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points by SpicyLemonZest 1 day ago | 0 comments

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.