[beachstartup]

they deliberately conflate legal (skilled) immigrants and illegal aliens. to them, there is no difference.

it is a hyper-egalitarian interpretation of the word 'immigrant' with no basis in law or social norms.

[humanrebar]

> no basis in law or social norms

To push back a little...

I'm generally pro immigration and didn't vote for Trump (partly for these reasons). But there are valid points to be made about:

* what a healthy level of immigration is

* what a healthy immigration process looks like

* how much should family concerns affect immigration chances

* how much should professional skills affect immigration chances

* how to enforce immigration laws

The above are entirely about law and social norms. Just because you disagree doesn't mean there are no valid points.

Not engaging those points is just retrenching people, promoting more division, and making reasonable people side with unreasonable ones like Trump. I'm gathering that most people who voted for Trump voted for the least bad option in their minds, not because they wanted a buffoon for a president.

[digler999]

* what a healthy level of immigration is

specifically, what reasons is it being used for? It's been discussed here many times that the H1B program for tech workers is being used to depress wages and remove the immigrants' rights to competition. So while a politician may seem so shiny and "progressive" for increasing immigration, you never know if their back pockets are being padded by the tech corporations who save billions of dollars by not paying the "free market" rate for the skilled work.

[beachstartup]

wow, i must suck at writing because you just made the same point i did.

namely: legal and illegal immigration are completely different things and anyone who says otherwise is disregarding law and social norms.

[ZeroGravitas]

Stephen Bannon stated that having Asian CEOs running 2/3rds of the companies in Silicon Valley was bad for civic society.

Are unskilled workers sneaking in from Asia illegally to run Google and Microsoft or are you wrong about whether it's only unskilled, illegal immigrants that are being targetted?

(We'll ignore for now the fact that 2/3rds is an incorrect figure, he was presumably intentionally exaggerating to inspire fear in his base.)

[beachstartup]

i'm saying that legal and illegal immigration are two different things. the fact that steve bannon dislikes both types and probably (almost certainly) dislikes non-white people has nothing to do with my point.

let's say all your worst fears are true, and bannon secretly is literally hitler. does that change the fact that legal vs. illegal immigrants are different, and should be treated differently, with a different set of laws and social acceptance? because i would say that even if he is literally hitler and mussolini combined, that would still hold true.

i mean, what is your actual point here? that you don't like steve bannon? okay, great.

[srum]

Didn't the recent travel ban attempt to revoke valid visas?

[dboreham]

And bar entry to valid green card holders (permanent residents).