At this time, no one from abroad who hasn't already immigrated should want to become a US citizen because it means nothing and you could end up stateless and deported to a real hellhole.
Also, this is not the bottom; the bottom is worse and further away. Concerned US citizens, whether by birth or by legal immigration, should at this time probably start working on an exit strategy just as a backup.
I am not saying this because it's ideal; it's far from ideal, but because one has to be realistic and pragmatic.
Idk why you’re getting downvoted for this. If watching masked federal agents grabbing kids off bus stops doesn’t make you think twice about living here what would it take? I for one will probably stay but only because I can trace my lineage back very far here but I grow less confident in that every day. It’s clear they aren’t following the constitution which means we are all at some level of risk of getting shipped to a camp.
A major consideration is that the state holds a monopoly on violence. A single person defending their citizenship with a gun might be morally right, but they will end up physically dead. And a few hundred foreign-born citizens with guns might make the news but will end up equally dead.
Unless a HUGE portion of the country decides to take up arms at the same time, the second amendment isn't going to make the difference. As the administration's policies seems to be affecting individual groups one at a time, I doubt that enough people will be willing to lay down their lives over any single issue.
A lot of good it did Alex Jeffrey Pretti, not. They have far bigger guns, more guns, and can track where you are at all times, picking you up when you're very vulnerable, like in the middle of traffic.
The 2A helps only when a whole community were to get picked up all at once, which basically never happens. When individuals get picked up one at a time, it is in effect useless. Also, the state-specific interpretation of the 2A doesn't allow concealed carry of compact automatic weapons, and even if it did, it is basically a recipe for self annihilation because there are a lot more of them.
Also, there is no way that the people will mass organize to fight ICE violently. This again is because ICE targets individuals, not entire communities.
pot calling the kettle black with that snarky little comment of yours. why do you assume that I have not protested and voted in the same way you have?
I have voted democrat in every election I could since I was 18. I participated in protests for occupy wall street and against Donald trump. where did that lead us? to this. something isn’t working.
if these people come for my family, all bets are off. i don’t care if no one is coming to save me. no one will make me and my family leave. i will die in america.
Seems more like that thing where an asshole somehow thinks its everyone else in the world that's an asshole, but it has just really been them the entire time.
I sure wish the nation's 2A fandom would join the protests against masked troops flagrantly violating citizens' rights. One has to assume the mental calculus of whether or not to execute a citizen in the streets would change if the surrounding peaceful protesters are open carrying firearms.
Unfortunately they will instead continue writing fan fiction about protecting their rights while they vote for team "take the guns first" yet again.
I'm going to assume that second amendment is going to continue to be upheld by Republican supporters. And you'll have an NRA who look at people getting executed for possessing a weapon without drawing, and keep saying "this is fine".
The hypocrisy with 2A supporters is palpable. They never supported 2A rights.
I'm a liberal (e: as in democrat) supporter of the 2A. On the other hand, while I do not and have never supported the NRA, didn't they immediately call out the republican politicians and cabinet members who were trying to pin the blame on Pretti for lawfully exercising his 2A rights before he was killed?
> The NRA labelled a suggestion by a federal prosecutor that people who carry guns risk being lawfully shot by officers as "dangerous and wrong".
> "Responsible public voices should be awaiting a full investigation, not making generalisations and demonising law-abiding citizens," the NRA said in a statement.
I mean, I guess you could imply that? But considering they have held marches when there were rumours of Democrats restricting gun ownership, it is literally the least they could do. Where are are gun touting matches? Where are the stages with "from my cold dead hands" statements?
I hope, in decades to come, that whenever the old and tired "2A protects us from tyranny" argument gets made, we can point back to the Trump years and simply reply "the guns were freaking useless, man".
We of course already knew that NBC is now yet another Party mouthpiece in the mold of the People's Daily, but if you needed confirmation just look at this beautifully contradictory opener (emphasis mine)
> WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is dramatically expanding an effort to _revoke U.S. citizenship_ for foreign-born Americans _as it works to curb immigration_
Next up is rounding up citizens into camps as it works to curb immigration, and we all know what comes next as it works to curb immigration.
Well, I hope for the citizens that they're married to card-carrying MAGA members highly ranked in the Party, as this is the only thing that matters and gives one a shield.
"A spokesman for USCIS, Matthew Tragesser, said the agency reviews cases of naturalized citizens when there is credible evidence that citizenship was obtained through fraud or misrepresentation.
[Is denaturalisation for committing fraud in the application process common in the enforcement of immigration laws of similar countries (rhetorical question)]
"We maintain a zero-tolerance policy towards fraud in the naturalization process and will pursue denaturalization proceedings for any individual who lied or misrepresented themselves," he said.
...
The Justice Department has already told attorneys to focus on denaturalization cases, and it has offered possible case examples, from "individuals who pose a risk to national security" or who have engaged in war crimes or torture to people who have committed Medicaid or Medicare fraud or have otherwise defrauded the government.
Roughly 800,000 people become naturalized citizens every year, according to DHS. To become a naturalized citizen, a candidate must be over 18, already be a legal permanent resident, speak English, know U.S. history and social studies and have "good moral character," according to the Immigration and Naturalization Act.
Foreign-born Americans were generally stripped of citizenship only if they were found to have committed fraud during their application processes. In past decades, those cases focused on ferreting out former Nazis who fled to the U.S. after World War II under false pretenses. Both Democratic and Republican administrations have sought to increase investigations, but it's still rare for a reason, a former USCIS official said.
[Is fraud in the application process consistent with "good moral character" (rhetorical question)]
...
The denaturalization process is lengthy and time-consuming, and there is a high legal bar. Even if the administration makes the push to investigate someone with the aim to denaturalize, it could take years, and a subsequent deportation would take even longer."
Republican lawmakers recently introduced a bill that would allow the government to strip citizenship from anyone found to have committed fraud against the government or joined a terrorist group or anyone who is convicted of a serious felony within 10 years of their citizenship."
Causes for denaturalization under the 1906 Act included fraud, racial ineligibility and lack of “good moral character.” In 1907, Congress expanded the laws on loss of citizenship by marking for expatriation all U.S.-born citizens who had naturalized in foreign nations and women who had married foreigners.
I'm not sure we should want to go back and dredge up the shadiest old laws for application today.
The sad thing is, laws like this are almost worse when they are used infrequently, since they the government can apply selective enforcement against people it doesn't like but are otherwise legal (we're seeing that now). Laws like this should be dredged up and revoked because they are otherwise landmines and secret weapons waiting to be abused by future (or current) governments.
This isn't some obscure law that's being "dredged up." It's been enforced continuously, including under Obama. It's just being made an enforcement priority. Previously, it was prosecuted only in serious cases, usually involving national security threats. But there's no good reason why it shouldn't be enforced for more mundane cases of immigration fraud, which are well within the scope of the law.
If it's not a serious case or a national security threat, why impose de-naturalization quotas? Surely if there are real threats out there we should be dedicating the energy to those?
(Also since you brought up Obama, why was Obama able to deport so many more people than Trump? And able to do it without terrorizing US cities with secret/poorly trained police, or needing a DHS with a larger budget than most other countries' militaries?)
You're fixated on a "technically this is legal" argument. But you're (perhaps willfully) missing the larger repercussions. This administration has lied and misled about their opponents committing fraud. You know they are not acting in good faith. So why would we want to further empower capricious, inconsistent, and politically motivated behavior?
You need to enforce it because illegal immigration is harmful in and of itself, even if the immigrants aren’t criminals or national security threats. Why do we enforce speed limits even when the person doesn’t cause a serious accident? Because the point of the law is to create a deterrent effect that compels people to follow a certain process.
Obama had an easier time deporting people because, at the time, most people in his party accepted the view that illegal immigration is harmful even without some other crime: https://www.foxnews.com/media/2010-obama-clip-goes-viral-whe.... Back then, even most Democrats embraced requiring immigrant to assimilate. If you think assimilation is important, then it naturally follows that we have to control the number of immigrants at a level where America changes them before they change America. Today, many of them reject assimilation in favor of multi-culturalism. If you embrace multi-culturalism, it’s hard to justify any limit on the number of immigrants. And at that point, illegal immigration just becomes a technicality.
For the same reason people fishing without a license is harmful even if it's not otherwise criminal. It's not about one fish. It's about a system that's designed to avoid social harm by limiting the aggregate volume of an activity, and people fraudulently bypassing those limits.
Does fishing without a license warrant the same large-scale violent carceral approach that DHS is taking? That would be an insane, disruptive overreaction for something that poses no public safety danger.
> So why would we want to further empower capricious, inconsistent, and politically motivated behavior?
Well because I want the laws enforced. Other politicians had my whole life to enforce immigration law and they chose not to. If it's between this and unchecked immigration status quo, I choose this. This is a lesson to respectfully enforce the rule of law and the will of the people lest they enforce it disrespectfully later.
> It was accomplished by simply choosing to enforce the law.
They accomplished it by terrorizing people based on the color of their skin. There's nothing "simple" about creating a gigantic secret police force. There's nothing "lawful" about blatantly ignoring court orders.
You already conceded that there is no public danger. Your argument boils down yet again Great Replacement nonsense about immigrants being bad for America.
All laws? Because there are several that the administration are actively breaking. Surely you want those enforced too? How about court orders?
> Other politicians had my whole life to enforce immigration law and they chose not to.
I mean, Obama was way more effective at deporting illegal immigrants than Trump. Even by raw numbers. So I'm not sure how you can honestly argue that de-naturalization quotas are necessary now, when they weren't before for an even more effective administration.
Your argument makes no logical sense. The presence of one invalid criterion doesn't invalidate the whole law. In the 1950s, banks used to deny people loans because they had bad credit and because of their race. So does that mean that in 2026 banks shouldn't be able to deny people loans for having bad credit?
The modern law, 8 USC 1451, was enacted in 1952, and was amended repeatedly, including under the Clinton administration. Obama launched a major enforcement operation under the law back in 2009: https://www.hoppocklawfirm.com/operation-janus-operation-sec...
I'm not making an argument, you are. You suggested that the long history going back to 1906 makes these actions normal. I'm merely pointing out that what they were doing back then was immoral, which may undermine your argument inasmuch as things that are immoral are not normal to expect from our government.
The problem is that people are detained indefinitely in extremely horrible camps (ICE facilities), essentially concentration camps, and are constantly pressured to self-deport before they get to see a judge who can clear them. It is their gameplay. Think about it happening to you. This is what's inappropriate and wrong.
Another serious problem is that the context of fraud is not well defined. Does it pertain to immigration or naturalization fraud, or to a general criminal history, or even to traffic violations? It is intentionally under-specified, open to exploitation, to selective enforcement. As noted in the Smithsonian article you linked, Supreme Court cases in the 1950s and ’60s declared unconstitutional several statutes pertaining to denationalization.
> The problem is that people are detained indefinitely in extremely horrible camps (ICE facilities), and are constantly pressured to self-deport before they get to see a judge who can clear them.
> Another serious problem is that the context of fraud is not well defined. Does it pertain to immigration or naturalization fraud, or to a general criminal history, or even to traffic violations? It is open to exploitation.
The statute says: "It shall be the duty of the United States attorneys for the respective districts, upon affidavit showing good cause therefor, to institute proceedings in any district court of the United States in the judicial district in which the naturalized citizen may reside at the time of bringing suit, for the purpose of revoking and setting aside the order admitting such person to citizenship and canceling the certificate of naturalization on the ground that such order and certificate of naturalization were illegally procured or were procured by concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation, and such revocation and setting aside of the order admitting such person to citizenship and such canceling of certificate of naturalization shall be effective as of the original date of the order and certificate..." 8 USC 1451(a).
So it is strictly limited to fraud in obtaining citizenship. But the statute is broad as to what constitutes fraud in procuring citizenship. Any "concealment of a material fact or ... willful misrepresentation" can be grounds for revoking citizenship.
> Supreme Court cases in the 1950s and ’60s that declared unconstitutional several statutes pertaining to denationalization.
Not ones related to fraud in procuring naturalized status.
It's hard to see this policy choice as anything other than putting pressure on people alleged to have committed a misdemeanor. Meanwhile, it will cost the federal government gobs of money to set up these camps, hire guards, and provide for the detainees. I don't want the government to waste my taxes on cruelty.
> In many cases, they are using detention where a simple bond would work.
But the bonds didn't work! That is what the prior administrations did, and the result of that was 22 million illegal immigrants in the country (according to a Yale and MIT study from 2018: https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/yale-study-finds-twic...).
The law specifically provides for detention and release on bond as two alternatives the Attorney General may choose between:
"On a warrant issued by the Attorney General, an alien may be arrested and detained pending a decision on whether the alien is to be removed from the United States. Except as provided in subsection (c) and pending such decision, the Attorney General—
(1) may continue to detain the arrested alien; and
(2) may release the alien on—
(A) bond of at least $1,500 with security approved by, and containing conditions prescribed by, the Attorney General; or
(B) conditional parole..." 8 USC 1226(a).
The law does not allow for cruel and unusual punishment. The Eight Amendment is strongly being violated by the administration. The ICE facilities are extremely poor, unfit for habitation, and are essentially concentration camps. Refer to https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/opinion/mass-detention-im...
The person you're arguing with is simply in favor of concentration camps and ethnic cleansing. They have 15 years of comments you can skim to verify this, they are very consistent.
You are not changing their mind and are just giving them a venue to present this abominable "if it's legal it's fine" framework.
Read the article. The article is about citizens, not illegal immigrants. Also, the fraud rules that you're pushing have everything to do with race and nothing to do with the acquisition of citizenship.
You’re welcome to that view, but most people in the world don’t believe that. Including most people in the countries that these immigrants are coming from.
I know I just think it's funny how often you ask that like it's some gotcha or clever trick rather than a core value of mine that I will proudly own.
Free movement of people will be the human rights issue of the 21st century as decolonization was the 20th and abolition the 19th. You'll die peacefully in a world made better against your will, fuming and raging, like the slaveholders & monarchists you admire.
No, I suspect I’ll die in an America that’s closer to the third world country my parents escaped from. Because entropy is a real thing and so is regression to the mean.
Invoking the eight amendment here is like some “sovereign citizen” theory of why they don’t have to pay taxes. The eighth amendment means you can’t draw and quarter people, it doesn’t mean that jails have to be nice: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/cruel_and_unusual_punishment
The study mentions a total number of immigrants may be up to twice as many as thought (10 mil vs 20 mil) but it doesn't say anything about when they arrived, how long they have been in the country, etc. You entirely blaming the last admin with no actual evidence, and muddying the facts between the total undocumented vs the amount that entered under Biden.
Also... what years was Biden president...? Your study from 2018 would be under a Trump admin, before the Biden admin was even able to "stop enforcing" this portion of immigration law and cause the (supposed) flood of undocumented immigrants. So how is it at all relevant except to confuse the issue?
> Causes for denaturalization under the 1906 Act included fraud, racial ineligibility and lack of “good moral character.”
And case law concerning this law, Ozawa vs United States:
> The decision goes on to deny that the common population could construe Ozawa, a man of Japanese descent, as white (thus, making him ineligible under section 2169 of the Revised Statutes of the United States).[9] Thus he could not be naturalized, under the current laws, in 1922.
Yeah, the article is the misleading one. Sure bud. Thanks for coming here to defend racism as a basis for citizenship.
Help me see the connection. The government can't denaturalize someone based on racial classifications. Does that mean it can't denaturalize people for any other reason?
How is denaturalizing people for lying on immigration documents "based in racism?" Canada as well, and in Sweden, France, Germany, etc., have the same law.
It makes no sense to say the law shouldn't be enforced simply because a different part of that law was struck down as being unconstitutional.
except no one (especially not this administration) is interested enforcing it vigorously as first lady might need to move back to maribor among other things
OK, but do you want it vigorously enforced, or are you just pretending that your problem with the law is uneven enforcement, rather than the law itself?
Help me understand your logic. Because the law had one invalid eligibility criterion in 1906 means we can’t enforce the law against people who lie about other things?
From 1906 to 1952 the eligibility criteria for naturalization included exceptions for fraud and for race.
You are here to say “that’s a good law actually, because fraud is bad. So we should enforce this law and retroactively denaturalize those who didn’t meet the criteria at the time.”
You act confused when people tell you this is stupid and racist.
You’re confused about what the law says. The current law, * USC 1451, was enacted in 1952, and it says you can denaturalize people for lying on their immigration paperwork. The current law has nothing to do with race, and Canada, Sweden, Germany, etc., have similar provisions.
You’re talking about a different provision of the law that hasn’t been in effect for 74 years. Nobody is talking about enforcing that provision.
>It shall be the duty of the United States attorneys for the respective districts, upon affidavit showing good cause therefor, to institute proceedings in any district court of the United States in the judicial district in which the naturalized citizen may reside at the time of bringing suit, for the purpose of revoking and setting aside the order admitting such person to citizenship and canceling the certificate of naturalization on the ground that such order and certificate of naturalization were illegally procured
It would have been illegal for, as a random example, a Bangladeshi immigrant to become a citizen until 1952. As in that citizenship was illegally procured.
So I’ll ask you directly, should we use these two laws to denaturalize everyone who, as you put it, “committed fraud”?
And what of the children of these “fraudsters”, why should they inherit citizenship from someone who never had it legally?
You are the one willfully misunderstanding the things you yourself are quoting.
> Nobody is talking about enforcing that provision.
You are. You brought up this 1906 law. You are defending its use today to denaturalize citizens.
That is literally the way laws work. Laws don't have moral statuses attached in them, we prescribe that to them as citizens. It would be wrong for this law to be enforced, and it should be revoked, but from a state perspective and a legal perspective, it IS "perfectly fine".
There is nothing morally wrong with the law either. It's morally irrelevant that it used to be in the same code provision as another law that was based on a racial classification. The law we're talking about today doesn't do that. And I would be surprised if any developed country doesn't have a similar law. Canada does, for example: https://www.canada.ca/en/services/immigration-citizenship/he...
Under the law you are suggesting is a just and legitimate basis for denaturalization, any non-white person naturalized before 1952 can be denaturalized, as they were committing fraud claiming to be white to be eligible for naturalization at the time.
I don’t have to be super imaginative to extend that to wondering how those people’s children could have inherited citizenship from a noncitizen who committed fraud against the US government.
But we’re all just trying to get back to “law and order” here right? What a stupid person you’d have to be to believe that.
If it could happen to 100 people per month, it could happen to anyone. This is of course a way to weaponize the system against dissent.
I am a naturalized US citizen. If I want to critique the administration, this is a message to me -- am I sure? What if they decide to make an example out of me? Maybe I'd better keep quiet.
Literally any law could be used to silence dissenters who have broken that law. That's not an argument against enforcing laws that have been on the books for over a century.
This administration, to put it mildly, does not have the trust of most Americans when it comes to fair enforcement of the law. That's the consequence of their own behavior.
I see your comments in all these threads, and I see that your take is generally, "these are the laws and laws should be enforced." I think there's a disconnect between this argument and what other people in these threads are unhappy about.
Question: have you never broken any laws? Maybe a technical error in a tax filing? Have you ever driven faster than the speed limit? If not you, how about the people you care about?
Do you think it's okay for the administration to go after you or your loved ones on the basis of these violations, simply because you spoke out against them? For example, the "mortgage fraud" allegations against Lisa Cook, which is something Trump himself is alleged to have done. Most people get off scott-free, but some people get the book thrown at them, and the only difference is they're on the wrong team. It's a separate conversation whether it's legal to go after that person, or if the law that's being used as pretext is or is not a good law. What I'm specifically curious about is whether you endorse lawfare, the weaponization of the legal system against political enemies.
The reason the "stripping your citizenship" thing particularly gets to me is that it's a way to destroy someone's entire life. Like, okay, maybe they go after you for the "mortgage fraud" and you end up owing fines or something, but life can generally continue. If they strip your citizenship, you have to leave your job, community, and any possessions you've accumulated, and start over somewhere else -- unless you're detained in an El Salvadorian gulag. Okay, maybe this is a tools been available to past administrations -- I haven't looked into it. I do think it's a bad tool. More importantly, I know it's a tool that's being wielded not by impartial administrators of justice but by corrupt political hacks. I submit this is... not good. What do you think?
So there are definitely large negative impacts on people affected by enforcement, and the fact that the enforcement has been so haphazard over the years has created second order problems.
If we model the national policy as a person, the person would be totally insane and basically heartless and possibly schizophrenic. Like you let somebody into your house for years, and they benefit from being in your house and they get used to it, and you may threaten every now and then that you are going to kick them out, but they can tell you aren’t serious. But then one day blam, you kick them out with no warning and you don’t even check if they have somewhere to go.
But if we think about the policy as the output of the desires and actions of a bunch of competing factions in America and not as a person, the faction that wants the people kicked out now has wanted them kicked out since they got here. They never stopped wanting them kicked out. The only thing that changed is that now, for whatever reason, the dominant politician is aligned with that faction. If that faction were in charge the whole time (not this particular politician, mind you, the faction of people who wanted them kicked out the whole time), we wouldn’t have this problem in the first place. So to them I think saying things like “it’s terribly bad for the people being kicked out”, they just go: I didn’t want them to be in that situation, I wanted them gone the entire time, and I’m not responsible for them having been here this long.
A framing I heard that doesn’t seem to have gotten traction (yet?) is that these people are “victims of migration”. The faction who wants them to leave isn’t harming them, per se, they are harmed by the totality of the migration policy situation over the last many decades. I think that makes a lot of sense
On your specific point: I think analogies to other law violations and what the consequence should be for those is not applicable, because they aren’t being removed from the country as a punishment. They are being removed because the violation is that they are here, they violated laws about being here. So the real equivalent would be: if you messed up your taxes, is it fair for the government to ask you to fix them?
Yeah with as much accuracy as the current ICE aktion on US inhabitants... In a perfect system maybe you can justify this, but when the system is ship them off and let them try to appeal that the government had no evidence from overseas then the law is effectively "cost people their job, their lifestyle, and their support system and keep them out of the country for a year or two (or permanently if they don't have savings), if they do anything I don't like"
History shows that mass internment and populous movements against a segment of society never end well for the governments that push these tactics. Unfortunately, the damage to the society is often deep and far reaching before the regimes face the consequences.
> mass internment and populous movements against a segment of society never end well for the governments
That is a convenient assumption, and while it was been true sometimes, unfortunately it often isn't true. Mass internment has worked very well in El Salvador and China. There's no reason to think it can't continue to work in the US.
Also, this is not the bottom; the bottom is worse and further away. Concerned US citizens, whether by birth or by legal immigration, should at this time probably start working on an exit strategy just as a backup.
I am not saying this because it's ideal; it's far from ideal, but because one has to be realistic and pragmatic.
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