Immigration, man. I don't know.
Right now the Senate is working on a compromise immigration bill, but as usual the immigration hawks are doing their best to sink it because they aren't getting 100% of what they want. Some of this is campaign cynicism, but not all of it. It's what they've done over and over. They really seem to have a death wish of some kind, preferring to keep the border porous rather than doing at least something to tighten it up.
For the rest of us, the problem is that immigration is a really complicated subject, which makes it genuinely hard to know what kind of effect a large bill might have. The new thing among Republicans is griping about Joe Biden's increased use of parole, which is understandable in a way since it lets hundreds of thousands of immigrants enter the country legally with just some paperwork. On the other hand, it also cuts down on border chaos since those hundreds of thousands aren't trying to brave the razor wire in Texas and sneak in.
But the really big difference between now and the past is asylum. Instead of merely trying to evade detection and capture, lots of migrants are now giving themselves up and applying for asylum. That creates a legal thicket, since if you ask for asylum the law says you have to be given a hearing. This is called affirmative asylum. Likewise, if you're in a deportation hearing and declare that you're seeking asylum, a judge has to hear your claim. This is called defensive asylum. Both have skyrocketed in recent years:
But there's more here than meets the eye. Asylum requests have surged, but ordinary old illegal immigration has too:
Asylum as a percentage of all illegal immigration peaked in 2017 under Donald Trump; bounced around during COVID; and then started to rise again under Biden. But in 2023 it was still only about a third of all immigration cases. Plain old economic migrants looking for jobs was much higher.
This combination calls for a combination of actions. Asylum seekers generally aren't successful, but nonetheless nearly half of asylum requests are approved. The Senate bill tightens up the requirements for asylum, which is something worth doing. The bigger problem, however, is that we have a huge backlog of asylum seekers roaming around the country waiting years for a hearing. The answer is more judges and more case officers, which the Senate legislation also provides.
At the same time, ordinary economic migrants could be most effectively dealt with via E-Verify. If you make it hard to hire undocumented workers, they'll stop coming. The problem is that even immigration hawks tend to downplay this because it might actually work, and that would piss off the business community that wants lots of cheap foreign labor.
The Senate bill would reportedly make asylum harder; increase the number of judges; reduce parole; and create a mechanism for quick expulsions. But those are quiet, technocratic changes. It doesn't include big, flashy stuff like building a wall; sending illegal immigrants back to Mexico without a hearing; or building mass detention camps. It would also increase legal immigration. As usual, hardliners are dead set against half a loaf, which likely means they'll once again get nothing. For 20 years they've gotten nothing. It's a mystery that they haven't gotten tired of this yet.
NOTE: Affirmative asylum applications for FY08-14 are here. Affirmative asylum applications for FY15-22 are here. Affirmative asylum applications for FY23 are here. Defensive asylum applications for FY08-23 are here.
The vast majority of asylum claims should be swiftly rejected.
Right now, the only Latin American countries with significant repression are Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Being a potential crime victim in El Salvador or Mexico is not a valid reason for asylum.
Legal immigration should be managed using a points system. We should let in noncriminals with the skills we need and a strong preference for higher education levels and English levels.
Any non-American who becomes or shows signs of becoming a net negative should be deported. That obviously includes criminals but also persistent scofflaws, habitual truants, etc.
We need both skilled and unskilled labor. If all you do is give points for having a Ph.D in computer science or something, 1. that *does* potentially take away work from native-born workers and 2. does nothing to address the need for farm workers, restaurant busboys, hotel maids, and the like, which will just encourage more illegal immigration to meet that need.
1. We have plenty of unemployed unskilled labor. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS14000018
If unemployed Americans do not want to take these jobs then there should be some combination of increased salaries and reduced transfer payments so they do take them.
2. Unskilled workers are the ones most hurt by globalization. If someone making 200K a year has his income reduced by 10% because of immigrant competition, well, cry me a river to the tune of the world's smallest violin. But minimum wage and close to minimum wage workers need their jobs. If anyone should be protected from immigrant competition it should be them.
3. Skilled immigrants add significantly more value per person. Since there is a limit to the number of immigrants we can accept without major impact on our culture and politics we should admit the highest value ones - the ones who add the most GDP per person - and who make us all wealthier by increasing the size of our economy and paying more taxes.
4. You solve the low wage illegals problem by mandating Real ID checks for all jobs.
"If unemployed Americans do not want to take these jobs then there should be some combination of increased salaries and reduced transfer payments so they do take them."
And then the price of food goes way up, because farmers have to cover that increased labor cost. And poor Americans go hungry.
I don't mean to mock your point - I also think unskilled labor should be paid more across the board. But agriculture in particular is an area where we must tread carefully.
It is absolutely an area where we want to replace humans with robots.
I remember when they automated sugar beet harvests in the 90s and after a year I was the only Latino in town because my family were degree holding white collar workers not ag migrants.
When people talk about undocumented workers they usually talk about farm labor. But there is also a very large number of undocumented workers in the home elderly care field. These are workers that allow dementia and otherwise disabled elders to remain at home. The costs involved would otherwise bankrupt families. Private facilities are very expensive and very few people want to or can afford to send their loved ones to those places. There are no robots that can do this work.
First off, robots and other tools do save labor in elderly care.
Secondly, poor Americans also get old and need elderly care.
If the current wages to elderly carers can be broken down to that earned by documented workers (Wd) and that earned by undocumented workers (Wu) and we kick out all the undocumented workers then there will be an increase in wages in the field as they increase to attract documented workers. Let's call the increment I.
Cost of removing the undocumented workers is I.
Benefit to documented workers (mostly Americans) is Wu + I since they replace the undocumented workers and get their original wages.
Obviously a net beneft to the US - the benefit of increased wages to documented workers exceeds the increased wage cost.
Apparently you have not had anyone close to you suffer from dementia. Believe it or not I actually hope you never see how clueless your comment is.
You really are being silly.
Key point is that net economic benefit is positive.
You may benefit by using cheap undocumented labor to take care of your relative with dementia, but that means that documented workers have less money and less ability to get care for their relatives with dementia. You are benefiting at someone else's expense.
I am, quite often, silly. But not on this subject. Your comments do not apply to the real world. My previous comment stands. May you never find out how clueless you are.
Apparently when Wu approaches 0, Wd just magically increases by virtue of additional income I. Even though there is no evidence to prove that I is sufficient at any value to bring in enough Wd to fully replace Wu.
Every problem can be obscured by math. But just because you understand the math doesn’t mean you understand the problem: working with adults with dementia or other mental/physical issues is really really hard, which is why nobody wants to do it at any price, unless they either have a passion for it (people who approach the job like a nun would) or they have to do it (direct relatives and people with no documentation thus little choice in the job market but to take this job). In math terms, Wd faces limits that Wu does not.
Nope, you are being cruel and silly. Robots cannot take care of my parents, it's now costing $23,000 a month to take care of them. Please listen to iamr4man.
At absolute worst, the increase in the price of food should be no more than the increase in the total wages paid to poor workers. US domestic workers would be better off because their net increase would be the total amount of their pay, not the increment from what was previously paid to undocumented workers.
In actual fact, we would expect smaller increases in costs due to investment in labor saving equipment and substitution of lower labor input products.
“US domestic workers would be better off because their net increase would be the total amount of their pay…”
Yes. And as we’ve seen over the last 3.5 years, even though people’s wages increase faster than prices do, people get furious when they notice the price of everyday objects increased *at all* - even by percentage amounts that are still affordable. I still recall all the news stories about the family that “needs” to buy 14 gallons of milk every week… as well as the outrage about a dozen eggs going up by a dollar. Media couldn’t find anyone actually forgoing buying those items, suggesting that they were still affordable despite the price going up. But they’ve been cited numerous times as a reason why Biden might not get re-elected this fall.
I would like to see any news story about a family that needs to buy 14 gallons of milk a week, unless it is a family of more than 10.
Link please.
I think you are lying.
Not a lie but instead a goofy ridiculous story that aired on CNN last year. Clearly a unicorn family way outside the boundaries of normal dairy consumption.
It was 12 gallon and a family of 11.
https://twitter.com/brikeilarcnn/status/1456227125346832384?lang=en
And there you go. That is high but not unreasonable for a family of 11.
"We need both skilled and unskilled labor."
Are you sure about that? Is there something you want that you cannot get because of this labor shortage? If so, what is it? I really think that assertion is just plain wrong.
I did not say we have a labor shortage.
I said we need both types of labor.
Skilled laborb deficit does not usually show up ad shortages. It shows up as higher wages. This is why wages are so high in finance, software engineering, and for doctors. Bring in more of these people ave we will produce more output in these fields and reduce costs.
How bout "you don't need a better reason to come here other than yearning to be free."
Why?
The purpose of American immigration policy should be to benefit America and Americans, not potential immigrants.
I don't know how to explain to you that you should care about other people, and that denying them privileges without which most of the country would literally not exist is grossly immoral.
+1
Do you think that caring about other people extends to inviting anyone who wants to come to America and would be better off by doing so to come?
I go to Nigeria on business frequently. Probably 50% of the population would come to the US if they could - even the most basic welfare that we provide to people to prevent them from starving in our streets would leave them better off than they are now and moving to the US is probably the most common aspiration you hear. Do we let in 100MM Nigerians? What about the other Africans who would be eager to migrate?
China has 1.6 billion people. The current political, economic, and demographic doldrums have more and more Chinese looking for opportunities to emigrate. It would not be as high as 50%, but 5 to 10% certainly would if they has the opportunity and a good country to go to. Would you accept 80MM to 160MM Chinese people?
Does the US have the obligation to help others by letting so many of them into our country so they overwhelm us and turn us into the same kind of place they are fleeing from?
Funny but America did basically let in any (white) person for 200 years. All they had to do was show up at Ellis island lice free. There was no concern given about how tens of millions of European immigrants would depress the wages of existing Americans at that time. It was only when the faces changed to Asians and Latinos and Africans that suddenly the whole What About Protecting The Wages Of People We Already Have became a concern. Weird!
“Probably 50% of the population would come to the US if they could - even the most basic welfare that we provide to people to prevent them from starving in our streets would leave them better off than they are now and moving to the US is probably the most common aspiration you hear.”
You do realize there are countries out there (Ireland for example) that sent more than half their population to the US during famines or other economic problems, right? It’s not unheard of in history for (white) people to flee poor economic conditions back home for a new life in the States. It’s just a “problem” now that non-white people want to do the same thing.
Ireland did not have 200MM people.
1. You might want to ask the Native Americans how that worked out for them.
2. From the 1600s to the late 1900s we had an inexhaustible need for unskilled and semi-skilled labor. That has changed. Now more and more we need skilled labor - bankers, accountants, engineers, etc.
3. Due to easier and cheaper travel, the number of foreign born Americans has increased from under 5MM in 1850 to 45MM in 2021 (https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/frequently-requested-statistics-immigrants-and-immigration-united-states). Today, with our needs and size, 5MM would probably be too few, but that does not mean that 45MM is not too much.
Fine with me... be free! Americans advocating for open migration ought to quit using the BS line about jobs. It's BS. Just say you want the whole oppressed world to come here and be FREE!
Honesty is the best policy.
Being a potential victim of organized crime in places that are effectively controlled by cartels rather than the putative government of the area is absolutely valid grounds for asylum. Being killed because of politics or terror is grounds for asylum. You would certainly think so, if you were in that situation. It's a good thing that we don't restrict asylum by country, but by circumstance.
But by your logic, any American who shows signs of becoming a net negative (hoo boy!) should be deported.
For that asylum criteria, be ready to have leased cruise ships coming from Africa with several thousand folks who qualify
Oh my! We can't have folks coming from AFRICA!
Depends how many.
Are you ready to welcome the majority of the inhabitants of the DRC?
Yes, you xenophobic piece of dog shit. Our requirement should be:
Do you want to live here?
How exactly do you think all the white people got here?
1. Living in a country with ordinary random risk of death is NOT valid reason If it is, then we need to admit all Gazans, most inhabitants of the DRC, most inhabitants of Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, etc.
The US would need to admit more people than our current total population. The idea is ridiculous.
2. Deporting American criminals would be nice, but no one would take them and since they are Americans we cannot do that. Seriously, don't you think it would be good if we could get rid of murderers, rapists, etc. once we release them from prison?
I believe the UK already tried the whole “let’s get rid of all our criminals” plan with Australia. Didn’t seem to stop new murderers, rapists, etc from being born to presumably “decent” folk still in the UK. Almost as if you can’t get rid of criminals entirely no matter what you do…? That whole free will thing combined with unpredictable human nature thing seems to lead to x% of every society turning into criminals.
Ideally our prison system would turn prisoners into productive citizens before they release them. You know, like Scandinavian counties do. But alas our prison system is just supposed to be a cheaply run warehouse.
What if we had a points system in which we let in good people from south of our border, and yeet all the racist xenophobes like you to the moon? That way, our country improves a lot and you won't need to be next to all the "inferior" people who might move in.
+1
This would have rendered the vast majority of the immigrant forebears of most people in this country ineligible to come here. It is morally abhorrent for this reason.
The US had different needs 100 years ago. Back then we needed huge amounts of unskilled labor, farmers, manual workers, etc. Today we need skilled labor that earns high wages and pays lots of tax.
Why is it morally abhorrent to accept the immigrants we need even if our needs change over time?
"Fuck you, I've got mine" is always awful.
So if a country used to allow practically anyone in (the early US had no border controls) then we have to do so forever?
Open borders until the end of time? Stop checking passports at ports of entry?
To ask the question is to see how ridiculous your ideas are.
Oh... and I love the consequences for Australia. Apparently they should admit every murderer and rapist on the planet. After all, a high percentage of their ancestors were transported criminals.
Really?
So the people chased out by criminal/corporate gangs took over their or because they're LGBT+ or their village was the wrong religion don't count?
Geez.
MF is repeating the stupid conservative canard that only the official government can engage in oppression. Anything done by private individuals, no matter how much power they have, cannot, by definition, be oppression.
They also ignore the role that the United States has played in the destruction of functioning societies in Latin America, which morally obligates us to be a big and effective part of the solution.
Repression can be engaged in by many actors. The important question is when is it our responsibility to accept a refugee.
I think we should accept refugees from oppressive governments and quasigovernmental actors. North Korean refugees should be practially automatic admits.
It is not our obligation to accept people from countries just because they are crime ridden hell holes.
What you, and the conservative idiots you are aping, cannot understand is that you are drawing a distinction without a difference. In these crime ridden hell-holes, the criminal gangs are the government. If you aren't too stupid to recognize that, if the military successfully topples the civilian government in a country, then they are the ew government, you shouldn't be too stupid to recognize that, if criminal gangs overwhelm the government and become the effective ruling power, then they are the new government.
But, of course, you are that stupid. Or bigoted. Or dishonest. Take your pick. But it's definitely one of those.
"shows signs of becoming a net negative should be deported"
Does this involve a Pantone color wheel?
"The Camp of the Saints"
Look it up. The Steve's (Bannon, Miller) read a chapter every night.
It's the Book of Mormon for Nativists.
This, 110%.
And they get this kind of vision enacted into the law only with a big win for Trump and the Republican party in November. Helping Joe Biden in any way, shape, and form is frankly stupid for white ethnonationalists at this point.
Because I loathe this crowd with every fiber of my being, I hope they're stupid, and give Joe and Democrats a policy win. But i doubt they will be.
(Sure, even without a border deal, Joe might well win. Hell, I think he's a moderate favorite to do so given the likely trajectory of the economy. So normal people might strongly consider taking half a loaf, in the event they lose in November. But these aren't normal people, but rather dead-eyed zealots.)
I had never seen this so looked it up in Wikipedia. Makes me long for the days when the Republicans favorite book was Atlas Shrugged. I wonder what people like Ramaswamy and Haley think of this shit.
Some of this is campaign cynicism, but not all of it. It's what they've done over and over. They really seem to have a death wish of some kind...
Why couldn't it indeed simply be a matter of political cynicism and expedience? It seems to me that's by far the most plausible answer. Even true believing immigration hawks believe, rightly, that getting Trump back in is more important to their cause than getting substantive policy wins right now that help Joe Biden. Biden, after all, isn't going to touch legal immigration inflows. But Trump has already vowed to do so. And of course many Republican lawmakers don't care about immigration restrictionism and probably (privately) oppose it as such a policy does nothing for plutocrats. This latter group clearly is opposing Biden solely to worsen national conditions.
Occam's razor, Kevin.
This is 100% correct. Kevin's assumption is ridiculously naive.
Occam's razor says blocking Ukraine aid is more important than dealing with the border.
The border discussion keeps everyone from talking about Ukraine.
Soon, everyone will be talking about "who lost Ukraine?"
Occam's razor says blocking Ukraine aid is more important than dealing with the border.
We'll see. I guess it depends on "to whom." Dealing with the border is only important to the restrictionists and true believers (people like Bannon, Miller, etc). I doubt that constitutes anything like a majority of GOP officialdom. In general, Republicans are happy not to deal with the border problem because the issue generates bad optics for Biden. I suspect even in the GOP of 2024, quite a few are a bit squeamish about letting Ukraine be conquered by Russia.
I don't understand why Democrats don't at least try and get a stand-alone Ukraine aid deal to Biden's desk. I'd guess (and this truly is a wild guess) such a measure would have a better chance of getting the required GOP cooperation than the omnibus-ish bill that now appears blocked.
"I'd guess (and this truly is a wild guess) .."
That democrats doesn't even try suggest that they don't believe it has any chance, presumably because Trump will do anything he can to torpedo it.
I think they need 60 votes in the Senate and a majority in the House to get this legislation to Biden.
They brought just such stand-alone legislation in the Senate in December but it did not get 60 votes and the House indicated that they would not even look at it.
I believe that the GOP has been pretty clear for the last several months that they will not allow a stand alone Ukraine bill and the Dems dont have enough people in either chamber to do it by themselves. The only thing that has changed recently is that the GOP is now saying that they also will not allow an immigration bill to pass.
Stuff like this makes me wonder -- over and over again -- why the Dems campaign committee(s) don't have a competent ad agency on the payroll. They ought to be rolling out a massive campaign emphasizing how once again the Republicans are letting Russia win their war of aggression. Emphasizing how this is just like how Hitler got started conquering Europe and causing World War II. Emphasizing how Putin has made no secret of the fact that his intention is to continue to overrun his neighbors, and the Republicans are his accomplices in that action.
Over and over, the Dems should be shouting it from every TV channel how the Republicans are aiding and abetting a Russian dictator to try to conquer Europe, just like Hitler. And also, at every turn, emphasizing how the Dems are trying to stop Russia, but the Republicans are blocking them by unanimously opposing helping the victims of Russian aggression.
Why does the Democratic Party campaign arm remind me of the ads for Meow Mix cat food?
Yep. I don't follow them as closely as I once did, but the Lincoln Project was particularly good at this -- taking some outrageous thing Trump or the Republicans were doing and getting a hard-hitting ad calling it out on social media within about 24 hrs -- practically within the same news cycle. I don't know how many times over the years I've seen Republicans doing something and asked, like you, why don't Democrats have a coordinated media message (i.e. not just a few anodyne tweets) out there kicking their asses over this? It's like liberals are just congenitally unable to get their shit together over this stuff.
I like the Lincoln Project ads, but I don't see any evidence that they've had any effect. They're like Rachel Maddow, admired by the true believers but with no converts.
This. People vastly overestimate how effective a messaging effort can be in a world in which there are a lot of low information voters who automatically assume that everything politicians tell them is a lie.
People vastly overestimate how effective a messaging effort can be...
Totally. I've been hearing for years now that Democrats could perform miracles if only their "messaging" were better or their "communications strategy" smarter—just get a new ad agency and the political seas will part! It doesn't work that way. Partly it's a matter of low information voters, sure, but partly it's a matter of media diffusion. There are endless different sources where Americans get their information, and no longer a practical means of getting to them all. It's a real dilemma in a democracy (we saw this spectacularly during covid).
Richard Nixon saved his political career with a single speech on national television in 1952. That wouldn't be feasible today. You could never get the entire national conversation focused on one talk by one politician.
Ironically, the most powerful way to influence the national conversation is still very likely to be the big to reach the three networks. Why? Well, liberals don't pay these much heed, and neither does MAGA. But non-political hobbyist types—so-called "normies" (many/most of whom are persuadable in terms of politics) are the primary audience for these networks. If you can generate free media coverage by the big three, you can potentially put pressure on Republicans. But that's a heavy lift. And of course this assumes that normies care a lot about this particular issue (Ukraine). They may not.
It may simply be the case that inward-turning America simply doesn't give a sufficiently large fuck about what goes on on the other side of the Atlantic. History doesn't repeat itself. But it sure as hell rhymes.
Trump ran on immigration, then had the control of the White House, Senate, and House for two years and did close to nothing about it. Then when Democrats regained control of Congress immigration became a big deal again.
Just like the budget deficit. Magically went away under Trump. Funny that.
That said, if you recall, "building the wall" was a major thing during his administration. He even redirected Pentagon funding earmarked for upgrading base housing to build it. Problem was, it was just a ridiculous performative boondoggle. You can't build a continuous physical wall along the entire US-Mexico border. FFS, even the Great Wall of China was largely obsolete even when completed.
“Build the wall” wasn't a major enough thing for him to get it through Congress. A group of Senators attempted to forge a bipartisan bill which would have funded the wall in exchange for writing DACA into law. Trump (or Steve Miller, who was Trump's point man in these negotiations) insisted on adding changes to the family reunification and diversity lottery provisions of the U.S. immigration law, which the Senators agreed to. Then Trump insisted that the bill included a reduction in legal immigration. Democrats balked, and Trump walked away from the negotiations.
If Trump had supported the bill, it probably would have passed the Senate, and I can't imaging that the House, which a Republican majority, would have blocked it. Yes, it would have been a ridiculous performative boondoggle, but Trump won the election based in part on his promise to “build the wall,” and politicians tend to think that the American people should get the policies they voted for.
I think that, after losing the House in 2018, Trump decided that he wanted to build “the Wall” in order to help him in the 2020 election, but by then it was too late to get a bill through Congress.
The numbers are right up there. Monthly immigration was 50k under Trump and just hit 300k under Biden with the change coming when Biden became president. It became a bigger deal because it actually increased massively when Biden got in office.
Yeah, the numbers follow the economy. If the US does better than others, we attract more - and need more.
Anything Trump does on immigration can be reversed by a Democratic administration. But statutory changes stay.
My thesis isn't that they are political opportunists and it isn't that they are constitutionally incapable of dealmaking (although both those elements are part of it). It's that the immigration restriction movement is full of paranoid idiots.
Think about the substantive policy. You basically have to be a paranoid idiot in the first place to be an immigration restrictionist. That's where that view comes from. Paranoia about who is entering the country, about cultural changes, about job loss. And idiocy about the benefits of immigration, idiocy about the desirability of stagnant culture and stagnant economics, and the great idiocy that is racism and ethnocentrism.
So you have a movement full of paranoid idiots. So why would you expect their politics to be anything other than full of paranoia and idiocy? They are convinced at all times that the Democrats are conniving conspirators who are going to stab them in the back if they make a deal. They fail to make rational cost-benefit calculations. And they think they know the "real story" when in fact they are the dummies and the conventional wisdom is right.
They are being offered changes to the laws of the US, which will bind every President going forward, in an era where it is VERY difficult to get anything through Congress whether Trump is President or not. But because they are paranoid idiots, they don't see that. They are submerged in their own world of conspiratorialist BS.
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Fundamentally, the political trade is more legal immigration for less illegal immigrations and its new legal-as-Trump’s-tax-returns twin, asylum.
Fundamentally the way to reduce immigration significantly is
1: Rapid, no-fuss, no-excuses deportation of anyone here without permission
2: Scrappjng the asylum system and replacement with expanded numbers of refugees
3: Jail time and ruinous fines for those that hire illegals
The problem is that both sides have issues they won’t compromise over, so we have had significant reform in 40 years.
"Fundamentally the way to reduce immigration significantly is"
Thanks for saying the quiet part out loud. The goal was never to stop unlawful immigration, it's to prevent Latinos from coming here.
My take: The way to increase immigration is to be a great place to live and to give people an easy way to come live here and enjoy that.
Your #2 makes no sense. Refugees apply for asylum. That's how that works. They aren't separate things.
They do, but they are separate things in public policy.
Governments decide to take refugees and what numbers they will take, and many refugees do not qualify for asylum (because their issue is not a credible fear of persecution because of their membership in a group, but simply that their homes are in a war zone, there's a natural disaster, etc.), which means that unless they are granted some sort of status by the host country, they eventually go back to their homes if the crisis subsides.
Obviously this isn't all of the asylum issue (a lot of asylum applications are filed by people who simply want to get into the country), but part of the asylum issue is precisely that we are very stingy on taking refugees (we are not alone on this-- a lot of "first world" countries are the same way). If you take a lot of refugees, you can grant them temporary statuses and eventually send some of them back if things get better. But if you funnel it all through the asylum system, the game-theoretic optimal response from migrants is to flood the border so that we have to parole a lot of the asylum applicants in whether they are refugees or not.
The refugee system and asylum systems are separate. Refugees come after receiving permission. Asylum seekers arrive and then ask permission.
Twenty years ago, we granted about 5000 asylum cases a year. It was a tiny rounding error on the system and not a burden. For whatever reasons, claims have exploded into the stratosphere and it is now entirely broken.
I'm guessing the main reason for a huge increase in asylum claims is the internet and smart phones. The information about what for example NYC is doing for every migrant (free housing for at least a period of time, free schooling, soup kitchens, tons of jobs delivering food, the money to be made by ushering your small child selling candy on the subway etc. etc.) is now available to everyone everywhere. Also information on what to do and say at the border, the latest places to cross, how to get there, free buses provided by Texas etc.
Up to date information or even much information at all was mainly by some rumor about what the son of someone's cousin's brother said before.
3: Jail time and ruinous fines for those that hire illegals
Sure, that will be simple, won't it? Suppose undocumented workers are found at, oh, let's say a poultry processing plant. (Shockingly, this has been known to happen.) Exactly who bears the burden of fines and jail time? The shift supervisor? The HR department? The plant manager? C-suite execs?
Go ahead and explain it to me like I'm stupid.
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
The same people who bear the burden if there are underage workers.
We manage to mostly enforce that law and punish violators. It isn't that hard.
We manage to mostly enforce that law and punish violators. It isn't that hard.
Yeah, as I said farther up, you're too stupid to have any idea what we are talking about. We do a terrible job of punishing violations of child labor laws.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/01/14/child-labor-fast-food-franchises/
I had heard that all immigration action (aka "reform") was dead, dead, dead until Donald Trump once again rests his ample haunches in the Oval Office.
Mitch McConnell even announced it to his Republican caucus in the Senate. They had been completing a bipartisan agreement on immingration and "border security" which would enable the aid to Ukraine (and Israel, unfortunately) to go through. Mitch announced a full stop because, he said, Trump had called and told him he wanted to hold the border issue over Joe Biden's head for the entire campaign, so do not provide any solutions. Of course, Milquetoast Mike Johnson over in the House immediately embraced the new plan.
Mitt Romney even commented on how cowardly and nakedly political a move this was by the Congress.
So I strongly doubt that any behind the scenes effort is still going on. The Master has Spoken.
I don't understand how information vacuumer Kevin did not know that the Speaker of the House and Mitch decided to can the negotiated compromise entirely because their real boss Donald told them to.
Asylum seekers generally aren't successful, but nonetheless nearly half of asylum requests are approved. ...we have a huge backlog of asylum seekers roaming around the country waiting years for a hearing.
I assume even the, say, 60% who are not approved can still stay in the United States (usually several years), temporarily, until their hearing date arrives. IIRC they get temporary working papers after about six months. It's a mystery to me why there are any "normal" undocumented immigrants at all coming to the US. Why don't they all come as asylum seekers? If I'm not mistaken the latter have something approaching a 99% chance of at least getting in temporarily, with a working visa.
Why don't they all come as asylum seekers? If I'm not mistaken the latter have something approaching a 99% chance of at least getting in temporarily, with a working visa.
You have to have at least a legally colorable claim of asylum when you present yourself to CBP, along with some ID, passport, etc. A lot of poor migrants don't have even that, so they just do it the old-fashioned way and sneak over.
Also, if they're doing it serially or seasonally - as many don't want to stay, they just want a job - you can only apply for asylum once.
> that would piss off the business community that wants lots of cheap foreign labor.
This. Building a wall or adding razor wire or whatever doesn't slow the flow of illegal immigration. To get cheap foreign labor, you need an illegal immigrant population that can be threatened. So you want the porous border and you want the humiliation, family separation, cages, slow bureaucracy, etc. Republican chaos is a feature, not a bug.
At the same time, you also want to destablize central and south american countries to create more illegal immigrants.
Asylum… Half the world’s population could claim it and be justified in doing so. It’s time to abandon this idea. Heck, if trump wins election, vermin like me could claim it in Canada! Anyway, if folks really want to help these so called political refugees, then we should let everyone come to America no questions asked. And we should arrange safe transit… planes, ships, etc. so they don’t have to pay smugglers. Welcome the whole world to America!
It’s a joke.
No, if the Defendant wins in November, he'll have zero control over Canada's asylum laws and policies. But the actual "open borders" is pretty much how it used to work. The US got a lot of good citizens that way.
Except for the draft-dodging German cretin that spawned the Trump clan.
Right - I was saying that I would qualify for asylum in Canada because the Trump run US government was oppressive and threatening to me.
Unlikely, he loves bigots like you.
Googled this gem from the Cencus Bureau:
Though largely illustrative, the zero-immigration scenario projects that population declines would start in 2024 in the complete absence of foreign-born immigration. The population in this scenario is projected to be 226 million in 2100, roughly 107 million lower than the 2022 estimate.
Good point. If people like me who plan to retire in the next 20 years or so still want their SS and Medicare, we need to grow the working-age population in the next generation and immigration is really the only way to do it. People are like "well, the country's already too crowded and we could use some major demographic contraction." Uh, no. We'd be royally fucked if that happened.
Not for much longer. Soon we will be able to replace with robots
Robots don't pay taxes.
I guess we'll have to figure a way to tax their owners.
Donald will build a bunch of new cities just like China did to put all the increased population in. Simple. Easy peasy.
Right?
"Right now the Senate is working on a compromise immigration bill, but as usual the immigration hawks are doing their best to sink it because they aren't getting 100% of what they want."
No. Immigration hawks - that is, Republicans - are doing their best to sink it because they *don't want* reform. The status quo of a porous border is working very well for them:
1) The business wing of the R Party likes having a huge pool of cheap labor who they can abuse and fire without recourse;
2) The porous border keeps the racist wing of the Party riled up;
3) The actual politicians in the R Party get to point at the porous border and say, "See! Biden has failed!"
Add in the fact that this is an election year and a border deal might be seen as a win for Biden. This bill has exactly zero chance of survival.
Indeed. They learned their lesson with abortion: once they caught that rabbit, it was no longer a viable and lucrative campaign issue, but became an issue against them!
Lesson learned: no more solving problems!!
Yep. Immigration is where their love of plutocracy and racism collide.
The business community wants lots of cheap foreign labor that can be threatened with deportation when they agitate for higher wages and safer working conditions. The politics is about satisfying the business community while using 'border security' as a demagogic issue.
Pingback: Getting Control Of The Border - Angry Bear - Celestial Chronicle
"There are trivial truths and there are great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true." - Niels Bohr
The immigration crisis is infinitely complex and incredibly simple.
The simple part is answering the question, is your intent and your behavior consistent with the Pledge of Allegiance's "liberty and justice for all" concept? The complex part is after you've answered yes or no.
If yes, then immigration and every major crisis is not a problem. Instead, it's a incredibly challenging but ultimately resolvable dilemma.
If no, then you're committed to liberty and justice for "us" in lieu of "them," you've made the otherwise resolvable impossible, and my guess is you've probably identified somebody else to blame. If not, then feel free to blame me.
What if I don't care either way?
Maybe next time there's a Republican president who isn't Trump, we can get mandatory e-verify passed as part of an immigration compromise. It'll have to wait until then because barring a Democratic supermajority in Congress with a Democratic president, there will be no progress.
I thought of that too, but I've come to cynically believe that the GOP scores twice by NEVER fixing immigration:
1- They please the GOP base that says never work with Dems on anything. Sometimes I wonder if Biden said "Don't hold you breath", he'd be tried for mass murder
2- Slimeball farmers and factory owners who want lots of undocumenteds who will work for below minimum wage. These owners now enjoy the double standard of not even being charged when authorities raid and arrest the workers. Why would these owners EVER want eVerify fixed?
That won't do it either. Enough lefty democrats believe rejecting anyone who isn't a criminal is immoral that dems can't pass it alone
Because rejecting Joe's grandma is just dumb.
Because not letting in refugees is illegal, by treaty.
Because it's just dumb.
In response to all those arguing that big business wants lots of cheap, undocumented labor, the biggest employer of illegal labor is in fact small business and most often other immigrants (think hair salons, motels, restaurants, daycares, landscaping, etc.) Yes, there are some larger companies, like meat processors, that certainly benefit from illegal labor, but in the larger scheme of things, they're not what's drawing people here. If the huge corporate interests that fund Republicans were really all that concerned about looser immigration enforcement, you'd see more dithering or negotiating on that side of the aisle. But there's not. It's become a 100% culture war issue that Republicans are willing to go to the mat over.
If Republicans were serious about ending undocumented immigration, they would not only fine and imprison employers who employ undocumented workers, they would also fine *anyone* who stayed at a hotel, played at a golf course, stayed at a resort, ate at a restaurant or purchased produce from a grocery store that involved undocumented workers. This latter would incent everyone to insist on the label "We use E-Verify" before purchasing goods and services.
And yet they're the ones dithering about funding immigration courts and eVerify.
The mistake people are making is the idea that it has to be big business in order for Republicans to cater to them. Republicans are even more responsive to the lobbying arms of small business coalitions than they are to big business.
As I've written here a number of times, we can talk about E-verify until we're blue in the face, but until it's upgraded to confirm someone's actual identity, and not just a SSN, it's fairly useless. The vast majority of illegal labor on farms and ranches across the US is provided by "labor contractors" -- shady, fly-by-night outfits that recruit workers, arrange for them to get SSNs that E-verify will not flag (in places where it's required), and then hire them out. That's why you never see a business get in trouble for hiring illegals; they just point to the contractor and say "hey, we trusted these guys to do the paperwork!" When they ask where the contractor is, the answer is always a shuttered storefront with a disconnected phone line.
"That's why you never see a business get in trouble for hiring illegals; they just point to the contractor and say "hey, we trusted these guys to do the paperwork!" When they ask where the contractor is, the answer is always a shuttered storefront with a disconnected phone line."
Lock 'em up. Claiming you "trusted" someone isn't a get-out-of-jail-free card. That's libertarian bafflegab. There has to be a threshold of accountability.
Exactly.
Way easier said than done.
Kevin, is that opening line a reference to The West Wing?
("That's when I decided to kick your ass.")
"For 20 years they've gotten nothing. It's a mystery that they haven't gotten tired of this yet."
They've gotten an endless flood of headlines to the effect that Democrats are to blame for the "invasion of immigrants." That's far from nothing.
Beat me to it. Yeah, most republican politicians probably do hate immigrants (at least the brown ones who aren't taking care of their kids or cooking their food while being underpaid), but much more important is getting votes and donations from their racist voter base.
Imagine thinking "we need to kick MORE people trying to claim asylum in the face and send them packing."
The easiest solution to ending illegal immigration is to legalize it. People want to live and work here. We can just let them.
Hear hear! Free movement of goods, services, capital, and information is good for the economy. Why not free movement of labor? It's baffling that the party that claims to be pro-business wants to slam the border shut.
It's funny, in a bleak way, to watch the supposed champions of The Free Market complain about illegal immigration. Whatever our position is on the subject, it's just a fact that restrictions on immigration are a massive deviation from a free market. If you are in favor of them, then you need to admit that you are just fine with economic regulation.
" It's baffling that the party that claims to be pro-business wants to slam the border shut."
Obviously they don't want to to. They just use it to bamboozle people to vote for them.
"The problem is that even immigration hawks tend to downplay this because it might actually work, and that would piss off the business community that wants lots of cheap foreign labor."
Do you have ACTUAL evidence of this, Kevin?
95% of current political discourse is currently based on psychism and telepathy, the ability to look int the minds of ones opponents, see their 'true" motives, and then weave a web of complaint based on these supposed motives,
I'm seeing more and more cases where this is simply BS, where team A does not have a CLUE what team B really wants (and isn't much interested in actually learning this). A particularly striking case has to do with university admissions, where the left has long complained that "affirmative action is no different from legacies" under the assumption that right loves legacies, a completely clueless reading of the right, as seen, for example, in the recent UNANIMOUS act passed by the Virginia Senate banning legacies in state schools.
The "business community" is very large. The part of it that uses illegal labor from South America is simply not that large. Would the FARMING community be upset? I don't know, perhaps. But the farming community is not the business community.
Is the entire Republican party driving policy based on what the farming community in a few states wants? Again, possibly, but I'd need some evidence because that seems unlikely to me.
...The unemployment rate for undocumented is much, much less than for documented workers?
Like, what are you even thinking?
Yah, I want what name99 is smoking.
"A particularly striking case has to do with university admissions, where the left has long complained that "affirmative action is no different from legacies" under the assumption that right loves legacies"
Talk about not knowing what your opponents believe. The left doesn't believe conservatives love legacy admissions, they believe they don't really care if white kids get a leg up, but violently oppose minorities getting one. And we know the reason why this is true.
. It's become a 100% culture war issue that Republicans are willing to go to the mat over.
There's two reasons for this:
1). 9-11, obviously
2). Because immigrants began settling in rural area where most Republicans live. And the reason they did this has a lot to do with the food industry. And not just farms but food processors who located their plants in the 1960s and 70s in rural areas away from big towns and presumably away from unions. And when said companies couldn't hire enough people from the local labor pool to fill these jobs, instead of closing the plants down they simply imported the labor, which they pay much cheaper to these places. You can imagine how the locals reacted. They think having a towns of Germans, Poles and Irish is diversity enough!
Near where I live in Wisconsin is a small town called Barron. In that town is a turkey processing plant run by Jennie-O. When there weren't enough locals to fill positions at the plants (for what they were offering in salary), they hired recruiters to find workers in big cities, which in this case were Somalis from Twin Cities, who resettled there and opened their own mosque. Imagine that! Little Barron with all its churches and its 95 percent white population and now with a mosque too! Needless-to-say the culture shock was enormous and also needless-to-say, Trump carried Barron County easily. Now multiply Barron's experience all across the country and you'll understand why immigration has become so important to Republicans and why Trump came to dominate the party. The reality is they didn't mind immigration when it was to the big cities. In little towns however, well it's a different story.
And it also ties into that other GOP bug-a-boo, welfare. It's the belief of many MAGAites that there are too many lazy people out there who won't work at places like Jennie-O (and weren't not just talking about stereotypes of people of color, because this belief exists in areas predominately white, even more so) and such people are to blame that companies have to hire so many immigrants to work in the food processing plant. While the reality is there's just not that many people in rural areas to satisfy the food companies' labor needs, there's a little truth to this. But, I mean, you can't make people work in a turkey plant if they don't want to or think such work is demeaning or not worth what they're willing to pay. And since everyone freaks out when food prices rise, food companies are not (and have never) going to pay what the market rate for labor is, so they find workers who will do so and even better don't ask any question or form unions when labor conditions are bad. It's this frustration that drives people to MAGA.
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*raises hand*
Um, excuse me? I have a question.
I keep hearing from Republicans and Democrats alike that migration into this country is a big, BIG problem. Huge! But aside from Trump's xenophobic blather about drug dealers and insane asylums and "poisoning our blood," I don't often see any clear description of what problems arise from immigration, legal and not.
What are the problems caused by the increase in border crossings? Specifically and with data.
(Don't @ me with accusations that I'm arguing for open borders. I'm arguing nothing. I'm asking for real.)
Precious how Kevin states empirical evidence…..like a slow hanging curve ball… and then whiffs the swing when drawing a conclusion. It’s like the ball hits the catcher’s mitt, and four seconds later Kevin takes the swing.
Abortion, the border, insert wedge issue here ________, are never actually meant to be solved. They are meant to keep a political party only concerned about 5% of the population as viably competing in a democracy. At some point there will be true believers who aren’t in on the con, but those are far and few between.
+1
Businesses want cheap migrant labor. Texas, Florida, and other states have been bussing them to where they are needed while their constituents think they own the libs with this gift to the employers. No one who supports criminalizing migration wants to criminalize the employers.
Why would they get tired of it? They've created an evergreen campaign issue. Were you thinking they went to Congress to solve problems?
Bingo
GOP is Bob Rumson in the movie- American President. Not the least bit interested in solving any problem, just making you afraid and giving you someone to blame.
Immigration is a GOP gold mine. I'd be surprised (shocked) if GOP supports any solution before the election.
be thrilled to be wrong