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Caesar's wife must be above suspicion, but Trump's transition team and ultimately cabinet, seems rife with conflicts of ignorance. The Intercept reports that:
Palantir Technologies, the data mining company co-founded by billionaire and Trump transition advisor Peter Thiel, will likely assist the Trump Administration in its efforts to track and collect intelligence on immigrants, according to a review of public records by The Intercept. Since 2011, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency's Office of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) has paid Palantir tens of millions of dollars to help construct and operate a complex intelligence system called FALCON, which allows ICE to store, search, and analyze troves of data that include family relationships, employment information, immigration history, criminal records, and home and work addresses.
I guess this is what happens when you elect a businessman to political office: they run it like a business.
Working closely with a President-elect who has pledged to dramatically expand ICE, Thiel's varied connections to the immigration agency place him in a position to potentially benefit financially from a deportation campaign that carries highly personal stakes for millions of Americans.
They always say: you have nothing to worry about, if you have nothing to hide.
Palantir, which is backed by the CIA's venture capital arm, did not respond to a request for comment regarding its ICE contracts and concerns over potential conflicts of interest. Peter Thiel spokesperson Jeremiah Hall declined to comment on a list of emailed queries, including a question asking whether Thiel has yet signed the Trump transition ethics agreement.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Wednesday December 14 2016, @04:27AM
Precisely. Allowing people to live in the US without the appropriate documentation, but not being citizens either leads to all sorts of problems. The exploitation you refer to is a very real problem and one that can only be fixed by enforcing the laws in place. Allowing people to inhabit a reality of no rights and basically no recourse if something happens is not good for society in genera.
I don't doubt that we'd have to loosen up some of our immigration laws if we did actually manage to effectively crack down on illegal and undocumented aliens in the US. But, that would be for the best as it would mean that the immigrants and non-citizen residents would have at least some protections under the law, even if they don't have all of the ones that come with citizenship.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 14 2016, @09:26AM
Agreed.
Some time ago, a couple years or more, someone suggested that "undocumented" aliens be given some status as second class citizens. To me, it seems that is the status they have today - second class citizens. They are permitted to work and live here, and the law turns a blind eye, but there is always the threat that the law will open it's eyes. And, that is entirely wrong. Either a person is an American - or he is not. The law needs to distinguish who is, and who is not, and ENFORCE the deportation of those who are not. At the same time, the law needs to ENFORCE THE RIGHTS of those who are deemed to be citizens.
There are no second class citizens. The concept is anathema to America, and the American way of life.
Like most problems, the longer it is ignored, the harder it will be to resolve the issue at some future time.