Hacker News Reader

Comment by supercanuck | Hacker News Reader

Sounds like immigration is gonna be this generation's "War on Drugs"

Not a lot of good solutions. Can't let everyone in. No one cares for merit based immigration like other countries (ie Canada) because pro-immigration supporters want others than the best to have a shot, and no one wants quotas because it'll clamp down on immigration from countries with large populations (China and India).

> Not a lot of good solutions.

There are a lot of easy improvements; there's no perfect solution, but this is a perfect is the enemy of the good situation.

> Can't let everyone in.

There are two halves of this:

Not everyone is personally acceptable as an immigrant; there are reasons for prohibition based on individual history.

You can't let everyone who isn't individually prohibited in for free because assimilating immigrants has costs.

The US has a basically reasonable approach (perhaps wanting some tweaks in details) for the first, but less than ideal handling of the second; most notably, aside from issues with the design of some of the available visa categories like H-1B, hard per-category caps and even moreso, per-country caps on visa categories exacerbate supply/demand imbalances for which the natural consequence is illegal migration.

> No one cares for merit based immigration like other countries

US preference categories, which are the basis of virtually all legal immigration, are merit-based, though you may not like then particular notion of merit on which they are based.

> and no one wants quotas

We have both per-category, and within each category per-country, quotas, and lots of people want them (and many want them to be smaller.) It's not a good policy, but many people absolutely do.want them.

> because it'll clamp down on immigration from countries with large populations (China and India).

Well, the particular formula effects countries with large number of people qualified and seeking to immigrate, which depending on the Visa category includes Mexico, the Phillipines, China, and India (and I think a couple others in a few categories.) Population has an indirect role, but it's not the direct driver of quota imbalance.

The US was founded on immigration.

> Can't let everyone in.

Why not?

Because it breaks your economy and social fabric (super simplified for the sake of fitting a decent reply into one short HN comment). We're at the lowest level of unemployment in decades, and wages are barely moving up. Bringing in large amounts of unskilled workers (remember, skilled workers get in on merit) would only delay wages rising (or those unskilled workers are going to be working under the table in jobs like slaughter houses, dairy farms, and other hazardous work environments where they will have no recourse when they're injured or maimed). Some immigrants want to integrate with American society, but not all (and that is what is expected of you as an immigrant, to share and hold our values in the same regard citizens do).

Europe has had its fair share of troubles with economic migrants. This isn't about race, this is about economic systems and the social stability of your host country. I support an immigration pipeline that gets skilled workers into the US as fast as possible (most especially in the healthcare field), but that's not what's on the public policy table.

I feel like a summary of all of that would basically be "nationals matter, non-nationals don't".

It's not unique to the US at all, I'm in the UK and you know how that's working out.

If the same barrier existed between the north and south of England, if I needed a visa to travel/study/work, I wouldn't be on here commenting, and tons of people would be stuck in crap conditions in the expensive south east because moving north would be visa-gated.

Citizens do matter, if the country has a social system, like the Europeans do.

You can have either social support system, or open borders, but not both. It is unfair to those who built the system to open borders and deplete it on people, who neither built it, nor have intention to continue building it.

Well-argued. I agree 100%.

But note that you can oppose this current system of enforcement being described in the article without being in favor of open borders.

This rests on the assumption that immigrants "deplete systems" and that citizens don't.

They're both just people. If anything, immigrants are generally above-average in terms of dedication (for one, there's a sampling bias because they've just travelled across countries to come to yours).

Limiting access to contributory systems (e.g. having a state pension require contribution) is reasonable, preventing someone from literally setting foot in a country or trading within a country is not that.

The visa-regime borders are not mutually exclusive with migration either. Actually, it ensures, that the country gets the well-driven ones.

If you want to see, how to destroy a country fast, have look at the UN Global Compact for Migration. Social service-wise, it binds the countries to provide more for immigrants (even those entering illegally) than for their own citizens!

But this isn't the first time that anti-immigration hysteria happened. In the 19th century the fear was that massive Irish immigration to America in the wake of the potato famine would destroy the culture and economy of the mostly Protestant, English-descended America. While it certainly changed America, in retrospect it is hard to say it was really for the worse.

Immigration is at generationally low levels, I don’t see how you could blame it for lack of wage increases. What about the stagnant minimum wage, record corporate profits or union busting; might they play a role? “American society” and “our values” are by-products of immigration, how would more immigrants ruin that?

I'll give you a firm example. I'm close to a town of 20,000 in rural Minnesota, and the biggest employer is a well known turkey company. Their plants used to be staffed with primarily native (and being in Minnesota, white) people. It was menial, hard labor but it paid well because of that. By the 90s the plant was primarily staffed by illegal Mexican immigrants, and now it's almost entirely Somalians.

The jobs are repetitive, mindless, and it's cold, wet, and loud in there. The pay is barely above minimum wage. If the company didn't have access to those immigrants that are happy for any work at all, they would have been forced to raise those wages long ago. If people in the plant were paid, say, $15 an hour, the hourly workers in the office next door sure wouldn't be happy being paid the same amount. Their wages would have to be higher, which would mean the salaried folks would also want to be paid more.

That town is a perfect microcosm of how the massive amount of immigration our country has seen has kept wages stagnant.

You still haven't proven that immigration is the cause of this particular wage stagnation. You want to believe it is, but you haven't given evidence.

Is there proof that non-immigrants even want to do this work? The well-known case from Georgia suggests they don't. https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/05/17/the-law-of-...

At the same time, couldn't the state just raise the minimum wage?

He says they used to, but wages didn't keep up.

Immigration hasn’t kept up either, so how can it be the driver?

Why do you think it hasn’t kept up? Perhaps legal hasn’t. CA is a very different place than the one I grew up in.

It's just as much the result of the lack of a meaningful minimum wage and reasonable labor standards. Another perfectly acceptable way to have fixed this would have been for Republicans to accept living wage and labor standards laws, and not have spent the last 40 some years waging war on unions.

I'll say it again. Study after study shows that immigration -- illegal or otherwise -- has very little effect on wages. Mechanization and "pro-business" policy is basically all of it.

Except the problem with that story is that immigrantion is apparently lower now than ever, and the biggest problem is that many americans strongly prefer not to do that kind of work.

Why would the 15 an hour office workers care? And quite frankly if that makes them unhappy, they are free to find employment elsewhere. They were clearly fine with the pay previously, why should it matter what someone else is making. That just reaks of elitism

> What about the stagnant minimum wage, record corporate profits or union busting might they play a role?

I don't discount that these are major contributors to the problem. Adding additional labor supply, supply willing to work for almost nothing, does not help the problem.

Growing the pie has always helped everyone in America. Is there something that has fundamentally changed in your view to alter this trend? Are there Americans out there who want to do these types of jobs?

The pie hasn’t grown for four decades [1], and the middle class has been hollowed out [2]. The existing system must be fixed before more burden is placed on it.

A job not being filled in no way validates that someone should fill that job. Some jobs should not exist (anything where life and limb is constantly in significant peril, for example). We don't throw our hands up when we can't find workers to clean up nuclear waste accidents. We build robots for the job.

[1] https://i.stack.imgur.com/iCTuo.jpg

[2] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/12/09/459087477...

==The pie hasn’t grown for four decades [1], and the middle class has been hollowed out [2]. The existing system must be fixed before more burden is placed on it.==

Your first chart doesn't show a stagnant pie, looking at GDP numbers disproves that theory. The pie has absolutely grown, corporations have just chosen to keep more of it.

The problem is that you are connecting these things directly to immigration and there isn't much evidence to back that up. You are taking a real problem (stagnating wages and fewer corporate profits going to workers) and shoehorning in an ideological belief to explain it. Your sources provide no evidence that immigration is to blame for either of these phenomena. They simple show that the phenomena exists.

==We don't throw our hands up when we can't find workers to clean up nuclear waste accidents. We build robots for the job.==

Wasn't your entire point that we are just hiring immigrants to do this work instead of building robots (your Wisconsin dairy example)?

> The pie has absolutely grown, corporations have just chosen to keep more of it.

Then the pie has not grown. You're simply advocating throwing more people on an already broken system.

> Wasn't your entire point that we are just hiring immigrants to do this work instead of building robots (your Wisconsin dairy example)?

My argument is that automation should be prioritized over subjugating illegal immigrants who have no recourse. Dairy farmers cannot afford to pay a legal wage, therefore automation is their only option if ICE shows up and prevents them from hiring illegal immigrants (the fact that the dairy industry is hideously broken and needs to shrink dramatically is a topic for another thread). I am pro-immigration when properly implemented, but staunchly anti-abuse of all people.

> Then the pie has not grown. You're simply advocating throwing more people on an already broken system.

I'm not sure where you get this idea, but the growth of US GDP is evidence that the pie has grown. The reality is that corporations are keeping a larger percentage of that pie than ever before. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Secondly, I am not advocating for anything, I am just trying to understand your stance.

But we're not talking about illegal immigrants who have no recourse here. We're talking about opening up immigration so that these people, and others, can come in and do these jobs that as of now only go to illegals, while also receiving the benefits and protections that come as a legal immigrant. That seems to be exactly what you want, so why are you against it?

I feel that I have sufficiently explained my thesis through my other comments.

Immigrants aren't only laborers. They are also consumers, increasing demand for economic activity.

At least in the US, claiming that immigrants hold "our values" in lower regard than citizens is not at all obvious.

Why wouldn't workers have recourse? Only illegal immigrants are excluded from protection under law. Unless your claim is that no low-skilled laborer are, which undermines your claim about "our values".

> Why wouldn't workers have recourse? Only illegal immigrants are excluded from protection under law. Unless your claim is that no low-skilled laborer are, which undermines your claim about "our values".

Legal immigrants would of course have employment law recourse. The vast majority of illegal immigrants currently do not (but should!), and that is what I was referring to. Those dangerous jobs I mention haven't been automated away yet solely because illegal, unskilled labor exists to perform them (see: dairy farms in Wisconsin that cannot exist without that labor [1]) (or the business cannot exist paying legal wages). Illegal immigration subsidizes business owners through the suffering of those immigrants. Legalizing those immigrants (and therefore, pushing their wages into what legal workers command) would eliminate those jobs. Catch-22.

[1] https://madison.com/ct/news/local/under-trump-wisconsin-dair... (Under Trump, Wisconsin dairies struggle to keep immigrant workers)

> We're at the lowest level of unemployment in decades, and wages are barely moving up.

This has everything to do with corrupt politicians gaming the US economy and tax code for their patrons, and absolutely nothing to do with immigration. Study after study shows immigration has very little effect on wages.

> Some immigrants want to integrate with American society, but not all

What does this even mean? There is no single American society. If you don't believe me, compare Savannah to Oakland, or St. Paul to New Orleans.

Your comment repeats a lot of incorrect and dangerous information about immigrants. I encourage you to do some research.

Imagine if the entire population of Bangladesh were suddenly added to the state of California. You’d quickly become the third world because no country could handle that sort of influx. Just the act of building enough schools would bankrupt the state. Not to mention any other social services — and the only benefit to the country initially would be simply millions of unskilled workers — which would drive wages to near zero. If you enforce minimum wages, then you’d have massive unemployment.

Immigration should be fair, measured and designed around a policy of quick assimilation, both for the benefit of the immigrant and the existing citizens.

This should not be down voted. I am from Bangladesh. You’re leaving out the fact that your hypothetical would also destroy our social fabric. Fully 1/3 of the population of the country believes that I should be executed for leaving Islam: http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religi.... That makes Bangladesh very moderate compared to say Pakistan where that number is 2/3.

That's not realistic. Even remotely. There won't be some sudden influx because getting to the United States alone is hard. For most people, it'll be a transoceanic flight which is not very cheap at all.

Speaking as an immigrant - trust me, there would be. Yes, you wouldn't get the entire population of the Third World overnight. But even the amount that could afford it (or would save to afford it if they knew they had that option) would be orders of magnitude more, and would overwhelm the country.

Why dont you ask the native Americans about that.

Are you drawing a comparison between what the US did to Native Americans and what immigrants might do to us? That is such a dangerous, slanderous, ignorant comment that I really have to question your motives.

Is it?

Our ancestors tried to annihilate natives in almost totality (physically first, then just culturally) - why is it a shock that some Americans would be afraid of the same thing happening to us? I mean one of the hallmarks of American culture is subsuming the culture of the newly arrived into our own - it not unconscionable to think that some Americans think all peoples/cultures have that same impulse.

I'm generally pro-immigration, but you need to have immigrants that want to be Americans, not people who want to bring their culture with them and pass it down. That means people who understand freedom of speech, democratic values, and largely either speak, or are willing to learn english.

As an immigrant myself, that is certainly what my family thought they were signing up for when they came here. Indeed, we left Bangladesh precisely because it was turning away from western culture and values.

I think, for the most part, immigrants today feel that way too. (There is evidence that Spanish speaking immigrants are taking up English faster than German speaking immigrants did). What scares me are the (I think well meaning but misguided) liberals who deny that assimilation is imperative.

(I'm clearly very liberal)

I think it's less binary than assimilating vs. not. Cultures are complex, and depending on your preference, you might like American culture (whatever that really even is) if it acquired some traits from others.

For example, Japan has a super low crime rate. Let's stipulate that this is a cultural thing. If you think the cultural traits that lead to this super low crime rate are good, then presumably you'd welcome lots of Japanese immigrants bringing that culture here to the US. On the other hand, if you're a freewheeling quasi-anarchist, you might not favor this kind of thing.

What I've personally always considered America's strength was its ability to ingest other cultures rather than force everyone to conform to some idea of "American" culture. That's how you can get America's rich musical tradition, for example. If we forced everyone to play saxophone instead of the accordion we'd never have Zydeco.

I do think we need to be careful of clearly destructive cultural tendencies. Religious fundamentalism. Nationalism. Homophobia. Misogyny. Racism. But it's obvious that even our own culture has problems with this stuff.

So I sort of worry when we start talking about "assimilation". To me, that feels like forcing people to live and think a certain way, when I think it's more beneficial for us to learn to live and think in a new way together.

I guess they assume that assimilation is bad, and is causing some cultural havoc - Whereas you and I both feel that assimilation is an imperative, While the newly arrived have historically wanted to do everything they can to be american, some old fashioned and/or non-americas values will always remain for them - they didnt grow up fully immersed in our culture. In any case assimilation is what will happen, with it mostly locked in by the first native born generation, and fully locked in by the second native born generation.

I'm glad you and your family are here, adding to our rich tapestry of culture and experiences.

Assimilation is not inevitable—see France for example. The native born population giving up on the idea of assimilation (and extolling those who reject it) is terrifying to me for that reason.

I'd consider assimilation to be inevitable in the United States - YMMV elsewhere - The European experience is why I'm particularly not a fan of European style multiculturalism

Which generation? This is being planned and executed by the same people that conducted (and failed) the war on drugs.

Why do you think it failed? I imagine failure of the war on drugs would be a revolution. That didn't happen, so the war on drugs didn't fail.

War on drugs was never about drugs.

Downvoted you initially but changed it to an upvote after reading it three times.

Clarification:

Iff the war on drugs was designed to systematically imprison Blacks, then the war's been largely successful.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com