied by a guide at all times, but other than that you're free to travel around.
It's worth noting that this is considerably looser than North Korea, where you not only have a guide, but can only go to the places that have been agreed in advance and your guides permit you to go to.
Trump is terrible, I wish someone else had been elected, this is clearly xenophobic crap, etc.
But we do this shit all the time. The US' immigration system is byzantine at best.
We deport "illegals" who have lives in the US routinely whose lives are no less worthwhile; Obama did something similar to Cubans coming here right before leaving office, leaving those moving to the US with the expectation that "wet foot dry foot" policy would continue stranded at airports.
We're just all more sympathetic to the MIT student.
Maybe I'm just overly cavalier, but it feels no different from the arbitrariness I have experienced in the US immigration system where random officials may make decisions with no relationship to the law with no grounds for appeal.
This country already makes it ridiculously hard for skilled workers to move here; the optics sure do look shitty though.
I do feel truly sorry for the refugees though, they have nowhere to go back to and are truly in a world of hurt. It saddens me that every country I have called home is so callous to them.
I think it is a little naive to think the effect on the country's "reputation as a place to study, travel, find work, and start families + settle down" wasn't considered by those pushing for this policy. Damaging this reputation and therefore reducing overall immigration was most likely considered a positive effect of the policy.
I do think that would be a good outcome, but even if Congress were interested in revising legislation to delegate less authority to the executive (and are they?), it seems like Trump wouldn't be interested in signing such legislation. Is a veto-proof supermajority interested in it? I think so far, no.
It's possible we may get some useful legal precedents, though, if some of this ends up in the courts. A good number of conservative judges are already skeptical of both excessive executive delegation and federal-government overreach, and were making moves in that direction during Obama's administration. Will Trump cause some liberal judges who have traditionally had differing views to wake up to the danger of such an executive, without an equal-or-greater number of conservative judges suddenly having a change of heart in the opposite direction? And will good test cases arise, with standing, etc.? Maybe, maybe not, but it's possible.
1. It's not what "half of you wanted". It's what a portion of the portion of those that voted in a 55% turnout election wanted. A tiny and vindictive portion, that lost the popular vote.
2. Even if it were what "half of you wanted", it's also what half of you did not want. This is not a kid's game where you count up the points and call the clear winner. If half of your population's will is being disregarded and worked against, there is a problem.
3. This is plain and simply abhorrent. Even if these were popular policies, they are reprehensible. The majority can be misguided.
PS: Your twitter feed is worse than an angry child's. Seriously, get a hold of yourself. Applauding Trump's targeting of the free press and minorities? "Civilizational cancer"? Are you seriously surprised that people dislike you and your ideologies?
In the absence of information from that 45% it is not unreasonable to assume the 55% represent their view. Also some Democrats are anti-immigrant. So not such a tiny portion are anti-immigrant. It will be interesting to see what repercussions are from this executive order.
Really, we wanted the President to break U.S. law in the first week and to mess up people's lives without any good reason besides bigotry and fear? I think you don't even understand the majority of the Republicans own base if you believe that.
First, it's 46% of the people who voted (i.e. less than half). Second, it's quite disingenuous to suggest that all of those people would support this hamfisted immigration restriction, as-is; in case you were oblivious to your surroundings for the last year, vast numbers of voters -- if not the majority -- were merely voting for the person they despised less. It's more than a tad delusional that there's a mandate here to go and fuck over people's lives because of the happenstance of where they happen to come from.
I think a lot of people voted for Trump only because they thought Clinton was even worse. AFAICT most of the GOP didn't want Trump either, they just couldn't unify behind one of the alternatives. It's safe to say most of the country is unhappy about this crap.
Birtherism, the Central Park Five, etc. The blatant bigotry is either desired, or all too easily diminished and dismissed or he would not be president. As much as it implicates Trump, keep in mind the U.S. Speaker of the House agreed with this specifically signed policy yesterday, as has the Vice President.
It was 46% of voters in a roughly 58% turnout election. So, roughly 26.7% of eligible voters wanted this.
And you think 26.7% of eligible voters, after you've suppressed and disenfranchised so many people, entitles you to violate our laws, our Constitution, and the boundaries of morality?
No. "President" Trump and his neo-Nazi advisor Stephen Bannon can shove this fascist crap where the sun don't shine.
"President" Trump and his neo-Nazi advisor Stephen Bannon can shove this fascist crap where the sun don't shine.
Regardless of how strongly you feel, how heated the discussion, or how others are behaving, you're doing yourself and your argument no favors with the name-calling. Even if you feel that you're just calling a spade a spade, you're just providing others with ammunition to dismiss you and anything you say as just an angry, unreasonable rant. And if you're not actually addressing the people who you don't agree with (which means you're addressing the people who already agree with you, or at best, people who are on the fence), is it really worth saying?
You make a lot of good points at the beginning of your comment. These figures need to be kept in mind, on all sides of these discussions.
>Even if you feel that you're just calling a spade a spade, you're just providing others with ammunition to dismiss you and anything you say as just an angry, unreasonable rant.
I think the problem here is that I genuinely feel I'm calling a spade a spade. Trump himself is probably not ideological enough to be a devoted neo-Nazi. Stephen Bannon, on the other hand, makes Republicans allude to fascism[1].
>“The racist, fascist extreme right is represented footsteps from the Oval Office,” said John Weaver, a Republican strategist who ran the presidential campaign of Gov. John Kasich of Ohio and previously advised Senator John McCain of Arizona. “Be very vigilant, America.”[2]
Like I said, it doesn't matter if it's justified or not. All that matters is whether you're able to appear as a legitimate voice. I'd love for everything to come down to rational facts and discourse. That's just not how human psychology works in the even the best of circumstances. And when people are actively choosing to act in bad faith, you need to take that into account even more so.
People have tried to take this "we're better than them" approach. The problem is that the other side isn't playing nice. Gandhian non-violence only works when the other side has a smattering of conscience; it is not so for Trump's administration.
Please don't misunderstand me as thinking this is a "better than them" type of thing. It actively denies opponents ammunition. I'm in full agreement that it's not enough on its own. People need to be engaged in political action as well. (Edit to add: And engaged as good, upstanding members of their own local communities.) I strongly believe one of the reasons the election was as problematic as it was all around is that there was too much name-calling and misrepresentation. It allowed people even more room to filter things to align with their own biases, which is going to happen anyway.
How many people strongly supported the candidate they ended up casting their ballot for? Both Trump and Clinton had historically low favorability ratings. If people think they're being attacked by one side or the other, it makes it all the harder for them to listen to reasoned debate, and much more likely that they'll be actively voting against a candidate.
Even this "other side" language is problematic, in my opinion. How are you going to find allies among those you don't already agree with when you think of them as "other"? How do you expect them to listen to you? People dig in, get defensive, when they feel they're being attacked. They're no longer listening. There are some people who will never listen to you, or even if they do listen to you, aren't going to end up agreeing with you. But that's not necessarily everyone you don't currently agree with. If you've already written off everyone who voted for a different candidate than you, then you're stuck with very few options. People are more complex than the effectively binary option that was the 2016 US Presidential Election admits.
It's not a "better than them" thing. It's a "what's actually going to make a difference" thing. Language alone isn't going to solve this, of course. But language used poorly can drive needless wedges between people.
A few weeks ago I agreed completely with this "be pacific, be understanding, be calm, be kind" strategy. And yes, it's nice to be all those things.
All your statements about trying to make people understand, to make them feel equal and not defensive, I was 100% on board with such an approach. And then you realise it's futile.
India did not become independent because Gandhi won; India became independent because it became unfashionable to have colonies, and the British were pressured into letting their empire dissolve.
I refuse to believe that most of the people voted for Trump because of his immigration policy, especially since all of the policy details he provided were vague at best. It was about jobs and hating the Clintons and the Dems more than anything, but immigration wasn't the core issue of the election.
Cracking down on illegal immigration was definitely a major plank in his platform. I think the wall is stupid and a waste of money but, at the end of the day, it is in service of existing immigration laws, so it's not abhorrent to the same degree as the Muslim ban, which uses executive power to capriciously deny entry to people who were previously legal immigrants, visitors, and tourists.
Nazism should be swiftly kicked in the ass whenever it rears itself.
This is naked white supremacism. For as much bullshit as we've heard about political correctness, why not just come out and say this is straight up religious and racial discrimination?
The easy time to do this was the election. It is much harder to deal with now.
The president's Chief Strategist and Senior Counselor is a white nationalist, who used to run Breitbart.com, where there is a distinction made between white supremacists and white nationalists (I cannot explain the distinction, for I don't see one). A site all about how awful multiculturalism is, separation of races is necessary for the survival of a country, etc.
Without letting down your guard or concern, my advice is to moderate it with another possibility. The U.S. has much better insulation geographically than European countries, and a history that involves worse rhetoric and divisiveness and we've survived. There might be a pro where the whole world sees what even a little bit of white nationalism does to a country, and all those European countries flirting with their own far right nationalists, and have elections coming up soon, might just have an "OH FUCK NO" moment.
And that's probably better than if Europe were electing far right governments before the U.S. Europe has a history of conflagration. Maybe Europe gets cold feet and starts taking far right nationalist politics more seriously, and rejects it more concisely and clearly, at election time. It's much easier, safer, more stable, to squash this at an election.
The trouble is that you can't convince someone that their own beliefs or policies they support are racial or religious discrimination. People can and do support these policies, and they can and do insist that the reasons for them are genuine concern for America's safety.
Voter turnout was a record low 55%, and Trump lost the popular vote by between three and five million votes, a fact he still refuses to recognize. Trump is not supported by a majority of the US population, and his constant and willful disregard of material fact is reckless.
I find this comment utterly disgusting, and entirely reprehensible.
You should be ashamed. Imagine being unable to go to work after a short vacation - because someone didn't like where you were born, and in the meantime, on a whim, decided not to let you go.
It's shameful HN doesn't flag posts calling Trump and his supporters nazis, homophobic and other names. While any dissident about liberals is flagged/downvoted to oblivion.
Every group on HN notices things that appear to be against them. It's normal human bias. I've seen plenty of flagging/down-voting going on all sides of various issues.
If you legitimately are interested to dig into this more, there are at least two different HN APIs available for you to mine the comments on the site. I'd be interested in the results if you chose to do so.
I did not downvote you myself but Trump, as a political movement, is really close to fascism. Look yourself at the definition of fascism: http://www.favreau.info/misc/14-points-fascism.php, Trump checks almost all the marks there and it makes a lot of people afraid. It does not mean anything bad is going to happen and it does not mean anything either on Trump supporters, but it's still very concerning.
I agree that it's not right or helpful to mislabel people or call names. Please don't read my comment as supporting that in any way. What I was addressing is the perception that it's one-sided.
I don't think looking at a single submission is adequate in dealing with the perception issue, but for the sake of argument, I looked at all of the references for "nazi" (as it was the first on your list) in the comments for the submission you referenced. Only one of them in my opinion can be construed as name-calling, and that is nuanced in that it explicitly says "not all". Still not great, admittedly, but not the blanket name-calling you imply.
This is all the effort I'm willing to do for you on this front. I think this shows good faith. I encourage you to take a step back and look at everything as a whole as objectively as you can. I know this is hard (it's hard for me), but it's increasingly important lest we increase the polarization we already have. We can't control how other people behave directly. All we can do is do our best to control our own behavior to encourage others to do likewise and move forward constructively.
I've sen a lot of angst over the last week about people on the left expressing approval for 'punching nazis' following Richard Spencer suffering a whack on the ear during a TV interview. It's true, someone, probably form the left, carried out an act of physical violence while he was just standing there talking.
I am even wiling to defend the concept of free speech for people like neo-nazis and the kkk - but only up to the point where they endorse violence against others as opposed to merely asserting their own superiority.
I'm not saying it has not errupted (it has) I'm saying violence and the glorification if it (as in people sharing the punch a Nazi video) is a dead end and will definitely strengthen trump support.
It is not possible to really invoke Godwin's law regarding Trump, he already opened this door when he accused the CIA of being like NAZIs for reporting he facts.
You don't appear to be engaging in good faith yourself. You accuse HN members of name-calling, yet when presented with evidence that the first name you list wasn't actually being used in the way you imply, you backpedal and say "oh, no, look at this other one". And you still use the nazi example as the majority of your comment.
Good faith means doing that work upfront to ensure that what you're saying has some basis, and in the case of contentious issues, strong basis. Good faith also means backing down when you're called out on something and found to be lacking that strong basis, not continuing to push it forward.
Most people's good faith doesn't extend infinitely. They're fools if they do continue to extend it when repeatedly shown that the people they're engaging with aren't doing so as well.
And you still don't seem to have gotten my original point: I agree that name-calling is uncalled for and actively unconstructive and uncivil. The perception that "your side", whatever that may be, is being treated unfairly pops up on all sides of contentious issues here on HN. Go out and do some real stats work if you think there's something pernicious about some particular behavior. The data is out there. Just anecdotes don't cut it. Your bias (and mine, and anyone's) isn't going to let you see the picture clearly on its own. And when you're done, share the data, methodology, and results with the rest of us. I know there are a lot of people besides me who would be interested in seeing it, regardless of the actual results.
Hey, thanks for writing these comments. I think these are great examples of how to talk about these topics without inviting more conflict or devolving into condescension.
People (re-)coming in with green cards, or the Iranian PhD student mentioned in TFA are hardly without knowledge of who they are. They've been vetted by the INS and already live in the country.
Even for those strongly against Muslims, or immigration in general, it seems difficult to believe that this kind of lame-ass shit is what they had in mind when voting Trump.
And for those few with enough animus to want to screw over some innocent PhD student because of where she was born? Fuck those guys.
How this effects [sic] this country's current reputation as a place to study, travel, find work, and start families + settle down can't be understated.
That's the intention. The USA is more than a convenient incubator for foreigners. It's a nation responsible for its own future. Quite a lot of Americans don't want foreigners to make plans expecting that the USA will just always be there to fulfill their whims.
A little unpredictability goes a long way in changing your national reputation as an easily exploited doormat.
I think that being a student here is hardly catering to their whims. She was let in by the University, works there, and studies there. It seems fair to let her continue to do that.
Also, why do you think immigrants are always going to be non-American? My father has lived here for nearly 40 years, pays taxes, pays into SS, and raised my family here. Is he just fulfilling his whims?
I have hired 70 people for my corporate overlords in multiple countries, and our national policies are pretty much the opposite of exploited doormat.
What I am trying to say is, if you believe USA is "an easily exploited doormat" you need to step out of the echo chamber and diversify your news sources.
What's scary is the new immigration ban affects legal, permanent residents. US legal, permanent residents that have firmly rooted their lives in the US, only to be told they can't come home.
This. I am from Turkey, and i will be nervous every passing day from yesterday on, watching news to see if Turkey is added to the list. I am still years away from naturalization, and it saddens me to think about relocating, after having left where i was born for a better and productive life.
Nobody chooses their birthplace, but these are the people that decided to make a change, and in a way that historically benefited the us.
Actually, per a snopes article (http://www.snopes.com/donald-drumpf), the Drumpf to Trump transition may have occurred because the former was more German sounding, and there was a good bit of anti-german hatred at the time.
This is what all the anti-immigration people don't get. Chances are, when their ancestors came to this country they likely weren't wanted by the current residents. Basically every American racial/cultural slur you can think of arose during the time when that group was the majority immigrant group. Every group was discriminated against (Irish, Germans, Italians, Chinese/Japanese).
So what? America's history is overwhelmingly white and Christian. The vast majority of immigration to the US has been from white, Christian nations, even more so at the time when the Statue of Liberty was erected. Is the US a nation of Yemeni immigrants? It's silly to simply treat all potential immigrants as if they are the same. Also, it's disingenuous to reference the Statue of Liberty as some kind of justification for unlimited immigration from all nations of the world. The USA is not a dumping ground for the world's poor.
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
You can make your immigration policy tighter for residency/naturalization, it's within country's right, but tying that to where people are born is pretty sad.
Are you kidding me? Benefits like regressing on clean energy, blocking PhD students and scientists, and in general violating laws? He's been awful just a week into his presidency. The next 4 years are not going to magically get better.
What happens when some terrorist group makes the extremely tactically-obvious decision to attack the Trump Towers there? It's not like there's any shortage of US-hostile terrorists with the ability to reach Istanbul.
(Honestly, what happens when any Trump property around the world gets attacked? They've got giant signs advertising that the president of the US cares about them, and they don't have anywhere near the protection that US soil does.)
Tbh I'm surprised this hasn't happened yet. All the countries that dislike him/US && have Trump property.... Seems like those are easy targets especially considering how sensitive he is to his brand image it would make the attacks all the more alluring.
It could be anything, right? The political environment in Turkey itself is not stable (hasn't been for quite some time now). There have also been multiple bombings in the country that citizens lost track of, and it became an ordinary part of life.
I don't want to speculate on how Trump might behave when it comes to his business now that he's the POTUS, but even without that, there are enough reasons for him to add Turkey to the list.
I think one of the few reasons it hasn't happened yet is probably because Incirlik base, but it's also been a long tension point between two countries.
Selfishly, I was hoping greencard holders would be exempt, and thinking we already go through thorough background check as part of the application, but it turned out futile.
It could happen, it's business after all. He might also be forced to sell by the turkish government. We don't have a stable political environment, and I wouldn't be super surprised if something happened there.
Tax laws come to mind, for example, when Turkish government wanted extra tax money, they started going after American companies.
Also, i feel like there is a chance where Trump can have his cake and eat it too - I am not entirely sure how a ban for Turkish nationals would immediately affect his business. The dynamics is very different in Turkey - i don't even try to understand.
Overall, I don't see this as such a bad thing... But every major decision is going to have its outliers.
This is a temp 90-day ban on non-reciprocating countries (and countries of concern), which the FBI said they are not able to properly vet (because those countries will not provide background info on the applicant, and some other reasons). It only affects non-citizens such as visitors, students, or employment visas holders - from leaving the country and coming back, and there seems to be a waiver process to help them.
They already have something like a 7 month backlog of applicants to process. 90 days is going to give them a chance to catch up and look for ways to improve the situation... Such as getting the "Implementing Uniform Screening Standards for All Immigration Programs" part of the order up and running.
> This is a temp 90-day ban on non-reciprocating countries (and countries of concern), which the FBI said they are not able to properly vet (because those countries will not provide background info on the applicant, and some other reasons). It only affects non-citizens.
The EO affects ALL legal immigrants from these countries like H1B visa holders and Green Card holders too.
I doubt it will affect anyone with a US passport at the border, but it's about time for the USA to adopt the Japanese policy and simply ban all dual citizenship. If you hold a foreign passport or any kind of documents from a foreign country for its citizens, your US citizenship should be revoked and you should be deported.
Japan is not the only one, I believe China does it too. There is a merit to this, and even though i can see many people would be unhappy to give up their citizenship (basically, you'll be required to have a visa to visit your family, which is big inconvenience), if it's part of the deal, I think many people would still take it.
Most of these though, I feel, should not happen retroactively. In other words, if they are already naturalized citizens and now have two citizenships, they should remain so. US shouldn't go after all the generations who naturalized. It's fair if they require you renounce your former citizenship going forward.
China has a special visitors visa category for foreigners of Chinese ethnicity, which gives them multiple entries over some long time period (could by 1 year, I forget). It's not available to foreigners of Caucasian, African, etc ethnicity.
You can be a loyal citizen to only one country. Maintaining two passports is an open declaration of disloyalty and lack of solidarity.
And immigrants shouldn't get special privileges that natural citizens cannot, especially special privileges conferred by foreign princes and potentates.
There are many countries that don't require a pledge of allegiance for citizenship, so you can't really argue that being a citizen of those countries constitutes a conflict of interest with US citizenship.
Being a citizen of a country typically means that you have certain rights and privileges in that country that non-citizens don't. That's about it. "Loyalty" doesn't enter the picture unless one is a hardcore nationalist.
Not all permanent residents are citizens. Also, it looks like it'll be made permanent unless that country can guarantee that every single person isn't a terrorist. Which seems impossible.
If these countries are not reciprocating as you seem to suggest, why did the US DoS issue them visas in the first place?
Don't tell me that they don't reject visa applications at their diplomatic missions and for reasons related to national security because that's what they do all the time in the ME.
So your great-great-grandparents moved to America, killed most of the local population and now you think you own the place? The USA is made of immigrants.
The sad thing is, those with the most options, who pay the most taxes, will do just that. They'll take their expertise and productivity and contribute them somewhere else. And the racists will congratulate themselves on how smart they are while the country continues its crumbling slide into fascism.
It's an executive order, so outside a court challenge that rules this whole class of procedures on immigration unconstitutional, he can do this ad infinitum. But then of course he also frequently invokes Andrew Jackson, whom history remembers as the populist who told the Supreme Court to fuck off when he was behaving unconstitutionally and proceeded to commit genocide against Native Americans.
It's so easy to see the outcome of these policies. Intolerance begats intolerance begats violence. There can be no other outcome other than an increase in violence, both domestic and international. And what will Trump do when the violence increases? He will whip the masses up with frenzied speeches and double-down on the executive orders to limit immigration. But the violence will not abate but will worsen. So finally, he will institute orders to deal with the violence, not the immigration orders that are the cause, but the violence. Protests will be banned, people will be put in prison, violence will be quashed by even more violent means, and they'll need to clothe these violence-quashers and will decide that brown shirts are the appropriate colour.
Protests will be banned, people will be put in prison, violence will be quashed by even more violent means
"Our country needs more law enforcement, more community engagement, and more effective policing. Our job is not to make life more comfortable for the rioter, the looter, or the violent disrupter. Our job is to make life more comfortable for parents who want their kids to be able to walk the streets safely."
My understanding of that event is that protestors were starting fires and the police arrested 230 people near the incident. Of those 6 were journalists. I think that's somewhat different than police targeting journalists for their viewpoints, of which I don't see evidence.
You're right we are early into that event. It's still not clear how the arrest played out: (a) they were grabbed along with "rioters" and later turned out to be journalists on the side or (b) they were with media badges and video cameras clearly covering the riots on the ground, then still arrested as a sign of force. Sadly journalists get arrested relatively often, but it's important to insist that medics should be aimed at as rarely as possible, despite the heat of the moment.
The unfortunate fact is no-one who matters cares about this.
Who matters? Not the US public: von Clownstick & co know it will be forgetten in a month or three, and by the next election (if there is another election) enough red meat can be thrown to the know-nothing base to "win" again.
Who matters: other wealthy nation governments. That's it. And none of them, however loudly they profess civilised values, will risk a hair on their precious bankers' heads to protect distant low-status nonwhite humans. That's a plain fact.
We all know what ought to happen: civilised nations should band together and just say no to America. An escalating series of sanctions, starting with trade, going via targeted military cooperation downgrades, and ending with cancelling all visas to US citizens. Some nations have strong leverage over America, eg. Australia threatening access to Pine Gap would make the US tremble.
None of this can or will happen, and we will plunge into the abyss. WWI and II were prequels. RIP homo sapiens. You will be little missed by our once-glorious planet's other sentient beings.
> by the next election (if there is another election) enough red meat can be thrown to the know-nothing base to "win" again.
I think this is a very important point and pose a threat to democracy. I submitted a new word addition request in Merriam Webster's open dictionary and Oxford:
demagogocracy - government by the demagogues
Individual injustices are not new. Wholesale bans of everyone from certain countries are. Both are bad, both deserve to be fought, but they are on completely different levels.
> Wholesale bans of everyone from certain countries are.
The actual 120 day ban is bad enough, there's no reason to lie about it. People with green cards/existing visas need to be re-approved, they're not "banned". There's no intention AFAICT to keep people who should be in the US out of the US.
FFS people, Trump needs actual opposition, not knee-jerk virtue signaling, hyperbole, and hashtag protests!
All those people being detained in Customs facilities at airports across the country must really be comforted that the intent isn't to keep anyone out who should be here.
You can say that, but I don't believe it. And you're not going to shut down my legitimate outrage and distress by pretending like it's not sincere.
> People with green cards/existing visas need to be re-approved, they're not "banned".
A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order, and it sounds like the administration is backpedaling as well, but it's important to note that in the mean time some people with a (previously) legal right to enter the US were turned away because of Trump's recent executive order.
> but it's important to note that in the mean time some people with a (previously) legal right to enter the US were turned away because of Trump's recent executive order.
This is false. U.S. visas (regardless of type) are different from those issued by other nations. A US visa does not give someone the right to enter the United States, it gives them the right to go to a port of entry (like an airport) and ask for permission to enter the United States.
Trump's order added additional scrutiny for border agents for people with visas from the seven countries. Many (most?) of those people were admitted, and the ACLU suit forced border agents to keep people "in limbo" in the US while that determination was made (vs. sending them back and forcing them to get a new visa—IMO, this is the right decision and I'm happy the courts made it).
But your specific assertion, that they had a legal right to enter the US is false. At best, they had a reasonable expectation that once they arrived, they would be let in without any difficulty or delay.
The only opposition yesterday worth anything was the ACLU lawsuit, and it was the only thing that actually made any concrete difference in the lives of the people affected.
The rest was just people engaging in fantasy politics in the streets, who got what they wanted by appearing to care in front of their peers—without actually changing, literally, anything at all but their own perception of themselves.
Everything beyond the ACLU lawsuit was either pointless virtue signaling or flat out lies (c.f. #MuslimBan hashtag). But sure, carry on protesting and virtue signaling, we all enjoy Trump running roughshod over the US while idiots live out their fantasy of political action and #Resistance on HN and Twitter.
So, when we complain about stuff on the internet, it's pointless virtue signaling. When you complain about stuff on the internet, it's.... what? Are you just virtue signaling to your group, here?
I'm talking to people, like yourself, who are normaly sober and rational on HN (and presumably, other places—I like your Objective-C articles, for instance).
It's weird, Trump really has a lot of people "off their game" as it were, and it saddens me because the guy's kind of an idiot. I'd like to see people I respect get their shit together and mount and effective opposition.
Short of talking to them (like I'm doing here), I'm not really sure what else you would expect me to do given my goals.
I am personally not politically active, I don't blog, tweet, or any of that stuff. I rarely even comment on HN.
So yeah: I just want to see the middle/left mount effective opposition. If you don't value my comments, ignore them. :)
Could you explain how I'm not being sober and rational here, preferably without using the word "lie" (I'm not intending to deceive, so I am at worst mistaken) or the phrase "virtue signaling" (which is basically a slightly more polite way to say "fuck you" and is not productive)?
What else would I expect you to do? I'd expect you to stop complaining about imaginary slights and insulting people for talking about things that they dislike.
What do you think I should do? You haven't given me any suggestions, just virtually shouted at me for being such a lying asshole. So I should... what? You said the ACLU mounted the only effective opposition, maybe I should donate to them? Well, I did already. Hmm, if I were virtue signaling, wouldn't I put that front and center on everything I write? Hey everybody, look at how virtuous I am, I donated to the ACLU!
Sorry, my timeout kicked in and I couldn't reply quickly.
I apologize if my comments seem overly directed at you personally; that was not my intent and I should have made a top-level comment. You're a good guy and perhaps I've misunderstood how effective your approach will be over time.
I was in an airport yesterday on business and encountered protesters who had organized via the internet and came out during a snowstorm. I don't know if that's what you meant by "hashtag protests," but the protests made the national news, and if enough people protest, maybe it moves the needle a little bit.
It is certainly a heck of a lot more effective than making pointlessly cynical comments like yours from behind a computer monitor.
False equivalence. Obama did not ban a country or religion wholesale. This is a substantial and disturbing step in the reckless anti-fact, anti-science, anti-truth administration of Donald John Trump.
If you think there was silence about immigration issues pre-Trump, you simply were not listening.
But yes, the current situation is several orders of magnitude worse, if you simply measure the number of people affected. Therefore, people's will be much more vocal.
Which immigration issues specifically? The net migration to Mexico is an outflow, and the US continues to have one of the longest and most extensive refugee/asylum vetting processes in the world. What specifically should change?
When I was in grad school, most of the grad students in virtually all the science and engineering depts were foreign students.
And what most people don't realize is that without grad students, most research will be severely impacted. So if this continues at the rate it's going, we begin to lose foreign grad students to other countries.
Of course they realize it. White nationalism is building its own epistemology - we already have alternative facts, and soon we will have "American science" [0]. Eviscerating the liberal/globalist scientific/academic community isn't some sad unintended side effect, it's the core of what an electoral majority of this country believes with all its heart we should be doing with gusto.
Let's remember that most people affected have far fewer resources and opportunity than an MIT student; most people's predicaments will not be on HN's front page or a Whitehouse.gov petition.
Question: Can people outside the US sign the petition as well, or does it have more validity if only US residents sign it?
I want to sign it, but don't want it to be used against the petition later if someone in the administration says it is a 'fake petition' because x% of outside the US jurisdiction signed it.
Don't sign if you're not a US citizen, exactly due to the reason you pointed out. We want the numbers as valid as possible, rather than as large as possible.
I signed, too, but I didn't see an update in the signature count either. According to https://www.buzzfeed.com/blakemontgomery/signatures-on-the-w... We the People is experiencing technical difficulties at present; the Trump administration said it was "a question of high volume."
And share with others. This is only one poor guy, but there's plenty more like him out there who have done everything right and jumped through the USCIS hoops to get here legally with the goal of improving their (and potentially their family's) life. This is beyond wrong and now is not the time to sit on our hands.
EDIT: Link looks like it is currently broken for me too.
You know, it turns out only ONE, just ONE signed the petition. It was probably Hillary. You know, I going to create my own petition and it's going to be GREAT. It's going to be the best petition.
There is nothing wrong with healthy pride (compared to egotistical pride). We all have things to be grateful for, hopeful about, and proud of, and that has never hurt anyone. Lack of healthy pride in oneself, one's identity and one's values is a sign of low self-esteem, a great source of suffering in the world. Black and white thinking on pride leads to fuzzy thinking and bad conclusions.
I agree, it's just that it's difficult to tell where the line is between a healthy self esteem about one's identity and it turning into an us vs them thing. In this thread, this comment might have turned into a discussion about the latter - or so I was afraid.
Or even if a member of your immigrate family has Autism, from anywhere in the world, due to the financial burden to the healthcare system.
Where is the outrage over THAT? But of course platitudes are dished out that give the appearance of openness. That is obviously the only thing that matters in these cases, for the leaders to give the public a warm, fuzzy, general statement whilst doing the exact opposite.
There is a huge amount of sanctimonious talk coming out of other leaders and the public at the moment. People do not seem to be aware just how restrictive most country's immigration policies are. This is all getting lost in the Trump hate.
You don't need a visa (H1B or otherwise), the Canadian border is just like the US border with Mexico: open. Anyone can migrate to Canada from the US, just walk across (or drive on up). If "caught", they won't send you back to the US (or wherever). You can get a job, get (free) healthcare, a driver's license, the works—you don't need documentation at all (or can fake it, just like in the US). Why people migrating from Mexico stop in the US is beyond me—Canada has a way better policy towards immigrants, they love undocumented workers! Canada even has sanctuary cities (like Toronto), and unlike the US, Trudeau isn't attacking them, he's praising them!
Canada completely rocks when it comes to immigration policy and is exactly how globalism in the US should be: welcome everyone, from anywhere—no papers, no problem! We're all people after all.
Canada has immigration and laws and will deport people. They aren't particularly fast or efficient about it, but don't spread false rumors that you don't need a Visa to live here. Further for off-continent arrivals the information is shared with the US in exchange for lesser restrictions at the US/Canada land border.
Undocumented workers specifically are a problem not because we don't want immigration - but because they are at risk of abuse by their employer.
> Canada has immigration and laws and will deport people.
Eh, technically, yes. But like anti-sodomy laws in many states in the US, they are rarely applied. Canada does not have a problem with immigration, "legal" or otherwise, no matter what the "laws" say.
Open borders is a human rights issue and Canada is on the right side of history. They do not preference their own citizens over other people, just because of where they were born or what nationality they are. Canada is compassionate to all people and a model for the United States.
> Undocumented workers specifically are a problem not because we don't want immigration - but because they are at risk of abuse by their employer.
Agreed, that's why I suggested undocumented immigrants just forge their papers; that's how it's done in the US and at least in California, works pretty well and tends to keep employers more honest.
Ideally Canada should just automatically give any undocumented worker (and their family) whatever papers/status necessary to make their de facto immigration to Canada legal, so they can stop being abused by their employer (and anyone else). Perhaps by setting up a center or something that undocumented workers can go to to get legal sanction. (California does something similar—anyone can get a valid drivers license here without any gov't papers.)
In fact, Canada not already just giving undocumented workers full rights and legal papers could reasonably be considered to be a human rights violation, since by not doing so, they are enabling inevitable abuse by Canadian employers. Same with visa grants, Canada IMO should just abolish visas entirely and let anyone who can get to Canada in, with full papers on arrival. It's probably some shit arrangement with the US gov't that's preventing them from doing so, now that I think about it.
I'm sure that over time, Canada will repeal all laws preventing foreigners from immigrating to Canada, establishing quotas, wait-lists, or anything else that takes away anyone's right to immigrate to Canada if they want to. Maybe even faster now that Trump is pissing everyone off in the US.
Like ending slavery, fully unrestricted open borders can't come soon enough. Future generations will judge us accordingly that we did not do so sooner, and at least Canada is on the right side of history, even if their laws have to catch up a bit to their hearts.
>I thought excessive chauvinism is what led to Trump at first place?
I have no idea how you equate him saying "Canadians will welcome you" with chauvanism. And if you're referring to Justin getting his shirt off, that isn't what chauvanism means. (He is actually the exact opposite of the definition of chauvanism).
He didn't say that, I quoted what he said. There is no need to be proud of anything, like a nationality would make someone "more virtuous" and people from other nationalities would be defacto "less virtuous". That's chauvinism.
Does the White House Petition website still work? I mean, I am surprised it is still up. Surely the new administration would A) not pay attention to it and B) simply scrap it to avoid maintaining it.
As far as I understand, there is no legal requirement for the White House to even entertain the petitions.[1]
It was an effort (at times, half hearted), at transparency by Obama, it has no legal weight, no. Do we have hope it will even be considered by Trump considering how they aren't even taking calls? No.
Yea I think continuing to use the wh petition site is futile at best and dangerous at worst, for reasons sibs point out. Would strongly disrecommed anyone from continuing to create, share or sign them.
Foreign students nearly always pay full tuition at US universities and help keep them afloat. Making the US undesirable for immigrants is going to make it harder for US colleges and universities to offer a great education.
Not just universities either. After the 2008 recession many private schools started to aggressively court international students, charging them as much as 2-3x base tuition plus room and board. 3 out of the 7 Catholic private schools in my area depend largely on a small group of Chinese students to be able to offer affordable tuitions to low income students. For every international student they lose, they'll lose 5-10 local students because their families can't afford the unsubsidized tuition and the schools will enter into a death spiral. This will happen while at the same time the Department of Education is slowly dismantled and opponents of public education cripple and profiteer off its privatization.
The far reaching and long term consequences the US will experience from this executive order are staggering.
Undergrad at MIT here, thanks for signing! Our community has been fairly troubled by this to say the least, and your outpour of support is incredibly helpful.
Double their chances? I seriously doubt that many MIT students are from Trump's list of countries, or that the "chilling effect" on other foreign applicants will be that great.
This policy is still an injustice, of course. And maybe I'm wrong about the chilling effect; we'll find out, unless the courts step in and thoroughly block or cripple this short-sighted executive order.
This is another reason why I decided to move back to Europe after I am done studying than trying to work on H1B. I just really do not need the stress of having to worry if I'll be kicked out overnight or not. I would probably be fine, as I am not a Muslim, but still. No thanks. Trump could make "America great again" any minute and just decide to kick out any non-American.
Excellent. America shouldn't take any immigrants that just want to exploit our resources or wealth. Only those who believe in America and love the people and our land so much they would take all the risks of coming because no alternative is good enough should immigrate here.
I wish you the best of good fortune in everything back home.
This is the time to make as much noise as you can - protest, call your congress person, etc.
This is the time to follow the "no quarter given" tactics of the NRA - they get their members to show up at any legislation anywhere that even smells of Gun control and raise a massive ruckus - similarly the time to protest is NOW before Trump rolls out the really evil stuff.
I don't think it is by chance or coincidence that Trump's admin is targeting Iranians. What really is it with American government hating Iran and Iranians, when there are equal or even worse ethnocentric, human-rights-abusing, racially intolerant states in the Middle East?
It's not America that did this it's a minority of America. The rest of us feel like prisoners in our own country when faced with this kind of complete and utter insanity.
Many HN readers (and Dem voters) are among the tech elite who at best benefit (and at worst promote) the fundamentalist neoliberal-corporate ideology that has crushed the US citizenry and contributed substantially to the von Clownstick revolt. They were the useful idiots content to keep their heads down, buy shitloads of expensive tech gadgetry, pay the elevated rents that dehomed locals, and obediently wrote code whilst their fellow citizens slept in cars. Well the 'minority' bit back. Irrationally, and probably fatally, but it was entirely predictable.
More people should listen to this. Davos said one of the biggest problems in 2017 will be political/ideological instability in democracies. The question is: how do you stabilize?
I just can't understand the short-term thinking of many here. The political system is volatile. You have growing radical fringes on both sides of the spectrum, increasingly more organized, more hysterical, and less factual.
Blaming "the other side" achieves what? Put your egos aside and look at the big picture. How do you avoid total dislocation of the country?
This was all predictable. All this is, is an escalation of political conflict between the left and right. How do you resolve conflict? Not by yelling at the other side, or telling them "they're responsible for their votes". You resolve conflict through competent communication. Most people don't want to do that, since it's easier to attack.
I'm rather sick of being blamed for Trump's election. How about the people who voted for the candidate from the party of personal responsibility take the responsibility for choosing who they voted for?
Of course they're responsible too. But mass-scale movements come from somewhere. They have systematic causes. The tech industry, and the ideology driving it, is manifestly amongst those causes.
Why can't something as complex as a historical change have multiple causes? And when the rise of social/economic inequality is such a clearly-evidenced part of the mix, why should those who have reaped unsustainable benefits from an unfair system not share part of the responsibility?
I'm not exculpating the ethno-nationalist forces (leaders or followers). They are dangerous and wrong (and their more moderate fellow travellers have allowed, for ignoble motives, nasty stuff to fester now for decades).
But when you have a rising class allocating ever rising shares of the world's wealth to itself, resentments will build. The Gates & Thiels of this world are fairly invulnerable and can buy themselves more fiercely guarded and gilded palaces to hide in (ever higher as the oceans rise). But for the rest, you would think even self-interest (let alone ethics) would have encouraged them to use their wealth and power to argue for a fairer polity. They didn't, and it's too late now: here comes the backlash with dizzying speed. It looks to me like we're beyond reason and are headed for widening violence and wars. I hope I'm wrong.
That again ignores that these people are operating inside a system, not in a vacuum. If you want to assign blame, fine, but don't confuse that with problem-solving. The blame game will not make American democracy functional again, it'll make it even worse.
When you point at techies as the cause, are you problem-solving, or playing the blame game? Sure looks like the latter to me.
Edit: I get it. This doesn't help. The thing is, I don't know how to fix it. It looks like we're just fucked. I'm thinking and trying to come up with a fix but it's not working yet. And in the mean time, when someone tries to blame me for this mess I didn't cause and argued against, I'm going to push back.
For the record I never blamed "techies". It's simple: political discourse is dysfunctional (in the sense: conflict-laden, and the conflicts don't get resolved effectively; that's all dysfunctional means). The best way to improve democracy is for each to improve the way they communicate.
2 necessary skills, that everybody can improve, are:
- empathic listening (always using the most generous interpretation of the other person's argument, and then walking back from there to your own opinion, to find common ground)
- problem-solving (look at the big picture, find the problem, and think of a good solution)
> And in the mean time, when someone tries to blame me for this mess I didn't cause and argued against, I'm going to push back.
There's nothing to push back against. This is just political conflict, and it's resolved the same way as any other conflict. If someone calls you crazy, and you reply: "well clearly I'm not crazy!" you may feel right but it's not effective communication.
Hmm. There's enough despair around and if my sharp wording added to it in your case I apologise. We're all bleeding and I need a longer posting delay. The causes of this mess are so widely distributed, finger-pointing is pointless (except von Clownstick -- I will not use his brand name -- and his crazed apparachniks who need blame aplenty)
> It's not America that did this it's a minority of America.
That's democracy; that is America or else there is no America. All Americans must own this problem, not say that it's not their fault.
For one thing, it didn't come from nowhere; Trump's policies merely put in action what many in his party have advocated for years. Yet many smart people I know overlooked it and continued to vote Republican.
If only this country were actually a democracy and not a gerrymandered, federalist republic with eroded checks and balances and an antiquated presidential election system. Then we wouldn't be having this conversation because a sane and intelligent woman would be running the country.
Unfortunately the best I can do as a single voter in a non-swing state is continuing to petition my representatives. Even then you face futility by having to deal with someone like our esteemed Senator Cory Gardner (R), who goes on CBS to claim that all the people calling and writing his office are "paid protesters".
Trump is president due to suspicion of democracy, not because of it. A plurality did not put him in the White House, the Electoral College did.
I agree that it is a trap to only blame Trump voters. Some 43% of eligible voters did not vote at all. Some Democrats didn't vote either because they thought it was a sure thing Trump would not win, or due to their own disaffection with a politically flawed candidate (without any respect to what degree this is deserved). And also the general political dialog in the country is fairly abysmal. Many things have conspired to bring us to this point.
I think Democrats, liberals, progressive, moderates, are all best off focusing on policy disputes rather than personal ones.
I'm not saying that Americans shouldn't own this problem, but it's notable that Trump's presidency isn't even majority representation, nevermind democracy.
Trump voters are a minority, they should be defended also.
Geek philosophy (let's pick Yoda this time) applies to Hillary and Donald voters: Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. Attack the policies, not the voters, not the president. Convincing will happen with compelling arguments that demonstrate these policies are flawed.
> Trump voters are a minority, they should be defended also.
This is a bit of propaganda commonly employed by the racist right (I'm not saying you are racist or a member of that group, but IMHO that's the origin of the concept).
In some sense everybody is a minority and no President every has been elected by a majority (a plurality at best), so taking the word "minority" literally is not meaningful. What is meant by "minorities" is groups that are abused by larger groups due to their overwhelming lack of political power. The people who voted for Trump were never slaves, didn't suffer segregation, weren't lynched, aren't suspected of being illegal, and generally are not excluded from power or opportunity due to their race or ethnicity.
Look at any group of powerful people, from Fortune 500 CEOs to members of Congress and Presidents to Silicon Valley leaders to leaders in academia, the military, actors, chefs, coders or almost any other field - look at any college campus - you don't say, 'wow, there sure aren't many white guys there'. White-skinned people make up 66% of the US population; black-skinned are ~12%, Latino ~16%. Those aren't comparable situations.
That doesn't mean that Trump voters don't have legitimate concerns, but they aren't at all a "minority" in the common meaning of the word.
If you're going to quote statistics to the tenth of a percent, you should also be very comfortable using terms like minority, majority, and plurality appropriately. This doesn't undermine your position at all, or the fact that Trump won the election fairly as the process is defined. Why argue it? It just makes you look unreasonable and needlessly argumentative.
I get your point of not being argumentative. I wonder why HN doesn't show up and down votes. Would be easier to let go of a position if HN would show the actual support of both sides, instead of people replying with the schoolyard "no, you are".
I think the reason the up and down votes aren't shown publicly is so people don't focus on the votes so much. It shouldn't be a game. I can see how it might be useful.
I've thought about the utility of making flagging (for uncivil, unsubstantive comments) the only way to dim comments. I think people want to be able to express agreement and disagreement separate from whether they think the comment is worthwhile or not, though admittedly the disagreement part is harder to distinguish honestly. In that case seeing the vote count would be useful. I don't know. It's hard to predict how community behavior would change as a result, and whether it would be for the better.
The entire point of the original comment up there is that most Americans didn't vote for him. Nobody was arguing the definition of "minority" until you incorrectly said the number didn't qualify, so if anyone's being pedantic, it's you.
Correct! And I think it's also correct, non-pedantically, to say that only a minority of Americans agreed with the policies proposed by either Clinton or Trump.
That is quite literally the definition of a minority :)
Seriously though, I take your point and this is a reminder that if we ignore vocal minorities spouting hate, eventually they may grow big enough to take control. If you see this type of behavior in your own backyard then please vote even if you don't think it will matter.
While I understand Trump's motive to micromanage Saudi, Yemen, and Syria due to ongoing military conflict ... Iran makes no sense. Reminds me of a South Park Episode, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-Yikes!
alternate facts strike again. in the old days we called this 'government propaganda'. Let people have 'free speech' but publish the party line in the news.
we need to setup ways for any students stuck outside the country with this madness to still be able to continue their studios for the 3-month period (or however long it takes) using digital tools like Skype calling into classes and other things that can be setup.
We cant give up on those who love to learn and want better lives for themselves and their families.
It is so easy to say country X or religion Y is evil, but this shows, effectively this could mean your neighbor, friend or colleague. People, who are not political but just try live and work and be a part of the community like everyone else.
"The federal court for the Eastern District of New York issued an emergency stay halting President Donald Trump’s executive order banning entry to the US from seven majority-Muslim countries tonight, following widespread protests at airports around the country."
I'm all against this immigration ban, but where were the tears and protests when the previous administrations targeted the same places killing thousands?
Though I see this is a whitehouse.gov site, I'm curious as to what counts as a legitimate signature. I'm not American, not a resident, and not in America, so what happens if I sign this petition?
Does anybody know how they figure this out? Do a bunch of signatures from people who have no rights in the US invalidate the petition?
If (and that is a potentially big if) Trump continues the Obama admin plan of responding to all petitions that have >100K signatures, it will be interesting to see what the response to 'hey you should let this young female student who was already here back in, since she poses no danger to the US'.
Seriously the fact that it still only says 1/100,000 signatures on Sunday morning is a conspiracy in my book. I've got a feeling petitions to the White House will have to be done somewhere other than whitehouse.gov during this presidency.
From what I hear, Iranian schools and universities are excellent.[1]
I work at a company where we have several Iranian researchers working as interns, and they are doing excellent work.
If the US doesn't want Iranian engineers and scientists, then I'm sure Canada will be glad to have them.
[1] When I was in high school Iranian students of 9th grade age who immigrated to Canada would immediately be placed in our 12th grade math classes-and they would still get top marks.
@daxorid shared his view - which wasn't inflammatory. The comment was downvoted, then flagged before I could reply.
Terrifying, how? This is what Trump promised, and the reason we voted for him. Half of us are quite happy to see campaign promises actually implemented.
HN is acting as if this was capricious and unplanned. In fact, it's what half of us wanted.
@daxorid voted for a political party that you disagree with. If they can't share their views openly and honestly we won't learn from their perspective.
Based on a tiny sample of GOP friends, they agree with @daxorid. Those friends voted for Trump based on campaign promises and they're happy that he's following-through those promises. For me this was a sort of "oh shit" moment. What else did he promise?? WP has a list:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-promi...
Half of the country is excited by that list. The other half is not.
Based on the discussion on /r/republican and /r/conservative, there appear to be very few in the GOP who thought that this was what Trump promised or are happy with it. Many wanted more curbs on illegal immigrants, and more vetting of new applicants for legal immigration from certain countries...but not many thought that people who are already here legally on temporary or permanent visas should be blocked from reentering if they leave temporarily, such to visit family over a holiday.
Why? Because this submission is on HN and HN is associated with YC? Need we drag Thiel into every political discussion? Yes, everything is ultimately related, but can we try to focus on one thing at time? It's hard enough to discuss politics constructively on HN without making it harder by reaching out for every possible tangent.
What are the mechanics of this ban? I see student was denied from connecting flight. What happens if said student travels to, I don't know, Germany first. Spends there a day or two and hops on a flight to US of A?
I ask because I understand ban is for admission of refugees and travellers from seven countries. Not nationalities.
What is the process to obtain these waivers? How long does it take? Does anyone know the answers to these questions? There's nothing clearly posted on DHS.gov.
I was able to find this, from an unnamed "senior administration official" [0]:
> Green card holders in the U.S. will have to meet with a consular officer before departing the country, the official said.
That's a fairly large inconvenience, especially for those not living in a city with a consular office. And it doesn't address the situation of green card holders who are currently abroad and need waivers. Presumedly they could visit a US embassy or consular office in their country, but that's going to be difficult for someone in, say, Iran.
No the House of Commons would stop him. Unlike the USA, countries with governments based on the Westminster system, such as Australia, NZ etc don't give the Prime Minister this type of unlimited power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westminster_system
I don't think the two systems are fundamentally different. If a British PM has a Commons majority and retains the support of their own party, they can basically do whatever they like.
Conversely, if Congressional Republicans wanted to stop Trump, they could pass legislation stripping him of much of the power Congress has delegated to him (and override any veto), they could pass a joint/concurrent resolution censuring his policies (and even calling for his resignation), they could begin impeachment proceedings, they could refuse to pass the budget until he gives in to their demands. (They may well not do any of these things – but if they don't, it is because they don't want to, not because they lack the power to.)
So I'm not convinced the US system and the UK system are fundamentally different here. Both give the executive utterly vast amounts of power. Both give the legislature the ability, by somewhat different routes, to remove the executive.
> I don't think the two systems are fundamentally different. If a British PM has a Commons majority and retains the support of their own party, they can basically do whatever they like.
The difference is that a PM has no independent power; they don't just need a partisan majority in the Commons, they need the confidence of the majority of the Commons.
The President has independent power, and is not subordinate to the Congress the way the cabinet (including the PM) is to the Parliament in a Westminster system.
Strictly speaking, the British PM's legal power comes not from Parliament but from the Monarch - they are a minister of the Crown, first in rank among the Lords Commissioners appointed to collectively exercise the office of Lord High Treasurer, one of the Great Officers of State. Now, as a matter of longstanding convention, the Monarch will appoint whoever commands the confidence of the House of Commons-but that convention is nowhere enshrined in law.
Turning to the US, under the US Constitution, Congress is arguably the most powerful branch, since Congress has the power of impeachment to remove the President and judges (including Supreme Court Justices), whereas neither the President nor the Supreme Court have any corresponding power to remove Members of Congress. Congress can impeach Trump but Trump can't impeach even the most insignificant Representative.
The queen is a figurehead and doesn't get involved in politics - the point being that she doesn't fiddle with parliament's politics, and they don't cut her out of the picture. Been that way for centuries.
Here in Australia, the picture is similar. The Governor General (queen's representative) is the ceremonial head of state and can dissolve government prompting new elections, but can't direct government to a certain course of action. Dissolving government is done when it's blocked, and almost always at the request of the current head of government. However, if the Queen tried to start influencing local politics, the GG would be renamed 'president' and she'd be cut out of the picture.
Basically, the Queen maintains her power by not pissing off whichever rabble is currently in power in the parliaments of any of her countries.
> But you implied just earlier that she has no power.
She has the power to divide her time among several palaces, have lots of servants waiting on her night and day, have Prime Ministers and Presidents lining up to dine and chat with her, have the Royal Air Force fly her in luxury wherever she wants to go, etc, etc, etc... basically more power than you or I will likely ever have. She has all the power she needs.
But in terms of her formal legal/political power – on paper she has enormous power, but she only retains that power because 99.999% of the time she does whatever the politicans tell her to do. (If she ever started refusing to obey them, they would take all that power away from her very quickly.)
However, in the very rare circumstance of a constitutional crisis, she does actually have some real political power. Consider something like the 1975 situation in Australia – if something similar were to happen in the UK, she would have real power to decide what course of action to take.
The GG in Australia has the power to dissolve parliament, yes. This has only been done once (that I am aware of) and that was when the sitting government lost control of parliament and could no longer pass the laws required to pay the bills. The GG approached the leader of the opposition and asked if he was able to gain control of the house of representatives and start government working again.
There has been a lot of speculation about the legality of this event and it would be a very brave Prime Minister who would allow things to go this far again without calling an election and an even braver GG who would not politely point out to the Prime Minister that he was behaving like an idiot, accept he'd lost control and let somebody else get on with running the country.
The GG has only dissolved government without PM's request once, but if supply is blocked in Parliament for the same act twice in a row, the PM can request the GG dissolve parliament in a double-dissolution. This is what happened with our last federal election - some random act, I can't recall, was blocked twice by the opposition and minority parties. Both sides thought they'd win the election, so they were happy to dissolve over a relatively minor issue.
Basically the GG is there to keep parliament ticking over, and not descend into the madness of the last six years in the US where the chamber is eternally deadlocked (party 1 head of government against a party 2 chamber). It's bizarre how many ways the US has to stall its government (eg filibustering, debt limit, etc), and how few to ensure it keeps ticking along...
She has no hard political power and can't direct politics, but she has soft power in that she's a queen and people listen to what she says or try to curry her favour; the soft power of a ceremonial head of government. It's a complex picture. Oversimplifying quite a bit, if parliament were to 'cut her off', everything with "royal" in it would become "federal".
Curiously, they'd actually lose on the deal financially if they got rid of the royals - the UK government manages the royal estates because of a deal back in the day, and they bring in more money than they lose (before even getting to tourism). The estates would revert to the family in such an event, as I understand it.
Which party establishment? What if UKIP were to win a general election? Unlikely to happen, surely-but almost everyone said the same thing about President Trump.
Nope. It's just appeasing his base. The man child is not sophisticated enough to have a coherent, well-manicured strategy. He sees only what's in front of his nose.
A lot of international students in UK think the same about Brexit, once pound hits 1:1 with Euro there will be less reasons to stay in the UK for them. What means less people will pay their student loans from government, and UK will lose access to European bailiffs...
given that EU students will no longer be offered UK student loans or tuition subsidised by UK taxpayers after brexit, this becomes less of an issue as each year passes...
it's not exactly easy to collect from former students defaulting on their loan repayment agreements at the moment either (if they're not in the UK)
(your argument about GBPEUR also makes no sense, if the euro increased in value that would make the UK cheaper for people holding euros...)
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While it's been easy to think about many possible negative outcomes in the proceeding days, weeks, months, another subtle aspect of this policy's ramifications is how it weakens trust and faith in the concept of stability for future American policy — the likelihood of future government actions, executed with little to no foresight, warning, or serious consideration, with serious consequences. How this effects this country's current reputation as a place to study, travel, find work, and start families + settle down can't be understated.