DNA comparison is extremely easy and quick to verify.

While not applicable to all self-described right-wingers, it's extremely concerning to see the common reaction from right-wing pundits and media organizations towards the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, and now the separation of 2,000 children from their parents, range from insouciance at best, to bullying and conspiracies at worst.

Paul Krugman's opinions in the NYT can be hit or miss, but I thought this piece really nailed it.

The speed of America’s moral descent under Donald Trump is breathtaking. In a matter of months we’ve gone from a nation that stood for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to a nation that tears children from their parents and puts them in cages.

What’s almost equally remarkable about this plunge into barbarism is that it’s not a response to any actual problem. The mass influx of murderers and rapists that Trump talks about, the wave of crime committed by immigrants here (and, in his mind, refugees in Germany), are things that simply aren’t happening. They’re just sick fantasies being used to justify real atrocities.

And you know what this reminds me of? The history of anti-Semitism, a tale of prejudice fueled by myths and hoaxes that ended in genocide.

First, let’s talk about modern U.S. immigration and how it compares to those sick fantasies.

There is a highly technical debate among economists about whether low-education immigrants exert a depressing effect on the wages of low-education native-born workers (most researchers find that they don’t, but there is some disagreement). This debate, however, is playing no role in Trump policies.

What these policies reflect, instead, is a vision of “American carnage,” of big cities overrun by violent immigrants. And this vision bears no relationship to reality.

For one thing, despite a small uptick since 2014, violent crime in America is actually at historical lows, with the homicide rate back to where it was in the early 1960s. (German crime is also at a historical low, by the way.) Trump’s carnage is a figment of his imagination.

True, if we look across America there is a correlation between violent crime and the prevalence of undocumented immigrants — a negative correlation. That is, places with a lot of immigrants, legal and undocumented, tend to have exceptionally low crime rates. The poster child for this tale of un-carnage is the biggest city of them all: New York, where more than a third of the population is foreign-born, probably including around half a million undocumented immigrants — and crime has fallen to levels not seen since the 1950s.

And this really shouldn’t be surprising, because criminal conviction data show that immigrants, both legal and undocumented, are significantly less likely to commit crimes than the native-born.

So the Trump administration has been terrorizing families and children, abandoning all norms of human decency, in response to a crisis that doesn’t even exist.

The thing about anti-Semitism is that it was never about anything Jews actually did. It was always about lurid myths, often based on deliberate fabrications, that were systematically spread to engender hatred.

I haven't read it, but as a rule of thumb, always go with what Streetlight recommends to read.

Every time some right-winger here makes a comment and it's pointed out how they are wrong, they either outright ignore it, or shift goalposts. They can never ever ever admit they stated something untrue.

EDIT: Much Ado About Nothing

Last year, the Trump Administration shut down "the least restrictive alternative to detention available to asylum-seekers who have entered the US illegally". The service, "help participants find lawyers, navigate the overburdened immigration court system, get housing and health care, and enroll the kids in school" and "99 percent of participants 'successfully attended their court appearances and ICE check-ins.'"

And for those who are more considered with taxpayer spending than the lives of immigrants escaping abuse and gangs, "family case management cost the government $36 a day per family versus between $5-$7 per adult for intensive supervision. That compares to $319 per-person for a family detention center bed."

Again and again, the actions of this administration demonstrate that they view the lives of non-white immigrants as subhuman.

Capital volume 1 by Karl Marx (rereading)

You've made several claims which are false. Stop trying to shift goalposts and own up to your mistakes. Aren't conservatives all about "personal responsibility"?

Whose zero tolerance policy? — tom

None these politicians enacted a policy to separate families at the border. Looks like you're just another 'Google Search Conservative'.

And would you like to admit you were wrong here, when I correct you here and here?

Trump signed an EO ending child separation at the border — Jeremiah

Not necessarily, unfortunately. The EO here, states that:

It is also the policy of this Administration to maintain family unity, including by detaining alien families together where appropriate and consistent with law and available resources.

"Where appropriate and consistent with the law and available resources" is fairly in-determinate language, providing wiggle room for the administration to separate families for vague, unclear reasons.

The EO then further states:

It is unfortunate that Congress’s failure to act and court orders have put the Administration in the position of separating alien families to effectively enforce the law.

"Separating alien families to effectively enforce the law" strongly suggests that the Administration nevertheless considers family separation to be not only within the realm of "The Law", but an "effective" was to enforce it. Chilling stuff.

And there absolutely were complaints about them.

He didn't. Those facilities were for unaccompanied minors, i.e. children who crossed the border unauthorized without parents. The article you provided even states, "personal accounts from immigration lawyers tell a tale of Obama being equally concerned about unaccompanied minors traveling to the border and wanting to create a deterrent."

David Brooks once again demonstrates how little awareness he has for the history of conservatism, which has gleefully wielded State power to shape society, or the world, to their ends, whether it be Jim Crow, the War on Terror, McCarthyism, Anti-Abortion, Anti-LGBT, Ant-Union, etc. Brooks is unable to acknowledge that American conservatism always been acerbic, and that the Trump administration is not excluded from this historical chain.

Why is it that the posts that analyze the problem are the ones that are responded to and those posts that offer solutions are disregarded? — ArguingWAristotleTiff

I'm not an expert on immigration policy, or an immigration lawyer, nor am I in any type of position to activate new immigration policies, so it's rather pointless. But I will say that we should provide immigrants who cross our borders, with good food, safe and comfortable shelter, therapists for those seeking asylum because I can't begin to imagine the horrors they faced in the Northern Triangle, while they undergo the process of being admitted into this country as all the evidence shows that immigrants are good for the country, rather than splitting their families apart and locking them in cages, and this administration is currently doing. Ultimately they should be treated with respect and dignity.

I'm actually embarrassed now because as I stated just earlier today, there's no point in paying attention to you. Your response only further validates my point. So stupid of me to forget that so quickly.

I'm going to coin the term "Google Search Conservative", that is, a conservative who establishes or defends his or her position through a quick google search.

It's stunning how little thought, how little research you've done on this subject. I've seen this trite video being passed around by several Facebook friends today, and I wouldn't be surprised if you haphazardly picked up this video from your social media friends, rather than actually engage in an iota of due diligence on this distressing topic.

First, there's no doubt that Obama's border policy was detestable. It's aim was to detain families (no longer than 21 days), and leverage that to deter additional undocumented immigrants, which as I explain early in this thread, are essentially doomed to fail. I don't think anyone, liberal or not, should defend Obama's immigration policy in this case, as it's arguably the platform on which Trump built his zero-tolerance fiasco (although I have no doubt the Trump administration would have orchestrated family separation either way).

Second, Clinton wasn't Secretary of State in 2014. I mean the goddamn news ticker on the video you provided even shows that she's the former Secretary of State. Again, it looks like you did a five second google search. She's on her 2014 Hard Choices book tour and basically being classic Hillary Clinton where she indecisively vacillates around ideas trying to appeal to both conservatives and liberals, because after Obama's 2012 reelection she was absolutely going to run again for the presidency. Anyway, Clinton's response is vague, with slivers of nuance, but poorly articulated, like her 2016 presidential campaign in a nutshell. She states that undocumented children should be sent back if it can be established that there are responsible adults that can care for them back in their respective countries, and that there are undeniable "concerns if all of them can be sent back", which to me indicates that if a responsible adult is in a precarious position due do cartel threats, etc. then that may not be a viable solution. Either way, it's super fucking vague, and not remotely comparable to Trump's zero-tolerance policy, because instead of ripping children away from their parents when they reach ports of entry or without announcing themselves, what Clinton is articulating is to send children back to their families who live in the Northern Triangle.

First, that article discusses undocumented immigrants, not documented ones. Second, the Heritage Foundation's research on undocumented immigration has been routinely criticized even by Republicans. They are a highly dubious source.

The most natural reason for economic growth is population growth. You don't need a study for this fact. — ssu

I'm sure the National Academies took such an obvious fact into account.

There is a lot of blame to go around, it's not reducible to one thing nor even a handful of things, and the blame isn't proportional.

The cost to the USA is $34,000 a year per immigrant. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

???

In 2016, The National Academies produced a 20-year study on the economic impact of immigrants in the United States. The study shows that while first-generation immigrants are generally most costly than native-borns (mostly at the state and local level), their children "are among the strongest economic and fiscal contributors in the U.S. population, contributing more in taxes than either their parents or the rest of the native-born population." The study states that in the long-run, immigration creates an overall positive impact on economic growth.

Trump is a good thing. If he hadnt been elected he would have droned on and on for years about how the system was rigged against him, continuously eroding confidence in the US and the very idea of self determination upon which it's founded.

So he and his sort got to try out their ideas and that's as it should be. — frank

A fundamental concern is that Trump's approval rating, regardless of his inhumane policies, incoherent twitter outbursts, antipathy towards allies, or geniality toward enemies, etc. has never sunk below 35%. While there are degrees in which people intensely approve of him, in the abstract, ostensibly one-third of the country agrees with "Trumpism", which is likely to outlast Trump's presidency. There are people who earnestly approve of the tax cut, the wall, Trump's immigration policy, the America First foreign doctrine, racial animosity, etc. which will not cease simply because Trump is out of office, and which were essentially seen as "justified" in the first place because Trump was voted into the presidency.

Had Clinton won, there is no doubt that Trump would have stoke outrage about a rigged system, corrupt political elites etc.. I believe it was Michael Wolff who wrote that Trump and his team, not believing that they would actually win, had plans to create some sort of Trump TV in partnership with Breitbart which would basically be an anti-Hillary, anti-liberal, anti-democratic platform. Considering how Fox News' viewership rose sharply during Obama's presidency, I don't doubt that Breitbart partnership would have been highly successful. But the alternative is that a Clinton win would have placed doubt in the viability of Trump's ideas because her election would be a public rejection of Trump, and they would have likely remained on the fringe, at least more so than now, where they are now public policy.

Regardless of turnout, it's clear that, at minimal, Trump's election as the Republican nomination signaled that there is something very rotten in the United States. Ultimately, I would have greatly preferred Clinton to be President while Trump just barks and growls like the mad dog he is on some heterodox network, because we would not have gotten this bourgeois tax cut, zero-tolerance immigration and ICE roundups, and all the various mistakes towards out foreign and domestic policy that are being too innumerable to count.

Creator of Godwin's Law:

No point in paying any attention to @raza or @wellwisher

"Never argue with an idiot. They will only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience."

Exactly, and we are doing essentially the same thing today by turning away asylum seekers - men, women and children who are trying to escape abuse, cartel violence etc., only to ship them back to where it is likely they will be killed. — Maw

To expand on this point: this is essentially why deterrent-based policies are nearly always doomed to fail. Immigrants escaping the Northern Triangle are often faced with either rape and/or murder if they stay in their respective countries. Insofar as the US border policy provides a better fate than certain murder or rape, it will unlikely deter immigrants. Again, I will iterate that the new zero-tolerance policy has not been well communicated down into Latin America.

Ah well then I'm glad my words have made an impact.

What about — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Oh come on Tiff

In merely six weeks, nearly 2,000 children have been separated from their parents. The situation is already inhumane and unsustainable. If this practice isn't stopped immediately the crisis will grow exponentially to something near unfathomable.

I think you are delusional if you think the proportion of "bad intended" immigrants is anywhere near commensurate with asylum seekers. The fact is immigrants, documented or not, are less likely to commit crime. And if our entry ports are "being overwhelmed" then that's likely do to cuts in staff and closing entry ports.

Maw, that is a chilling link — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Exactly, and we are doing essentially the same thing today by turning away asylum seekers - men, women and children who are trying to escape abuse, cartel violence etc., only to ship them back to where it is likely they will be killed.

By the way, I have a great Uncle who is a Holocaust survivor, and he has been very vocal about certain parallels and affinities between Nazi Germany and Trump's America, this policy in particular.

With all due respect Jeremiah, you also brought up Hitler earlier in addition to slavery now and I am not going to compare the two. Not for fear of semblance but because I will not disparage what concentration camps victims and survivors have gone through. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Um....

No you misunderstand my point. To "own the libs" is a meme that makes fun of right-wing self-destructive, or self-debasing, or just plan stupid behavior in an attempt to "score points" over liberals. Punishing protesters with expulsion is an example of that.

And if you've abandoned defending Trump's heinous zero-tolerance policy, and it looks like you have, then I think we're done here.

And I think this Twitter thread, where Jacob Soboroff of MSNBC toured one of the larger immigration processing centers speaks for itself.

There are very few systems in place to help reunite parents with their child, and the onus is "largely on the parents to locate their children within government custody and seek their return," which is profoundly draconian given that the Government separated them in the first place. The information that they are given and the process is Kafkaesque. — Maw

Additionally

'I cannot convey enough how much utter chaos there is,' said Michelle Brané, director of migrant rights and justice at the Women’s Refugee Commission, a research and advocacy organization that monitors immigration issues. 'The government does not have a proper system in place to track families and coordinate.'

In some cases, parents and children have gone weeks without being able to communicate with one another and without knowing each others’ whereabouts. From April 19 to May 31, a total of 1,995 children who arrived with 1,940 adults were separated from their parents, according to administration officials.

From that point, migrant parents and children become separate legal cases in the maze of government bureaucracy, and keeping them linked has proved challenging. Different legal protections are afforded to juveniles and adults in the immigration system, and as a result, reuniting families can take months or longer, several legal experts said.

“Once the parent and child are apart, they are on separate legal tracks,” said John Sandweg, who was acting director of ICE during the Obama administration.

Reunification becomes particularly difficult when a parent is deported without the child and is no longer on American soil, Mr. Sandweg said; in those cases, “there is a very high risk that parents and children will be permanently separated.”

It should be noted that Hilary Clinton forecasted, during one of the debates, what Trump's draconian immigration policy would look like.

The reason they were able to hold for 21 days was because at day 21, they were released, regardless if they have had their time in front of the judge or not. That was why the "catch and release" program was so popular. After being caught, held for 21 days, we legally had to release the illegal immigrant and they knew it. Our only way to abide by the law was to issue a court date, release those being held and contact them when their date came up in maybe 12 months, sometimes 2 years. As you can imagine the rate of appearing before the judge after being released was 30% at the highest. Where did the other 70% go?

Maw, logic this thru with me. Between the detention centers along Arizona's border with Mexico, we have the capacity to hold somewhere around 4k people within three detention centers. When we can handle the flow of those surrendering themselves to an entry point, asking for political asylum their stays were about 5 days. Now? We cannot even physically accommodate the asylum seekers AND follow the law we operate under in that we cannot hold anyone indefinitely. In other words, if a LARGE group of people present themselves at one time, it overwhelms our ability to process anyone as we normally would. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

None of this is relevant to the specific matter I'm discussing: Trump's zero tolerance policy. There is no excuse for separating a child from their parent. You can pontificate about the lacuna's of the 'Catch and Release' policy, but that does not justify the inhumane separation that is taking place.

Maw, please try not to go overboard in the idea that this is some form of genocide for it lessens the respect for those who were actually lost to genocide. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

History shows us that splitting families apart is often a prelude to genocide. The analogy is appropriate.

Here is your citation: here and here and here — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Daily Caller is not a legitimate source. Neither of the other two sources stat that immigrants are explicitly told their children will be separated from them prior to them arriving at the border. And I provided examples that makes that rather clear the policy is shrouded in deception.

Please provide a citation that suggests the separation is for an indefinite period of time — ArguingWAristotleTiff

There are very few systems in place to help reunite parents with their child, and the onus is "largely on the parents to locate their children within government custody and seek their return," which is profoundly draconian given that the Government separated them in the first place. The information that they are given and the process is Kafkaesque.

None of this is without pain for those children separated or for those caring for the kids. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Tragicomedy at its finest, Tiff.

So what is YOUR solution? — ArguingWAristotleTiff

I am not talking about the whole issue of immigration Tiff. You continually try to digress from the specific Trump policy I originally addressed, to a much wider problem.

Maw, I get the loss of life and the reasons why and I assure you it is not lost on me. The actual death count is closer to 4,000 because of delayed and interrupted health care — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Right. Ergo, one of the worst US atrocities within the last 20 years.

Yes, of course they should be subject to those same standards. This was my point. — raza

Punishing protesters to own the libs. Got it.

So fucking what? What does any of that have to with the child separation policy?

You are correct in that the Trump administration "implemented" this policy but it was considered an option back in July of 2016 when we had tens of thousands of children being sent across the border without guardians. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

During this time, regarding the prior policy, families were held together for "no more than 21 days", after which both parents and child(ren) were released together. The new zero-tolerance policy was implemented because we have a xenophobic, racist, white supremacist administration that has continually demonstrated utter indifference to Latinos.

Just bear in mind that the parents entering illegally are aware of this policy. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Tiff, you need to provide a citation for this claim. Personally, I'm unfamiliar with the publication you provided, and am skeptical at some of it's broader claim of greatly increased immigration when Latin American immigration has been steadily decreasing since the recession. It is perfectly feasible, that there have been an increase in asylum seekers and an increase in border arrests without an overall increase in immigration. Given that this is a new policy, I find it difficult to believe that immigrants who may have been traveling for thousands of miles were well-informed about it prior to reaching the border. In fact, in some instances, border agents lied to the parents and the children in order to separate them without incident. In one case, a father killed himself while in a detention cell after learning his child was taken away. There have also been cases in which immigrants, following US law, have announced themselves for asylum, and yet were separated from their child for several months. This policy has been implemented with subterfuge and callous lies and reeks of a prelude to genocide.

The fucking idea I am "on about" is that the average wait time is up to 20 days. Have you ever gotten a really bad sunburn from a day at the beach? It would be not just traumatic to the children to leave them out in the elements but it would be down right deadly for anyone. That is what I am "fucking" going on about. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Tiff , what is the connection between the forced and indefinite separation of families and not "leaving children out in the sun"? I'm certainly not advocating that families be left in the blistering heat while a slow churning bureaucracy screens them, but separating families indefinitely in no way solves this.

Ultimately, immigration policy in this country has been shoddy, and I am not a proponent of Bill Clinton's, Bush's, Obama's approaches. But Trump's policy takes a defective system and dials up the inhumanity, and the forced separation, the deceit, and the rabid language and inhumane treatment is inexcusable.

There is no correlation Maw. One is an act of Mother Nature and the other is the choice of free will. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Oh Lord. No. The Trump administration's blithe indifference to Puerto Rico greatly impacted the high number of fatalities, despite the Government's original 64 death toll estimate. According to a study from the New England Journal of Medicine, "one third of the deaths were attributed to delayed or interrupted health care."

The privilege is that everyone else's problems are identity politics. While "my" problems are simply politics.

Jordan Peterson criticises identity politics, and I think he is broadly right to, although some vulnerable groups do need collective representation. What are your thoughts? — bert1

Identity politics have existed since the Roman Republic. They have since been vital in supplying universal suffrage, civil rights, LGBT rights, worker's rights, woman's rights, etc. Criticizing identity politicstout court, as Peterson often does, is crap, and done from a privileged vantage point of being a white male.