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Comment by seanmcdirmid | Hacker News Reader

This is what Canada mostly does and it’s super effective, the problem is that the people who employ illegal immigrants: farmers, construction contractors, hotel owners, etc…belong to the same party pushing against illegal immigration, they would basically be punishing themselves, so it isn’t going to happen.

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Exactly The aggressive raids aren't in Florida or Texas, or even California farm county, they're targeting urban areas, and getting the intended headlines.

Not true.. they are doing the raids elsewhere including Texas. Florida cracked down on the state level on businessrs a year ago so not as much of a problem as far as I understand.

Florida has not cracked down. The E-Verify mandate is limited to companies of 25 or more employees and is not enforced. DeSantis will never oppose the criminal businesses profiting from illegal labor.

E verify is the real crackdown. Everything else is just show

When they mandate E-Verify universally and enforce it, we will know that they are serious. Until then, it is just a sham to keep Democrats and Trumpers distracted.

Immigration is a federal government problem. Why would a start “crack” down on something not in its jurisdiction?

The Tenth Amendment and Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting give states the power to enforce work eligibility laws.

“Largest joint immigration operation in Florida history leads to 1,120 criminal alien arrests during weeklong operation” — May 1, 2025

https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/largest-joint-immigration-...

And no employers will be penalized.

Most certainly not Donald Trump, god forbid.

If I was a betting man, I'd handicap the number of paper-less workers he employs at his 3 golf clubs in Florida at 100. If we were to take into account the amount of work-permit-less laborers working on his golf courses nationwide, I'd say the number is over 200.

And even then, I'd bet my life on the over. Having played golf once at his club in Doral (shitty course, would never play again, even if my round was covered), I can safely assume ain't nobody mowing that course that can speak English passably, let alone are in this country working legally.

>Having played golf once at his club in Doral (shitty course, would never play again, even if my round was covered), I can safely assume ain't nobody mowing that course that can speak English passably, let alone are in this country working legally.

How proletarian of him to hire "normal" help. Lol.

Based on my limited experience with comparable clubs in the northeast I would have expected the properties to be run by (subcontracted) crews of "you pay extra because we speak english and have no face tats or felonies" type service personnel because that's what the old money wasp clientele expect.

I'm from the Northeast and have played tennis and golf at a few of the comparable high end places - the subcontractors don't usually speak english either, usually the head groundskeeper is white and speaks it well enough to communicate to the staff who know not to speak to members. Alternatively, the groundskeeper is someone that's been in the US long enough to speak English well enough that nobody would think about his immigration status. In some of the wealthiest places, it's usually a kid whose parents are illegal but he was born and raised in the US, was blessed with intelligence and won a scholarship to a great NEASC school where a member of the club is on the alumni board.

I can also attest that some of the multigenerational "my great grandkids won't have to work a day in their lives" wealth types are some of the cheapest and stingiest people I've ever met, and most certainly don't care that the groundskeepers at their too-cool-for-school clubs in Westchester or The Hamptons or Greenwich speak zero english and aren't here legally. In fact, that's the expectation, because god forbid their club dues go up by a few hundred dollars a year (while they spend that same amount on a single dinner at the clubhouse).

I don't golf so my only experience is incidental and limited to a few clubs that I have a business relationship with a vendors for but it seems to me that the waspy country clubs are mostly staffed with townies and a lower representation of immigrants than comparable occupations for different employers in the same towns.

Now, I get that "a few" isn't a trend but the effect is pretty observable. IDK if it's the customers really driving things or if the townies are simply more capable of excelling in such roles.

> the waspy country clubs are mostly staffed with townies and a lower representation of immigrants than comparable occupations for different employers in the same towns

I've played tennis and golf all over Westchester County, all over Fairfield County, and in Long Island. On the golf side, yeah, it's townies. Same goes for pro shop, tennis assistants, pool staff, and sometimes, kitchen/snack bar staff. But the folks who mow the lawns, clean the locker rooms and toilets, water the greens? Hell no those aren't locals.

However, I'd be willing to bet my life that if one was to go to the Trump golf clubs in WPB, Doral and Jupiter, you'd find that some of the folks, say, watering the course, raking the bunkers, or cutting the lawns definitely do not speak English, do not have work permits, are not getting paid standard legal wages, and most definitely are NOT here legally.

Remember folks, with this administration, hypocrisy is the point.

> Florida cracked down on the state level on businessrs a year ago so not as much of a problem as far as I understand.

Omg, I’m in tears.

It’s an open “secret” in some industries that it’s trivially easy to hire illegal immigrants en masse through Florida-based “recruiters”.

If this somehow changes, some big R donors are going to be very upset.

A core group of Texas Republicans have for years blocked attempts to require employees to verify worker status because some key donors in that state own construction or agriculture businesses which depend on cheap labor. Having a few raids is good for them politically because it gives them free campaign advertising but it doesn’t cost businesses much since it’s infrequent and the penalties are lower than the amount they save in wages (not to mention indirect benefits like keeping workers from saying anything about unsafe conditions).

https://www.texastribune.org/2025/06/05/texas-e-verify-requi...

They do in Texas. Is just that Texas dont buy into the santuary cities bullshit, and raids always happaned there.

Texas raids the employers and deports the undocumented, but the employers are never penalized. They are performative raids, intended to intimidate undocumented workers and prevent them from organizing or pushing for better pay and working conditions. Texas has been doing this for a century, and even during the Braceros era Mexico often refused to work with Texas because of how they treat chicanos.

They may not be called sanctuary cities officially, but if that idea didn't exist there, Texas Senate Bill 4 wouldn't exist in the first place. And it wouldn't be on hold and disputed today.

Or Wisconsin:

> President Trump spent much of his campaign vowing "mass deportations" of undocumented immigrants, and the first weeks of his term have been marked by public displays of immigration enforcement. It could pose a blow to multiple parts of the country's food supply chain, including the dairy industry, where more than half of the national workforce is undocumented.

* https://www.cbsnews.com/video/how-undocumented-workers-suppo...

> The aggressive raids aren't in Florida or Texas, or even California farm county, they're targeting urban areas, and getting the intended headlines.

I don’t know that that is true:

Florida: https://www.fox35orlando.com/news/100-undocumented-immigrant...

Texas: https://www.tpr.org/border-immigration/2025-06-05/ice-raids-...

California farm country: https://calmatters.org/economy/2025/01/kern-county-immigrati...

Didn’t read them all but that last one in Kern was under Biden,

“This appears to be the first large-scale Border Patrol raid in California since the election of Donald Trump, coming just a day after Congress certified the election on January 6, in the final days of Joe Biden’s presidency.”

It strains credulity somewhat to act as though ICE, whose purpose has always been immigration enforcement, only started enforcing immigration under Trump. I remember hearing about ICE/immigration raids for many decades now in California.

In any event I think the prior’s point was that the current admins’ zealous focus on immigration is mostly optics. The idea is to get California activists to juxtapose themselves on the evening news throwing bricks and Molotovs against clean cut patriotic young servicemen. The American electorate prefer marines to brick throwers, so it’s just easy politics. It’s been the go to gambit of the Trump team for most of his two terms. Immigration is a very popular issue with voters, but not with educated journalists who know most GOP donors like the Koch brothers are free market libertarians who want totally open boarders and therefore despite the voter concern, nothing meaningful will ever happen because immigration enforcement and reform will remain in essence a tool to whip up hysteria in the non-sophisticated. Immigration and deportation numbers don’t lie, and tell most of the story.

You clearly posted false statements. Are you able to retract or delete your comment?

I would honestly hope that comments don't get deleted as it makes following discussion threads harder. If someone already posted a rebuttle, you can already see it.

OK agreed as others have pointed out there if enforcement in other places. I get the sense, but can't quantity the push seems different by state and city. Perhaps the reaction is different as well.

Doesn't post-pandemic Canada have the highest rate of legal immigration in years since government gives out immigration visas like candy? I can't see how this is good in a country that already has a stagnating economy and a housing crisis. You're eroding the bargaining power of local labor and increasing competition for housing in an already tight market.

They were slow to let off the gas pedal after the labour shortages during COVID. There's been a massive swing in the other direction now.

What kind of labor shortages are we talking about? Isn't "muh labor shortage" just corporate propaganda for importing more cheap labor to drive down wages and increase rents?

Also, isn't it completely reckless to import a lot more people in a short timespan, without the necessary housing and infrastructure (doctors, nurses, teachers, etc) to support them in the first place?

Small businesses were having a hard time staffing stores and the like. For a short period 2021 to maybe early 2023.

It's definitely not the case now. Unemployment is way up. Which I suspect is a combination of factors (slowing economy & tariffs) not just immigration.

But yes, Canadian governments work for employers, not workers. Just like any other advanced capitalist country. There is an expectation that there's a "natural" unemployment rate in this country around 6%, and they freak out if it goes much lower than that.

In general, when regular people are complaining about inflation they're complaining about their groceries. When you hear businesses and governments concerned about inflation .. they mean they're stressed out because minimum wage employees are demanding some basic respect that employers feel they shouldn't have to provide...

There were no labor shortages during COVID... Low-wage employers just panicked because they were suddenly competing with generous temporary government benefits.

No wonder Canada's productivity is stagnant and on track for the lowest growth in the G7. Why invest in technology or productivity when you can just cry to the government for cheap, indentured labor?

There has been a massive swing? They announced a small reduction and called it a day.

The tightening of international student visas has actually been quite significant. Its effects on colleges and universities has been very drastic. And it has effects in the labour market as well.

https://archive.is/awVp8#selection-2637.0-2640.0

Quarter with the slowest population growth since at least 2018, excepting one quarter in 2020.

>I can't see how this is good in a country that already has a stagnating economy and a housing crisis

Increasing immigration is a good way to revitalize a stagnant economy. This is the great chasm between people's intuition of how national economies work and economists' understanding of how they work.

Well, it doesn't seem to be working.

It's working at making Canadian landlords rich. That's economic growth too.

>Increasing immigration is a good way to revitalize a stagnant economy.

Then why is Canada's economy stagnating with all that emigration? When is that supposed economic boom coming?

The second issue is, if that economic boom is gonna trickle down to the Canadian working class or only to the top 1% of Canadian business and asset owning class while everyone else is left holding the bag?

Because we've been duped for decades with this uncontrolled immigration trickle down economic fallacy.

Your ancestors were likely "uncontrolled" immigrants and so were mine. That's the way the Western hemisphere was settled. If it's so bad, how did the US and Canada get so rich?

Optimal policy is much different for a post industrial economy than an agrarian/frontier economy, I would rather have better standard of living than consistent ethics

That's possibly true. Is there any evidence? Because there is a thread of racism and fear of the other built into our immigration policies since the beginning, and I don't see that's changed.

This is true if you build enough houses to help the new arrivals, but the government failed to do this and has recently admitted as such. Because they didn’t, the housing crisis is about four times worse in Canada than in America, and that has completely defeated young Canadians and pressured them to not start families.

I think the real reason is that Trump feels that the illegal immigration issue generates votes for him so actually solving it is the last thing he wants to do.

This has been true of every major policy ‘lock in’ topic for both parties for at least a decade, if not more.

Gun control, abortion, immigration (legal and illegal), taxation/gov’t spending, affirmative action (aka DEI), etc.

Trump is really good at pushing buttons and generating outrage though. Not unexpected for a reality TV show star.

It’s sad how addicted people are to his button pushing. I’ve got an elderly family member with dementia who can’t go more than 2 hours without watching a outrage video about Trump. You know the ones on YouTube, still doing hourly updates on russiagate and other “legal analysis” around Trump prosecutions, still. She lost much of her life savings because these YouTube “experts” explained how Trump would crash the market when in actuality, from 2016 to today, the market has actually gone up. A lot. Thanks medias touch or whoever it is for destroying the sanity and financial security of so many American seniors. What a business model.

> She lost much of her life savings because these YouTube “experts” explained how Trump would crash the market when in actuality, from 2016 to today, the market has actually gone up. A lot.

How did the market going up lose her money?

The loss of potential gains?

If you read the comment carefully, it sounds like she sold early and put into things like CDs which lost money to inflation.

I'm not sure it even matters if there is an actual problem, as long as there is a perception of a problem in his voters.

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