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> Besides, going by legality, illegal immigrants "couldn't" even have passed the border into the country to begin with.

Of course they could. Being an "illegal immigrant" does not imply unlawful border crossing. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_to_the_Uni...

"Visa overstayers mostly enter with tourist or business visas.[99] In 1994, more than half[108] of illegal immigrants were Visa overstayers whereas in 2006, about 45% of illegal immigrants were Visa overstayers.[109]"

(Here in the UK, the vast majority of illegal immigrants arrived legally and overstayed their visas. Yet our Conservative government, who oversaw a large increase in such arrivals, tried to blame all the country's woes on a few small boats illegally crossing our southern border; which is effectively a rounding error).

As an aside, refugees are actually allowed to make unlawful border crossings. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_Relating_to_the_Sta...

"The contracting states shall not... impose penalties on refugees who entered illegally in search of asylum if they present themselves without delay (Article 31), which is commonly interpreted to mean that their unlawful entry and presence ought not to be prosecuted at all[18]"



>Of course they could. Being an "illegal immigrant" does not imply unlawful border crossing.

Same difference. Whether it's border crossing or visa overstay, from a pure legality aspect the answer is still "they couldn't".

>The contracting states shall not... impose penalties on refugees who entered illegally in search of asylum if they present themselves without delay (Article 31), which is commonly interpreted to mean that their unlawful entry and presence ought not to be prosecuted at all

I'd wager 99% do not "present themselves without delay", so don't fall in this case...


> Of course they could. Being an "illegal immigrant" does not imply unlawful border crossing. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_to_the_Uni

Nice catch!

Keeping with the theme:

> Yet our Conservative government, who oversaw a large increase in such arrivals, tried to blame all the country's woes on a few small boats illegally crossing our southern border

a) What was the exact claim (the word "all" caught my eye)?

b) is it the sole claim?

c) If one person in a group does something, are all members of the group "doers of that thing"?

d) for (d), does the answer depend on what the thing is, and if so should we perhaps imagine everyone is speaking a bit tongue in cheek?

Etc


Also, is the impact e.g. on crime of "visa overstays", that is, from people who were vetted, registered, and got a visa, the same as that of randos just passing the border with zero oversight?

Even if the first category is higher in numbers (and assuming there are correct numbers for the latter), the crime stats between the two are probably quite different. Especially since "visa overstays" could also count some people waiting for a delayed renewal, or coming in for 6 months and staying 5 or whatever.


It's funny to watch computer programmers (and various experts), whose day job is literally handling complexity and producing truth, fail so quickly and utterly at simple culture war topics. It is like the weirdest thing, people like you (though you did make at least one error somewhere in this thread) are 1 in 1000++ in my estimation.




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