Hacker News Reader

Comment by badpun | Hacker News Reader

I suspect the system works as intented. American economy and people profit off of illegal immigrants' cheap labor, but at the same time the legal system does not recognize them, so that they can be squeezed even more with no recourse. That's how the country was built in the past and that is what it is still doing - and it's working extremely well. I don't believe it will ever be changed.

Oh, and H1-B is the same principle, but for coders and such. It has to be made nicer, because coders have better options worldwide - but it's only made as nice as absolutely necessary to keep the cheap people coming in.

View on HN

> so that they can be squeezed even more with no recourse

IMO it's about labor pressure on actual US citizens. You know that some illegal immigrant could be hired to take a low-wage position over you, therefore you don't have actual labor bloc leverage from withholding your labor from those positions. Prevents unions, prevents wage raises, prevents strikes, prevents all progress in those classes of work. They use these folks against US workers all the time.

Both are correct.

That's why the executive is sabotaging immigration control right now, it's like telling the world come to America. 10x more Cubans, Haitians, Brazillians crossing the border cararraja why? To stop that inflation! No unions, no inflation, no dignity in the workplace, up that unemployment in real life (but not on paper, turn those 9's into 6's).

> 10x more Cubans, Haitians, Brazillians crossing the border

Do you have a source for this?

10× is an exaggeration, but there has been a huge increase in illegal immigration across the southern border. The Biden administration has a de facto open border policy, so that has motivated a lot of people in Central and South America to try their luck.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/11/09/whats-happe...

I actually think we should have more immigration. But it should be controlled with strict vetting, not random people paying coyotes to smuggle them across the border.

That's not what your source seems to be saying - it's saying there has been an increase in encounters, which could indicate a more effective strategy for encountering immigrants. In fact some quotes like this:

"By comparison, the proportion of repeat border crossers was much lower in the 2019 fiscal year (7%), before the Border Patrol began regularly expelling migrants during the coronavirus outbreak."

indicate that illegal immigration has gotten harder. Isn't the real problem with illegal immigration the immigrants that aren't discovered?

Obviously there's no way to actually count people who are trying to hide. But there hasn't been a huge increase in Border Patrol staffing, so an increase in encounters likely indicates an increase in illegal immigration. They only catch a fraction.

Or do you have an alternate hypothesis that fits the data?

> While the number of encounters was the highest on record last fiscal year, the number of individuals encountered was considerably lower. That’s because more than a quarter of all migrant encounters at U.S. borders in both fiscal 2021 and fiscal 2020 (27% and 26%, respectively) involved repeat crossers, according to CBP statistics. By comparison, the proportion of repeat border crossers was much lower in the 2019 fiscal year (7%), before the Border Patrol began regularly expelling migrants during the coronavirus outbreak.

This evidence runs exactly contrary to both the "open border" and "unprecedented numbers" theory and indicates a change in policy that directly explains the new numbers.

No, the evidence supports that we effectively have a (mostly) open border. Illegal immigrants who make it through the border are usually not expelled immediately. Many are processed and released pending some kind of further action. This can stretch out for years, especially if they claim asylum (even without evidence to justify the claim).

> Illegal immigrants who make it through the border are usually not expelled immediately. Many are processed and released pending some kind of further action. This can stretch out for years, especially if they claim asylum (even without evidence to justify the claim).

And yet the quote I just gave says the increase is due to people being removed from the country and trying to get back in.

> But it should be controlled with strict vetting, not random people paying coyotes to smuggle then across the border.

But then it's an official system and the immigrants are recognized by the law, which means they can't be exploited as much - which defeats the purpose of the whole thing.

For example, if Julio from Mexico falls off poorly constructed scaffolding and is disabled for life, he could sue his employer, but he'll have a hard time doing that if he's deported back to Mexico two weeks later. Whereas, if he was here legally, he could sue the company for millions, which would increase the price of construction, which would make American houses less nice. People like nice houses though, so things will probably stay as they are.

Yeah they like the nice house they like the maintenance crew they like the gardening they like the cleaning, they call this "the help" in many cases. Say "We're accustomed to the help.". No idea what their names are. When I met those people I'd learn their names (I still remember a few, "Rigoberto" was a gardener in Atherton), I remember tipped them Coronas once, for after they got home, they cleared something out for the hacker house just to help us out...what else...well it's different for me because growing up overseas, in Chile, basically means talking to "nanas" (Kechwa meaning "older sister", consultora de hogar or housemaid or babysitter, mixed responsibilities) all day long. Learn to talk from them, a lot of my Spanish comes from them.

But yeah they want all these nice things but...they can't swing it legit, like yeah the top brass of a town's bank can have all this, but a middle-class family? So they find work-arounds.

For those three specific nationalities 10x is not an exaggeration. We're not talking Venezuelans, Colombians, Nicaraguans, Dominicans, Guatemalan, or Mexicans, who couldn't possibly go 10x year-on-year.

Yes, Wall Street Journal reported some time last year Those three nationalities had 10xed compared to the year before according to the DHS.

Do you mean "Record Numbers of Migrants Arrested at Southern Border"[1]? That doesn't sound like an open door policy, nor an ineffective border control.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/illegal-immigration-arrests-hit...

I think that's a different article than the 10x article. Different pictures.

Until US workers keep voting for the party that enacts such policies, I don't see anything wrong: just democracy working as intended.

Interesting that illegal immigration - something that has been a major concern since the 90s - became a major flashpoint after the courts chipped away significantly at labor rights and peak (illegal) immigration was over for 2 decades.

The number of illegal aliens present in the country appears to have peaked in 2007. So somewhat later than 2 decades.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/04/13/key-facts-a...

This is sadly how a lot of economies function. Something is dangled in front of you (life in the big cities, citizenship in developed countries, etc.), and in order to get that you must agree to be exploited, to different extents. This way inhabitants of said economies get to enjoy the fruit of such cheap labor.

Sometimes the facade of a convenient modern life is built entirely upon an underclass who are intentionally kept in that situation just so they can continue to be exploited. This is of course neither healthy nor sustainable.

Of course incentives and promises of upward mobility after some hard work are nice, but one must question themselves: if the local economy will simply cease to function when there are not as many people willing to be exploited, is this model still ethical?

I also worry about all kinds of other exploitation that could result from the immigrants’ legal situation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com