Highlights: GOP presidential candidates are threatening to deport international students who they accuse of sympathizing with anti-Israel terrorists. “If you are here on a student visa as a foreign national, and you’re making common cause with Hamas, I’m canceling your visa and I’m sending you home, no questions asked,” vowed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis during Wednesday night’s debate.

Those comments were just the latest salvo in the escalating Republican campaign against immigrants who the right accuses of siding with Hamas, the group that perpetrated the October 7 mass murder in Israel. It’s a trend that is setting off alarm bells for civil liberties advocates, who warn that these proposals risk conflating support for Palestinian rights or criticism of the Israeli government with an endorsement of terrorism. Moreover, they argue, threats of deportation could have a severely chilling effect on free speech and the right to protest.

The Republican demands have already gone far beyond typical campaign-trail bluster. In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) urged the Biden administration to “immediately deport any foreign national—including and especially any alien on a student visa—that has expressed support for Hamas and its murderous attacks on Israel.

These calls come as GOP leaders have pressed for even broader immigration crackdowns in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war.

  • @Rhoeri
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    251 year ago

    At this point, are conservatives still considered as Americans?

    • FuglyDuck
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      251 year ago

      Biden is a conservative. The people we’re taking about here are regressives

        • FuglyDuck
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          41 year ago

          Yup.

          But I like calling them regressives too. It’s fun watching them blink in confusion trying to figure out what I just called them.

        • FuglyDuck
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          51 year ago

          Biden is only moderate compared to current extremely-fascist tiny-dick fucks whose political goals are to drag this country kicking and screaming into a theocracy ran by evangelical extremists; many of whom have already participated in or supported an insurrection.

          In case your wondering, they’re trying to regress the US into a puritan hell hole that never existed. (Despite the puritans trying their best… they’re the reason the first amendment exists.)

          So you’ll pardon me if I call a spade a spade. And a conservative politicians a conservative politician. (By the way they’re called conservatives because they’re trying to halt progress and maintain the status quo. Which is exactly what Biden is doing. All the big achievements are really just things normal governments do…)

        • @masquenox
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          01 year ago

          A hundred years ago Bernie Sanders would have been considered conservative in the US.

          It’s like Noam Chomsky said… there are no actual conservatives left. They’re all just fascists.

    • @Burn_The_Right
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      91 year ago

      Not to me, they aren’t. To be an American, I think you should be human first. Or at least sentient.

  • @Burn_The_Right
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    1 year ago

    Hey, this is a fun idea! Conservatives have said for years they are cool with expatriating Americans and deporting them to “make America great”.

    Nearly every act of racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia and other bigotry ever committed in the U.S. has been committed by conservatives. We could really make America great by just deporting conservatives! And since this was their idea, I see no problem with starting (and ending) with them.

  • @[email protected]
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    161 year ago

    FFS not everything is black and white.

    Just because you disagree with the actions of one side doesn’t mean you automatically agree with the actions of the other side. Both sides can be in the wrong and you can stand in the middle pointing that out.


    Beyond that, you have the right to free speach; unless the government (or just some random senator) disagrees with that speach? Even if they were openly agreeing with everything HAMAS does while also condemning Israel; that’s a deportable (or even remotely punishable) offense? The fuck?

    • xerazal
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      81 year ago

      Whoa hold on, you’re making too much sense.

  • BeautifulMind ♾️
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    131 year ago

    This is the same bullshit game they play to chill every other sort of speech and expression they think ought to be stuffed into a closet and/or out of public life- threaten those that speak it, greenlight the bullying, and make life hell for people that insist on having their own opinions or identities, and then cry crocodile tears about how they hate our freedom