> Low-dollar cross-border funds transfers have been used to facilitate or commit terrorist financing, narcotics trafficking, human trafficking, and other illegal activity.
They're banging the national security drum to make it unlivable here for some.
>They're banging the national security drum to make it unlivable here for some.
But they're not supposed to be here in the first place? As for the people who are supposed to be here, but are collateral damage (ie. "which is destroying the used car market in latino communities") should we have sympathy for people in such situations? If a local casino is laundering money for drug cartels, but that casino funds the community because it employs workers, should we be against the FBI coming in and busting the casino? What if it's more benign than drug cartels, like run of the mill securities fraud?
> "people without work visas"
is not the same legal category as
> "they're not supposed to be here"
2. Practically speaking, how many people lack a work visa (or similar documentation), but are supposed to be here?
In fact, did you know, in Canada it doesn't count as work for visa purposes if you work over the internet for a foreign company and get paid into a foreign bank account and don't compete professionally with local interests? (This is a free hot tip for anyone wanting to live in Canada. It might be true in some other places too, but I don't know.)
Usually those long term visas (eg. student visas, I guess) require some sort of extra vetting to acquire (ie. they're not the tourist visas that get auto-issued at the border), and therefore are unlikely to be possessed by "people who aren't supposed to be here", so as a practical matter I agree they should be accepted in place of a "work visa".
Source? If you can do that, a Canadian could too. So you're directly competing with "local interests".
See e.g. https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/co...
What kind of activities are not considered to be “work”?
...
long distance (by telephone or Internet) work done by a temporary resident whose employer is outside Canada and who is remunerated from outside Canada;
https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/SOR-2002-227...
A foreign national may work in Canada without a work permit (a) as a business visitor to Canada within the meaning of section 187;
187 (1) For the purposes of paragraph 186(a), a business visitor to Canada is a foreign national who ... seeks to engage in international business activities in Canada without directly entering the Canadian labour market.
...
(3) For the purpose of subsection (1), a foreign national seeks to engage in international business activities in Canada without directly entering the Canadian labour market only if
(a) the primary source of remuneration for the business activities is outside Canada; and
(b) the principal place of business and actual place of accrual of profits remain predominately outside Canada.
You may send your letter of complaint to the Government of Canada's department of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship.
I'm kidding. :) I guess the interests to which you're referring are just tautologically not the interests I meant. Apologies for the confusion.
1) People get loans against assets literally all the time.
2) People can live and work in different places.
Typically in these cases, there's actually a source of income. You have to pay back the loan, after all. Otherwise I struggle to imagine why anyone without income but with plenty of assets would take out a loan, and having such documentation requirements would greatly inconvenience them. All this feels like a fig leaf for allowing workers lacking work visas to live and work in the US, while turning a blind eye.
>2) People can live and work in different places.
Again, is this something that actually happens, or is it just a contrived scenario? Is there really a large contingent of people working Mexico and then commuting back and forth to the US? They can't get a loan in Mexico?
You mean that there's a demonstrated ability to repay the loan, which isn't the same thing. I say this as a person who has taken many loans in my life, including ones while not working. Anyway that's up to the lender to sort out isn't it?
> "Otherwise I struggle to imagine why anyone without income but with plenty of assets would take out a loan"
Just because you struggle to imagine doesn't mean it isn't common for reasons you don't know or think about. I think this just shows some missing awareness about how things really work in the world more than anything else. Even Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, has billions of dollars in outstanding loans that he could repay today if he wanted to. I think a good place to start is to investigate why.
> "All this feels"
I get it. But I think we've established that you haven't considered the way these systems actually work, so your feelings probably aren't fully contextualized.
> "is this something that actually happens"
Given that I said that I did it personally, why is my story more contrived than the imaginary people in your head that you don't know anything about?
> "They can't get a loan in Mexico?"
I think this question is a non-sequitur. On what basis should someone's right to do something in place A have any bearing on their right to do something in place B?
If billionaires who lack work visas can't get an auto loan because of their stock borrowing schemes, that's fine by me. I don't think progressives would have much sympathy for billionaires in the first place anyways.
More to the point people who are actually engaging in this sort of stuff probably either have citizenship, or can buy citizenship so that they're not living in the country undocumented, so your counterexample doesn't work.
>Just because you struggle to imagine doesn't mean it isn't common for reasons you don't know or think about. I think this just shows either a lack of awareness about how things really work in the world more than anything else.
You know, it's pretty ironic how you interpret my lack of ability to imagine a scenario as "lack of awareness", but you can't think of an actual working example either. You do however, seem to have enough time and words to excoriate me, so why you try again and skip the insults?
I gave you the biggest working example in the world, the one where a person definitively has no objective need to take loans and does so anyway because it's deemed advantageous, and what you did in response instead of saying "oh damn, you're right, I did forget that in fact people take loans all the time against assets vs income" was try to rewrite the discussion around how progressives feel about billionaires.
> "people who are actually engaging in this sort of stuff ... either have citizenship, or can buy citizenship"
I am not rich enough to buy citizenship anywhere, and yet here I am. Your estimation of how things work is not complete.
> "so that they're not living in the country undocumented"
This is the second time now in this thread that you've replaced lack of right to work with something else entirely.
Are you forgetting the whole context for this conversation was over people who lack authorization to work but somehow need (and can get) auto loans? Bringing up Elon Musk, who is a US citizen only fulfills half of that requirement. Not to mention he'd be getting a portfolio loan on his stock, which gets him cash, obviating the need for an auto loan specifically. Then you pretend that was the entire argument, and trying to dunk on me for not accepting it.
https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025...
Plus, the drug trade coming in from Mexico is, in fact, a huge problem, not just for the US, but for Mexico itself. Mexico is run by cartels specifically because of how much money is made off selling drugs to Americans. This isn't some non-existent problem they are using as cover.
I can think of a more humane way: Prosecuting the employers who break the law by hiring undocumented workers. The prospect of employment is what draws migrants here in the first place.
Don't employers already have to check for authorization to work?
(Let us not feel:) How many innocent economic actors does the regulation hit.
It ensure real checks, ensure that when the immigrant work permit expire, the employer have an incentive to help renew it (that alone ouwld probably solve 70 to 90% of illegal "aliens"
Like any other system, the purpose is what the system actually does. Especially a system that's been around for decades.
We let them in, so they can work our fields and process our meat and whatever else. We shouldn't be surprised they want to buy cars, own business, and do other completely normal things.
In Europe it's the other way around: the businesses employing folks with no right to work get fined to death, with no direct repercussions on the workers (except they lose that income, which is another discussion)
Except the farm businesses complained, and the Trump Department of Labor rolled back a bunch of the protections. For example, apparently a sticking point was the requirement that vehicles transporting visa holders have seatbelts for all occupants, so that was eliminated. Another was the requirement that workers be allowed to have guests visit them on employer-provided housing; an often-cited example is worship services provided by a priest. Also rolled back, too onerous.
This is all being stressed at historically high levels as immigration crackdowns continue. Essentially, food production in border states is increasingly forced to go through this visa program that has terrible oversight and protections that I consider below-par. It's not a sexy issue to yell about with a megaphone though.
See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49260422
>We let them in, so they can work our fields and process our meat and whatever else. We shouldn't be surprised they want to buy cars, own business, and do other completely normal things.
So if the city/state/federal government lets a drug addict/dealer population to exist for too long (despite their best efforts at cracking down), they'll eventually get grandfathered in, and we can't enforce anti-money laundering regulations or dismantle their crack dens?
Not remotely the same thing as Ukraine's army being stuck in a war they cannot win. Or whatever other not-quite-apt comparisons you want to make.
Did you get to comparison #3?
>The purpose of the British government is to propose a controversial new sentencing policy, stand firm in the face of protests for a while, then cave in after slightly larger protests and agree not to pass the policy after all.
>...
>The purpose of the British government is to govern Britain. But different British people disagree on how they should be governed, and sometimes one or another faction gets more power, so the government sometimes flip-flops about what it wants.
More to the point, the point isn't that POSWID is always false, it's that you can't use it as a thought terminating cliche in place of an actual argument.
Looking at El Paso, since it was the first city mentioned in the article, the entire city is about 25% immigrants (>200,000 people). And of that, more that 75% is here legally. So, 150,000 give or take, that according to your first comment, shouldn't be allowed to do business because there are illegals nearby?
Doesn't seem to be particularly well received nor does it respond to any of the obvious criticisms.
Nobody knows what Melania was doing between the time she arrived and the time she met Trump. She only had a handful of photoshoots shortly after she arrived, and then nothing for 3-4 years until she met Trump at a social event.
Boy, if you really cared about justice and economics, you'd be in a completely different ballpark.
Or is it prodromic to a "stop talking to guts and let us put the factors in a computational framework, where all targets and constraints and consequences are laid out with their demographics"? A Cost/Risk/Benefit for policies?
And it's not new. He is a money launderer. His friends are bad bad bad people. Grift is what he has always done, is the only thing he knows. https://bsky.app/profile/justinschuh.com/post/3msqa7ggcc22p
two sides-ing this can kiss my fucking ass, get right the fuck out. you have nothing. maybe some pathetic little shrivelled complaint. and you know what? i'm fine if "both sides" have to face consequences for their violations. abuse of the state, of state power deserves incredible condemnation and outcry, universally. but this shit? this shit deserves the most stringent strongest response of the state, if it wants to maintain any pretense of law & respect. party of law & order has proven itself to be a sham. RIP congress.
you seem to show up in threads and spit nasty garbage. i recommend not doing that. i recommend positive contributions to humanity that have hope and forward thinking and outlook on what is good, that don't just cast negativity and spread rotten undermining about.