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Comment by logankeenan | Hacker News Reader

I was 15 (~2004) years old working at Burger King when I had my first glimpse of a broken immigration system.

I came to work one day and we were very understaffed. I asked my manager what was going on. She heard a rumor that immigration enforcement was coming to our store and they, our co-workers, were never coming back. People I was friends with, just gone forever.

I wish we could have a functioning immigration policy so hard working people wanting a better life can come here and live without fear.

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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.

> 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...

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

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?

When the local Chipotle opened down the street from my office lines were out the door at lunchtime. And yet if you got in line ... it just kept moving, never stopped.

Behind the counter were 4 people (including the cashier) making the burritos. They were fast, communicated efficiently, and very accurate with orders.

Immigration enforcement put some pressure on Chiplotle and they were all gone one day. Replaced by 7 locals behind the counter who didn't listen to each other, were insanely slow and all around bad at their job. It was hard to go in there and order and watch them just kinda ... be there, but not do much right.

Fast food might not be the best measure, but man those folks worked efficiently and accurately.

Have you ever encountered the customer service in Europe? (Especially outside Germany, Sweden, etc.) It's awful and everyone is rude. It's because they don't have to worry about being replaced by illegal immigrants.

I don't see the leap in logic from "I experienced bad service in areas of Europe" to "downward wage pressure alleviation results in a better experience."

Can you expound how they are related, and if you have some insight, where this has been researched?

No, it is because we don't use the tipping system.

And it's not awful, and people are not rude, just not "fake-friendly" as americans.

And in my experience, the "fake friendly" is largely confined to chain restaurants in the US. I haven't encountered it much at Michelin-starred establishments, for example.

Or worry about tips.

UK, Italy, and Iceland in the last decade, haven't encountered what you describe. Restaurant staff have universally been polite and professional.

Counterpoint: Customer service at restaurants in Japan (where tipping is not customary and where immigration policy is strict) is excellent, much better than in America. I’ve had wonderful service even at fast food restaurants; the workers are friendly, service is timely, the orders come out correctly, and the presentation of the food is thoughtful and considerate of the customer. I stress these things because I’ve had some bad experiences in America where I end up with sloppy food served by surly staff.

I think the differences in customer service expectations are cultural in nature.

I had a similar experience as a kid at Dairy Queen. At the time, I adhered to the common cultural milieu in my little Bible belt town and had a load of cognitive dissonance when they took my friends away, never to be seen again -- the spirit of this was totally violated: "For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me."

It was an eye opening experience for me. I take as a fundamental human right that people and capital should be able to travel without sovereign restraint. You should be able to vote with your feet.

I get the pro-isolationist arguments regarding wages, of course, but restricting immigration because your wages are at risk is a zero-sum game where one side the winner violates a human right.

The EU gets this and allows people to travel to work between countries. The US gets this and allows people to travel to work between states. Why does a line on the ground invoke magical worldviews and forced tribalism supporting sovereignty?

Presumably your coworkers weren't legally working in the US?

Why would them leaving be viewed as a "broken" immigration system? I'd say it's broken if we don't enforce immigration laws, not if we enforce them.

It would be trivial to set up a system to validate the right to work in the US. In fact one already exists - E-Verify. But many groups have resisted the national roll out and penalties if businesses don't comply (similar to how we have sanctuary cities).

The funny part is that in all the other countries I've lived in, this issue never comes up. Sure, there are illegal immigrants, etc, but nobody questions when they are sent home or when businesses are fined for violating immigration law.

I'm not sure why it's such a contentious issue in the US.

Saw this for the first time as a teenager working in the service industry too. My restaurant was a little mom-and-pop run by a couple who would knowingly violate employment law by hiring undocumented workers for back-of-house roles, and would use the threat of contacting immigration enforcement to coerce them to do further unlawful things when it suited their interest. Often it was in service of unlawful activities like improper waste disposal and dumping.

I have no idea how much they were paid, if it was regularly, or if they benefitted from mandated labor concessions like lunches and breaks.

So odd that we so often label people on one side of this transaction as “illegal” but have no popular words to describe the other.

When wealthy people say they want an unregulated free market - this is what they mean.

It's "broken" in the sense that other parts of the society depend on non-enforcement. Start enforcing it more often and the house of cards starts crumbling.

Benefiting from exploitation =/= dependence, but I would imagine some businesses rely more heavily on this than others.

Really? If we enforced immigration laws strictly then prices for food and household services would rise a little, but the whole economy wouldn't crumble.

There would be chaos in agriculture lasting over a year, in my opinion.

Labor is only 6-7% of the total cost of produce.

People get really mad when I bring what you said up. When I worked in the service industry we had tons of pre E-Verify illegal people working there. Most of them never filed taxes and put the most exceptions possible on their W-4s.

Post E-Verify in my state I noticed we hardly hired anyone illegal. I worked in 3 chain restaurants and it was always the same. Even then the restaurants didn’t care at all if the number was stolen or reused, as long as the SSN or Tax ID number passed the verification.

> I'd say it's broken if we don't enforce immigration laws, not if we enforce them.

I'd say it's broken if the laws are bad.

What laws are bad? That we allow less people to come and work in the US than there are people willing to do so?

Why would them leaving be viewed as a "broken" immigration system? I'd say it's broken if we don't enforce immigration laws, not if we enforce them.

It's a broken system that allows them into the US in the first place, then denies them reasonable opportunities to work and settle down, then deports them on a whim.

We need the labor; let them in legally, pay them a fair wage, and allow them to pursue their dreams like any other resident.

There are significant issues with E-Verify's error rate. It is a poor idea to enable the government to unilaterally strip someone of their right to work, particularly given the error rate, when the only recourse is a lengthy kafka-esque process involving multiple government agencies that can drag on for months.

The fact that after decades they still haven't adequately addressed the error rates or the recourse process does not lend confidence that this is something that should be mandated.

hard working people wanting a better life regularly come here and live without fear, by filling out paperwork, don't they?

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