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points by skulk 1 day ago | 0 comments

Immigration in the US has always been more complicated than "no papers? gotta go." Moving north to do some seasonal work then moving back south is a very old thing, and was enshrined into law by the "Bracero program" in the post ww2 era. In the 60s, however, it was ended abruptly, giving migratory workers no choice but to stay illegally. ... and business owners no choice but to keep hiring them.

The idea that illegal immigrants need to be deported (and not have a path to legal residency) comes from a view that those jobs should go to American citizens (which will bring economic pain that is intolerable) or from a view that browns don't belong in the USA.

[–] aniviacat 1 day ago

> The idea that illegal immigrants need to be deported (and not have a path to legal residency) comes from a view that those jobs should go to American citizens (which will bring economic pain that is intolerable) or from a view that browns don't belong in the USA.

Doesn't the qualification of them being illegal immigrants imply that they aren't going through the legal processes immigrants should go through to get work and residency?

If illegal immigrants gain the same rights as legal immigrants, why even bother following the rules?

[–] skulk 1 day ago

As others have pointed out in the thread, those who slurp up the surplus value of the labor of these undocumented workers would hate to lose this leverage of "Oh you want the same rights American workers get? Don't want me making a phone call to my buddy over at the police department!"

The purpose of a system is what it does.

[–] Morizero 1 day ago

Yeah if they actually wanted to solve this "problem", they would go after the business owners who incentive them coming here via pay.

[–] RajT88 1 day ago

That happens occasionally. But it mostly doesn't happen. Mostly, the people who end up with criminal charges are the illegal immigrants. If you dig into the numbers it tells the story of a vanishingly small number of companies (like hundreds per year out of millions) getting scrutiny. The industries which get the scrutiny are the ones where people could end up dead or injured (construction, meat packing, etc.). (According to Gemini - grain of salt)

[–] FireBeyond 1 day ago

A few years ago there was a huge set of raids at Tyson facilities - 900+ undocumented immigrants working there.

Awkwardly, it was made known to the media that Tyson knew all about it, to the point where they had provided those workers written instructions and tips on how to stay under the radar with respect to taxes, financials, immigration, etc.

When a journalist asked about this at the press conference where DHS was crowing over the success of the raid? "That's not something that is being investigated as part of this operation." Well, what about separately? "We are not investigating the company."

A lot of the theory was that like some other food production firms (Hormel dealing with people getting sick from y'know, inhaling aerosolized pig brain), that it was very much a "won't someone rid us of these meddlesome immigrants" (the ones advocating about child labor, wage theft, OSHA violations). Come round these ones up, you get a press conference and we solve a labor issue.

[–] gadders 1 day ago

Oh yes. I mean ICE could raid some of those big meat packing factories tomorrow, but obviously that would cut down on donations.

[–] jimbokun 1 day ago

Sorry is this an argument for or against stronger immigration enforcement?

[–] dpkirchner 1 day ago

It's an argument in favor of stronger immigration enforcement against employers.

Reducing illegal immigration is extremely simple and inexpensive -- toss a few Big Ag CEOs in something like "alligator Alcatraz". There's no step 2.

[–] cmorgan31 1 day ago

You have to prove you are actually verifying these things and our government has done a pretty bad job at it. We have at this point hundreds of incidents of legal residents and citizens caught in this fascist net.

[–] linuxftw 1 day ago

The issue is that past administrations of given them quasi-legal status. You hop the border, claim 'asylum', then you get a court date years away.

So the first step is revoking the fraudulent claims, and processing the cases so they can be deported legally.

[–] 5upplied_demand 1 day ago

Couldn't you just better fund the court system so the court date isn't years away? Or improve the citizenship process? Maybe some of that $100 billion we gave to ICE could have gone to the courts for faster processing of these specific cases. That would seem like the more civilized way to do it.

Instead, we spent the money setting up a heavily armored police organization to forcibly find, process, and detain people who "might" have broken a law. Putting everyone in a detention center doesn't really seem like a great way to speed up the processing time. In the meantime multiple actual US citizens have been killed, detained, and intimidated. Makes you wonder what the actual goal was in the first place.

[–] linuxftw 1 day ago

Well, as it happens these immigration court judges were appointed by previous administrations, and they were intentionally slow walking every case. The Trump admin fired a bunch of those judges earlier this year, was sued, won, and now the cases are actually getting processed.

The people that ICE are rounding up today already have an active removal order, and they are actively fleeing law enforcement (for the most part).

People have also been offered incentives to self-deport. The ones left are actively breaking the law and are more or less fugitives.

Personally, I would prefer to not have federal police forces and we could use state police to deport people, but both sides of the aisle are making a lot of cash building up the police state.

[–] 5upplied_demand 1 day ago

> The ones left are actively breaking the law and are more or less fugitives.

Overstaying a visa is a civil violation, not a criminal offense. If you want to hunt them as fugitives, change the law.

> we could use state police to deport people

So much for states rights.

> both sides of the aisle are making a lot of cash building up the police state.

In what ways? I don't see a lot of police unions supporting left-leaning or Democratic candidates. Democrats have voted against things like the Patriot Act in much larger numbers than Republicans. Democrats have introduced bills like "Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act of 2026" which have basically no Republican support. The biggest private advocates for an increased police state (Peter Thiel, Larry Ellison, Palmer Luckey, etc.) are huge Republican supporters and donors.

[–] xp84 1 day ago

> Overstaying a visa is a civil violation, not a criminal offense. If you want to hunt them as fugitives, change the law.

It sounds like you’re saying we should all just accept that our visas mean nothing, and that in practice literally anyone should be able to just show up, claim asylum, never show up to court for their hearing, and what we should do is absolutely nothing. In “blue” states they are strongly encouraged to sign up for driver’s licenses and welfare programs, and state agencies are forbidden from even asking their legal status. State and local police in those states are often banned from spilling the beans even when they commit crimes.

So, overstaying legal status can’t be addressed by states because Dems think it’s too mean to send them home, and it can’t be actively done by federal agencies because to do so, they have to come into states and investigate people to determine if they’re legally here or not and we don’t like the possibility that they might ever get it wrong.

This is why Democrats lost all respect from moderates like me who used to proudly be part of that party a decade ago. They’re not serious anymore. They appear to want a system that pretends to work but which everyone ignores because everyone knows it’s never enforced. Like driving 70 on the freeway in a 65 zone - everyone does it.

This is not how we should run immigration.

[–] parasyte 1 day ago

you're not a moderate, you put words in others mouths to justify your own extremist beliefs. own it.

[–] 5upplied_demand 18 hours ago

I never said any of those things. I simply pointed out the legality of things today. If you think it should be changed, you should state that and own it.

Instead, you completely ignored the "both sides" portion of my comment to build a strawman to rant against.

[–] JuniperMesos 22 hours ago

> Personally, I would prefer to not have federal police forces and we could use state police to deport people, but both sides of the aisle are making a lot of cash building up the police state.

A lot of states make it illegal for state police to participate in immigration enforcement. And there's a reasonable argument that immigration enforcement is properly the job of the federal government rather than the states; which then requires a federal police force to do that job.

[–] scarecrowbob 1 day ago

Or, given the fact that normal folks come here and live normal lives contributing to their communities, the US could just make easier paths to citizenship.

[–] xp84 1 day ago

We already have paths to citizenship, people just need to wait their turn. People with skills we need can already get in under programs that exist for that purpose.

We don’t want the full population of every failed or economically-languishing state (including ALL kinds of people, including the worst elements that exist in every society) to show up overnight and move in, which is what has happened in many western countries including the US with asylum claim abuse.

It’s rapidly turned high-trust societies into low-trust societies because that’s how those who come here from low-trust societies operate by default. People who have been here and know what a proper society looks like don’t like this.

[–] scarecrowbob 1 day ago

Folks have been crossing that border since before there was a border. The border is the created problem, not folks moving around.

[–] FireBeyond 1 day ago

Hah, what? I have skills we need. I came here legally.

It would have been easier, quicker, and cheaper for me to come here on a visa waiver, marry a USC against the terms of that waiver, and ask for forgiveness (i.e. "adjust status") than it was to do so the "proper way".

Much of your comment just sounds xenophobic.

[–] linuxftw 1 day ago

We don't need your skills, your country does.

[–] psadauskas 1 day ago

Undocumented immigrants are a useful scapegoat politically, because it allows those in power to point the finger at them for all the country's problems, but those immigrants have no political power themselves since they can't vote.

Additionally, it gives business owners a bunch of workers they can exploit, since those workers can't go to the police or report them to the labor board.

[–] gadders 1 day ago

>> The idea that illegal immigrants need to be deported (and not have a path to legal residency) comes from a view that those jobs should go to American citizens

Isn't that obvious? I mean I can't imagine why this would be even remotely controversial.

[–] yifanl 1 day ago

There exists a subset of business owners who would prefer hiring workers without standard protections or rights.

[–] xp84 1 day ago

Yup, and 50 million “Democrats” assisting them, people who’ve been convinced that maximizing the number of foreign citizens living here without valid visas is the enlightened and cool policy to aim for, or at least that if the other party won’t let them automatically naturalize everyone as they sprint across the border, that this is the next best thing.

[–] gadders 1 day ago

Yes, which baffles me why being pro-immigration is a left wing position, given that it harms workers so much.

[–] jimbokun 1 day ago

Bernie used to be anti immigration for exactly this reason.

[–] phainopepla2 1 day ago

At the risk of a committing a "No True Scotsman" here... it isn't a properly left wing position. Or at least it hasn't been for most of the history of the left.

[–] gadders 1 day ago

Well "A policy of parties that currently identify as left of centre" - UK Labour, US Democrats etc

[–] kristjansson 1 day ago

yes yes as everyone knows there are exactly 112,530,874 jobs in the US, and will never be any more or less, so the labor market is exactly zero-sum

[–] SpicyLemonZest 1 day ago

The Bracero program was ended, but the H-2A visa program for seasonal farm labor remains active, with no numeric cap and hundreds of thousands of visas issued each year. I don't blame workers for making a living, but is there some reason why these business owners requiring seasonal labor could not obtain the proper visa for it?

[–] buildbot 1 day ago

They can pay them less, treat them worse, then if there are any issues, deport them. It's very gross.

[–] jimbokun 1 day ago

So you are arguing for not allowing immigrants to come and work those jobs?

[–] buildbot 1 day ago

I strongly believe all people are equal, and we should not apply different ethics based on national borders, race, sex, etc. They should be able to come work any jobs, and be treated the same as citizens.

[–] georgemcbay 1 day ago

> They can pay them less, treat them worse, then if there are any issues, deport them. It's very gross.

Yeah, it boils down to the same reasons why many corporations want an incredibly broken H-1B system at the higher end: it provides an exploitable pool of workers.

And currently in both cases you can find a lot of consternation from the people who benefitted from how things worked prior to Trump because the administration is making significant changes to the status quo. The business owners loved the rhetoric about fixing immigration, but assumed the broken systems that gave them the benefits of exploiting those worker pools would largely be maintained as they had been.

And to be explicitly clear with my opinion, neither side of this conflict (businesses that want to maintain the broken-but-works-for-us system, or the Trump administration) are the good guys here. The businesses want to keep exploiting migrant workers unimpeded and the administration wants to be maximally racist more than it wants to help businesses keep exploiting.

[–] assbuttbuttass 1 day ago

It's actually better in many cases for businesses to hire undocumented workers, since it makes the workers position much more tenuous. They are much less like to unionize, demand higher pay, etc. if the threat of deportation is hanging over their head

[–] FireBeyond 1 day ago

Tyson Chicken was shown to have provided written instructions for undocumented workers on staying under the radar. And yet when DHS arrested 900 workers at their facilities, they also announced there was no plans to investigate the company itself (strange - knowingly assisting an undocumented immigrant with such is a felony).

[–] IAmBroom 1 day ago

Friction of paperwork. Not saying it's right, but it's a reason.

Also, you are shifting the blame for immigrants getting arrested to the owners. That means the employees are actually blameless: they are caught between seldom-enforced laws and a need to thrive and feed their families.

[–] SpicyLemonZest 1 day ago

Yes, again, I don't personally blame the employees. I think the vast majority of people who unlawfully immigrate to the US mean well. There's actually pretty broad agreement on that, despite the psychopaths running enforcement right now; CBP is still paying bonuses for voluntary departure.

[–] slashdev 1 day ago

That’s an extreme take. What other laws do you think should be ignored? Traffic laws? Building codes? Tax laws?

A nation is literally defined as an entity that has control over its borders. If it permits just anyone to enter or exit, it is technically not a nation anymore.

I’m all for changing immigration laws, giving more people a legal route to becoming temporary workers, students, residents, and citizens. But being choosy about who gets in and who does not. Attract the best and brightest to lift your country up, not freeloaders and criminals that tear it down. Look at the riots in Europe right now - and learn from their mistakes. Immigration is good but there have to be limits, laws, and control over borders.

[–] alyeska2 1 day ago

That's a definition you just made up, which has no precedent and is clearly untrue.

I can cross a dozen borders in the EU without so much as slowing down. I can sell my house in one US State and move to another without asking for permission.

It wasn't until World War 1 that passports for international travel became common in Europe.

Don't let the xenophobic posts on social media trick you. Immigrants in the US are factually less likely to commit crimes than born Americans, look it up. They've just repeated the lie so many times that people have accepted it.

[–] slashdev 1 day ago

The term combines two concepts: Nation: A group of people who identify as belonging to a shared community. State: A political entity with a defined territory, a government, and sovereignty over its internal and external affairs.

I would argue this requires at least some sovereign control over borders.

The EU defines their borders as a bloc. States are not nations - and that’s one of the reasons why.

Border control is an important expression of state sovereignty. If you have zero controls the state would experience net migration until conditions declined below the global average and nobody wants to move there anymore. That’s pretty self evident, it’s how economics works and how systems maintain an equilibrium.

Both legal and undocumented immigrants in the US show lower incarceration rates than native-born Americans in major studies; the picture in Europe is different, with clear overrepresentation for non-Western and asylum-related groups. Fiscal impacts depend heavily on skill/education level rather than legal status alone, with low-skilled migrants (legal or not) more often a net cost over their lifetimes.

So control over borders is important, and having standards is a good thing.

There is no magic soil. A nation is the people who make it up. Bring in the violent, stupid, and culturally incompatible people from the shithole countries they are trying to escape and things will trend downwards to some average between those terrible places and our desirable countries. That’s not racist our xenophobic, it’s acknowledging the facts.

People are not equal. Countries are not equal. Education and culture and religions are not equal. There are better and worse versions of all of them. Again just facts. To ignore that is to live in fantasy land that doesn’t exist in the real world.

I have traveled to nearly 50 countries. I have lived in the developing world. My ancestors have had to flee countries and been refugees. I know what I’m talking about. You sound very idealistic and naive.

[–] alyeska2 1 day ago

America itself brought in the <undesirable> people from the <bad> countries in Europe throughout the 1700s, 1800s and 1900s - Irish peasants, Jews, poor and uneducated Italians, Germans, Poles, Hungarians and Norwegians.

It turned out that those peoples, given opportunities and in a system with functioning institutions, actually weren't violent, stupid or culturally incompatible and in fact thrived, integrated, built communities, grew the economy and contributed to society.

Something for you to consider.

[–] modo_mario 1 day ago

>A nation is literally defined as an entity that has control over its borders.

A state*

A nation is a people with common identity, culture, language, history, etc (see first nations, stateless nations, etc)

[–] nostrademons 1 day ago

A nation-state, technically. A state is an organization with a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical violence. There have been historical states (eg. European kingdoms of the high middle ages) that meet the definition of a state while still having very fuzzy borders.

[–] tempfile 1 day ago

> That’s an extreme take.

Big words considering the rest of your comment.

> If it permits just anyone to enter or exit, it is technically not a nation anymore.

You cannot "permit" something you do not control, so this is a contradiction in terms. If you mean that the constraints put on the US by itself to not police immigration in overly violent or cruel ways mean that it does not control immigration, then by the same logic the 4th amendment implies that there is no rule of law in the US (since certain criminals can't be convicted due to bad actions by the state).

> But being choosy about who gets in and who does not.

Nobody really denies this. The question is how violent or cruel you can be in the exercise of this choosiness.

> Look at the riots in Europe right now

The riots in Europe are not primarily about immigration. Get off twitter.

[–] slashdev 15 hours ago

You’re arguing with a strawman you’ve built from my comment.

> If you mean that the constraints put on the US by itself to not police immigration in overly violent or cruel ways mean that it does not control immigration.

I don’t mean that. I’m saying you do have to control the borders and you do have to deport people who break the rules and enter our stay illegally.

It seems we agree that at least some of that is necessary, and we can both disagree, at least partly, with the way it’s currently being handled.

> The riots in Europe are not primarily about immigration.

Where did you get that idea? The riots are caused by the immigrants. Look at them, there’s hardly a single European among them. These are undesirables they let into their country and they’ve been paying a price for it ever since.

[–] tempfile 13 hours ago

I tried to be as charitable as possible.

> I don’t mean that.

So you actually think the USA, the most powerful and richest country in the history of the world, is unable to police its borders? That is the only alternative to what I said (which is that they are able but not willing).

> I’m saying you do have to control the borders and you do have to deport people who break the rules and enter our stay illegally.

Again, nobody really denies this, if I interpret you charitably. But the question is always how rigid the laws should be, how many other rights you are willing to sacrifice in order to hit the "deport illegals" metric. If you overstay one day, what happens. If you overstay due to a medical emergency, what happens. If you are in danger in your home country and need to enter illegally in order to claim asylum, what happens. How much of a soviet-style "papers, please" dungeon are you prepared to turn your country into in order to find all the illegals.

You will never ever police any crime to 100%. Immigration is very hard to police effectively without adding literal military-style checkpoints and sending in the gestapo (as is happening in the US). Besides that, if you look at the big picture, the vast majority of these people are harmless and have perfectly reasonable reasons for wanting to come. Remember that it is an accident of history that you get to live in a rich country.

The US in particular has had massive unregulated immigration through most of its history, by the way, and it didn't cause the place to burn to the ground. So please keep a bit of perspective.

[–] Izikiel43 1 day ago

There are visas for seasonal work and farm work though? J1/j2 afaik?

[–] innagadadavida 1 day ago

Could they not just have fruit picking farms in the south and export it here? I think that will be a win win for everyone. The big losers will be the US farms I guess.

[–] jimbokun 1 day ago

Just so I understand you:

Advocating for any restrictions on immigration means you are racist?

If not I honestly don’t understand what point you’re making.

[–] JeremyNT 1 day ago

You could imagine a sane policy regime to unwind the "look the other way" approach to illegal immigration and the under-the-table low wage labor market that it created.

Instead we get... well, whatever the fuck this gestapo shit is.

I guess regulatory reform doesn't really play with the kind of people who will gleefully vote for mass deportation on the grounds that they just want immigrants gone.

[–] carlosjobim 1 day ago

> and business owners no choice but to keep hiring them.

Um?

[–] ExoticPearTree 1 day ago

> giving migratory workers no choice but to stay illegally

Are you serious? The choice for them was to go back to their home countries.

[–] parineum 1 day ago

> The idea that illegal immigrants need to be deported comes from a view that those jobs should go to American citizens or from a view that browns don't belong in the USA.

Or, you know, from the idea that they are doing something illegal and the job of law enforcement is to enforce laws.

[–] SmirkingRevenge 1 day ago

It's actually not a crime to overstay a visa or to be here without one. It's nothing.

It only becomes a crime once you're formally deported

[–] IAmBroom 1 day ago

Laws aren't moral. These laws are bad, and shouldn't be enforced. They should be changed, but we don't have the political will to do so, so "rounding up all the brown people and shipping them to Mexico" is not the second-best option.

[–] parineum 1 day ago

Change the laws.

[–] ang_cire 1 day ago

Sure, but when 1 party blocks that continually due to racism (and kills programs put in place like DACA that help the situation), then funnels money to "law enforcement" specifically for the thing they helped make illegal, then it's fair to criticize the "law enforcement" as a tool of racist politics (and make no mistake, before anyone comes claiming racism isn't the reason for it, Stephen Miller has plenty of choice quotes stating that's exactly why he is pushing for ICE deportations).

[–] parineum 1 day ago

Welcome to democracy.

[–] ang_cire 1 day ago

Don't know why you think I don't understand that, I'm just pointing out that a law being a law doesn't shield racist people who support racist laws from being called racist.

(And the people who sign onto an organization like ICE knowing exactly what they do and why.)

[–] dudul 1 day ago

> it was ended abruptly, giving migratory workers no choice but to stay illegally

Or they could have "moved back south" like you said, and stayed there.

Since this "program" was ended it sounds like it should be as simple as "no papers? gotta go".

Funny how democrats always care so much about "the law" and "due process" until it relates to immigration.

[–] rtkwe 1 day ago

> Funny how democrats always care so much about "the law" and "due process" until it relates to immigration.

Funny how often the very problems republicans are so adamant about are caused by their own policies. Before the change the population flowed seasonally and had little reason to stay long term. Suddenly it's an issue but by shutting off the flow without a way to do it legally it screwed both parties. Farms still need the crops picked and the work is difficult and the pay is only good relative to the opportunities in other countries so there's no replacement domestic workforce.

[–] modo_mario 1 day ago

>Farms still need the crops picked and the work is difficult and the pay is only good relative to the opportunities in other countries so there's no replacement domestic workforce.

"for that wage."

This is wage suppresion you're supporting.

[–] rtkwe 1 day ago

Somewhat, the other side of the coin is if they can even find labor at a price that has a chance of competing with growers who have local access to cheaper labor because they're in poorer countries. The price they'd have to pay to get legal pickers is more likely to fully drive those farms out of business or at least out of those crops into more machine harvestable crops.

The main point though is that the "problem" of seasonal farm workers staying in the US illegally is to some extent artificially created by attempting to strictly enforce the border. Before that they were able to come work freely and would happily return to their home country because the process of getting into the US for the harvesting seasons was (relative to the modern process) easy, safe and cheap so there was no reason to stay in the US. Why would they, their wages would go farther in their home countries and that's where their families were and they would be able to cross back for the next major harvest they wanted to participate in.

[–] modo_mario 21 hours ago

A similar thing is said here in europe but an important caveat is that they typically had no way of drawing most support. No commonly accepted way of regularisation. Buying property. Etc.

One can easily go back but will more easily go back if there's no point in staying beyond the momentary moneymaking and essentially just no future.

It's imo how china manages to have roughly as much migration as Berlin despite sharing a border with pakistan, afghanistan, etc and without large militarised force to kick people out. Simply don't give to incentive.

[–] dudul 1 day ago

it's always funny the mental and grammatical gymnastic people will go through just to not say "but who will pick the cotton??!!"

[–] rtkwe 1 day ago

We're not talking about slaves here... and someone does need to pick the food from the vine, big ag has tried for decades to automate picking of various fruits to little success. It turns out recognizing and handling ripe fruit is a difficult task for both vision and effectors.

[–] esikich 1 day ago

It's almost as if the entire southwest used to be Mexico.

[–] lmz 1 day ago

Ukraine used to be the USSR too.

[–] dudul 1 day ago

What are you talking about? Can we avoid the Reddit/twitter style of comment? If you have an argument or a point to make just make it.

Is this one of these stupid "yeah 300 years ago this used to be on that land!!!" argument? Buddy, if so, stop living in the past. Territories are conquered all the time everywhere throughout the entirety of History.

Plus, this has nothing to do with current immigration laws.

[–] esikich 1 day ago

The point is that families didn't just evacuate when it turned into US territory. There are very strong ties to Mexico in the southwest that will never go away.

[–] jimbokun 1 day ago

The descendants of those people have always been American citizens.

[–] dudul 1 day ago

And what does it have to do with foreigners illegally coming to do these seasonal jobs? People who were here when it became US territory just became citizens.

How does it apply to the specific case mentioned in the parent? How does it relate to illegal workers who somehow are now "trapped" in the US because some weird fringe program was stopped?

[–] esikich 1 day ago

Family. Imagine if the state next to yours was no longer the US.