US Supreme Court upholds Biden administration’s claim of unrestricted power to separate families

anticolonialist@lemmy.world · 5 days ago

US Supreme Court upholds Biden administration’s claim of unrestricted power to separate families

mozz@mbin.grits.dev · 5 days ago

Yeah, but a big part of the Goebbels game is to create an overall picture of separate events that paint the larger falsehood you want to create. For anyone other than the single-digit percent of people who decide to click on the article, the headline forms one more little thing they’re scrolling past that paints an overall picture of “Biden is malicious on immigration and trying to hurt people,” which I think is actually one of the most successful totally-made-up realities they’ve managed to get into the public consciousness to try to depress support for him among people that would otherwise be inclined to.

I’m a little suspicious of the meat of the article, too – like how much connection is there between these particular lawyers who made this filing, and Biden (presumably he didn’t weigh in on this particular case, but are they even State Dept lawyers? The article says so, but I thought usually the lawyers for this kind of thing would be rank and file DOJ immigration lawyers, maybe I am mistaken)

Are the tattoos that they said justified non renewal really totally innocent non MS13 tattoos that the racist immigration apparatus freaked out about, as his lawyers are claiming? (easily possible but also not guaranteed to me simply because his lawyers are claiming it)

But the meat of the article is maybe at the “IDK I have some questions” level, whereas the headline is what’ll have honestly most of the impact on the public consciousness, and it’s well up into “get the fuck out of here with that explicit propaganda” level.

rockSlayer@lemmy.world · 5 days ago

Well this is a firehose of bullshit.

What part of the article is factually wrong?
What specifically gives you the feeling that the article is unreliable?
Why does it matter whether or not the lawyers representing the state department work at the state department?
Why should tattoos of any kind be an indication of whether a non-citizen spouse can get a visa?
How exactly does the headline mischaracterize the ruling or the majority opinion?

mozz@mbin.grits.dev · 5 days ago

I have begun to identify arguing against something that isn’t quite what your opponent is saying, as a way of disagreeing with something that it’s hard to muster up any good faith arguments against, as one of the key hallmarks of bad faith debating on Lemmy.

Obviously I am not saying that any part of the article is purely made up; I am saying this is a specific technique of highlighting individual data points to paint a misleading picture, and then giving what I feel is additional context which gives the lie to the picture that they’re trying to paint. And, I would add that it’s also using wildly inaccurate phrasing to communicate technically-not-lies to dial even further up the level of dishonesty that can be achieved. But no, I’m not aware of any of the data points actually being lies or made up.
I think I made my explanation pretty clear already
Because the State Dept actually does work for Biden, whereas the DOJ is very specifically separated from direct control by the executive weighing in on individual cases even though it’s part of the executive branch
If you have actual gang tattoos that’s an indication of criminality. Again, for all I know, that part is crap and US immigration is just being racist against innocent tattoos; I’m just pointing out that there is such a thing as gang tattoos and I would support using them as a reason to make a bad inference about the person.
“Unrestricted power” is patently false; no less than 3 different courts spent quite a while evaluating whether to restrict the State Dept’s power in this case, and presumably they’ll still be able to do that and US immigration will still have to show a judge good reasons if they want to remove someone from the country in the future. The issue is just where are the boundaries and restrictions on the power. Also, “separate families” is grossly misleading, since it could lead a reasonable reader who wasn’t up to speed on the minutiae of immigration policy to claim (as multiple Lemmy users have done to me in the past) that Biden is continuing and even expanding the policies of removing children from parents that were so infamous in the Trump administration.

rockSlayer@lemmy.world · edit-2 5 days ago

I’m not going to keep the numbered thing up, because a few of those answers are good enough for me.

I don’t think the headline is wrong, I think this headline is indicative of the problem with headlines in general: they fundamentally can’t provide appropriate context. The state department does have the unrestricted power to separate spouses now, in a very narrow context where the non-citizen is not in the US (for now - we know where SCOTUS and Trump want this to go). Yes, it could have been better, they always can be. I’ve only seen maybe a handful of perfect headlines in my entire life, and most have come from the Rolling Stone. I don’t think this slant is any worse than mainstream headlines, and miles better than anything that would come from conservative media. I think the reaction is that as a country, we’re used to these angles coming from the right so it feels wrong for there to be leftist critique in news.

Why would it matter either way if the lawyers report directly to him or to the DOJ? The DOJ is still administered by Biden’s handpicked appointee. This decision is inextricably linked to Biden’s administration. We don’t need to know if this is what he wanted in his heart-of-hearts, we just need to know that his administration is why we now have this majority ruling in the first place. The lawsuit would not have existed if the State Department didn’t try to fuck with people’s lives.