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> came to work jobs no one else would take

This is a particular piece of rhetoric I find distasteful. If there are jobs that are structured such that only an illegal immigrant, who by definition exists outside the normal labor pool and its protections, will take, that job should not exist in that form or at that pay rate. Full stop.

So the fact that jobs that "no one else would take" exist and are being taken by illegal immigrants isn't a good thing. If you're in favor of expanded immigration, making that claim doesn't help your case. It substantiates the case that anti-immigration proponents have always made, which is that immigrants take the bottom out of the labor market and help keep salaries down.

After all, if nobody would take a job doing some particularly onerous job at a pittance per hour, then the employer would have to pay more, or automate, or find a more efficient way of doing the job. Refusing to do these jobs is the correct response when they are clearly undercompensated.

There are lots of people in the legal labor market who do terribly unpleasant, physically strenuous, or frankly dangerous jobs, but they typically (outside of illegal or exploitative markets) do them for reasonable wages. Someone who SCUBA dives in raw sewage or nuclear waste, for instance, is probably going to demand a fair compensation for the unpleasantness of the job. The same should be true with people who work in slaughterhouses or picking strawberries or tarring asphalt roofs. The narrative that "Americans just won't do" certain jobs is one that is created by cheapskate, exploitative employers who don't want to pay the market rate for particularly ugly jobs. Parroting it is water-carrying for these exploitative industries.

>> came to work jobs no one else would take

> If there are jobs that are structured such that only an illegal immigrant, who by definition exists outside the normal labor pool and its protections, will take

Typically, that statement also refers to jobs that are perfectly legal, but most Americans wouldn't take anyway. For example, many of the experienced people reading this wouldn't drive a cab, deliver pizzas, work as unskilled construction labor, a dishwasher or a janitor if they became unemployed. They'd continue to look for their next IT job. And they'd be choosy about that - not selling computers at Best Buy, for example.

(I'm not putting down those jobs; personally I respect any work.)

I've done almost all of those things before (general maintenance rather than construction, and I've never driven a cab) -- including retail sales at an electronics chain (Radio Shack before Best Buy was the thing) -- and would again if I didn't have better prospects elsewhere (with my experience and expectations of the future labor market, I don't expect to need to do any of those things again, but that's a different thing than being unwilling to consider it if there was a need.)

I suspect that's not all that uncommon here (well, maybe not having done as many of the less-skilled jobs you talk about, but not being unwilling if it was genuinely the best prospect.)

I have a feeling you are more like the average person here.

When the economy goes into a recession, or our current line of work is down sized; we take a chit job.

Only the elite can wait around until something palatable opens up.

My problem with people so desperate for money, is they come here illegailly, or just happen to somehow get some bogus paperwork by the federal government, and will do practically any job.

A large swath of American employers know they can use these people, treat them poorly, and make a better ROI in their particuliar business venture.

Construction trades--love them. It's gotten so bad, if I took my general contractor's licence out of non-op status, I honest don't know if I could be competitive without hiring the people who will work for minimum wage, or less.

("How do these workers manage to live on the U.S., if you pay them so little? They have different cultural norms than the average American. They see nothing wrong with bunk beds, and four, or more to a residential bedroom. Maybe the average American should get used to living like this; that's another debate.)

So basically, my gripe is certain employers are thrilled they can get away with underpaying their employees. If they do it shroudly, they can live the American Dream--nice house, happy wife, a bunch of spoiled kids.

There are so many business that use this business model.

I have very wealthy neighbors in Marin County. Yes, that liberal enclave north of San Francisco. Literally every landscaper on this block doesn't speak English, nor do most of the plumbers, and handymen. The DINK's like to gab, and a lot of the talk is just how cheap they get their jobs done. My next store neighbor literally brings two low wage helpers to Home Depot in her Mercedes. Their job is to follow her around, in her high heals, and carry her stuff to the car. Then they spend the rest of the day at her disposal. (I'm glad they are doing this job.)

In the end, it makes chit jobs hard to find when Americans are layed off, or fired.

Before we had this huge sector of society that will literally do anything, for practically noting; chit jobs were better. That was in the 80's, and 90's. By the 2000's it was over. They were here, and spoiled the low wage job sector even further.

That's where the anger comes in. It has nothing to do about Trumps claims of "Rapists--and sometimes, good citizens", etc.

> They have different cultural norms than the average American. They see nothing wrong with bunk beds, and four, or more to a residential bedroom.

So, just like silicon valley programmers then?

http://boingboing.net/2013/12/21/live-in-a-san-francisco-ike...

People will do what they need to, to improve their lives. I don't completely disagree with your post, but this comment was unnecessary and off base. You make it sound like they wouldn't be happier with more space and a nicer living quarters. They are human beings, of course they would be. Yet, they are willing to risk everything and put up with pretty desperate living conditions to come to the US. Maybe there is a reason.

> My problem with people so desperate for money, is they come here illegailly, or just happen to somehow get some bogus paperwork by the federal government, and will do practically any job.

Why have a problem with those people? To me, that makes about as much sense having a problem with the relative economic success of the United States, which is why the US has been (until the recent economic crisis) an attractive place for such people to seek to go.

Why not, instead, have a problem with the features of the system in the US that fail to address (or actively make worse) the social costs of such desperation, including, but not limited to:

(1) a legal immigration system with, in most immigrant visa categories, hard per-country numerical limits which are not aligned with demand, creating the incentive for illegal immigration (simply eliminating per country limits in most visa categories and assigning available slots from one global pool would vastly reduce illegal immigration; removing hard numerical limits and charging fees to mitigate the social costs of excess immigration beyond existing caps would reduce it even further and allow surplus immigration demand to be a source of public revenue rather than a cost hole.)

(2) poor enforcement of labor rules, both where it comes to enforcing who-can-legally-work requirements, but also wage, hour, tax, and benefit rules (without poor enforcement on both sides of this equation, the effect of illegal immigration on wages and working conditions would be far less, and the draw for illegal immigrants would be far less.)

Someone I know from the UK used to quit his job if he got fed up and then become a package courier.

   "I'd say sod it and drive around the country side for a few months."

Most Americans (as well as non-Americans) would prefer other things, if they had them available. There are poor people out there. I knew a couple who'd sell their blood often (they'd cheat by going to different banks) in order to afford gas to get to a menial job. Another one working home depot, etc. getting minimum wage --I'm not taking about highschoolers working McDonald's or the mall, I mean grownups.

Check your assumptions, friend. Pizza delivery drivers in decent areas routinely make more a year than college professors and other more prestigious-but-ultimately-low-paying gigs.

It's just not true that Americans wouldn't take these jobs.

If Americans won't take jobs at $2 an hour that doesn't mean Americans are big assholes who leave food on the table, it means that companies are big assholes that want to profit seek at the cost of legal employment. If you actually noticed a shortage of employees in these jobs, their salaries would necessarily go up to attract more. This is the natural process of the labor market.

I disagree, on liberal and humanitarian grounds.

These people make the risky and grueling trip to the US and try to make it as an illegal immigrant, for a reason: they feel the alternative is worse. They'd rather be picking crops and remitting money to their family back home, doing the jobs Americans don't do. You should be blaming the drug war that caused the Sinaloa cartel and others to take over entire cities, and resort to violence we now know from ISIS.

It's a bit like blaming the Koch brothers for hiring convicts for jobs because the convicts would be happy with less. When properly you should be blaming all the other employers whose refusal to hire convicts leads to them CHOOSING to take these jobs.

In short, even though I am a liberal, I recognize that these arguments about "exploitation" are myopic. They don't look 1 step beyond the "exploiter" to see whatconditions make people CHOOSE to be "exploited". Always, the real fix is to fix the conditions at large, not the employer.

So it is with the jobs that "no one wants". I would rather Mexicans come and do them for less, and American citizens get freed up to study other subjects and get higher paying jobs.

In fact I'd advocate for taxing 20-30% of the money saved from hiring overseas workers and automating jobs away and redistributing it as basic income on the federal level. That would help transition our economy from the one we had 20 years ago to one where aggregate demand for human labor has droppd by 10x.

While I see what you're saying, it's disingenuous with respect to American history, to pretend the nation has ever not aggressively brought people in to work "who by definition exists outside the normal labor pool"

> This is a particular piece of rhetoric I find distasteful. If there are jobs that are structured such that only an illegal immigrant, who by definition exists outside the normal labor pool and its protections, will take, that job should not exist in that form or at that pay rate. Full stop.

Agreed. There was a pretty good article on this in N+1 magazine a few months back that I found insightful enough to copy down:

> Both American and Mexican labor are cheaper for being divided, and there is no obvious reason to believe that more labor laws, like raising the minimum wage, will change the fact if there remains a surplus of undocumented workers to whom these laws technically apply, though in practice they are unenforced. The real wage, calculated as the average rate paid to documented and undocumented workers alike, explains Trump's rise more than his virulent racism does. Racism is a side effect of a regime that keeps labor laws on the books only to look the other way when millions of brown people are subjected to conditions far beneath these standards.

> The wall isn't racist; the border is racist. The wall is an effort to force a broader recognition of the privileges the border grants to professionals, who are the primary beneficiaries of American immigration and trade policy, and to redistribute some of its racist benefits downward. The only solution to this problem is to raise the price of labor power in Mexico, and then everywhere else. But given the limited political horizon of the professional left, for whom a higher minimum wage for American citizens is the best that can be hoped for, perhaps the unemployed people of Indiana can be forgiven for thinking that the wall is more realistic.

Excellent post.

One thing I find worrying about arguments in favor of illegal immigration/very lax immigration policies is how easily it can come across as being in favor of indentured servitude and having a lower class to support the upper class. We say they do jobs "nobody else wants to do" for suboptimal wages, and they do it right because they fear what'll happen if they don't. And we proudly say that they contribute by paying taxes that support citizens while taking nothing in return.

You could honestly make a solid argument in favor of slavery using the same exact points. Go to a poor, dangerous country like Yemen, offer someone a contract saying they can live in a safe country so long as they accept that they get zero benefits, they'll be deported should they mess up their job, and a large portion of their income will support their citizens. Of course, this sounds terrible, because you're making them sign a contract and this is seen as taking advantage of them, when it's entirely their choice to go for it. But when no written contract is involved, we sweep it under the rug and even get people saying it's great because it boosts our economy.

Unfortunately there will always be those for whom this modern day slavery is better than the prospects they have at home.

You do them no favors by keeping them out because they never had access to "benefits" in the first place

I think this comes down to the contract really, and you could make an argument about many contracts which are not morally right (like marrying a 50 year old grandma on her death-bed and going away with all the inheritance. Is that right?). Sweeping under a rug will not be solved by banning immigration, or making it stricter, that would exclusively make it worse. Lax laws would actually tremendously help those kind of modern slaves. So i dont really see your point.

Your argument is basically "everybody's doing it, everybody is breaking a law somewhere" and that it's OK for people to break one law because other people are breaking a different law.

I think a more sensible approach than saying "lawbreaking is OK" is for the parties on Capitol Hill to forge a compromise that involves (1) easier legal immigration (2) better funding and more enforcement of existing immigration laws (yes, including significant deportation for illegal immigrants that moved to the US as an adult)

The only way to make progress is to move further away from casual law breaking, not to continue encouraging it. (And yes, a "one time amnesty" as you suggest would encourage more people to break the law.)

Side note: My own personal opinion is that legal immigration should be so easy that virtually anyone can come to our country who doesn't have a criminal history, but that's not on the table as a viable option.

Sometimes a law is detrimental to human good. In such cases we should break it.

No, the companies involved have clout to lobby to change it. Instead of breaking it in the dark, apply sunlight and expose the problem, then fix it.

This used to be how the US operated, how both majorities (women) and minorities got the right to vote, and more.

Apparently certain countries have no such problems, with near full employment. For instance, South Korea, and it's a pretty rich country. So it is not impossible to do legally.

> No, the companies involved have clout to lobby to change it.

> This used to be how the US operated, how both majorities (women) and minorities got the right to vote, and more.

You might be giving a bit too much credit to company lobbyists and not enough to law-breaking activists. Both examples involved extensive illegal actions to accelerate change.

I think the major disagreement isn't whether law breaking is ok or not. The question is whether violating US immigration laws is a serious crime that requires harsh punishment or a minor crime the requires a slap on the wrist.

The "apologize, pay a token fine, get a work permit" crowd thinks violating immigration laws are like speeding, pot, or jaywalking laws. The "deport them all" crowd thinks violating immigration laws is like stealing or committing fraud.

That's why this issue won't be resolved any time soon. If liberals get a big enough majority there may be a one time amnesty or a change that allows new immigrants in. If the right got a big enough majority there would be a one time mass deportation or maybe a stupid wall. But the bottom line is that some people see it as no big deal, the others see it as a heinous crime, and it's a Rorschach test: agreement on who's right will never happen.

Sure, speeding might be a misdemeanor, but no one in their right mind will continue doing it of they see police lights in their rear view mirror.

Similarly, illegal immigration may be a misdemeanor, but you can't continue doing it after you're caught.

Deportation is not meant to be punative, it is simply the mechanism needed to bring you back in compliance with the laws you've knowingly broken.

The "pay a fine, get a work permit" solution will put you into a compliant status too.

Whether deportation is meant to be punitive or not, it is harsh. Not just for the deported person, but also their employer, family, landlord, etc.

This gets back to my point, does the crime deserve a harsh punishment or not is something that our society doesn't agree on.

But for most people, there is no "work permit" to be had. If you're an El Salvadoran national who wants to come to work in the US - good luck. Unless you are married to a US national, there isn't really a path to "come work here legally". If we were to create such a path, then the people who are coming here illegally would compete with random foreign nationals who would love to come and work in the US for sub-par wages in exchange for a chance at a better children for their future. We have a problem with illegal immigration from our southern border because it's porous. Are we going to create two standards - one for people who can manage to get here by crossing the Rio Grande, and a different one for a textile worker from Laos who has no ability to get here physically so that he can become "legal"?

the parties on Capitol Hill to forge a compromise

I was actually pretty impressed with the immigration reform GW Bush tried to pass, but failed. Increase enforcement along with a process to legalize the ones already here. My memory is hazy on the details, but unless you've lived illegally in the US for more than X years (those people get legalized within the US), you need to leave the country, then apply and return. Of course this is dependent on having a good enough process to let them back in (which I remember it was), but it seemed a good compromise between enforcement and increased immigration.

A fair immigration policy for US citizens would take into account the effects of immigration on them and also take their concerns into account --with rigorous studies, not just cherry picked ones (higher income immigrants, for example, contribute more to the economy than unskilled immigrants, irrespective of country)

That said, to be fair to all potential immigrants, we should grant all of them equal potential access (i.e. someone from South Africa having the same chance to legally ingress into the US as a Canadian or Mexican who are right next door --it might also take into account their population, so someone form Indonesia has the same odds as someone from Belize.

And, to be fair to the American population, we should ensure those who come here are here to fill gaps in our society --so ensuring they don't undercut Americans jobs (that is let meat packers have to pay $25/hr to get locals to do that job rather than say have them say that no American wants to do that job. I'd bet many poor whites as well as many poor blacks would take those jobs at those wages.

Also, any underdeveloped population which moves to the US (or Kuwait or Chile) will typically increase their own per capita consumption (from a global perspective) also if they come from a country wallowing in economic mismanagement (say Albania) allowing Albanians (or Georgians) to flee means even less stability for those locales as it takes their motivated people and transplant them into a place that doesn't need them as much. There are many incidental things which a policy can affect. We're not a nation of 120 million or 200, we're at 330 and climbing and most with a voracious appetite for consumption (including the fast learning newcomers).

That said, fairness in immigration should be a priority rather than just allow those who runt the gauntlet successfully. And in addition, tie it to the ease of Americans's ability to migrate into these other countries, if we choose.

Fair? You mean, maximum benefit to Americans. We're supposed to believe all people have inalienable rights to life, liberty etc. I'm willing to allow folks suffering abroad to find a haven here. That sounds fair to me.

Of course I mean fair to Americans (just as every other country wants to maximize things for their own populations). Do you think when immigrants come to the US _they_ are not going to try to maximize their own advantage? It's not like they're going to say, ha, we made it, time to underachieve, let's not ask too much.

It's not as if we don't have our own poor --blacks and whites.

We should, of course, be fair to all people. Especially as the most powerful country on earth, to play the gorilla is patently unfair.

And I also mean fair to all immigrants by granting all of any potential immigrants equal chance of acceptance, regardless of geography --but with an eye toward their potential contribution to the US --just as many other nations' immigration policies do.

Let's also remember, up and till WWi we were not a rich country. We were quite rural and not all that excellent. Many of today's poor countries were not that far behind the US.

Revisionist history. During the US Civil war, there were two great armies in the world, and the US Army of the North was number one. Number two? The US Army of the South.

Around wwi the European powers were the most powerful, Russia, UK, France, Austria, etc.

Saying the civil war US was an example of a great army is like saying Syria has the greatest armies in the ME just because so many people are armed.

The US was rural, technologically backward, compared to some european powers, and not that far ahead of others.

Are you then in favor a visa-free regime between United States and other Northern/Central American countries? It just seems silly to pay for the infrastructure for visas, passport verifications and border control, and the current status quo rewards only illegal immigration path.

Indeed. People who go the regular route are punished and have to wait and wait, get denied, etc. meanwhile irregular immigrants blow right past them.

This is a really important issue. I'm sure all the folks from China and India who waited 10 to 15 years to get a Green Card will be really happy if an amnesty happens.

Some of the issue comes down to fairness.

By 'irregular' we mean impoverished desperate people? Who have no means to afford paperwork and lawyers? Being fair to the (relatively) wealthy is a strange sort of fairness.

I'm speaking of fairness in opportunity. Someone in the Gabon should not be at a disadvantage just because they can't simply cross the border. We should set a quota, 1M, 2M, whatever, and distribute that fairly among all wanting to immigrate.

We set the rules. We have not achieved WH Bushes thousand points of light new world order single government. We look out for ourselves just as China, Mexico, Singapore do.

Whether or not people have that right outside the US doesn't mean it's our problem to enforce that right. Those people have their own countries, with their own governments organized for their benefit.

As an immigrant, this is one of those things that still perplexes me about Americans despite my having grown up here. Nobody in Bangladesh thinks they should care as much about people in Africa as they do about their own neighbors. I see that attitude in the US, but it seems to mostly be an excuse not to really care about anybody except at the most diffuse level.

Frequently it seems that caring about immigrants or refugees in the abstract is an oblique way of attacking your fellow citizens.

Additionally, if government officials are supposed to be governing the nation for the benefit of all mankind rather than looking after the interests of the people whom they theoretically represent, we might as well dispense with the pretense of representative government and try to formulate some other basis for state legitimacy.

I grew up with a lot of "college democrats" types who think big about being "citizens of the world" but will happily shit on people from "flyover country," "rednecks," etc.

The trend is that more Mexicans have left the US rather than entered it. http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/11/19/more-mexicans-leaving-...

Then, you used Mexican immigrant and illegal immigrant interchangeably. Not all Mexican immigrants are illegal or financially distressed, or seeking to do jobs that no one else wants to do.

This pisses me off.

The US entertainment industry is hostile towards Mexico in a very passive aggressive way. It spends significant resources reinforcing the idea of Mexico being poor and unsafe, as well as Mexicans being poor, violent and unattractive by designing characters and casting for actors with substantially different traits.

You made a great point, I'm Mexican so I'm aware of all the ideas and stereotypes the entertainment industry spread to the whole globe about Mexicans.

I've met people from other countries who really think we live in a desert (old west style), with a poncho and a sombrero. I can't really count all the American movies or shows where they show Mexico in a old west style, sepia background, sand and cactus everywhere, women using old style dresses, people armed everywhere. I love Terminator and Breaking bad, but the way they show Mexico, wow, it's so laughable.

People tend to think we all Mexicans are just looking for an opportunity to go to the US, they don't stop for a second and think that that might not be true for most cases, I have family over there that would give everything to come back to Mexico if they could find a good job.

You know it's not easy crossing a desert risking your life, leaving your whole family behind, knowing that you might never see them again, just to take an unpleasant job cleaning someone's else toilet, just to live in a small house in an ugly neighborhood, experiencing racism, facing cultural and language barriers, praying God for good health.

I'm a developer so I have a reasonably good job over here, I've had a lot of offers from American companies but I've rejected all of them because I just don't see it as a necessity, right know money is not a factor to consider facing all the downsides a Mexican will face in the US, here I have everything that I need and want.

To be fair, I'm guessing most of the hard line conservatives advocating mass deportation actually don't smoke pot at all.

You're right, they're much more likely to have a prescription opiate habit.

If you're poor and black, it's a crime a and should be sternly punished, if you're rich and white, it's youthful experimentation and should be glossed over.

Easy.

Or a "public health crisis" (which it's always been, but now that it's white folks, the public have dug up some compassion).

Relevant: https://twitter.com/kjhealy/status/781557015843856385

I think you'd be surprised how many older staunch conservatives nevertheless experimented with drugs at some point earlier in their lives. And if not drugs, something else that is illegal and carries stiff penalties. The point is the hypocrisy of demanding such stiff penalties for classes of crimes that most people are guilty of at least one at some point in their lives.

Are you then in favor of removing visa entry requirements for the citizens of Mexico?

The current status quo of mandating that legal visitors to the United States adhere to the terms of their visas, but looking the other way for anyone entering illegally seems just a tiny bit hypocritical to someone on the Mexican side.

I've never taken an economics class so forgive me, but hypothetically, what would the effects be if everyone was given citizenship today? All jobs in agriculture, construction, services, etc. would require minimum wages and benefits and the costs of many basic things would increase drastically. Imported produce would be much cheaper than domestic, making it ineffective for farmers here to compete. That would severely reduce the number of agricultural jobs here, further reducing the low skill labor market. What do you do with all these people, who now qualify for unemployment insurance? Not to mention that low income people can no longer afford basic goods and services, and housing prices would go up.

Perhaps I'm way off base, but would appreciate some clarification on these issues.

> All jobs in agriculture, construction, services, etc. would require minimum wages and benefits

Aren't all jobs meant to require minimum wages and benefits now? Just kidding, of course not! We have immigrants to do those jobs!

Another benefit of immigration (legal and illegal) you didn't mention is that they cover the population shrinkage from being heavily populated in the boomer age range. That's actually good for the economy. In some places that's a crisis.

Another important note is every worker is also a consumer. Every worker will consume food, movies, construction services, etc.

I actually think it would be a great idea to explicitly start a company that only wanted to hire immigrants especially Syrian refugees:

- they're more motivated (they have people lives depending on them making money and sending it back, they actually want to move here rather than just being born here)

- they're often richer (i.e. they don't come to live off the state) than those that stay in their own country as they have to have the money to pay the people to get them across [1]

- the fact that they got through demonstrates a level skill and intelligence. It's not just luck that means people survive 5,000-mile, 2-month journeys illegally

I'd say any of these tasks are way above what would be asked on The Apprentice.

  [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20160305124312/http://www.rescue.org/blog/mapping-syrian-refugees-danger-filled-journey-europe

You ignore the most important characteristic of these refugees.

Which ones did I miss?

>>The fact is, immigrants have higher labor participation, lower crime rate than the native born population.

Do you believe their higher labor participation is due to the pressures we put on them? What about their children?

At face value, the proposition for wholesale legalization of illegal immigrants is to create several million low income Americans.