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Comment by iagooar | Hacker News Reader

Words can't express how sad I feel about people who write and believe in such a logic. Where is our humanity gone?

How can you think that by helping people (legal or not) you are doing something wrong? USA is a country that has a massive problem with not accepting what it is, what it has, and what it could have. But then again, a country is made of diverse people. I feel happy that some people in California feel that they need to help and support those who are most vulnerable and mistreated by the system.

The poor living legally in your country ARE NOT competing for resources with "illegal aliens" you call them (I find it absurd to even consider a person, a HUMAN BEING, to be illegal, but that's a different topic). Your country has way more resources available than those dedicated to eradicating poverty.

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> The poor living legally in your country ARE NOT competing for resources with "illegal aliens" you call them

I am generally support immigration. But we need to remain realistic.

Of course such competition exists. If an anti-poverty program for only me costs X, then that program for a million people will cost more [1]. It takes more resources, in aggregate, to maintain something for more people. That, in turn, means there are fewer resources for e.g. saving piggly-wiggly turtles or whatever. You could raise taxes, but that just means fewer resources in taxpayers' pockets in favour of more anti-poverty programs and piggly-wiggly turtles et cetera. Resources are finite, human wants are unlimited, and political capital is a delicate thing.

[1] citation needed

Leaving the hairy question of immigration aside, you're assuming that economic systems on the scale of nation-states are zero-sum. It's not at all clear that providing a service to one person v.s. a million people is "cheaper" on that scale, because when you're talking about a nation you also tax those million people.

You can take this logic to its extremes and assume that if you had only one very wealthy person living in the US that providing services for that one person would be cheaper. That wouldn't be the case.

Then how about if there's 100 million people? 300? 600? Generally speaking having more people should increase the economic efficiency. If you have a tax base of 600 million people that's going to give you more resources to save your piggly-wiggly turtles than if you had 100 or 300.

> "Leaving the hairy question of immigration aside..."

I am all for legal immigration.

Your comment might be correctly phrased as "leaving the hairy question of illegal immigration aside..."

> "you're assuming that economic systems on the scale of nation-states are zero-sum."

I'm not assuming that at all. I'm simply making a statement that California taxpayer funds (and since money is fungible) and federal funds are used to fund people who live in this country illegally and that is only because the citizens of California elected politicians who are not fiscally responsible and seem to feel that it OK to use taxpayer funds to pay for people living here illegally.

As I originally stated, if Californians simply elected responsible politicians they would have the funds for paying for the electric train without the federal grant.

    > Your comment might be correctly phrased as "leaving
    > the hairy  question of illegal immigration aside..."

No, it really couldn't. I'm replying to your economic fallacy of asserting that "[a] program for a million people will cost more [than a program for one person]". Of course that's literally true in terms of absolute dollar amounts, but it's not true in the sense that actually matters. I.e. if you had a million extra people in your country would they be a net drain on your economy, or net contributors?

To answer that question it doesn't matter that they're illegal immigrants or legal immigrants. You can't assume that just because someone's illegal they're more likely to be a net drain on the economy, actually the reverse is probably likelier to be true, since an illegal immigrant will seek work but can't make use of social services provided to people legally in the country.

    > I'm not assuming that [illegal immigrants are a
    > net drain on the economy] at all.

I really hate to put words into someone's mouth, but the most generous reading of what you're saying really does sound like that's what you're actually saying.

You're asserting that having X number of "illegal" immigrants is going to have some linear drain on the economy as a function of X, it's not at all clear that that relationship exists in any sense, i.e. it could be a gain not a drain, and it could be non-linear.

I'm not stating myself clearly enough. I'm simply stating that taxpayer money should not be paid to support people who are living in this country illegally. Instead they should be living in the country that they are legally residents of and receive education, health etc from that county.

The correct term for the people is illegal aliens. No quote marks.

> "I am generally support immigration. But we need to remain realistic."

I support immigration. After all, my ancestors were immigrants. I do not support people living here illegally. There is the distinction.

>I find it absurd to even consider a person, a HUMAN BEING, to be illegal

I don't understand this. What would you propose as a replacement term for people here illegally? The term 'undocumented resident' just seems like handwaving to avoid the fact that these people are violating the law. If we can't use the word 'illegal' to describe violations of the law, then things become silly (e.g. "undocumented bank withdrawal").

  I find it absurd to even consider a person, a HUMAN BEING, to be illegal

It's not about a person "being illegal"; it's about a person doing illegal deeds.

For example: a storefront "doctor" with no license does cosmetic surgery procedures in a back room. Do you call him an "undocumented plastic surgeon"?

> "Words can't express how sad I feel about people who write and believe in such a logic. Where is our humanity gone?"

The correct term is illegal aliens. I didn't create the term, but I do use the language correctly.

My humanity is for those poor people who live in the US who don't get enough funding as it is and who lose out on the funding because of illegal aliens. That is where my humanity is. My question to you is where is your humanity for the poor Americans, many who don't have nearly the IQ of readers of HN and who are losing their jobs and not getting enough support.

> "The poor living legally in your country ARE NOT competing for resources with "illegal aliens" you call them (I find it absurd to even consider a person, a HUMAN BEING, to be illegal, but that's a different topic). Your country has way more resources available than those dedicated to eradicating poverty."

That is an incorrect statement. There is only so much tax money and much of that money is used for funding K-12 education, university education, healthcare, etc. etc. for illegal aliens instead of better funding the poor.

The vast majority of children of immigrants in public schools are US citizens by virtue of being born in the US. This argument about spending money on educating illegal immigrants is pretty facile.

> This argument about spending money on educating illegal immigrants is pretty facile.

That is one aspect of what the government spends money on. What about roads, health care, utilities, and the other things the OP mentions?

>Much of that money is used for funding..illegal aliens

Er, maybe, but far, far more is used on maintaining massive military superiority[0][1][2][3].. if it's tax dollars you're worried about, you ought to have far bigger concerns than "illegals".

[0] https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-bud...

[1] https://www.nationalpriorities.org/campaigns/us-military-spe...

[2] http://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0053_defense-comparison

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...

Typical example of "Whataboutism" [0]

The point here is not government spending priorities, but spending efficiently and justly in the fund distribution we have now.

In other words, we do spend money on illegal aliens, we spend more money on other things, but we should not be spending any money on illegal immigrants, no matter what else we're spending money on.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

That's why we always use bit shifts for division. it doesn't matter if we're using an exponential algorithm instead of a linear one: the thing we should care most about is how fast that division is.

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