11 ms·

Norms and goalposts aside, what’s the value in adopting a formal policy of harassment against non-criminal, non-violent workers? Congress can debate immigratio

by dtjb 1y ago

Norms and goalposts aside, what’s the value in adopting a formal policy of harassment against non-criminal, non-violent workers? Congress can debate immigration laws on the books, but this cultural shift seems to be something else entirely. Instead of measured enforcement, it appears to be the normalization of cruelty. We're punishing people who are part of the workforce contributing to our country's economic output. Seems like the real question is, what do we get out of this? Because it doesn't appear to be aligned with security or prosperity. It's just needless suffering, bureaucracy, and wasted resources.

gruez 1y ago
>Norms and goalposts aside, what’s the value in adopting a formal policy of harassment against non-criminal, non-violent workers? Deterring irregular economic migration? If the government adopts a non-formal policy of not prosecuting non-criminal non-violent workers, it's implicitly saying it's fine to people to violate immigration laws and come here to work, as long as you don't cause trouble. You might think this is fine because free movement of labor is good or whatever, but that's not what most Americans want.
- Larrikin 1y ago
  Republican voters are not most Americans
  - gruez 1y ago
    see: https://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/HHP_Oct24_KeyResults.pdf#page=45 https://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/HHP... Note that what I said was that most americans do not support "it's fine to people to violate immigration laws and come here to work, as long as you don't cause trouble". That's not the same as "ICE raids as currently implemented" or even "don't offer current pathway to citizenship for current undocumented workers".
  - rayiner 1y ago
    The difference is more about the appetite for aggressive enforcement than the underlying policy. There is little appetite in either party for increasing the volume of legal immigration. Also, you can’t lump non-voters in with the immigration proponents. Multiple studies have found that Trump would’ve won by an even larger margin if everyone would have voted: https://www.npr.org/2025/06/26/nx-s1-5447450/trump-2024-election-non-voters-coalition https://www.npr.org/2025/06/26/nx-s1-5447450/trump-2024-elec...; https://data.blueroseresearch.org/hubfs/2024%20Blue%20Rose%20Research%20Retrospective.pdf https://data.blueroseresearch.org/hubfs/2024%20Blue%20Rose%2...
- dtjb 1y ago
  Americans don’t want economic growth, or don’t want foreigners in the country? I feel like we should be honest - Americans are perfectly comfortable picking and choosing when laws get enforced. We do it all the time. We don’t treat every law as sacred. Enforcement is selective in a million other areas, from antitrust to wage theft to pollution. Nobody insists those must be pursued to the letter every single time. So why single out immigration as the one area where “the law is the law” trumps any rational or humane appeal? It starts to look less like a principled stand on legal consistency and more like a cultural preference. One that just happens to line up with race and class anxieties rather than some universal devotion to the rule of law.
  - rayiner 1y ago
    You're attacking a strawman. Immigration law is like any other quota law. The point isn't whether a single person has satisfied a legal formality. The point is to regulate the aggregate scale of the activity through a legal procedure. It's like county fishing or park visitor licenses that are made available for a nominal fee or for free. The point isn't the license itself, it's to control the aggregate volume of fishing or visitors to the parks. Similarly with immigration, the purpose of the legal formalities is to constrain immigration volume. If you think those volumes are not high enough, you can advocate to increase them. In 60% of polling this issue, Gallup has found that the support for increasing immigration has never exceeded 34%, and was under 10% from 1965-2000. As to the rationales for limiting the volume of immigration, they are two-fold. One, people don't buy the argument that immigrants are good for them economically. Economists have lots of theories about public policy that people don't buy, like the idea of getting rid of corporate taxes: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/19/157047211/six-policies-economists-love-and-politicians-hate https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/19/157047211/six-.... Two, people have cultural preferences and want to limit the scope of cultural change. That's a perfectly legitimate rationale for limiting immigration. People in the Bay Area would be pretty upset if internal migration made Mountain View culturally more like Alabama. People in Wyoming would be upset if immigration made their town more like New Jersey. And those are people in the same country!
    - jacquesm 1y ago
rayiner 1y ago
> Congress can debate immigration laws on the books, but this cultural shift seems to be something else entirely. Instead of measured enforcement, it appears to be the normalization of cruelty. That's because Congress has been promising "measured enforcement" for 60 years, but in that time the foreign-born population has ballooned from 4.7% in 1970 to 15.6% in 2024--higher than it ever was in the 20th century. The goal is big, visible enforcement actions that will disincentivize people from immigrating above the limits set forth in the law.
- dtjb 1y ago
  I fail to see how the percentage of foreign born citizens is a problem in any way.
  - dfxm12 1y ago
    It's only a problem for white supremacists.
    - rayiner 1y ago
      It's only "white supremacy" if you'd object to, e.g. a majority-Bangladeshi town or neighborhood where people behaved indistinguishably from people in Idaho, Wyoming, or Vermont. But if assimilation was real--if people could be transplanted from one cultural context to another seamlessly--opposition to immigration would be almost non-existent.
      - ViewTrick1002 1y ago
        It is interesting how far the American Overton window [0] has shifted. With white supremacy now being featured on HN. I truly never could comprehend how Hitler got to power. Now we’re seeing it in action, and it scares me. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
        jacquesm 1y ago

by dtjb 1y ago

gruez 1y ago

>Norms and goalposts aside, what’s the value in adopting a formal policy of harassment against non-criminal, non-violent workers? Deterring irregular economic migration? If the government adopts a non-formal policy of not prosecuting non-criminal non-violent workers, it's implicitly saying it's fine to people to violate immigration laws and come here to work, as long as you don't cause trouble. You might think this is fine because free movement of labor is good or whatever, but that's not what most Americans want.

Larrikin 1y ago
Republican voters are not most Americans
- gruez 1y ago
  see: https://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/HHP_Oct24_KeyResults.pdf#page=45 https://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/HHP... Note that what I said was that most americans do not support "it's fine to people to violate immigration laws and come here to work, as long as you don't cause trouble". That's not the same as "ICE raids as currently implemented" or even "don't offer current pathway to citizenship for current undocumented workers".
- rayiner 1y ago
  The difference is more about the appetite for aggressive enforcement than the underlying policy. There is little appetite in either party for increasing the volume of legal immigration. Also, you can’t lump non-voters in with the immigration proponents. Multiple studies have found that Trump would’ve won by an even larger margin if everyone would have voted: https://www.npr.org/2025/06/26/nx-s1-5447450/trump-2024-election-non-voters-coalition https://www.npr.org/2025/06/26/nx-s1-5447450/trump-2024-elec...; https://data.blueroseresearch.org/hubfs/2024%20Blue%20Rose%20Research%20Retrospective.pdf https://data.blueroseresearch.org/hubfs/2024%20Blue%20Rose%2...
dtjb 1y ago
Americans don’t want economic growth, or don’t want foreigners in the country? I feel like we should be honest - Americans are perfectly comfortable picking and choosing when laws get enforced. We do it all the time. We don’t treat every law as sacred. Enforcement is selective in a million other areas, from antitrust to wage theft to pollution. Nobody insists those must be pursued to the letter every single time. So why single out immigration as the one area where “the law is the law” trumps any rational or humane appeal? It starts to look less like a principled stand on legal consistency and more like a cultural preference. One that just happens to line up with race and class anxieties rather than some universal devotion to the rule of law.
- rayiner 1y ago
  You're attacking a strawman. Immigration law is like any other quota law. The point isn't whether a single person has satisfied a legal formality. The point is to regulate the aggregate scale of the activity through a legal procedure. It's like county fishing or park visitor licenses that are made available for a nominal fee or for free. The point isn't the license itself, it's to control the aggregate volume of fishing or visitors to the parks. Similarly with immigration, the purpose of the legal formalities is to constrain immigration volume. If you think those volumes are not high enough, you can advocate to increase them. In 60% of polling this issue, Gallup has found that the support for increasing immigration has never exceeded 34%, and was under 10% from 1965-2000. As to the rationales for limiting the volume of immigration, they are two-fold. One, people don't buy the argument that immigrants are good for them economically. Economists have lots of theories about public policy that people don't buy, like the idea of getting rid of corporate taxes: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/19/157047211/six-policies-economists-love-and-politicians-hate https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/19/157047211/six-.... Two, people have cultural preferences and want to limit the scope of cultural change. That's a perfectly legitimate rationale for limiting immigration. People in the Bay Area would be pretty upset if internal migration made Mountain View culturally more like Alabama. People in Wyoming would be upset if immigration made their town more like New Jersey. And those are people in the same country!
  - jacquesm 1y ago

rayiner 1y ago

> Congress can debate immigration laws on the books, but this cultural shift seems to be something else entirely. Instead of measured enforcement, it appears to be the normalization of cruelty. That's because Congress has been promising "measured enforcement" for 60 years, but in that time the foreign-born population has ballooned from 4.7% in 1970 to 15.6% in 2024--higher than it ever was in the 20th century. The goal is big, visible enforcement actions that will disincentivize people from immigrating above the limits set forth in the law.

dtjb 1y ago
I fail to see how the percentage of foreign born citizens is a problem in any way.
- dfxm12 1y ago
  It's only a problem for white supremacists.
  - rayiner 1y ago
    It's only "white supremacy" if you'd object to, e.g. a majority-Bangladeshi town or neighborhood where people behaved indistinguishably from people in Idaho, Wyoming, or Vermont. But if assimilation was real--if people could be transplanted from one cultural context to another seamlessly--opposition to immigration would be almost non-existent.
    - ViewTrick1002 1y ago
      It is interesting how far the American Overton window [0] has shifted. With white supremacy now being featured on HN. I truly never could comprehend how Hitler got to power. Now we’re seeing it in action, and it scares me. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
      - jacquesm 1y ago