patrick.net

The fact that the demand side of immigration is underaddressed highlights the deliberate broken-ness of the US immigration system. It drives down US wages and makes for a readily available and exploitable CHEAP workforce.

Look how many people voluntarily left the US, and how many stopped coming, when jobs dried up during the Great Recession, for proof that reducing employment makes the "immigration problem" take care of itself.

I think cutting off the welfare to them would work just fine.

@ Patrick
I think your sign "ILLEGALS" misrepresents illegals by tagging them as being from Mexico.
Can you change it to maybe something that represent all types of "illegals"?

Jailing doesn't go far enough. There should be huge fines as well.

We should create the biggest jail ever and send them all over there so they don't come back. Build the jail! Build the jail!

Can you propose a way to meet the demand for products these jailed employers produced before they were jailed??

Better yet have the employers build the wall.
ddshutlz says

Build the jail! Build the jail!

Spot on as usual Patrick.

Patrick says

Jail the employers of illegal immigrants

This Trump Presidency has really got Patrick worked up.

Immediate death penalty for hiring an illegal alien.

ddshutlz says

Can you propose a way to meet the demand for products these jailed employers produced before they were jailed??

How about hiring Americans?

ddshutlz says

I think your sign "ILLEGALS" misrepresents illegals by tagging them as being from Mexico.

It's reasonably correct, since just over half of illegal immigrants are from Mexico:

In 2012, 52% were from Mexico, 15% from Central America, 12% from Asia, 6% from South America, 5% from the Caribbean, and another 5% from Europe and Canada.[4]

Patrick says

Jail the employers of illegal immigrants

Don't do this to me Patrick.
My gardener and the cleaning lady might be illegal. If they are gone, my wife will make me do all the work.
That is cruel and unusual punishment, which is against the law.

I bet there are gardeners and cleaning ladies who are legal and will work for just $1 more per hour!

this includes people who pick up illegals in front of HomeDepot.

Why is it racist to enforce border laws?

ddshutlz says

So if I want to be reasonably correct I would call you a racist?

Patrick says, "Democrats get more Hispanics who reliably vote Democrat."
While I agree taht jailing employers is more effective and cheaper than jailing illegal immigrants by cutting of demand and not the ever adjustable supply,
I respectfully disagree. Hispanics tend toward conservatism and are far from a homogeneous group. Cubans have as little in common with Mexicans as Berkeley leftists do with southern conservatives. Spaniards of Spanish birth are different than either of those groups and so on. It is as rude and false as if all European heritage persons can be described by white. The Irish are not the English (I have traces of both, talk about a mixed heritage!)

You left out the most important item.
The fact that conservatives are actively campaigning to deport illegal aliens.
If you or your family are in danger of being deported, that would seem to override all other considerations.

georgeliberte says

Hispanics tend toward conservatism and are far from a homogeneous group. Cubans have as little in common with Mexicans as Berkeley leftists do with southern conservatives. Spaniards of Spanish birth are different than either of those groups and so on. It is as rude and false as if all European heritage persons can be described by white. The Irish are not the English (I have traces of both, talk about a mixed heritage!)

Liberals call everyone racist who disagrees with them.

Yes, because liberals have been so brainwashed and distracted from fundamental economics that they forgot what the Left was all about.

It's up to us to start reminding them that all this race crap is so that people don't have time to talk about taxing non-productive rent-seeking by billionaires.

georgeliberte says

Hispanics tend toward conservatism and are far from a homogeneous group.

Yes, Hispanics tend to be Catholic and socially conservative, but for worker rights, which is a traditionally leftist issue.

All the race and gender crap is probably driving them away from the Democratic party just like it's driving white men away.

ddshutlz says

Can you propose a way to meet the demand for products these jailed employers produced before they were jailed??

Why should we give a fuck about a business that hires illegals? Let 'em go under, a better, LAW abiding business will rise up to take their place.

The cost of jailing employers will be infinitely cheaper than building a wall, and way more effective at stemming illegal influx.

We need both: jailing employers, and the wall. Neither one is sufficient alone.

If you cut off all incentive to border hop, employment, social services, medical care, schooling, housing, what need is there to still build a wall? If anyone still wants to come after all that is taken away, maybe they really do need asylum, and we shouldn't try to hinder their entrance.

Strategist says

My gardener and the cleaning lady might be illegal. If they are gone, my wife will make me do all the work.

Nah..., you'll be in prison.

"We need both: jailing employers, and the wall. Neither one is sufficient alone."

But, how do you know? We've never tried jailing employers. Let's try that first, then if it still doesn't work, we can talk about a wall.

Patrick says

What you lose:

US wages, public safety, respect for the law

You also lose a strong middle class and a good economy, and that affects your wages and standard of living even if you do not work in any field remotely related to cheap immigrant labor. The more poor people there are in a society, the more you have to pay in taxes for social services and law enforcement, and the less healthy economic activity per capita there is, resulting in a decrease in material standard of living for all but the richest 0.1%.

Poverty does not just affect the poor.

Patrick says

How they rationalize their abuse:

"No human being is illegal."

Why they, the capitalists, really want illegal immigration: it results in no bargaining power for labor and thus effective slave labor. This allows the owners to take a larger piece of the pie that was baked by other people.

Patrick says

How you should respond to their rationalizations:

Illegal immigrants have broken the law by sneaking over the border. They don't belong here.

Actually, most illegal immigration and work isn't Mexicans sneaking over the boarder but rather being brought in to work on farms. The farm owners and their bought politicians then want those farmers to leave and new ones brought in so that the labor remains powerless and cheap. However, the farmers, now illegal immigrants who overstayed their welcome, remain and either work illegally for the same owners, who absolutely know and encourage this, or work illegally elsewhere.

[stupid comment limit]

Stopping all illegal border crossings won't put a dent in illegal immigration. Any reduction will be offset by allowing more Mexican slave labor to legally cross the border and then illegally stay beyond the season they had permission to stay for.

The only solution is to stop the practice of using powerless illegal workers and temporary foreign labor. This can only be done if the pay of the owners is tied directly to the pay of their employees. Fix the total income of the owners of farms to the median income of the farmer, i.e. farm worker. Let the owners have a total income from the farm equal to five times the total income of the farm laborer. If the owners want more money, they have to make it so that the farm laborer gets more money.

Do this and the immigration problem will cease. The immigration problem is inherently a problem of capitalism. The solution is the removal of the mechanism of capitalism from commerce and production. As long as there are financial incentives for owners to exploit labor, these problems will continue. The solution is to align the financial incentives of owners with the interests of society, and that requires that society rather than owners determine how much of the pie the owners get.

Abandoning capitalism in favor of more rational business and commerce systems would motivate owners to increase the size of the pie because they cannot increase the percentage of the pie they get. Right now the owners do the math and find that a bigger cut of a smaller pie means more pie for them, and they don't give a shit that it's less pie for everyone else. This is the fundamental problem with capitalism.

And remember, capitalism has NOTHING to do with commerce, business, or free markets. Those four terms mean completely different things.

FortWayne says

Liberals call everyone racist who disagrees with them.

That's bullshit. Show one example where I have done that? Oh, you can't? What a surprise.

Once again conservatives demonstrate their complete lack of grasp on reality. No wonder they are so bad at running economies and the government.

Oh, and this whole immigration problem, is caused by conservatives, particularly right-wing conservatives, and even more particularly, those that advocate Reaganomics. It's trickle down economics and unregulated capitalism that causes the very immigration problem being discussed here. And yet you continue to use the image of that buffoon Ronald Reagan as your avatar.

As always the problems that conservatives complain about are caused by those same conservatives.

Dan8267 says

You also lose a strong middle class and a good economy, and that affects your wages and standard of living even if you do not work in any field remotely related to cheap immigrant labor. The more poor people there are in a society, the more you have to pay in taxes for social services and law enforcement, and the less healthy economic activity per capita there is, resulting in a decrease in material standard of living for all but the richest 0.1%.

You made some good points. I added them above.

There is no wall along the Mexican-Guatemala border. Yet, there are no Mexicans crossing over to Guatemala. Why? No jobs.

Dan8267 says

Actually, most illegal immigration and work isn't Mexicans sneaking over the boarder but rather being brought in to work on farms. The farm owners and their bought politicians then want those farmers to leave and new ones brought in so that the labor remains powerless and cheap.

@Dan8267 this is very interesting.

Are farm owners actually arranging or paying for illegals to be brought in?

Is there evidence of that?

rando says

Are farm owners actually arranging or paying for illegals to be brought in?

They don't have to be. The way to commit a crime and not be prosecuted for it is to have other people do the leg work while you just provide the financial incentives. Our society never prosecutes those who incentivize others to carry out crime even if the crimes would not exist at all if not for the incentives.

The owner class is above the law. We jail and deport the Mexican who illegal stays longer than the season he was given permission to work. We don't jail the farm owner who hires those illegal immigrants precisely because they cannot petition for better wages or living conditions, but it's those farm owners who are creating the problem.

It's like if a rich person didn't hire someone to assassinate Donald Trump but made it known that if someone did, he'd give that person ten million dollars for "unrelated" reasons. Not illegal because of the sneaky mechanism -- evidently one layer of indirection is all it takes to get around the law -- but certainly any justification for making an action illegal is also a justification for incentivizing that action illegal. The farm owner has far more influence on illegal immigration and working than the migrant farmer has.

Ultimately, illegal immigration is fundamentally an economic, not a political or social, problem. Thus it requires an economic solution.

Dan8267 says

There is no wall along the Mexican-Guatemala border. Yet, there are no Mexicans crossing over to Guatemala. Why? No jobs.

Stopped a bit prematurely didn't you?

No jobs, no wealth, no 1st world medical system that can't turn them away, no major liberal movement that is fighting for the rights of illegal Mexican immigrants in Guatemala... essentially no immigration problem because there's nothing to chase relative to where they are coming from.

That just furthers my point. The solution to massive migration and the illegal immigration problem is to properly align the selfish financial incentives of individuals, both the poor migrant worker and the lazy-ass farm owner, with the interests of society. People act on incentives. We humans -- hell, all life -- is inherently selfish. It's time to use the selfish nature of life for good rather than evil. This is possible only by aligning selfish interests with selfless interests. It all comes down to mechanics.

Yet, some people want to build a wall, persecute undocumented immigrants, clap their hands and say "done". Wasn't it so easy?

ddshutlz says

Yet, some people want to build a wall, persecute undocumented immigrants, clap their hands and say "done". Wasn't it so easy?

Simpsons explains human behavior.

www.youtube.com/embed/OkV_ztynYDM

www.youtube.com/embed/zDFo2Iok06Y

NuttBoxer says

If you cut off all incentive to border hop, employment, social services, medical care, schooling, housing, what need is there to still build a wall? If anyone still wants to come after all that is taken away, maybe they really do need asylum, and we shouldn't try to hinder their entrance.

Criminals would still come. They are the ones we need to stop first.

So if I want to be reasonably correct I would call you a racist?

@ddshutlz You should not be calling any other user anything on this forum.

Attacking the person and not his point is the very definition of ad hominem.

If you have an argument to make, please make it. If you just call users names, that helps nobody, and moves everyone further away from an amicable resolution to the argument.