I was denied a entry visa into Paraguay left to be stranded in Brazil. I barely made it to my grandmothers funeral. I had to call the embassy and spend several days in limbo. I understood that I was powerless because I was not a citizen of Brazil nor Paraguay. I wasn't entitled to representation by either country nor would they provide it.
I was jailed in Mozambique for refusing to pay a bribe at the border. I did not expect nor receive any special treatment. This is the way things are.
I overstayed my visa in Chile by less than 24 hours, was forced to remain at the border between Argentina and Chile for the day and threatened with jail. I did not fight and riot nor protest. Why would I? I need to follow the laws of the country I am in.
What we have here is a nation so divided that you have people on the right who are for less government and rule, but respect the rule of law and people on the left who have no regard for the law and demand more regulations and laws.
The people being detained here have obeyed all of the rules (visa holders, permanent residents), and are still getting screwed. I skew right of center and am usually the last person to get pissed off enough to protest on the streets, but I went down to LAX tonight. The US got ahead in the world because we play by the rules and don't pull discriminatory ex post-facto stunts like this. As a nation, we should seek to keep things this way.
Protesting and reaching out to the people affected by actions like this is absolutely within the bounds of American civil society's responsibilities.
So your point of comparison for the US are Paraguay, Mozambique and Chile? Also, note that none of the people being detained under his EO right now is actually being accused of breaking the law: if they'd arrived two days ago, they wouldn't have faced any issues at all. So it's unclear to me how your experience informs any aspect of our current predicament.
> ... people on the right who are for less government and rule, but respect the rule of law ...
The right has just elected this guy into WH:
> "Hillary wants to abolish -- essentially abolish the Second Amendment. By the way, if she gets to pick, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don't know," Trump said.
I think what he said was entirely appropriate. You don't have to look very hard to find pretty convincing evidence that Republicans are not the law and order party that they claim to be. Gerrymandering, obstructionism, racist and anarchist dog whistling. There's so much there it's hard to know where to start.
You've written a much more substantive and civil comment than did 'yongjik while raising the same issue. My point was not that the sentiment was unjustified, but that the manner in which it was expressed was uncivil. Especially with politics, we need to strive to be even more civil rather than less so.
Please stop bringing up every last thing you can think of, no matter how wrong you think others may be. These discussions are difficult enough as it is without throwing all variety of incendiary materials on the fire. It's not constructive and actively makes things worse.
That is a good point. Thank you for pointing that out! It's way too easy to lose perspective and often control these dayes.
I have to get better at what I actually set out to do and ignore politics and news for the next years and just donate s bunch to ACLU. That's really all one can do. I don't think there is anything one could say that would make this situation better either way.
I don't think there is anything one could say that would make this situation better either way.
Well, I'd like to think our little exchange made things a little better. I know it helped reinforce for me that people can step back and reflect, which it's easy to lose sight of. And figuring out ways to do so is increasingly important.
well, they're not following the Constitution and the law on this visa situation, so I would respectfully disagree ...
see e.g. - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/opinion/trumps-immigratio... . one can parse words but the whole thing seems clearly intended and specifically designed to make laws with respect to people of a specific religious faith, contrary to the First Amendment.
authorizing torture, proposing Muslim registries, intimidating the media, threatening to send troops to Chicago, bullying companies to score PR points ... all of these things, if Obama had done them, some would have said it was incipient dictatorship. it's plain as day that this Administration falls on the authoritarian end of the spectrum, not for 'less government and rule'.
Why couldn't we just change the rules for new visa that are being given out? People would have had ample warning before they get to the border and people with existing visa who randomly happened to be traveling wouldn't have been impacted. Arguably we would have achieved about the same security without the giant mess.
The only reason I can see why this was done in this fashion, side stepping regular process as if some disaster wag imminent is so that our new president can own this news cycle and make his fanatic voters happy.
Your statement vastly confuses me. Because things are laws they are just and moral and you should respect them? That's a really backwards way of thinking.
Vastly? Like the vast reaches of outer space? Wow...
Because things are laws is the reason the US has been able to maintain its democracy (constitutional republic) for as long as it has. So yes.
Picking and choosing what laws you want to follow based on how popular or pc they are is why Hillary lost and is why we have sanctuary cities and is why welfare wiped out the American family.
Tell that to the nut jobs who occupied the wild life refuge in Oregon after having had a previous police stand off.
It's a good thing not all laws are enforced equally. Otherwise most of us apparently would be on jail because of obscure, old laws that were never revoked.
Also, how did the welfare state destroy the Martian family?
Have you ever been outside the US? Edit: nvm saw you were the same poster who talked about their border experience in other countries. There goes that prejudice of mine.
It is not just morally right to resist laws that are unjust and immoral. It is a moral imperative. It's actually accounted for in jury trials in the US, see jury nullification.
So you weren't a permanent resident of Paraguay? You didn't have a job, a house, or a family in Brazil? You didn't spend years navigating the immigration system in Mozambique? I fail to see the relevance of your comparison.
People who are legal permanent residents of the US, with lives and jobs here, are being denied entrance.
Since we all love Godwin's law, those people who man the gas chambers in Nazi Germany were also respecting the rule of law. I'd rather be on side of good and decent than have respect for an unjust law.
You fail to see my experience (as anecdotal as it was) as relevant and yet, you compare what is currently happening to Jews being gassed in Nazi Germany. I really don't understand you leftist.
> you compare what is currently happening to Jews being gassed in Nazi Germany.
Poor reading comprehension; I did no such thing. It was merely a very strong counter-example to your idea that one should not question the rule of law.
You all are aware that the past 6 U.S. presidents have done this sort of thing...right?
Obama last did it in 2011.
The hypocrisy here is that because Trump did it, it is wrong.
We are a nation of laws and in order to maintain law and order, we must follow those laws. The minute tech companies (let's not be obtuse here, corporations are in the business of making money and appeasing shareholders) decides they are either for or against certain laws, well...you have anarchy.
This has nothing to do with denying rights to immigrants and everything to do with the far lefts disproval of the elected president of the United States.
Obama Admin banned processing applications from Iraqi refugees during a 6 month period [1]. They did not ban approved refugees from entering the US.
Obama Admin never banned permanent residents aka greencard-holders married to US citizens from re-entering the US because they held Iranian passports. The current executive order does. Doesn't matter if they are completing a PhD in Computer Science at Princeton and flew to Canada for a conference. They can now be refused entry for not breaking any laws. The smartest, most-hardworking immigrants and non-immigrant student-visa holders will instead choose Switzerland, Germany, and other places because of blanket bans like this.
Obama's version of the move wasn't great either, but it's not nearly a direct comparison; he temporarily shut down immigration from one country directly in response to a known and immediate threat, for a set and predetermined period of time. Trump is trying to shut down immigration from seven countries, indefinitely, for no particular reason aside from a general sense of feeling threatened by them. He also, unlike Obama, did so amidst a sea of his own angry rhetoric implying that the ban was entirely due to Islamophobic prejudice.
So, yes, the POTUS can deny rights to humans in all sorts of ways and no one will complain- we're far from perfect. But that he's denying human rights from outright bigotry is especially unacceptable.
Meanwhile, tech companies can decide they're for or against whatever they want- according to the (heinous) Citizens United decision, corporations are people now, and entitled to their political opinions just like you and me. It's not anarchy, its capitalism!
>The minute tech companies (let's not be obtuse here, corporations are in the business of making money and appeasing shareholders) decides they are either for or against certain laws, well...you have anarchy.
Private companies can't protest about unfair laws? Really? That's not the same as disobeying laws.
You can find plenty of examples of more conservative companies opposing left-wing laws.
How can you not see the difference between ending the program due to institutionalized xenophobia and pausing it temporarily in order to work on its safety? Are you being obtuse?
How do you expect us to take Ycombinator and the tech community seriously when you have a large number of persons within the tech community organizing grassroots initiatives for the purpose of having California succeed the from United States. It's a bit hypocritical to lump the tech community into your narrative to fit your narrative of how you believe America should operate and which values it should uphold.
One reason why I believe it won't matter is such:
Companies require a real name. Most require social profiles or a website. If you refuse to give your real name and supporting materials, you will be passed over.
Of course you don't submit an anonymous résumé; companies handle this. HR departments can have specific people outside the selection process hold the table matching candidates' realnames and candidate ID #.
"I had heart surgery when I was 18. I was virtually uninsurable. I now have health insurance. Why we need the ACA is no more complicated than that."
I am a bit confused by this story. Was Zach not covered under his families' health coverage? He also went to: Westminster School - one of the most expensive private high schools in the US.
Now, one could argue he had a pre-existing condition and thus, was not covered under any health care providers plan, but he states: "I was virtually uninsurable." This tells me there were options, but none that covered the entire cost of the surgery.
Honestly, this story alone makes me seriously question the purpose of this post.
A serious heart condition in one's youth (infancy, even), regardless of insurance coverage at the time, could exclude one from all future private insurance (as in: there are zero options, they will not do business with you) leaving only incredibly-expensive state-provided (but privately administered , of course—profit over all) insurance as an "option", i.e. leaving the only actual options as being employed with a large company, going without insurance at all, or being poor enough to qualify for medicaid (so, avoiding employment).
Source: I know someone for whom this was the case pre-ACA.
He seems to be implying that, post surgery, he had a preexisting condition that would prevent further insuring for the rest of his life. The heart surgery itself was (presumably) covered, but after that he was on his own.
It's after the surgery that he would be un-insurable. Before the ACA, when he turned 19, the only possible way for him to get insurance would have been to get a job that offered health insurance because he wasn't allowed on his parents plan and he had a pre-exsiting condition so he wouldn't have been approved for private insurance. After the ACA, at 19, he could have stayed on his parent's plan, bought private insurance because the insurers couldn't discriminate based on the pre-existing condition or get a job that offered health insurance.
This comment captures a feature of a lot of discussions I've read: somebody's got an axe to grind.
It's unfortunate that we're not able to get these conversations going in a way that's ... what? "unbiased"? I don't know what I'm asking for, but I think it's some variant of honesty and openness. And I think that we're missing a lot of the truth, for ourselves and others, by having to couch our statements in ways that aren't entirely forthcoming.
That said... I'm still glad that medicaid covered my uninsured ass when I broke myself trying something I'm not good at (skiing). I remember thinking (as I was bundled up in the medic's sled) that I was not too different from some New Zealander with a busted body part... about to be carted off to free medical care, to get me back on my feet and working as quickly as possible.
You are reading too much into the word "virtually" — he means that once he was kicked off his parents' health insurance, no insurer would accept him because of the preexisting condition.
Anything is a pre-existing condition. I sail and my knee got whacked by the traveller car. It blew up like a pumpkin. I went on my own dime to my ortho guy. He said, it was either going to get better fast or not. It got better fast and I can't even remember which knee it was.
Pre-existing condition. Anthem denied me coverage.
My ortho guy said, I don't understand. It was a good outcome.
The ACA allowed adult children to stay on their parents insurance until age 26. Without this provision, Zach would have been kicked off his parents health plan and been uninsured at 18. He probably wouldn't have even been able to afford the heart surgery in the first place.
The heart surgery is now considered a preexisting condition when the individual tries to buy their own insurance. That's why it is mentioned, it is very likely it was covered by their family insurance.
