A new kind of labor movement in Silicon Valley? | Hacker News Reader

A new kind of labor movement in Silicon Valley?

theatlantic.com

57 pointsRobertSmith76 comments

This "movement" is not nearly as broad-based as the combination of loud online activism and press coverage suggests. The current social-media-fueled frenzied environment has a way of amplifying extreme views, and the concrete policy propodals from the "ethics" camp are extreme indeed.

It is not "unethical", for example, among the huge majority of the population, to cooperate with law enforcement in matters of immigration --- but to listen to advocates, cloud hosting for these organizations is beyond the pale. Every proposal I've seen has a similar character. To these people, "ethics" isn't about the timeline virtues of honesty and integrity. Instead, it's deplatforming your ideological opponents, because in activist world, the only explanation for disagreement is intellectual or moral defect.

This whole effort is a thinly-disguised political power play, and large socially-important infrastructure companies should not play politics. These companies serve too important a role in society to allow themselves to be weilded as political tools by a loud and angry few.

Employee protests over hot button issues are one thing, grievances over working conditions and general dissatisfaction with Bay Area living conditions are another, and mentioned in the article.

I decided a few years ago when I left the CTO role at a startup I founded over what I considered a massively unethical feature, that I would never build anything that violates my code of ethics. No one has to build racist face tracking bots, or auto killbots, or automated sentancing platforms, or things that are just useless cash grab garbage.

Sure people can argue that they'll just get someone else to build it. Fine, go for it, but the power I do have is to not build it. I'm not a clerk, I'm a creative partner and a damned good one. Money doesn't buy my soul.

Fun fact, that feature never got built in that platform that I left. In fact they pivoted completely out of the field I had built the platform for. Possibly because of the loss of the person that got them there. Today, they make money, but not off something that would have haunted me for the rest of my life. Also, I'm much better at qualifying my partners/employers now before things like that come up and am much happier with the things I'm working on now.

Maybe that's political. This feature could have been seen as de-platforming my political opposition if you wanted to. It's not much different from the stories in the article. We have a choice as the creators of the tools, like it or not. Not building a weapon for mass surveillance is a power I have and I'm willing to use it and it works. The world would be a better place if more people drew that line in the sand.

> Sure people can argue that they'll just get someone else to build it.

The true argument would be that those things aren't unethical (or are merely poorly stated, or misunderstood), and no one should feel bad for their actions in building them.

I don't think people want face tracking software to be explicitly "racist", anymore than Apple wanted their first generation of digital cameras lenses to poorly take pictures of dark skinned people.

> The world would be a better place if more people drew that line in the sand.

Thing is... people keep changing where the line in the sand ought to be drawn and soon start believing that anyone whose line is in a place it was merely ten years previously is "unethical". Ethics isn't supposed to be a spectrum, or a hammer to beat others over the head with, its supposed to be a way in which we communicate our ideals to one another so we can build together, or at least live together.

Now this may not be you, but I think too many people are becoming intractable about their views.

Well, the problem with the racist face tracking AI is THAT it's unintentional and being used by people that are clamoring to use it because it sounds great but aren't concerned about the human fallout. As the person who's educated in the tools, I feel that it's my responsibility to speak up about what these tools can do from my knowledge and experience. I decided that it's my duty as the person who writes the code and creates the thing to inform the executives, sales, marketing, and other engineers that even though there's a Scrooge McDuck money sack there that I won't be a part of it and other people in the company may not be either. I have to define what is ok or not on my own. There isn't a single source that can tell me the dangers of what I create.

As an individual, I have spent countless hours thinking about what I do for a living and the moral code I need to live by and no one who has cut me a check can modify my personal code of ethics. The people who want to use these tools don't always know or care what the problems are. It's a race to market. Move fast and break things. IPO and get a jet.

To counter that you may be saying that my ethics aren't hammer to beat people with... I say their paycheck isn't a whip to get me to build them a bomb to destroy people's lives with. Nor a gag to keep me silent if the company is building the bomb without me. Whatever I'm doing is funding the process that lets them engage in that project. I have a responsibility to use my voice if I have a problem with my contribution to something I see as dangerous, unnecessary, ugly, or stupid. My work could potentially outlive me, I have to be aware of my role is bringing it to the world. Having a discussion about that balance is how we will find ways to use the power we have as a society to create these things in a way that doesn't destroy people (guinea pigs) who have no say in these technologies creation.

Coming together with other employees who say "We won't work for a company that builds this weapon" is how we are going to put the breaks on long enough to make the right choices and not just build it because we can. You can't put the genie back in the bottle. Testing these things live, in the name of corporate bottom line, can cause problems that can last decades. If a person is the principal engineer on something that could be looked upon in the future like how stupid leaded gas was, and they knew it, and they still shipped that product... They are a fucking asshole and history, if they can identify them, will see them as criminals.

This isn't about being a whiney snowflake, this is speaking up with the power we have as people to put the breaks on the creation of capital to have a say about the future world we want to live in. We ARE a very divided society here in the US, for precisely this reason... because until now no one at Facebook and Twitter was speaking up about their business model. They towed the line. Local news papers died, people siloed, and now you are right; people are becoming intractable in their views. People protesting at these companies are not doing something akin trolling Breitbart on Twitter for likes, they are saying that they don't want to be involved in making digital leaded gas and the people writing their checks have to listen. If they don't speak up, who else can that Apple, Google, or Amazon will listen to? The user? The government? Neither of those groups have the knowledge to know what the details are. They may think they want them. Leaded gas also poisoned the families of the people that sold it, and the politicians that lobbied for it, and the people that wanted it for their cars.

As engineers we have a responsibility to have a moral compass and understand the impact of the things we create. We have a responsibility to think very deeply about the things that we create because we are in the role to create them. We are directly in the role to poison the well of humanity. If you don't think that's part of your job (if you are an engineer), then I would plead with you to move into something else. What we do matters. Introspection into the effects of our action or inaction is vital.

Uh, no it isn't? I quit working at google because I don't approve of tracking and massively applied AI. I also got in a friendship ending fight with someone over their decision to work for facebook. It's individual people who are complicit in doing unethical things and it's individuals who need to take responsibility and do something.

Good for you for standing up for your ideals. I don't think you're the type the OP was complaining about.

large socially-important infrastructure companies should not play politics

I predict within a year the platform vs publisher issue will be resolved legislatively if not done voluntarily.

> It is not "unethical", for example, among the huge majority of the population, to cooperate with law enforcement in matters of immigration --- but to listen to advocates, cloud hosting for these organizations is beyond the pale.

It is unethical to co-operate with law enforcement, if you believe law enforcement is done in an unethical manner.

Anything else is an appeal to authority. Do this because the government wants you to.

"These companies [large socially-important infrastructure companies] serve too important a role in society to allow themselves to be weilded as political tools by a loud and angry few."

Isn't this an argument for increased regulation or public ownership?

You really don't need to bring in politics to justify a programmer's union, but if that's the trigger that causes workers to organize, so be it.

Just off the top of my head, I can think of a number of entirely non-political ways a union could benefit tech workers:

1) Personalized ergonomic workspaces

2) Legal counsel on basic tech-related issues (patent law, non-compete clauses, sexual harassment, discrimination, etc.)

3) Training and career development

4) Representation to recruiters

5) Group health insurance, tax advice, equipment rentals for freelancers

What exactly do you mean by unions without politics? Unions are inherently political. The things you've listed here are literally just employment perks, they can exist independently of unions as reasons that someone might want to work at a given company. They also all have a cost to the employer and employee, either of which might prefer to have those resources allocated elsewhere.

Companies naturally offer differing employment perks to try to entice people to work for them. Google famously has bowling alleys, dance classes, laundry, massages, food, etc, which all form a part of the package of what might make somebody want to take a job as a developer at Google. Facebook followed suit with many similar perks. As an SF/SV contractor for the last 5 years, it has been my experience that all different companies offer completely different costs and benefits to working for them, and I'm perfectly happy to let the companies compete among themselves for talent.

If I have to join some software engineering union whose demands are going to be some bastardization of collective goals, which inevitably will deteriorate into a wasteful bureaucratic entity (as unions tend to do), I lose my ability to freely choose what exactly I'm looking for in a workplace.

For example, I don't care about personalized ergonomic workspaces, I don't care about legal counsel, I don't care about training, I don't care about representation to recruiters, I have my own health insurance, I get my own tax advice, and I don't need equipment rentals. Every thing that you've outlined as an objective for a union to accomplish are things that I would rather have the employer spend on salary. Your objectives do not align with mine, I don't want to pay you to accomplish them, and I don't want you to have my employer spend money accomplishing them. I have completely ignored companies with things like swimming pools, ping pong, seminars, etc, and have instead chosen places based off of how much they pay, or how interesting the project is to work on.

Everyone's objectives are different, and so long as there is not a massive imbalance of power against the workforce wherein we lose the ability to choose freely, which in the case of a SV developer is absolutely not the case, then I see many more problems than solutions from an attempt to collectivize them.

I guess I meant more of a labor collective than what's normally considered a "union." I'm not interested in paying for pensions or protecting jobs of old farts who feel threatened by young people. But I am interested in collectivizing with workers to get access to the sort of "perks" that most people rely on their company for, because that's going to increase my ability to freely choose who I do and don't work for.

You mentioned you have your own health insurance and that's great. As an independent consultant, I do too, but I don't get the same kind of rates and coverage as I would as part of a company. It's just not offered to people like me. The "free market" response to that would be, "Well, then get a FTE job then, there's plenty out there." But what if I'd rather not depend on my employer for that? We can collectivize; we choose to let our employers do it for us.

I don't understand the stark anti-union sentiment. You must realize that sometimes, your interests will diverge from your employers, and that the optimal result for both sides may not always be for you to give up or risk your employment being terminated over it, but it might actually be for the company to change their policies. That outcome is much harder to imagine without some sort of collective bargaining.

  You must realize that sometimes, your interests will diverge from your employers

But Unions span multiple employers and have the last word over any grievance you might have. You lose standing as an individual to negotiate with or complain to management.

And when union leadership and management collaborate against the best interests of employees, you're really screwed. I've been there.

Interesting story, do you mind giving more detail?

> so long as there is not a massive imbalance of power against the workforce wherein we lose the ability to choose freely, which in the case of a SV developer is absolutely not the case

You're right, there isn't a massive imbalance of power- relative to other industries. Yet we get these endless stories of developer misery- toxic workplaces where people are cuffed by golden handcuffs to prevent speaking up or walking, harassment that goes uninvestigated, abuse of contractors, the endless crunch cycle of the video game industry, management that refuses to listen to engineering concerns and decisions, and the dev complaint of the month- open offices, whiteboarding interviews, rejection of remote work, outsourcing, bad equity deals, or whatever else the industry bosses holds sacrosanct.

Software engineers are paid more than well- though don't forget that it's partly because that other careers have not seen salaries rise as they should, not that engineers in general are doing much better [0], but there is still a lot more to improve in this industry. Some sort of workers' association can be the solution for these problems, and at least provide some oversight. Why assume that it'd be inevitably doomed to fail as American labor unions in the past. (I assume you're not familiar with the benefits of the German system [1]). Shouldn't an industry whose foundation is on optimization, improvement, and experimentation at least try to build a better union? Why follow tedious axioms like "unions don't work?"

[0] https://www.quora.com/Why-do-software-engineers-make-so-much...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13986889

I think you DO need to bring some kind of politics into it to justify a programmer's union. Just think what would have happened if those google engineers simply created a union without some "higher moral cause". They would have been fired and replaced instantly. But, Google certainly can't do that if they're gathering together to fight some uniequivocal evil (at least how society sees it) such as "Automated Military drones". Google and facebook can't take any chances on appearing to have unethical behavior - they have far too much at stake.

In case of using AI for drones and warfare I am glad that people decided to standup against it. Although there is a big moral question here the technology is there even some of the tools are open sourced. Google employees decided to raise their hand and say it is wrong but there is no checks if a dictator decided to make use of AI in a bad way. Technology is constantly evolving and there is no oversight when misuse happens. CEO's will sign contracts like these as long as there is a big dollar sign attached to it.

I'm glad people are building AI for drone warfare. I would much rather not put uniformed people at risk where the risk could be avoided. I would much rather have discriminate weapons as opposed to ones with more collateral damage.

Right. The world is more complicated than "weapons bad love good". Do people really think that fewer people would die if we could somehow roll weapons technology back to 1914? God help us if we did that unilaterally.

We live in an age of unprecedented peace and prosperity, and it's not artificial limitations on technological development that got us here.

I see the adoption of simplistic and absolute moral stances by people smart enough to know better as a form of entitled selfishness. It's as if people feel entitled to performative first-order moral posturing while foisting on other people the job of avoiding the foreseeable negative consequences of adopting simplistic feel-good policies in a complex world.

> Do people really think that fewer people would die if we could somehow roll weapons technology back to 1914?

Nope, that's a red herring.

The long term outcome of this is not what you want. The less risk there is to going to war, the less incentive there is to avoid war in the first place. More automation will inevitably lead to more frequent, bloodier (especially in terms of collateral damage) wars.

What makes you think these weapons will be discriminate? Who will be deploying them and against what will they deploy them? Drones are dual use technologies, the user matters. AI is also a dual use technology, the trainer matters. AI (poorly defined term almost always, but whatever) can be just as evil as a human, if not more so. It's hard enough to figure out what's a moral right vs. wrong as a human, I've yet to see a computer do that, and if it did, I'd argue it's just as easy to tell it to always choose wrong vs to always choose right.

I think AI drones make us more willing to kill indiscriminately. When our people are also at risk, we pay more attention to whether there is sufficient information to safely operate with minimal casualties on either side. Drones invite "spray-and-pray" warfare that breeds further aggression.

They definitely have value, drones would have been great at D-Day, but realistically considering human behavior... I suspect these "discriminate" weapons will result in a net increase of collateral damage.

Nobody's talking about AI drones, or anything close to that.

The proposal was better image recognition algos for surveillance drones. https://dod.defense.gov/News/Article/Article/1254719/project...

Let's take a step down the slippery slope and assume that in the future it was repurposed for manually triggered weapons drones. Ever see a story about how the US drone-bombed a wedding or a goat farmer? Maybe better (or any) image recognition could have saved innocent lives.

It's not that clear cut.

You aren't thinking about AI drones, other people are. Project Maven was a first step towards securing broader DoD contracts. Pretending drones were not part of the picture is either naive or disingenuous.

You can't do any better than slippery slope? Who's being disengenuous?

There are several rubicons between here and AI killing machines. Why draw this particular line? Why not just halt all AI research?

If I said that banning bump stocks was "basically gun confiscation" or that implementing universal healthcare was "basically the great leap forward", would you be convinced?

I'm really trying to understand your argument here, please help me out.

I'm not sure that I buy your first paragraph. When our people are also at risk, there is more incentive to shoot first rather than risk being shot. When our people are not at risk, we can take the time to be sure, because our downside is smaller.

Um, use your imagination a little. This has the potential to make murder-for-hire and assassinations much easier. The body count may be lower but everyone is at risk. It won't just be US government drones and Russian poisonings anymore.

This is likely to require more stringent security. But heck, who really needs to go outside anyway?

My imagination is failing me, how would improving image recognition on surveillance feeds make murder-for-hire easier?

The drone-joystick-operator combo already exists and would seem to be exactly what you wanted for that scenario. Weaponry is a bit of an issue if you're not the government, but the project at issue didn't have anything to do with that.

Maybe try reading some of Daniel Suarez's earlier novels.

Good image recognition is a step towards not needing a human operator and that could change a lot. It's no longer a 1:1 or even 1:10 relationship with a human organization. They're more like intelligent mines that can be manufactured and deployed in bulk. They're no longer dependent on a radio signal and can lie in wait indefinitely on a roof somewhere for a good ambush.

No doubt he makes it sound easier than it is; tech often has unexpected limitations. But, it seems like it would be hard to show that it couldn't happen. It seems well worthwhile to try to ban the things (similar to mines).

.. so it's just because it sounds spooky?

Because I thought we were talking about CNN based image recognition in the real world, here.

Could you explain to me, in a few short steps, how we get from there to skynet? I'm assuming this involves top military brass just blithely taking humans out of the loop in drastic contradiction to 75 years of established US aerospace culture?

Seriously, I want to hear something convincing about why I'm wrong on this. There must be something.

I don't really expect the U.S. military to take humans out of the loop any time soon. But the tech industry doesn't seem to be very good at keeping secrets. And IED's and car bombs are already a thing, right?

It is a bit weird that people will work on drones as open-source tech and not for the U.S. military. With the open source stuff, anyone could use it.

Right or wrong, the sad reality is that if the US doesn't develop AI weaponry, its adversaries will, notably Russia and China.

To play devil's advocate, couldn't these employees be terminated for refusing to do the job they were hired to do?

That's one of the things that the union/guild would be there to protect against.

That's not within their purview. The CBA binds management and labor alike.

what does "blue-collar" and "white-collar" mean?

"blue-collar" generally means people who do physical, non-office work; and the jobs that they do. "white-collar" generally means office workers and management, and their jobs.

AFAIK it originates in the color shirts normally worn, i.e. if you're out working on engines you can't afford white shirt collars as they'll get stained.

The difference is a lot less clear in tech, where we're all "white-collar" in old-school terms but there is still a very wide scale of job-pleasantness and pay and everything else. I think when these terms originated, an entire productive industry of only white-collar folks was unimaginable.

("Productive" as opposed to, say, banking.)

I am of two minds about immigration enforcement.

One on hand, I don’t have a problem with enforcing immigration laws.

On the other hand, I hate the demonization of “other” and immigration enforcement has turned into being more openly racially motivated than it ever has been before and this isn’t a Democrat vs Republican thing. None of the other Republican administrations have been like this one.

I hope the Romney/Bush wing of the party can take back over. I can deal with “big business” Republicans even if I don’t agree with them on a lot of issues. I would love to have two sensible parties fighting over ideas or even more cynically which special interest they favor.

> On the other hand, I hate the demonization of “other” and immigration enforcement has turned into being more openly racially motivated than it ever has been before and this isn’t a Democrat vs Republican thing. None of the other Republican administrations have been like this one.

"Racially motivated" is a misnomer. Trump uses "Muslim" and "Mexican" not in the way that Confederate politicians used "Negros" (or worse), but in the way that older Republicans used "Russian" or "Communist".

It's obviously not used in a sympathetic way but it's not about racism any more than Nixon was racist against Russians. Trump isn't threatening to expel the ethnic Mexican with US citizenship operating an auto repair shop in Alabama, but he's also not offering citizenship to low-income people from neighboring socialist-leaning countries who would probably vote for Democrats.

Democrats hate this with a burning fire because it's the exact opposite of what they want. But it's not actually about race, it's all politics and the culture war.

Trump isn't threatening to expel the ethnic Mexican with US citizenship operating an auto repair shop in Alabama,

Actually he is threatening to expel US citizens who are Mexican who he doesn’t believe have valid birth certificates. Not because he believes they are forged, but because the babies were delivered by midwives at the border....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/us-is-deny...

ICE also detained an American citizen that was speaking Spanish.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/05/2...

Not to mention that whole Obama’s is not a US citizen but he is a “secret Muslim” trying to spread Sharia law.

but he's also not offering citizenship to low-income people from neighboring socialist-leaning countries who would probably vote for Democrats.

If it were about socialism and not race, why is he so enamored by people from Norway?

> Actually he is threatening to expel US citizens who are Mexican who he doesn’t believe have valid birth certificates. Not because he believes they are forged, but because the babies were delivered by midwives at the border....

According to your article the passports were denied for the same reasons during the Bush and Obama administrations. Because the midwives actually admitted to committing fraud.

At that point the affected people will have to come in and sort things out. What's the alternative? Don't sort things out? It's a huge pain but you can blame the midwives for that.

> ICE also detained an American citizen that was speaking Spanish.

Law enforcement is constantly looking for a stupid pretext to check your papers. "Speaking Spanish" is a stupid pretext to check your papers.

But you're claiming it's evidence of racism. If they had detained a white person for speaking Spanish, would that also be racist? If they had detained a Mexican person for "speeding" (but really for being Mexican), would that be less racist?

The specific pretext isn't the issue. The issue is that they're using stupid pretexts to check papers. But that's a very broad problem with law enforcement in general.

And notice what you're doing with it -- speaking Spanish is the cultural rather than racial characteristic.

> Not to mention that whole Obama’s is not a US citizen but he is a “secret Muslim” trying to spread Sharia law.

This is kind of my point. "Trump is a jackass" and "Trump is a racist" are not the same thing unless you're just defining racist to mean jackass, in which case everybody knows that already.

> If it were about socialism and not race, why is he so enamored by people from Norway?

Because they aren't immigrating here (in violation of the law) in numbers that could change the outcome of elections.

Also because the people who immigrate legally are more likely to be affluent (and thus more conservative) than their home countries, the people who sneak across borders the opposite.

According to your article the passports were denied for the same reasons during the Bush and Obama administrations. Because the midwives actually admitted to committing fraud. At that point the affected people will have to come in and sort things out. What's the alternative? Don't sort things out?

It’s that whole innocent until proven guilty. The government has to prove guilt on an individual basis.

From the article.

The same midwives who provided fraudulent birth certificates also delivered thousands of babies legally in the United States.

Law enforcement is constantly looking for a stupid pretext to check your papers. "Speaking Spanish" is a stupid pretext to check your papers.

You really believe that law enforcement looks for “stupid pretext” to stop blond haired blue eyed white people?

This is kind of my point. "Trump is a jackass" and "Trump is a racist" are not the same thing unless you're just defining racist to mean jackass, in which case everybody knows that already.

Was Reagan ever called a “secret Muslim” when he was sending weapons to Osama backed Mujihadeen and Iran during the Iran Contra scandal?

Also, the people who immigrate legally are more likely to be more affluent (and thus more conservative) than their home countries. People who sneak across borders the opposite.

Right because people from Norway wouldn’t support a large social safety net, government run health care, and free college education....

> It’s that whole innocent until proven guilty. The government has to prove guilt on an individual basis.

Which is the thing that happens after they deny your passport, in the same way that it's the thing that happens after they arrest you for a crime. "Innocent until proven guilty" means you go free if they can't prove you're guilty, not that you don't have to go through the process.

> You really believe that law enforcement looks for “stupid pretext” to stop blond haired blue eyed white people?

Finding a stupid pretext to conduct a search is literally 90% of what they do all day. Ask all the meth heads who got pulled over for a minor traffic violation and ended up charged with possession.

> Was Reagan ever called a “secret Muslim” when he was sending weapons to Osama backed Mujihadeen and Iran during the Iran Contra scandal?

What does that have to do with racism? Your argument can't be that no one has ever made a false claim against a white person.

> Right because people from Norway wouldn’t support a large social safety net, government run health care, and free college education....

The people from Norway are going from a country with more government benefits to one with less. If they liked what they had then why did they leave?

You still have to have some type of evidence specifically linking you to a crime. The midwives never gave names of specific people.

What does that have to do with racism? Your argument can't be that no one has ever made a false claim against a white person.

We aren’t talking about any random White person. We are talking about a President of the United States who specifically helped “radical Muslims” and a President who was accused of being a “secret Muslim” before he was ever elected.

The people from Norway are going from a country with more government benefits to one with less. If they liked what they had then why did they leave?

Actually most don’t.

https://www.denverpost.com/2018/01/13/norway-better-than-don...

So if Trump wants them here despite their viewpoint being more in line with Democrats, that kind of puts your whole argument to rest....

> You still have to have some type of evidence specifically linking you to a crime. The midwives never gave names of specific people.

Which is why they ultimately get their passports after the government has conducted their investigation. For the people who weren't actually born here the government should be able to find evidence of that, e.g. the mother is not a US citizen and her passport wasn't stamped into the US before the child was born.

> We aren’t talking about any random White person. We are talking about a President of the United States who specifically helped “radical Muslims” and a President who was accused of being a “secret Muslim” before he was ever elected.

But what does that have to do with racism? People falsely accuse political candidates of things constantly.

> Actually most don’t.

Which is why there aren't enough socialist-leaning immigrants from Norway to affect election outcomes.

That’s not how the US constitution works. Whether or not the parents were here legally, if the child was born on US soil, they are still a citizen.

So it is still not on them to prove their innocence. It’s on the government to prove that they were not born in US soil.

Which is why there aren't enough socialist-leaning immigrants from Norway to affect election outcomes.

You claimed that it had to do with politics and not race. But Trump was more than willing to welcome people who would vote against his party’s interest. Why would that be?

> That’s not how the US constitution works. Whether or not the parents were here legally, if the child was born on US soil, they are still a citizen.

> So it is still not on them to prove their innocence. It’s on the government to prove that they were not born in US soil.

That's what the government is doing by providing strong evidence that the mother wasn't in the country at the time. If the person contends that she actually was, they have the opportunity to present their own evidence of that.

> You claimed that it had to do with politics and not race. But Trump was more than willing to welcome people who would vote against his party’s interest. Why would that be?

Because they are not those people. The people who (as most of that country does) prefer socialist policies are already living in a place that has them, so they do not come and do not change election outcomes. The few people who do come are the ones less likely to support socialist policies.

That’s not how criminal law works. The defendant is never under any obligation to prove innocence. The prosecution always has to prove guilt. Having suspicion is not having proof.

So you attribute that level of conciseness that Trump never stated. He never said that we want the good non socialist minority of Norwegians.

> That’s not how criminal law works. The defendant is never under any obligation to prove innocence. The prosecution always has to prove guilt. Having suspicion is not having proof.

Applying for a passport isn't a criminal proceeding, for one thing, but regardless of that, not having a passport stamp is strong evidence that you weren't here. It's like proof that your car was parked in your driveway all night when you claim you were at work -- when all other methods of travel are illegal. It's theoretically possible that you got there some other way, but now it's on you to show that. It's not about "proving your innocence" but rather rebutting the government's strong evidence that you're not.

> So you attribute that level of conciseness that Trump never stated. He never said that we want the good non socialist minority of Norwegians.

That's a fair point, only then it goes the other way. Trump doesn't want more people from Mexico because he actually knows they don't vote for him (it's a thing the media regularly talks about). Does he contemplate how immigrants from Norway would vote at all, or is he just arbitrarily choosing a country known to have a middle class?

Applying for a passport isn't a criminal proceeding, for one thing, but regardless of that, not having a passport stamp is strong evidence that you weren't here.

According to the article:

In some cases, passport applicants with official U.S. birth certificates are being jailed in immigration detention centers and entered into deportation proceedings. In others, they are stuck in Mexico, their passports suddenly revoked when they tried to reenter the United States.

Being “jailed in immigration detention centers and entered into deportation procedures” sure sounds criminal to me.

It's like proof that your car was parked in your driveway all night when you claim you were at work -- when all other methods of travel are illegal. It's theoretically possible that you got there some other way, but now it's on you to show that. It's not about "proving your innocence" but rather rebutting the government's strong evidence that you're not.

Do you know how many Black people alive right now in the South also have parents that were born as late as the early 1900s without any official documentation besides thier names written in a Bible? Should that also make it harder for my parents to get passports? (btw, it doesn’t.)

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17911377 and marked it off-topic.

I don’t know of any country which is able to which does not enforce immigration policy, including Mexico, Canada, as well as Colombia, Brazil, Costa Rica, etc... Never mind Japan, Koreas, China, etc.

Do those countries make toddlers represent themselves in immigration hearings?

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/children-immigration-court...

I seriously, seriously, seriously doubt that if you examined all those countries with the same level of examination you've applied to the US (even if that is not all that much) that you'd find they're all just hunky dory. In fact I all but guarantee you'd find over half the policies aggressively racist, let alone all the other things you might think to fault immigration policies for.

Note this is not an "everybody else does it so it's OK" argument, this is my not being particularly sympathetic to a lamppost argument. If the area under the lamppost is dirty, you don't have much logical basis to assume that everywhere else is clean, and then critique the area under the lamppost for its unique dirtiness.

If the area under my lamp-post is dirty, that's what I should care about. I don't care that there's some dirty lamp-post on the other side of the world. I don't live there. I don't have any power, or influence over that lamp-post.

It's one thing when some government agency in Turkmenistan is behaving unethically. It's another thing to actively abet unethical behaviour next door.

You are right that, if it's my lamp-post, it's fine for me to say that it's not as clean as it should be, and we need to fix it. But that's different from what jerf said. He said it's not valid to assume that under my lamp-post is uniquely dirty. And he is also correct.

I honestly do not care about those other countries. I'm not a citizen of those countries; I don't have the ability to influence what happens there.

I am a citizen of the USA, and thus I am able to influence things here. I absolutely can and will criticize the US's lamppost for being dirty as fuck, regardless of the state of other lampposts.

I mean, can you point to one example of another country that we'd consider part of the free world that makes toddlers represent themselves in any sort of court proceeding? I can't exactly prove a negative here, and am willing to hear non theoretical arguments.

> I mean, can you point to one example of another country that we'd consider part of the free world that makes toddlers represent themselves in any sort of court proceeding?

Are you sure this isn't the general practice? The US isn't prohibiting them from having an attorney (or their parents etc.), it's just not paying for their attorney.

It's the same as when a toddler sets fire to someone else's property. If there is a lawsuit the government doesn't pay for the defendant's lawyer, independent of how old they are. That's on the parents.

> Are you sure this isn't the general practice?

I have yet to see examples to the contrary.

> The US isn't prohibiting them from having an attorney (or their parents etc.), it's just not paying for their attorney.

They just separated them from their parents, and expect a toddler in a detention center to somehow shit out an attorney. Meanwhile the government is represented by an attorney.

> It's the same as when a toddler sets fire to someone else's property. If there is a lawsuit the government doesn't pay for the defendant's lawyer, independent of how old they are. That's on the parents.

Can you even sue a toddler? Like, you can sue the parents sure, but can you think of another situation civil or criminal that has a toddler representing themselves?

> I have yet to see examples to the contrary.

https://www.loc.gov/law/help/right-to-counsel/detained-migra...

The United Kingdom appears to be the only country where legal counsel is provided by the government’s legal aid agency free of charge to all migrants in detention.

Also remember that (like most of these countries) the US does have legal aid services available for this purpose in various cases.

> They just separated them from their parents, and expect a toddler in a detention center to somehow shit out an attorney.

How does anyone find an attorney? For young people their parent or guardian would typically do it.

In the cases where they were separated from their parents (a stupid, short-lived policy that has been discontinued) the attorneys were often finding them.

> Meanwhile the government is represented by an attorney.

What would you propose they be represented by?

> Can you even sue a toddler? Like, you can sue the parents sure, but can you think of another situation civil or criminal that has a toddler representing themselves?

Why not? Typically there is no reason to because they typically have no assets and are not legally responsible for many of their actions. But suppose you have a toddler who is the legal owner of some inherited property where someone is injured.

In practice they would have a parent or guardian deal with it (or hire an attorney), but that's also normally what happens with immigration.

And the people who can't afford an attorney get shafted. But that's par for the course. Even in criminal cases the time and resources available to the public defender are totally inadequate.

Would the people affected choose their home country’s immigration laws over the US’s (if that were a choice) in deciding their cases? I think the US would be favored by most.

I mean, how is a toddler even supposed to make that decision?

This is not new with thr current admin, even if advocates would like to make people believe this is new under Trump. However, these children are represented by attorneys at their side who know more than the patent(s). They are getting more rep than they would had their home country’s immigration laws applied.

> This is not new with thr current admin, even if advocates would like to make people believe this is new under Trump.

I also protested Obama's immigration policies, but sure, paint the other side as hyper partisan.

> However, these children are represented by attorneys at their side who know more than the patent(s). They are getting more rep than they would had their home country’s immigration laws applied.

Literally straight from the above link:

> In court, the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) is represented by a trained lawyer who argues for the child’s deportation. But no lawyer stands with the child. Every child is required to respond to the charges against him or her, and, in theory, afforded an opportunity to make legal arguments and present evidence on his or her own behalf. But in reality those rights are meaningless because children are not competent to exercise them.

> Each child has attempted to find representation, including through pro bono legal service providers, but none of them have found anyone with the resources to take on their cases. Absent this Court’s intervention, these children were or will be forced to defend themselves pro se under the immigration laws—a legal regime that, as the courts have recognized, rivals the Internal Revenue Code in its complexity.

So... no. They aren't unilaterally represented by attorneys.

Just FYI, starting every sentence with "I mean," is analogous to starting every sentence with "Duhhh".

For an in-person realtime conversation where one may need a moment to gather thoughts, I can look past it. But to consistently do it in written text? Come on.

So I can see two outcomes:

1. The children are deported, thus go back to their home countries where they will be cared for.

2. The children are not deported, thus stay in the US where they will be cared for.

There's no downside. They're toddlers. They were never going to be imprisoned or fined (hopefully, gosh if I got this one wrong I don't know what country we are living in).

The thing is in the US, you the right to legal counsel is restricted to "criminal" cases. Thus in lots of court hearings, you won't have counsel, especially if you are someone who is involved but will face no 'negative' consequences in the courts' opinion. Child custody hearings have children "testify" on their own behalf, but they don't get personalized legal counsel; any support they do get isn't guaranteed to be someone with a law degree.

A lot of these children were separated from their parents while their parents were seeking asylum. So no, it's not a forgone conclusion that the child will be cared for in the other country.

Hell, in some cases they're not even sure which country the child is from.

If they cannot determine where a child is from, I am sure that the US government will take care of the child.

If they can, and the asylum request is approved, then the child stays in the US.

If they can, but the request is denied, then their home country is not an unsafe place, and surely the home country will want their citizen back.

I feel like talking about asylum is an edge case in its self. Surely not the majority of immigrants are not legitimate asylm seekers. For most, they may not like their home countries (perhaps due to the low wages, or opportunity) but home is not a place of abuse where we must morally rescue them from.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17911377 and marked it off-topic.

I have to think the authors of articles selling the same point are participants in an activist cabal, because they keep pushing this narrative as if it is the dominant perspective and has momentum. But it's not the dominant perspective and doesn't have momentum. And except for the outrage machine of Twitter/Vox[Recode]/Atlantic/Gizmodo/etc. trying to stand up a positive feedback loop around this issue, we would probably have moved on. The number of participants in these efforts are so small and unrepresentative, to a point where it is not material and these companies should not change their direction. Based on what I've heard, Microsoft and Amazon have triple-digit participants at best. Google is where this vocal minority is most present, and they're just in the low four-digit range (~3K per this article, out of ~100K employees).

There are FAR more employees who either do not share these same views or are OK with the company pursuing its own agenda independent of their personal political views. For example with workers not willing to build image recognition algorithms that assist/augment the capabilities of joystick-drone-operators, I bet there are a much larger number that are totally willing to work on it, and they are signaling that by not participating in the protest even when it is socially/professionally safe to do so.

As for the others - they're just not screaming about it due to the intolerance exhibited by far-left progressives at these companies, especially with all the purposeful/malicious leaking. And as a left progressive, I think that sort of behavior must be stopped and not tolerated.

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