Trump

[ThetaReactor]

Long, but interesting.

Striking parallels to season 19 of South Park.

[F-ZeroOne]

Question for Mr. Trump! You're President! Its the first 100 days! You've banned Muslims from travelling to the US! Then you get a call - its the new Mayor of London - he wants to come over for a chat. What do you do?

Also, Trump has a dilemma - lets say that by some miracle (as a newspaper columnist speculated a couple days ago, though I think they were rather overestimating his business "acumen") Trump turns out to be a good President (for example, hes promised investment in US infrastructure - a little like Obama tried to do a few years back which got blocked by a certain party, but never mind - like railways and power grids). His dilemma is that if thats the case, that would not be what his voters wanted.

But if he sticks to his other claims, which will be exceptionally difficult because in some cases it will be logistically impossible (deport 11 million people? During an, at most, 8 year term of office?), so even if he gets in, he still can't give them what they want...

[gumboot]

I don't think he means to deport anyone. Just to block them from coming back in if they've left.

It's a pretty common situation to be in in the US. Their visa regulations don't generally consider people who travel regularly, and so the case of allowed to stay, allowed to leave, but not allowed to reenter comes up a lot. That's where I am right now.

[gilesgoat]

I don't think he means to deport anyone. Just to block them from coming back in if they've left.

It's a pretty common situation to be in in the US. Their visa regulations don't generally consider people who travel regularly, and so the case of allowed to stay, allowed to leave, but not allowed to reenter comes up a lot. That's where I am right now.

From things I heard years ago even if you are a 100% born and pure US citizen, you stay out of US for 1 year or so you have TREMENDOUS problems to get back in again.

[pogo]

No, he has said he will deport illegal immigrants. All 11m of them. On the one hand this is rational and legal. They are illegal, should not be in the US, should be deported. There is no constitutional or other bar on doing so.

But it would be a nightmare to do. First logistically the resources needed to find, round up, detain, check and eventually deport 11m people would be immense. It would require a massive expansion of government to do in a reasonable time scale, such as within Trump’s first term.

But even worse these people are not just random criminals. They are someone’s employee, someone’s employer, someone’s wife, mother, friend. There would be massive social disruption once the process started. There would probably be large scale civil disobedience as coworkers, family and friends took steps to hide those under threat of deportation. Then what do you do? Criminalise probably millions of Americans for helping? Introduce Orwellian tracking measures to find them (such as e.g. compulsory biometric ID cards which are checked all the time)?

Whatever you do it’s hard to imagine it not spinning out of control and collapsing. More likely any government would look at the costs and problems and find some excuse not to do it. Trump may not realise the problems but he would understand once the costings come in and the first bills become due.

[gumboot]

No, he has said he will deport illegal immigrants. All 11m of them.

Oh, right, I was thinking of the Muslims... but that's only 3 million.

[PFVA]

I don't think he means to deport anyone. Just to block them from coming back in if they've left.

It's a pretty common situation to be in in the US. Their visa regulations don't generally consider people who travel regularly, and so the case of allowed to stay, allowed to leave, but not allowed to reenter comes up a lot. That's where I am right now.

From things I heard years ago even if you are a 100% born and pure US citizen, you stay out of US for 1 year or so you have TREMENDOUS problems to get back in again.

No, not for as long as you pay the taxes. However Permanent Residents who leave the country for more than a year or whatever length of time can have problems to go back again.

[pogo]

Some background:

How Trump's deportation plan failed 62 years ago

In fact that is a poor model as it was on a much smaller scale than Trumps plans. But I don’t think you need to go back to 1954, it is obvious now that it is a doomed policy.

[tufty]

Trump may not realise the problems but he would understand once the costings come in and the first bills become due.

But surely the deportees' original countries of origin will pay for it?

[gilesgoat]

Trump may not realise the problems but he would understand once the costings come in and the first bills become due.

But surely the deportees' original countries of origin will pay for it?

.. I never heard of that ..

[pogo]

I think tufty was being ironic. The serious point is Trump has said he will get Mexico to pay for his border wall. When it was pointed out you can’t force other countries to do this, he instead turned his attention to remittances, the large sums Mexicans send home, as something he could raise money from.

This is as stupid an idea as his deportation one though. Remittances consist of millions of small transactions conducted through all sorts of channels. Some are sent through banks, some though dedicated transfer services like Western Union. Some are carried across the border as cash, or tradable goods. Today people can send them electronically using Paypal or Bitcoin. Not only would this be impractical to tax but try and clamp down on one area, such as banks and transfer services, and people will just switch to other tried and tested methods, or devise new ones, and the government will be able to do nothing to stop it.

[gumboot]

Trump may not realise the problems but he would understand once the costings come in and the first bills become due.

But surely the deportees' original countries of origin will pay for it?

.. I never heard of that ..

It's all down to how you package them. Mark them as "collectors editions" or something.

Alternatively, sell them at significant markdowns to pirates.

[merman]

A reporter found the first mention of Donald Trump in the New York Times.
He was being asked to explain why he and his father refused to rent their properties to minorities...

[gumboot]

What was his reason, then? I'm sure it made perfect sense.

[pogo]

Possibly it was a different era when discrimination was widespread and widely accepted. The key legislation was the Civil Rights Act in 1964, but even that did not end discrimination overnight, in particular as it did not deal with many economic rights such as equal access to property. The following by Ta-Nehisi Coates is essential reading on this. It is at the same time a detailed study of the inequalities built into the US housing system, and a searing inditement of the discrimination that was associated with it.

The Case for Reparations