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The entire endeavour is thoroughly corrupt, lawless and ineffective. It’s being run for TV, not for results.
So we get stupid spectacles like this from influencer ICE that make us, in the long run, trillions of dollars poorer, all while doing nothing to remove migrants much less gangs or cartels from our streets.
[1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ice-budget-big-beautiful-b...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_highest...
We survived for decades with basically just that. People could come up from mexico to work the fields in the summer and head back for the winter with basically no friction at the border.
The question to ask is "what is the border actually protecting"? When you start to drill in the reasons for a strong border, they all end up being fabricated problems.
"To stop drugs". Well, most drugs are either being manufactured in america or they are brought in by US citizens not smuggled across the border.
"To stop human trafficking". The ironic part here is the most common human trafficking happens because of the strong border. "We'll deport you" is used to keep workers abused. A weaker border gives workers much more bargaining power.
"To stop crime". Most crime is done by citizens of the US, not immigrants. And, again ironically, overly punitive borders does exactly the opposite of stopping crime. When someone that's undocumented can't talk to the police they are far less likely to be a witness for a crime or to report a crime. It further encourages gangs. A lot of gangs spring up because people can't go to the cops. That's part of the reason the mafia flourished. It's the reason militant organizations like the Black Panthers were formed.
"To create jobs". This one might be a wash. However, it has to be said that more people means a higher need for services in areas which can in fact create jobs.
"To avoid spending on services". This just doesn't happen outside of maybe emergency room care. Undocumented workers are FAR less likely to use any public services because they don't want to be deported. And so what if they do? Is it really such a bad thing if a non-citizen gets an education here? Don't we want more skilled and educated residence?
Let me put it in contexts of other countries. I as a kid, made a few trips to Canada and back. Back in the day you could do that without even presenting passports, it was kinda wild. Did Canada suddenly explode because of that easy border crossing? No, it was just a non-issue.
Similar things happen in the EU. The relaxed border controls for EU members hasn't resulted in chaos. It is, for the most part, a non-issue. People generally do not move, you still have most people born in whatever EU nation they are from staying there. The same would be true of the US.
End of the day each party needs certain to appease certain people in certain locations. Like any marketing team they segment their "customer" i.e. voter base[1], then rationalize actions to get there post hoc.
The general public depending on the news channel they wire their head into will have the same opinions.
Hence, it will unlikely to get a sensible answer by asking this in a forum. The actual answer is behind the scenes from political operatives who do the literal political calculus.
PS [1]: this is one reason identity politics is so appealing to them as it's logistically easy as it maps well to their customer segments
If it's the latter you don't need the former, etc.
I can agree that shoddy news (a lot of it these days) do abuse viewers worst instincts and provide plausible coverage for it, but there is clearly something more going on for a sustainable amount of people to still support this.
What I want is for people to be free to immigrate to the US if they are a) not known to be dangerous; and b) prepared to commit to the US and support it. That means I am more in favor of permanent immigrants than of migrant workers. In general there should be a low bar to clear to have a path to citizenship in the US. I think it makes sense to have various requirements that must be met along that path; I'd be fine with, for instance, laws that require people who are in that process to register, meet periodically with some official, pay an extra tax, etc. I also would support requiring immigrants to formally and effectively renounce any other citizenship upon receiving US citizenship.
But the goal should be to get people to actually move here, permanently, not just be here. That is what improves the country: people committing their hearts and souls and investing their lives in the place where they live. So many of the great immigrant stories from the past took this form. I find it ironic that so much rhetoric focuses on ways to legalize migrant labor, because that seems like exactly what we don't want.
Just because someone isn't white and speaks english as a second language does not make them illegal or a criminal.
There used to be the presumption of innocence. This is no longer the case.
That's what I want. Simple rule of law in the us the way it is supposed to be.
First, ICE should be competent. There's a long history of them being the dumbest and most thug-like people to hold a badge. Compare this to the US Postal Inspectors, who are the most competent. Reform has long been needed from top to bottom. Consider that they basically use skin color as probable cause, which is enraging and lazy.
Second, the silly quotas focus on the wrong issue. The government, being incompetent, is meeting quota by voiding valid permission-to-stay because they know where those people live. They are manufacturing people to deport because they are not competent to find people who can be legally deported.
Third, this is a case of supply and demand. The system is focused on the supply side composed of desperate workers rather than demand side of people who hired them for personal profit. This is silly: come down hard on one meatpacking plant and you "solve" the problem of hundreds of illegal immigrants with a single criminal charge. Trying to stamp out the immigrants one-by-one is inefficient and unjust.
Lastly, this is pretty much all the fault of the Republican Party. George W Bush wanted to make a grand compromise where sufficient barriers to entry were erected in exchange for amnesty. The nativist wing of the Republican Party went apoplectic at compromise and killed any practical solution for decades. There will never be a solution so long as one side wants to deport law-abiding hardworking taxpayers whose parents brought them here as children.
A major reason ICE and a strict border exist is to depress wages and enable employer abuse. That's why this is never the approach to solve immigration problems.
Being able to say "behave or we'll deport you" is exactly the point. If you flip it around you'll quickly find a bunch of employers that cry about how wonderful these workers are and that we need to "have a heart".
Undocumented workers won't, for example, form a union or make complaints to OSHA.
1. If we have jobs available, people should be able to immigrate to do them.
2. Changes in enforcement policy should be just. If people are here doing jobs, we should assume that they have jobs worth doing. Norms are norms for a reason.
3. If someone breaks those rules, sure, arrest them and deport them. But not to a gulag in El Salvador.
Imagine you are canada, A canadan citizen kills an american while visiting. The US immediately deports that person because "they are a murder". What do you do as the Canadian government? Do you just take the US's word that "this person is a murderer"?
For a serious crime like murder you want to imprison them for their sentence and then deport them. You obviously don't want the most serious consequence for a foreigner coming to the US to murder someone to be deportation.
But for a minor crime like shoplifting maybe just tossing them out is fine. Is it worth locking them up for a couple months when you can just wash your hands of them?
I just don't see a work visa program as having any benefit. Anyone working in the US should be protected by workers laws the same as if they have a visa or not. Why should we put limits on who can work for who and be employed by who. Who actually benefits from such limits?
People who work. It's just an economic argument. The US (and any other targets of net immigration, really) has a higher wage level than the regions from which the labor is arriving, more or less by definition. That's why the labor force is moving.
So if you allow completely unlimited population motion at zero cost, the system will seek to a state where all wages for a given job are the same, everywhere. And that means that we highly-paid Americans end up poorer.
Now, is such a world more just? More fair? Maybe! But it's worse for us, and that makes it a politically infeasible solution to argue for. You'll never convince people to live poorer for the benefit of others.
A feasible/reasonable/moderate/boring immigration policy would simply ask the question "How much immigration is needed to fill existing jobs (good for growth) without depressing wages (bad for workers)?", and allow that much.
It's either a crime, and they are entitled to a a jury trial, or it's a civil issue.
Calling people criminals and treating them as criminals, but not granting them the rights afforded to criminals by the constitution is speaking out of both sides of your mouth.
The sixth amendment is unambiguous about it.
> In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.
But again, you're simply wrong as a matter of practice. Deportation does not require a criminal trial, and never has. The conflation with criminal law is something the current administration essentially invented as a pretext for deploying law enforcement force. And that's a bad thing.
Deportation isn't punishment, and it has a trivial remedy in cases where it's misapplied (again, assuming a rational immigration policy): apply for a visa and come back.
Part of getting past the wonderfully comfortable "restate anyone else's differing opinion in the weakest and most easily attacked strawman form" fallacy is taking the time to think about and engage with the best and most thoughtful form of the other opinion you could imagine that person holding, not just with the weakest and least thoughtful version.
Should you still disagree with the best form of their likely opinion, you'll be much better equipped to engage in an actual dialogue that can lead to actual intellectual growth and change, commonly on both sides.
The 2024 bipartisan border bill (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico%E2%80%93United_States_b...) seemed like a good compromise to me. Of course, it wasn't brought to a vote by the house (for reasons that I won't elaborate on), so it's mostly a hypothetical.
And, if I had to choose between the two, I'm more supportive of the Biden era immigration policy than I am of the current Trump policy.
[1] A B-1 visa is a U.S. nonimmigrant visa for temporary visits for business.
Has any evidence been presented by the government for this claim?
Meetings like one of the men mentioned in the article was in when they arrested him? He wasn't doing "productive line work", whatever that means for a factory that isn't even operating.
Where would we find the people to build all those things, and do all that work? Why, we’d need like 1 billion more people to do all that!
And what would that do to our GDP? Multiply it by 4 or 5? How horrible!
I don't think it's logistically possible for 1 billion people to migrate in a day.
I care about being humane. I care about due process. I care about not assuming someone is an illegal immigrant just because they have darker skin or speak a language other than English. I care about people getting their time in front of a judge before they're flown off to some country that they may not have even set foot in before in their lives. I care about elected officials -- the people who represent me, regardless of whether or not I voted for them -- treating people like people, and not like animals.
To answer your questions, though, I do think we should have open-er borders. I think we should have easier paths to residency and citizenship, for people who want it. I'm sick of the isolationism and xenophobia. It's disgusting. It's unamerican.
People want ICE to enforce the immigration law without violating other laws and the Constitution. Unfortunately the current government and their supporters (and you seem to belong to that group) spin the insistence that ICE to not violate laws and the Constitution as the opposition to enforcement of the immigration law.
This is utterly disingenuous. Do you really think "enforcing immigration laws" is what ICE is doing? Since when sending people to foreign countries without due process is a proper way to enforce laws?
This nation does now and always has depended on immigrants. This recent ICE nonsense is capricious (no public plan), punitive (targets mostly political opponents), and illegal (targets skin color).
The people responsible are the ones who let this happen. The solution is gonna be ugly no matter what.
too much immigration literally suppresses wages, all other arguments are secondary and not imp enough imo
That's bullshit. This notion that human rights don't matter in law enforcement matters is cancer.