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Yeah that’s awful. A reasonable compromise here would be giving people who’ve been here for a certain amount of time amnesty and a green card. Hard to support this
Turning immigration policy into a life size game of hide and seek is not just silly, it's encouraging a parallel economy of crime.
People taking illegal shortcuts can't be tolerated. I'd argue the opposite, that your residence and even citizenship should be revoked if you obtained them fraudulently.
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I think some kind of deal for illegals who turn themselves in might work. No guarantees, but perhaps waiving certain restrictions on them applying for legal entry. It could reduce the workload while getting some of the more sympathetic cases into the legitimate system.
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We tried that compromise in the 80's, and it didn't work then to stem the tide of illegal immigration it only encouraged it. Why would things be any different this time?
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Why do you believe this would be a reasonable- as in, reason-driven- as opposed to a pathetic- as in, pathos-driven- compromise?
Keep in mind that weaponized emotional appeals- including appeals to sympathy for social compact violators and shaming campaigns against those not showing enough pity towards preferred beneficiaries- have been a hallmark of the American culture war for decades now, and which the current political context is part of a political revolt against.
This is particularly relevant to this example, as a 'let's compromise on amnesty for immigration reform' was bargained in the past, except that the amnesty given did not lead to actual immigration enforcement afterwards.
Now your proposal is a compromise of further amnesty instead of enforcement for... what, exactly?
Half of half of half a cake?
I'm no American, so feel free to ignore me, but are you sure about this? Is there a political revolt against those kinds of tactics, or is it merely a political revolution that aims to switch out the old good/bad distinction for a new set?
First one, then the other, seems the most likely way it will go. Or we'll go back to the old set. But there's definitely an at least temporary reduction of pity, helped along by the administration's wise choice of targets (scary-looking tattooed guys).
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Yes. I would re-emphasize the 'part' as in 'is not the whole,' but I would consider it a significant part of the rise of Trump in the Republican party, and later Trump's rise in the broader American electorate.
I don't think you're asking if such tactics were used in the culture-war, so I'll just gloss over the basic point with re-stating that emotional pressures were not only used, but often major elements of the culture war. One of the psychological points of a twitter mob or cancellation campaign is the public shaming ritual dynamic, a significant point of the progressive stack concept is to re-align emotional sympathies for whoever claims the best position deserving of public support against others, and a key function of the 'lived experience' justification was that one's personal views and emotions were on their own basis for deferrence and grounds to dismiss counter points. Resisting these techniques requires resisting the prioritization of emotional appeals / pressures intended to change your position.
For the Republicans, Trump's rise in republican circles was part of a voter-base revolt against what one of our former posters called the Republican patrician class- the Republican elites including the Bush-Cheney dynasties, the Romneys, and other dominant parts of the party in the pre-Trump era. They had been dominant in part because of their alliance with the evangelical / religious-interest wings of the party, i.e. the moralizers of the right. Just from an intra-republican power struggle perspective, Republican party culture would need to develop cultural antibodies to defy and dismiss the religious right moralists (who were a very significant force in the early 2000s, albeit running out as a national movement by that point).
What made the Patrician class discredited to the Republican base, beyond just technocratic failures such as Iraq or the 2008 financial crisis, was their reputation / perception for compromising on Republican base positions for the sake of left-framing media coverage. This was the model of Republican Party wants position A, left-aligned media raises sympathy argument against position A and dares patrician polity to do the unsympathetic thing, Patrician folds / strikes a compromise legislation which trades away base interests for [thing the base doesn't care as much about]. Base was then told it was necessary / just / moral / the best they could expect.
Trump's surge in the Republican primaries for the 2016 cycle was in large part because he was willing to fight on despite to moral condemnations. This was most notable on the topic of immigration, where Trump would do things like counter 'think of the innocent and desperate refugees' with 'rapists and criminals.' This itself was a politized distortion of the full quote, but the reason the quote was a Trump success rather than a slam dunk is because it demonstrated Trump was willing to defy the sympathy-paradigm that was trying to be used. A similar point exists for the failure of the Clinton campaign's October surprise of the lockerroom talk tapes. It could only fail because the electorate was not moved by the attempts to incite and manipulate them via emotional instigation. In other words, the American electorate was sharing in the cultural antibodies against that sort of shame-and-disavow technique.
As the culture war continued, my view is that this tendency got stronger. It's been further by the discreditation of technocrats in the COVID crisis, and with it those covid policy justifications that often ran on emotional appeals (hug a chinese person to show you're not racist; don't protest against covid restrictions because think of others; protest despite covid restrictions for cause more deserving emotional support). But it was also discredited by the people often conveying those emotional appeals (particularly media intermediaries) themselves being discredited as a class, for- among other reasons- pretty transparent attempts to manipulate for political interests. (The conformist pressures against anyone who raised the Biden age-electability issues; the manufactured joy to try and build Harris support during the period of the campaign which ended shortly after she had to commit to public speaking.)
It's a dynamic I feel is visible now with Trump's disruptions to the American federal government, like the shutdown of USAID. This is a policy that is popular despite the stories by anti-Trump/pro-USAID medias about those in desperate need abroad, or think of the former government workers who are living in uncertainty, and so on. These are empathy / sympathy appeal stories. They also are not changing the general electorate- and by extension cultural- willingness to press on despite them.
Because the appeal to emotion is, while not dead, has been scarred as a result of it being used to flagellate the non-compliant. Now the formerly non-compliant are moving against the interests / preferences of those who did, and in many cases still are, attempting to use emotional appeals and emotional pressures and please for compassion / accusations of cruelty.
It is not that 'cruelty is the point'- it is that the accusation of cruelty is no longer sufficiently deterring. And since people tend to attempt to be internally consistent, a resistance to emotional appeals on one front increases the tendency to resist emotional appeals on another front.
It may not be a central part of the electorate revolt, but I would consider it a part of it, in the same sense that destroying the method of abuse is a part of the revolt against an abuser, even if there are more central reasons for the revolt in general.
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Yeah this is definitely a culture war issue. I just feel like being excessively harsh on illegal immigration is punching down. Do you feel intense competition for jobs or homes from illegal immigrants? If you do, then it makes sense to be wary about more immigration.
But this isn't being excessively harsh - this is complying with the laws (and punishments as written). There's nothing "excessive" about it.
That's the thing about national economies - we all experience warped market conditions (for employment, housing, healthcare, and basic goods) because of illegal immigration. That these experience may be more acute in TX,NM,AZ doesn't mean they are not experience elsewhere in the country.
A massive percentage of the American agricultural workforce is of questionable legality. Yet they've become so endemic that any agricultural concern that tries to play fair and not hire illegals finds their production costs are too high and gets competed out of business. Think about that for a second; there is a large American industry wherein the only way to remain viable is to flirt with legally dubious hiring practices.
I would like to see swift and stubborn crackdowns on that. Excessive would be letting illegal employment continue to be de facto all across the country.
Well if a huge portion of ag labor is from illegal immigrants, perhaps we shouldn’t be so hasty in deporting them. Most of us still, uh, need to eat every day.
Issue is that other Anglo ex-colonies have legal migrant farm worker visas, like Aus and Canada. It’s called “wuffing”. While we don’t have that at all, we just had an unspoken agreement that you let in some amount of illegal workers to fill the massive need of agriculture help come harvest time in California and other states. Effectively it does the same thing
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It’s not that their production costs are too high- it’s that they are unable to find legal workers at any reasonable wage for the skill level.
There are parts of the American economy where the only people ‘doing the work’ are 1) on a management track(this is a minority and they will not be doing the actual work for very long) 2) here illegally or 3) working there under court order(often parolees, child support delinquents, etc). Plenty of construction trades(especially roofing), most of agriculture, meatpacking plants, etc. I would rather have meat on the shelves and roofs on the houses than live in a 100% white society(not that deporting the illegals will get us there anyways) and republican lawmakers agree with me.
Also tagging @HughCaulk.
I agree with you. I'm not advocating for deportations because of race animus. I'm advocating for 1) deportations of illegal immigrants AND 2) a massive overhaul of labor laws.
Here's is my big post on that point
I don't buy the idea that natural born Americans "just don't want to work" - I believe that combination of the welfare state and labor laws actively prevent them from easily getting basic level jobs. The only way for these basic level jobs (exactly the ones you listed) to get done is to illegally employ foreigners. To be blunt; we have outlawed cheap labor in this country, so the only way to hire cheap labor is to do it illegally one way or another. Who is going to have an easier time accepting and illegal job; someone who is already violating US law or someone who is not?
It would be perfectly legal to pay your workers less than illegals are making on a roofing crew. This isn’t 2005. People willing to work for low wages just don’t exist in America. Increasingly, Americans won’t do physically difficult low status work at all.
This is a major problem with post scarcity societies like the modern west. Somebody has to nail shingles and dig ditches and slaughter animals and pick produce. But you have to be willing to let people starve if they don’t. People without scarcity won’t do that. People are perfectly willing to buy strangers a hot dog outside of seven eleven. ‘Literally starve to death’ isn’t a realistic bad outcome in a society where food is a trivial expense to people.
Well, the solution is to make the work well paid, and high status. Let Hollywood make flood of movies about brave and manly construction workers and vegetable pickers.
Yes, Soviet efforts to do this completely failed, but Hollywood is Hollywood. If you can make cool and prestigious as hard, dirty and dangerous profession as cow herder, you can do anything.
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Agree with all of your points.
In this case, I'm going to defer to you as your post history (assuming a stranger on the internet isn't lying!) does demonstrate a more consistent exposure to these realities.
Well, then capitalist solution is to raise the wages. There is no problem in finding oil workers, no matter how remote is North Dakota and how dirty and dangerous work it is.
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At the risk of pointing out the obvious, if a business isn’t getting the employees it needs in the numbers it wants them, then the business isn’t paying high enough wages. ‘Reasonable’ is something that potential employees decide collectively through the market.
Whether the meat industry can survive paying true market wages for meat packing jobs is another matter. But importing millions of indentured labourers every generation is not going to work as a long term solution.
Hell, what happens if, by some nebulous social mechanism, the immigrants just stop wanting to do the shit jobs for sub-par pay, but keep coming anyways?
The "nebulous mechanism" is the welfare state, and what happens is Europe.
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Trucking used to be a well-paying job with excellent safety standards, and now it's been destroyed in the US and Canada by illegal immigration. How many parts of the American economy are we going to sacrifice to squeeze an extra few cents of labor costs while the costs get shifted onto society in general?
What's the net gain when we have truckers blasting past construction signs into oncoming traffic because you're allowed to bring an interpreter to the commercial license test now?
There’s still natives that want to do trucking, and it’s still a well paying job. On this specific issue, no, we shouldn’t let immigrants do it. But I wasn’t talking about trucking- I was talking about fruit picking, meatpacking, construction, etc.
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How high have you tried?
These concerns pay well enough for ambitious bilinguals on a management track to grind out; still can’t get people.
...I hate to just ask again, but, uh, how high have you tried? My general belief is that supply curves slope upwards.
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Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.
These people knowingly fucked over everyone who actually goes through the legal process. You're being swindled if you think they're victims.
Other counties legally have migrant farm worker visas like Aus and Canada. We don’t have this system in lieu of “illegal” immigrant work. You’d need to set up a similar system here and transition all these workers to it, otherwise food will be rotting on the vine in California
Even if it were true, which it isn't, I fail to see how it's a counter argument in any way.
Did it become acceptable to break the law if your business is not profitable and nobody told me?
I swear, farmers have to fill in tons of paperwork to do the slightest thing and get crucified if they don't, but somehow in this one particular case, everyone should just look the other way?
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We have a farmworker visa system already. Most of the shepherds in the US are from Peru for example; their mountain grazing season is the opposite of ours.
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They broke the law. You can't just have people flagrantly ignoring laws, especially ones as big as illegal entry into a country. It devolves trust in the entire system massively.
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Unfortunately it's the natural and necessary reaction to things like benefits specifically for illegal immigrants and certain states like California bending over backwards to favor illegals over citizens and legal residents.
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That just incentivizes people to have kids tge second they get here. If you can’t deport when the illegal has American kids, you encourage people to cross the border pregnant and once the baby pops out, they get to stay.
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I (UK citizen) married a US citizen in 2023. We started the procedure to get me a green card immediately. There's a good chance it won't be completed until 2026. We're lucky enough that my wife is able to live in the UK so we can be together while we wait. Many of those waiting alongside us for spousal visas to be approved aren't so fortunate and have to stay apart in separate countries. I don't have a huge issue with the slow processing time, i approve of rigorous vetting for green cards. A number of my wife's friends in the US wonder why I don't just enter the country illegally. They even say that they'll find me work on the black market, no problem. Commonplace stories like the Mexican woman above are why they think this. Why play fair and by the rules if there's no penalty for cheating the system. If, instead, you actually get rewarded for cheating the system.
No, I don't agree that this woman should be given a green card. She should be deported and so should her children.
Well her kids are US citizens if they were born here. We aren’t some barbaric European country!
Yeah you get paid for cheating the system. Welcome to America! Seems like you’ve got a lot to learn.
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The pathway to citizenship is out of the country and to the back of the line.
There's your reasonable compromise. Not amnesty, not ever amnesty, not ever again.
There is no line. There is no path to citizenship for random people.
I don't want infinite immigrants, either, but I've always found it disingenuous the way some people act like their only problem with immigrants is that they are coming in illegally and jumping the queue instead of waiting their turn. The implication is that there is some kind of workable immigration process everyone can apply for and that the only reason not to do so is because you are too impatient to wait a few years or too dismissive of law and authority to bother going through the proper channels.
This is totally false. There is no path to immigration for the vast majority of people. If you support enforcing current immigration law, you support denying millions the chance to live and work in the U.S. for no other reason than they were born outside of it, condemning them to a much worse quality of life in countries full of poverty and violence, and you need to own that.
I support it, because allowing unlimited immigration combined with a welfare state, affirmative action, and NIMB zoning is unsustainable, but I'm not missing the proper mood; I feel bad about it, but it has to be done.
(Caplan would chime in with the keyhole solution of denying the immigrants welfare and civil rights, but he's delusional if he thinks that's politically stable)
Yes. The average condition of humanity is indeed full of poverty and violence in an economically disadvantaged country. The fallacy in the pro-immigration-for-all argument is thinking that geographic change (transplanting people from poor countries to rich ones) will solve what is fundamentally a social problem (poor countries are poor and remain so because they have poor-quality people). One only need look at Sweden, Germany, or France to see what happens when you allow in high numbers of low potential immigrants. Current US immigration law as written (very different from what is actually enforced) recognizes this and is designed to filter for only the best, brightest (or at least richest), and highest potential immigrants who will add value to the nation. This is a wise policy that reflects the fundamental instincts of nations through the millenia. It is only recently that society has become peaceful enough for suicidal empathy not to be exterminated by Darwinistic processes, though the jury is perhaps still out on that in the long term.
I firmly believe that if you advocate for less restrictive immigration rules, you should be legally obligated to support those immigrants at your own expense, in your own house. If you cannot put your money and life where your mouth is, you have no business telling the rest of us to do so.
It's also not self-evidently more just even if it were true.
A lot of the criticisms of hardline immigration positions on the grounds of geographic luck count just as much against most migrants themselves.
Why do central Americans have a disproportionate right to see their living standards improved, even if we agree borders are unjust? There are poorer people who couldn't even conceive of making journey. Clearly, nothing about de facto not enforcing the law eliminates the problem either.
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There's a line, it just might be decades or centuries long. If you apply now and life extension is invented within your lifetime, you just might make it in.
(Some of the later Japanese emigrants to Brazil must have been kicking themselves a few years onward).
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Or you could put your skills to use making your home country less of a shithole so that you don't need to immigrate
This is simply not doable in Venezuela, short of an armed takeover. Mexico has some bright spots but it’s not the sort of thing talented individuals can improve.
Right, but a multiplicity of individuals makes a group. I’m sympathetic to their case but emigration is acting as a release valve for the kind of pressure that formed first world countries to begin with.
Is this supposing that the inflows of immigrants are high enough that, if one were to indoctrinate, train, arm, and organize them, that they could be a force large and powerful enough to overthrow Maduro and suppress Chavismo into oblivion? This might be true, but I would like a reminder on the numbers involved.
No, it’s saying that change tends to arise from the efforts of frustrated, resourceful people. Those people are (understandably) deporting themselves from the countries that need them.
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The premier first world country was not formed that way; it was formed by emigration.
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Seriously? Your advice to someone born in Venezuela or in Mexico is to stay and use their skills to fix their countries? Those places are like San Francisco on steroids. The government stops any value from being built or protected, and if against all odds you do manage to build some wealth it will immediately get stolen from you by the government or by criminals.
Just because it is in our best rational interest to stop them from immigrating doesn't mean it isn't in their best rational interest to try escape from those hellholes. Even if, democracy being what it is, a large enough number of them will turn first world countries into more of the same, much like Californians escaping to Texas and Florida vote for the same policies that made them leave.
From "Policy Debates Should Not Appear One-Sided" by Eliezer Yudkowsky:
My concern is that many of these people are the reason their home countries are San Fran on steroids. Moreover, even if the first bunch are not they create linkages to future immigrants that might be.
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Pretty much this. If we really wanted to stop some illegal immigration, the most optimal thing to do would probably be to delete shit governments from across Central and South America--but very few people have the appetite or political will to even consider such a thing.
EDIT: I've even raised a similar point before.
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Nobody's got that much skill in some countries (e.g. Haiti), and almost nobody has it anywhere.
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I don't think "fake it 'til you make it" is a very good basis for a legal system. Continuously breaking the law for years is worse than breaking it for days, all else being equal.
Yeah I just don’t think these petty deportations are good politics though. There are 10+M immigrants under Biden, and we are selectively going to deport the criminals (good) or the well known ones in their community? Doesn’t seem wise.
Next Dem president likely to let 20M in next round, at this rate…
What constitutes "Good Politics" is indeed the core of the disagreement here. You and others arguing for accepting the illegals appear to believe that Reds should accept large-scale, chronic violation of the law as a fiat accompli, because what can we do about it, after all?
One thing we could do about it would be to, as Blues have a long history of doing, simply stop pretending that laws mean anything when they contradict what we perceive to be desirable or necessary outcomes. And then you and others who make arguments similar to the above can offer your "sure what they did was grossly illegal, but it's done and it'd be far too much effort to fix" arguments to the Blues instead, and see how receptive they are.
I understand that you might not think this sounds like a good idea. What I'm curious about is why specifically it would not be a good idea.
It’s not a good idea because some industries like Ag are completely dependent on this “illegal” labor. If you could snap your fingers tomorrow and instantly deport them all, you’re going to have food shortages and food rotting on the vine in California.
Trust me, I’d rather have a few more Mexican neighbors than have food shortages!
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Maybe they think this is a battered wife approach to politics and are just tired of it.
I’m sure this tit-for-tat escalation will be our new reality
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Highly-publicized deportations seem like meat for the base, and also serve as a chilling effect for illegal immigrants. It's also a wedge issue where the Right gets to paint the Left as opposing the Rule of Law.
I don't see any reason to deport immigrants who applied and were accepted. At worst, the government could stop approving new applications and let any existing temporary ones expire without renewal.
Immigrants who commit normal crimes (like murder) or break immigration law should be deported and/or punished in other ways. Just like anyone else.
That sounds like a call to deport 20M extra so that the immigrant numbers are at the right level at the end of their term. (jk?)
There were over 10M illegal immigrants under Biden, so that would need ~4k daily deportations for the entire presidency to undo. Seems unlikely/impossible to happen.
Unfortunately it’s a lot easier to let people in than kick them out.
I believe a statement like this would technically be illegal in large parts of the world as it would effectively constitute holocaust denial. You probably don't want to go on the record as stating that it is "impossible" for governments to remove millions of people in a few years.
Yeah true we should just round up every brown person in sight. Easily doable, you got me here!
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What a weird statement to make. Obviously, US deportation logistics are limited by certain legal and ethical boundaries that did not constrain the Nazis at all.
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Why? When it comes to the capacity of modern states for mass deportations, I like to point to the example of the post-War "flight and expulsion" of Germans:
So it looks to me that the real question is one of will.
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The thing is you don't even need to directly deport most of them. Like people said upthread, this is very unphotogenic and faces contest opposition on multiple levels. What you need to do is make them virtually unhireable.
A Haitian you hired caused a vehicular manslaughter ? Great, the trucking company CEO gets tried for something like felony murder, and the company pays a fine high enough that they'll be in the red for the next quarter. A bunch of Mexicans built a house which doesn't have a single right angle? Great, we'll make it so it makes fines for every code violation raise exponentially. You knowingly helped people cross the border illegally so that you'll hire them? Great, your company gets dissolved and auctioned off.
Within weeks, 75-90% would deport themselves.
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Well, shucks. Guess it's best to just give up completely, then. /s
If it's hard, then that just means it takes more work. Might as well get started now.
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Making a very large fine an alternative to deportation works. Basically what the IRS does in most cases.
Why pay for a visa the slow legal way, or a million dollar trump gold card when you can just pay a fine?
Great incentives.
Edit: Edited the fine size, you did say 'very large fine'.
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Well it’s unlikely these people can pay a fine. They often do menial labor tasks for below minimum wage (main reason you hire undocumented labor in the first place)
They do not work for below minimum wage. They work for somewhat less than American citizens that would be doing those jobs(mostly ex-cons anyways). This is well above the legal minimum wage, even if it’s still not a very nice salary in either case.
Here in South Florida at least a lot of waitresses are illegal immigrants who don't even get paid any wage at all; tips are literally all they get. If you are already violating labor law by hiring someone, you might as well go all the way.
I’ve never seen that, but, you know, it doesn’t really surprise me- more of a violation of the letter of the law than the spirit.
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