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Comment by koolba | Hacker News Reader

> However, I'd like to point out that the budget hawks of yesteryear (Reagan, Simpson, McCain) were at least logically consistent in that they were pro-immigration.

Being pro immigration does not mean you’re pro illegal immigration.

> The bonus to Social Security is even larger because of the undocumented population, which pays payroll taxes but is ineligible for retirement benefits. This effectively foots the bill for 2-3 million American retirees.

If they don’t have social security numbers, they’re not paying payroll taxes.

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There's a very simple fix to both issues you raise, change the immigration system to allow more legal immigration.

We write the rules on what is and isn't legal. Writing the rules and then using them to say immigration is great unless it's illegal is very circular logic.

Yes, as written that is circular. I believe it is shorthand for legal immigration << actual immigration (legal + illegal) and that people in favor of "legal immigration" are in favor of much lower, selective immigration.

I do not see a logical flaw in this stance.

> Being pro immigration does not mean you’re pro illegal immigration.

This distinction is mostly out the window with today's populists, see e.g. repealing jus soli and all the other racist dogwhistles.

> If they don’t have social security numbers, they’re not paying payroll taxes.

They're using SSNs, often false or not their own. Read about the Earnings Suspense File at the SSA in the second link I posted.

> This distinction is mostly out the window with today's populists, see e.g. repealing jus soli and all the other racist dogwhistles.

There are already some limitations on birthright citizenship, for example we do not grant it to children born to diplomats visiting the USA. It's not an unreasonable position to limit it to legal immigrants.

Foreign embassies are considered US soil for jurisdictional purposes. If an army forced their way in to an embassy so that their pregnant battalion could deliver their babies within the embassy, should they get citizenship? If it doesn't apply to the embassy, how about if they do the same thing to a small island controlled by the USA or even the southern USA border?

> There are already some limitations on birthright citizenship, for example we do not grant it to children born to diplomats visiting the USA.

That's largely because the US is a signatory of the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations. Children of foreign diplomats born in the United States are not automatically granted citizenship because they are not considered subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.

You're right, I can picture this. A pregnant battalion of the Mexican army breaches the border and invades the US to give birth, 18 years later the kids are employed cleaning American bathrooms. Mexico wins and America is not great once again.

> ...repealing jus soli and all the other racist dogwhistles.

Australia did the exact thing. Switch from Jus Soli to Jus Sanguinis. Some Jus Sanguinis countries have switched to some hybrid system that allows legal immigrants to get citizenship at birth.

Australia also has Vegemite and the Sydney funnel web spider. No desire to imitate those either.

There's no reason to punish US-born babies just because their parents committed a misdemeanor jumping the border fence. If they're born here and grow up here they're as American as anybody else, descendants of the Mayflower border-jumpers included.

To undertake the process of a constitutional amendment just to deny them that is one of the most racist policies being debated in this country since Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era.

Make jumping the fence a felony then?

Yes, this and also just prevent the fence jumping in the first place. It's not an intractable problem, we do have the means to secure our borders.

Deport the children of felons? Ok but the only country willing to take Eric has frigid winters. He might not make it.

Legal immigration has already been reduced to almost nothing anyway.

> If an army forced their way in to an embassy so that their pregnant battalion

Most people prefer to live in the real world rather then in absurdist fantasy land.

Absurdist fantasies are to prove a point that some limits exist. The question then becomes what said limits are.

That limits exist is usually not that interesting to point out. Nothing is unlimited. It doesn't usually matter that much for practical policy.

But it doesn't matter anyway because heat death of the universe.

This verbiage is just muddying the waters. When people say they're in favor of "legal immigration" we generally don't mean that we're fine providing a legal fig-leaf to the record high illegal immigration levels that we're seeing today.

We mean that we're fine with the rate of immigration that as a country we've agreed that we're okay with (i.e. "legal immigration") and that it isn't okay to ignore these compromises and just let in anyone who shows up.

> record high illegal immigration levels that we're seeing today

As of 2022, the undocumented population was still about 10% below its 2007 peak. [1] The population of the US grew by 11% over the same period, so as a fraction it's well below the recent maximum.

Some of the statistics at the border increased massively in recent years because a lot of immigrants are now turning themselves in as refugees. [2] This allows them to "ride the disfunction" in the backlogged immigration courts, granting them legal work authorization and deportation protection in the meantime. If we fixed the disfunction, they would just stop turning themselves in once again.

The level we've "agreed that we're okay with" is far from set. Every time we've tried to set it in recent years [3], restrictionists like you have spared no tactic to gum up the works. That's because you figured (correctly) that the level of legal immigration that we would compromise upon is higher than the level we currently have.

Restrictionists are the primary reason we have a vast underclass of semi-serfs.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/22/what-we-k...

[2] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/asylum-applicatio...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_Security,_Economic_Oppo...

>the [legal] levels ...are far from set

They are set. You appear to not like those levels, but they are well defined. Movements to change those levels are also fine, but again, legal immigration paths are well defined.

>restrictionists like you

We have a system by which we make these decisions as a society (i.e. the federal government). That system has not materially changed immigration recently. That isn't "gumming up the works" that's the system working as designed.

>Restrictionists are the primary reason we have a vast underclass of semi-serfs.

No. We have a underclass of semi-serfs because we have systematically and for decades chosen to turn a blind eye to (or actively encouraged) illegal immigration. We could enforce laws as they exist today and not have this human exploitation.

> They are set. You appear to not like those levels, but they are well defined

> We could enforce laws as they exist today

You can't have it both ways, either the system is broken or it isn't. You don't want to fix it because the overall level would increase. So you push for "enforcement," but that does nothing to address e.g. the asylum claims situation. The system cannot be fixed without updating the law.

The immigration system has been broken for more than a generation. There have been large majorities in favor of reforming it for almost as long. Doing nothing in this context is not how the system is supposed to work. It's actually amazing how a narrow-but-loud minority of visceral racists has managed to gum up the works for so long.

I'm completely unbothered by the implied accusations of racism (e.g. "only racists oppose my position. You oppose my position. The remainder of the problem is left as an exercise to the reader.") and it shows that you're increasingly unable to justify your stance.

>you can't have it both ways

We have a system of government and that through that system we've defined legal immigration. That system is no longer being enforced, which is less of a system-problem and more of a meta-problem. I don't have any solutions to the meta-problem[1], but it is self-evident to me that even if we have immigration reform the system won't work if those who are sworn to uphold it neglect to do their part (that is, if there is a meta-problem, no within-system solutions will work).

[1] I hope it will work itself out in the polls but I guess we'll see

> it shows that you're increasingly unable to justify your stance.

Funnily I'm making the same claim about you.

> the system won't work if those who are sworn to uphold it neglect to do their part

As is, the system is only serving the interests of the restrictionist minority. The situation is similar to where marijuana enforcement was a decade ago, and LGBTQ rights a decade before that. Many states have had to make-do with the situation and ended up building their own mini-immigration systems.

If this is the context in which someone is thinking "gee, but I'd really like to get millions of people deported and lock the rest out, how can I accomplish that?", well, it's just possible that perhaps they haven't come to terms with the reason why. They can call a spade a spade if and when they're ready.

> repealing jus soli and all the other racist dogwhistles

What exactly is racist about being against jus soli?

Personally, I think birthright citizenship solves more problems than it causes but I also see the arguments against it.

Most countries in Africa, Europe, and Asia don't have it.

None of the Nordic countries have it - are they racist? I thought those were the countries everyone says we should try and be more like?

> What exactly is racist about being against jus soli?

Pretty much everything?

If some new country like South Sudan was picking a rule from scratch, one could perhaps convincingly claim to be against jus soli for reasons other than racism. But to push for a constitutional amendment to deny citizenship to babies that are American in every way betrays the obvious reason for doing so. It just doesn't fool anyone.

Yeah, I'm not really convinced.

Just sounds like you feel very strongly about this and want to say "everyone who disagrees with me is racist".

The majority of the world's population lives in countries that don't do birthright citizenship.

Jus Soli definitely gets abused. Cheap international flights didn't exist in 1866 when birthright citizenship became part of US law.

I could see merit in amending those laws, perhaps not abolishing it but maybe tightening it to only apply to children of legal residents or something like that. That's a system that many countries use, including progressive European states.

Trying to put motivations out of bounds over whether something is racist or not has historically been the core tactic in the bigot's playbook. We're all in favor of voters being literate, aren't we?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test

The argument that a rule is color-blind on paper doesn't make systems that are incredibly racist any less so.

Don't see how that's relevant. Other laws were racist, therefore a law removing Jus Soli would be racist?

The literacy test was a law that was colorblind on paper but that furthered a racist outcome in practice, which is why it was passed by bigots.

The jus soli repeal is a constitutional amendment that's colorblind on paper but that furthers a racist outcome in practice, which is why it's being promoted by bigots.

>This distinction is mostly out the window with today's populists, see e.g. repealing jus soli and all the other racist dogwhistles.

your enemies aren't all dumb. the smart ones aren't likely to talk to you based on your attitudes towards them.

> Being pro immigration does not mean you’re pro illegal immigration.

I can't really know what anyone believes in their heart, but I doubt that the oligarchs who extol the free market (including the market for labor) really care about any of the demographic details of those they would employee as long as they produce as expected.

Fake and reused social security numbers work just fine for withholding. Most companies are not doing E-Verify. The companies profiting from illegal labor are working with the system as designed.

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