Hacker News

points by skulk 1 day ago | 0 comments

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.