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Comment by lmz | Hacker News Reader

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Because American industry runs on illegal labor. They pick the fruit, they work in the slaughterhouses, they build the housing, they work in the kitchen prep lines.

Like go to any construction site, any restaurant -- you're gonna see a bunch of Mexicans, Salvadorians, etc.

As wages haven't gone up, Americans need cheaper and cheaper labor on the low end to be able to, like, eat, and lots of big business knows this. The GOP owned Congress under GW Bush could have locked this issue down, and if they felt so compelled they probably could have swung that during the Obama era if they were willing to push. Instead it's a boogyman they can use to rile up voters while keeping costs low.

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

The immigration has always existed, laws of it shifted, and AFAIK the current level of illegal immigration is not that high. So it's not really a large economical or humanitarian problem, and looks like it's much bigger political one.

It is because corporations benefit from exploitable labor and competition among workers. For this reason they promote a narrative that opposing illegal immigration is racist. The counter narrative would be that preventing it gives power to American workers (of all races) but no one seems to discuss that.

This is an obvious truth around immigration that makes me question the media's motivations.

Asylum applications are often contingent upon finding and keeping employment. ICE immigration prisons sell prison labor sold to state governments and corporations.

The public debate between "Immigration is a human right" and "Immigrants are criminals" is out of touch with the actual considerations motivating the laws and policies by US institutions.

I agree on both counts at a high level, but America always had cheap labor. It is what helps us have so much disposable income compared to other countries.

This is a bizarre take. Corporate towns and company stores and union leader assassinations are all a part of the history of cheap labor in the US.

None of those dynamics contribute to higher incomes for anyone aside from bosses and investors.

But maybe exploitation of cheap labor for personal gains is what you were referring to?

>It is because corporations benefit from exploitable labor and competition among workers. For this reason they promote a narrative that opposing illegal immigration is racist.

This is just such an absurd take. How much reality do you have to suspend to believe that corporations around the globe have all zoned in on a policy of somehow propagating a narrative through public life about immigration so that they can exploit illegal immigration.

I know we're in the anti-capitalism, anti-big-corp zeitgeist, but come on.

I am very pro capitalism, but as a worker under capitalism it is very clear that immigration benefits corporations. Why do you think the impacts of immigration on American workers are not discussed by media? My conclusion is that discussing it does not benefit those who own those media companies. They are shareholders in other businesses, they employ people, and likely sit on the boards of companies that benefit from immigrant labor. It does not need to be a conspiracy, just self interest of those who control the narrative.

"Cracking down" isn't what's needed, it's reform of the immigration system in the first place.

Basically because everyone here is an immigrant of some sort just maybe not first generation. Also because the vast majority of people who show up at the Mexican border are fleeing horrific violence and when you are fleeing horrific violence it is difficult to always do things by the book. And also it is a reaction to just how poorly these people that otherwise would be classified as refugees get treated. Under Trump in particular family separation became the norm and courts who oversaw immigration cases had kids as young as 4 brought before a judge without family or legal representation.

Most Americans are not opposed to having immigration laws. The disagreements come from whether those laws are fair and the way “illegal immigration” is used as a bogeymonster by racists. For example, when Trump and Vance were doing the “Haitians are eating cats!!!” thing recently, note how often their supporters would throw the “illegal” term around even for people who are here legally. Their concerns were quite transparently not about immigration per se but the ethnicity of the immigrants.

That controls the general immigration policy debate, too. American employers in key industries like construction depend on immigrants for cheap labor, and the unwillingness to provide a legal path for those workers guarantees that people will keep taking huge risks to come here illegally because the conditions in their home countries are even worse. I would highly recommend reading this article: note both the former cop accurately stating that you can’t arrest your way out of a market imbalance and the lack of reception for the proposals from the construction company owner trying to have a legal path for workers. These people aren’t dangerous, they’re working hard and supporting families, but they’re brown and speak Spanish so we don’t respect them and businesses love to have workers who can’t complain about mistreatment.

https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/border-crisis-tex...

The reason they call asylum seekers illegal is because most asylum seekers are immigrating for improved economic opportunities, not because they are otherwise fleeing persecution from their government. If you want to immigrate somewhere for work you need to get in line for the correct visa. I would expect many legal immigrants here on HN would know this struggle. My parents did when they immigrated to the US.

The problem is that the asylum seekers are committing fraud if they are immigrating for economic reasons, and that fraud is being encouraged by the government and NGOs. JD vance, Elon, and Trump have talked about this several times but the media usually interrupts then or make a straw man argument about racism instead of covering the real issue, which is that these immigrants are being brought in as low wage, temporary laborers to undercut American workers.

That’s a lot of unsourced claims which appear to be rehashing people who famously lie for political reasons (e.g. Vance admitting that he fabricated the Haitian cat story), and you’re certainly not building credibility by pretending that they’re somehow being “interrupted” from a serious conversation.

If you have a reliable source for the claim that large numbers of people are lying on asylum applications and that this is being encouraged by the government, you should edit your comment to cite that so there’s something to be objectively discussed.

I don't get it. Haiti has had an ongoing civil war for at least 6 years. Their last president was assassinated and they've suspended elections and haven't replaced him. Most of the capital city is controlled by criminal gangs. Civilians are regularly raped and murdered for no real reason other than intimidation. The UN has authorized and sent an official security assistance mission. What exactly needs to happen in a country before you consider people fleeing it and seeking asylum to be legitimate and not lying?

> Is it all that repressed guilt from invading Indian lands or something?

I don't think you have to look that far back to find fairly convincing arguments that the US is the architect of much of its own immigration "problems." Most illegal immigrants come to the US from Latin American countries that the US spent a lot of time interfering with in very recent history.

Consider Guatemala. Democratically elected president overthrown with CIA support in 1954 so that US fruit companies could keep up their profits by exploiting people. The 1950s weren't that long ago.

Consider El Salvador. During their recent (ended: 1992) civil war the US funded the right-wing government that according to the UN committed 85% of atrocities during the war. The US government then refused to grant asylum and legal protections to refugees, which contributed heavily to MS13 forming in LA. The US then deported many of these gang members back to El Salvador, which did a huge amount of damage to their development after the war.

Wrt Mexico's gangs, most of the demand for their products come from US customers.

Wrt Venezuela, whether the sanctions are right or wrong there's no doubt that they're hurting people there economically.

Given what the US has done to these countries (and others) in living memory, I don't think we have much of a moral right to turn these people away. I've also never had a single negative experience (and many positive ones) with immigrants from these countries (I live in an area with many of them), nor am I convinced that they're even an economic drag on the country.

We have the right to turn them away granted by our ability to use force, and we absolutely should if they are making our lives worse, period, end of story

"Might makes right" is not only a pretty heartless ideology but one that I don't think works well most of the time. It seems like the prior application of that policy caused much of our immigration today.

> if they are making our lives worse

They (legal and illegal immigrants, for this discussion specifically from Latin America but I suspect more broadly) certainly are making my life better and I'm not convinced that they're making the life of the average American worse.

I've seen a lot of convincing arguments for why immigration helps us, and they seem to mesh with my understanding of immigration to the US being historically a good thing. I can't say the same for arguments from the other side. Often the claims are totally baseless, such as claims that illegal immigrants are as a whole dangerous, despite having a lower incarceration rate than US-born citizens. Other times they're just myopic (most of the claims related to jobs imo). Sometimes they're just blatant racism (white-replacement theories).

I'm pro open borders. I see no downsides to letting whoever wants to live here, come here. I also think the US culture (think TGI Fridays and Macys) is pretty much the worst and can only improve as we import people with rich cultural histories.

I think Darryl Cooper's take is interesting. It's actually original sin from the Holocaust put on all conservatives, not just Germans

So why do about 60% of people who consider themselves left or far left oppose immigration?

Cooper also claims that the Holocaust happened by mistake, so I wouldn't pay too much attention to him.

I imagine for the same reasons people on the right, but it's forbidden to speak out loud

I heard no such claims, but also he hasn't finished his WWII series yet, so a little premature to dismiss him

Edit: When I said conservatives, I meant conservative values

Plenty of people of all political stripes were, are, and have been complaining about immigration. It was a key factor in Brexit.

Cooper's deliberate misreading of the Wannsee Conference is Nazi apologeticism.

"Well, they didn't really mean to commit genocide, they just whipped up public hatred, confiscated all their assets, and banned them from working! So of course they had to commit mass murder!"

Who are his sources, David fucking Irving?

And let's not get started on the pipelining of extremist views to people who would normally consider themselves moderate or centre-right and are now spouting insanity...

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