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Comment by abtinf | Hacker News Reader

There are between 8-14 million such individuals in the US.

Many of them have lived here for decades, work peacefully, and have built lives. Many of them have married citizen spouses, and also have children who are citizens.

They are friends, neighbors, and colleagues. They are often the best and most ambitious among us.

It would be an ethical, moral, and humanitarian catastrophe to suddenly expel all of them.

It would also be an economic disaster, as this population forms a disproportionate fraction of the labor force.

The price of goods and services would skyrocket if not outright be lost from the market forever. Inflation would obliterate savings.

The US immigration system is wildly irrational and violates the rights of American citizens. It must be radically reformed.

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There cannot be a comprehensive system of worker's rights when millions of workers are present without documentation. We cannot support a higher minimum wage and, at the same time, take in millions of workers who will work for less. It is a violation of the rights of Americans not to have a real and effective border, and for immigration laws not to be enforced.

Sounds like the more humane way to deal with the problem is documenting them. Nah, let's send them to CECOT because they didn't have their paperwork right.

It is not a natural born right of every person born in North and South America to come to the United States. It is not a natural right of every person already inside the USA to remain in the USA.

So indefinite stays in prison camps for people who were otherwise productive members of society because they didn't have the right paperwork. Makes sense.

I agree it's probably not a right, but we've made it so obtusely difficult to do. Even people doing the process legally have stints where they'll probably quietly overstay visas because the gaps in processing things messes up their status.

Having such a messed up system only leads to more people being undocumented and our society in a worse place. Make it easier to be documented and obvious that not having documentation means you're probably doing something really bad, and we'll be in a far better place. Add in some carrots to encourage cyclical migration while we're at it.

Make it really illegal (read: executives/owners in prison) for hiring undocumented workers. This will do a lot to prevent undocumented workers.

I don't disagree with anything you are saying. No one should be deported to prison camps in third countries (a la CECOT). Immigration should be made easier. Executives should face more serious consequences for hiring undocumented workers. I agree. My basic premise starts from the fact that, as a country of laws, we must first enforce the laws that we have, then create new laws that reflect the society we want. Currently we have laws subject to haphazard enforcement and the color (blue or red) of the party in the White House.

>let people break the law, because they are economically beneficial

Doesn't sound very humanistic to me, especially if you think who benefits the most from their unregulated labour.

While having secret police running around and forcing their way without any discretion is quite bad and ill omen for the future, it doesn't eliminate all the problems that are brought with illegal immigration (and even legal one as well). One could argue, that this ICE showdown is a reaction to almost pathological leniency before, when people in need were used as economical benefits for the rich, as it was mostly them that benefited from employing illegally all those workers, while unloading all nasty side effect on the common folk.

You said it very well. Personally I would even go so far as to say it is a manufactured crisis perpetuated by both parties for the benefit of the rich in this country.

> Doesn't sound very humanistic to me, especially if you think who benefits the most from their unregulated labour.

I'm not arguing they should be breaking the law. Hence the whole "Make it easier to be documented" line. I'm saying we should change the law to document these people. This would be the first step towards making their labor regulated. I'm absolutely in agreement the current policies just lead to lots of abuse in many ways.

>let's smooth bureaucratic processes

Yeah, we should. The problem is, there are powers, and people behind them, that benefits from undocumentness of immigrants. To make matter even worse, they typically have funds to lobby for no changes, or changes for worse.

Isn't it similar case as in tax refunds and what not? Very purposeful obfuscation to make TurboTax required.

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