6 ms·

This is the part that is the wildest to me. The current system seems to generate a collection of second-class citizens: people we openly rely on for labor but t

This is the part that is the wildest to me. The current system seems to generate a collection of second-class citizens: people we openly rely on for labor but that have no recourse if they're exploited and no regulatory protections such as minimum wage (even though I argue against min wage, if we're going to have it, have it!). My personal preference would be to allow nearly unlimited legal immigration but strip welfare programs for all. In this way we allow anyone and everyone to become an economic participant, voting participant after the naturalization process, and mitigate those immigrating purely for handouts. But I haven't thought through this policy well. Maybe there is something this seemingly solution is missing.

bognition 4mo ago
Is this a surprise? This is hardly anything new. The United States was built with slavery.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 4mo ago
  So do you support building an even higher wall, and doing even more deportations, to keep the so-called "slaves" out? If the US is so "exploitative", we should be keeping illegal immigrants out for their safety.
  - alistairSH 4mo ago
    Generally, republicans want lots of illegals for two reasons… first, cheap labor. Second, it’s a drum to bang during election season. And democrats only halfway want to fix it. If they actually succeed, they also lose a drum. And have to pay more for chicken and oranges. Making non-immigrant visa or work permits easy to obtain would be trivial (relative to other gov endeavors). But we don’t. I’m left to conclude the political elite on both sides like it this way.
jfengel 4mo ago
There are vastly fewer "immigrants for handouts" than right wing media would like you to believe. Coming to the US is incredibly challenging. People who do it are mostly young and wish to work, to support families. Handouts don't accomplish that. It take tremendous effort to immigrate, legally or illegally. Anyone telling you that they are lazy is obviously lying.
- voakbasda 4mo ago
  As a US native, I have met zero lazy immigrants, but lazy Americans are everywhere I look. Thus I think this sentiment is more a projection of their own behavior: “they must be as lazy as we are”.
  - mkw5053 4mo ago
    I think you hit the nail on the head. It maps directly to much of their coalition’s rhetoric, accusations, policy agenda, and behavior these days, including, but not limited to, their obsession with pedophilia.
  - throwaway85825 4mo ago
    Americans work more hours a year than most countries.
    - alistairSH 4mo ago
      And for all that, we barely beat Germany on labor productivity. Truly working ourselves to death to enrich the Epstein Class.
actionfromafar 4mo ago
Best I can give you is Russian oligarchs and criminals, and corporate welfare. Deal?
alistairSH 4mo ago
That’s by design. Maybe not initially, but we’ve been having this immigration debate as long as I’ve been politically aware, which is going on 4 decades. It absolutely is the desired outcome today.
Mezzie 4mo ago
> But I haven't thought through this policy well. Maybe there is something this seemingly solution is missing. What about long term immigrants who end up disabled through no fault of their own? Or who get cancer? Or who end up having a child (who is an American citizen) and that child is special needs and the immigrant can't manage a full time job and care for their child? If they get pregnant and end up on bed rest or with a traumatic birth that takes them out of the workforce for a period of time? There are ways to end up needing to rely on welfare that aren't due to laziness or a desire for handouts. If the answer is 'kick them out', I'd be worried about what we're teaching our American kids watching. There are two lessons they could pick up, and neither is good for their moral development or sense of self. The first is that anyone who lacks the ability to work has no value, and that will engender greater alienation and isolation as they place all of their self-worth on their ability to earn money. They'll look upon the elderly, children, and caretakers with disdain (Interestingly, this probably won't help the birth rates either...). The second is that they are protected but those people should be disposed of when they're not useful. This will make them arrogant and introduce the idea of dehumanizing other groups, which will further the cracks of division in our society.
xdennis 4mo ago
> The current system seems to generate a collection of second-class citizens Poor choice of words. Illegals are not citizens. That's the whole point. > have no recourse if they're exploited The recourse is to go back. In the era when you could just immigrate to the US just by getting on a boat (before the Immigration Act of 1924), about 1/3 of immigrants went back to their home country if they did not make it in the US. See: > From 1908 to 1932, 12 million individuals migrated to the United States. Over the same period, four million returned to their source country. -- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0014498314000199 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00144... (you have to pirate it to view the full thing) But now, the expectation of leftists is that the government is somehow supposed to help the failed immigrants.
- array_key_first 4mo ago
  Most people in the US are immigrants, including white people. Very few white people have a lineage to the revolution. Most came from Europe following WWII or, perhaps, before. This most likely includes you. The idea that the US is composed of true Americans that have been here since the beginning is an outright Republican fantasy. A delusion to make white immigrants feel better about themselves. But it's just not true. This has always been a country composed of immigrants, and it's always something we've been proud of. We have long been the melting pot. To think otherwise is anti-American, and you do not belong here.
  - lurk2 4mo ago
    > Most people in the US are immigrants, including white people. If they were born in America they aren’t immigrants. > To think otherwise is anti-American, and you do not belong here. United States Congress, “An act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization,” March 26, 1790: > Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That any Alien being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof on application to any common law Court of record in any one of the States wherein he shall have resided for the term of one year at least, and making proof to the satisfaction of such Court that he is a person of good character, and taking the oath or affirmation prescribed by law to support the Constitution of the United States, which Oath or Affirmation such Court shall administer, and the Clerk of such Court shall record such Application, and the proceedings thereon; and thereupon such person shall be considered as a Citizen of the United States.
wombatpm 4mo ago
Are you going to allow ER’s to refuse patients and let people die on the street? What if the Patient is unconscious with no identification but looks Hispanic? Can they be turned away? Stripping away all wefare because of immigration is a bad bad bad idea.
- Der_Einzige 4mo ago
  [flagged]
  - ModernMech 4mo ago
    So in your utopia, what's the process to determine if someone is a gross and terrible homeless druggie that deserves to die on the sidewalk; versus someone like yourself who is very important and deserves all the help right away?
    - simpaticoder 4mo ago
      Society makes this judgement every day in a thousand different ways. Resources are limited. It's why we don't give 85-year-old's heart/lung transplants - the 30-year-old recipient can use it better/longer. Does that mean we don't give any health care to 85-year-olds? No, and to argue it is so is a slippery slope fallacy. It's why we don't have lights on all 4-way stops even though it's safer than stop signs. Given that we make these judgements, the problem with your argument is that you paint the GP as some sort of monster for making the judgement and picking a spot on the scale. It's a valid thing to disagree with where he picks on the scale; it is invalid to argue that there should be no scale.
      - mlnj 4mo ago
        > it is invalid to argue that there should be no scale. And to put that into policy gets rid of the scale for everyone. You can see it with abortion restrictions in various states. Instead of the doctor's expertise, the lawyers are the ones to decide. Then again this is very much on point for the US. There are no experts other than lawyers. /s
tick_tock_tick 4mo ago
> This is the part that is the wildest to me. The current system seems to generate a collection of second-class citizens What do you mean seems too. The biggest proponents of immigration routinely ask "who's going to work the fields?" As a call to allow immigration. I don't know how to interpret that as anything but importing an underclass.
rcxdude 4mo ago
[dead]
JOnAgain 4mo ago
Kids. Kids are the piece of this policy you haven’t considered. Poor people have kids too. Then you have starving babies in the street and 5 year olds trying to find work to pay for food. Then you might think, “okay, maybe we take care of kids. Healthcare? Food? Education?” Great. But do you have forced separation from parents in order to provide these services just to the kids? What if the parents eat the kids food because they’re starving. Now you have to feed the parents. And providing care for orphans costs more than healthcare for parents, so probably rational to give them healthcare too. And do you want to create a system where having a kid gets you food and healthcare? Probably don’t want that incentive. So now you’re maybe giving food and healthcare to people without kids. So, whenever you think about purely capitalistic policies with no social policies, we just have to be okay with having a large number of babies and toddlers starving on the streets in front of us. When you hear about republicans cutting $900 billion from Medicaid, and millions of families losing coverage, that means children. Almost 50% of Medicaid recipients are children. Most of the other 50% are their parents. So millions of children now do not have healthcare. Your post advocates for millions more to lose coverage. That translates to children dying and having lifelong disabilities from otherwise preventable illnesses. The other inevitable outcome of policies like this is exploitation of women. It might start with “voluntary” sex work, but it becomes a bigger business that invites true exploitation and rapidly leads to human trafficking. Btw, that “voluntary” is there because it’s usually a choice between sex work and spiraling into homelessness and poverty - so not super voluntary to begin with. And we’re not even counting women more women who stay in abusive relationships because they are fully dependent on their partner for sustenance and shelter. All that is to say that anytime advocate for a certain set of social policies over another, it’s usually informative to look at how they impact the most vulnerable in our society. Start with kids, then consider disabled and women. And finally ask why we’re generally okay with men starving on the street but not toddlers.

bognition 4mo ago

Is this a surprise? This is hardly anything new. The United States was built with slavery.

0xDEAFBEAD 4mo ago
So do you support building an even higher wall, and doing even more deportations, to keep the so-called "slaves" out? If the US is so "exploitative", we should be keeping illegal immigrants out for their safety.
- alistairSH 4mo ago
  Generally, republicans want lots of illegals for two reasons… first, cheap labor. Second, it’s a drum to bang during election season. And democrats only halfway want to fix it. If they actually succeed, they also lose a drum. And have to pay more for chicken and oranges. Making non-immigrant visa or work permits easy to obtain would be trivial (relative to other gov endeavors). But we don’t. I’m left to conclude the political elite on both sides like it this way.

jfengel 4mo ago

There are vastly fewer "immigrants for handouts" than right wing media would like you to believe. Coming to the US is incredibly challenging. People who do it are mostly young and wish to work, to support families. Handouts don't accomplish that. It take tremendous effort to immigrate, legally or illegally. Anyone telling you that they are lazy is obviously lying.

voakbasda 4mo ago
As a US native, I have met zero lazy immigrants, but lazy Americans are everywhere I look. Thus I think this sentiment is more a projection of their own behavior: “they must be as lazy as we are”.
- mkw5053 4mo ago
  I think you hit the nail on the head. It maps directly to much of their coalition’s rhetoric, accusations, policy agenda, and behavior these days, including, but not limited to, their obsession with pedophilia.
- throwaway85825 4mo ago
  Americans work more hours a year than most countries.
  - alistairSH 4mo ago
    And for all that, we barely beat Germany on labor productivity. Truly working ourselves to death to enrich the Epstein Class.

actionfromafar 4mo ago

Best I can give you is Russian oligarchs and criminals, and corporate welfare. Deal?

alistairSH 4mo ago

That’s by design. Maybe not initially, but we’ve been having this immigration debate as long as I’ve been politically aware, which is going on 4 decades. It absolutely is the desired outcome today.

Mezzie 4mo ago

> But I haven't thought through this policy well. Maybe there is something this seemingly solution is missing. What about long term immigrants who end up disabled through no fault of their own? Or who get cancer? Or who end up having a child (who is an American citizen) and that child is special needs and the immigrant can't manage a full time job and care for their child? If they get pregnant and end up on bed rest or with a traumatic birth that takes them out of the workforce for a period of time? There are ways to end up needing to rely on welfare that aren't due to laziness or a desire for handouts. If the answer is 'kick them out', I'd be worried about what we're teaching our American kids watching. There are two lessons they could pick up, and neither is good for their moral development or sense of self. The first is that anyone who lacks the ability to work has no value, and that will engender greater alienation and isolation as they place all of their self-worth on their ability to earn money. They'll look upon the elderly, children, and caretakers with disdain (Interestingly, this probably won't help the birth rates either...). The second is that they are protected but those people should be disposed of when they're not useful. This will make them arrogant and introduce the idea of dehumanizing other groups, which will further the cracks of division in our society.

xdennis 4mo ago

> The current system seems to generate a collection of second-class citizens Poor choice of words. Illegals are not citizens. That's the whole point. > have no recourse if they're exploited The recourse is to go back. In the era when you could just immigrate to the US just by getting on a boat (before the Immigration Act of 1924), about 1/3 of immigrants went back to their home country if they did not make it in the US. See: > From 1908 to 1932, 12 million individuals migrated to the United States. Over the same period, four million returned to their source country. -- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0014498314000199 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00144... (you have to pirate it to view the full thing) But now, the expectation of leftists is that the government is somehow supposed to help the failed immigrants.

array_key_first 4mo ago
Most people in the US are immigrants, including white people. Very few white people have a lineage to the revolution. Most came from Europe following WWII or, perhaps, before. This most likely includes you. The idea that the US is composed of true Americans that have been here since the beginning is an outright Republican fantasy. A delusion to make white immigrants feel better about themselves. But it's just not true. This has always been a country composed of immigrants, and it's always something we've been proud of. We have long been the melting pot. To think otherwise is anti-American, and you do not belong here.
- lurk2 4mo ago
  > Most people in the US are immigrants, including white people. If they were born in America they aren’t immigrants. > To think otherwise is anti-American, and you do not belong here. United States Congress, “An act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization,” March 26, 1790: > Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That any Alien being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof on application to any common law Court of record in any one of the States wherein he shall have resided for the term of one year at least, and making proof to the satisfaction of such Court that he is a person of good character, and taking the oath or affirmation prescribed by law to support the Constitution of the United States, which Oath or Affirmation such Court shall administer, and the Clerk of such Court shall record such Application, and the proceedings thereon; and thereupon such person shall be considered as a Citizen of the United States.

wombatpm 4mo ago

Are you going to allow ER’s to refuse patients and let people die on the street? What if the Patient is unconscious with no identification but looks Hispanic? Can they be turned away? Stripping away all wefare because of immigration is a bad bad bad idea.

Der_Einzige 4mo ago
[flagged]
- ModernMech 4mo ago
  So in your utopia, what's the process to determine if someone is a gross and terrible homeless druggie that deserves to die on the sidewalk; versus someone like yourself who is very important and deserves all the help right away?
  - simpaticoder 4mo ago
    Society makes this judgement every day in a thousand different ways. Resources are limited. It's why we don't give 85-year-old's heart/lung transplants - the 30-year-old recipient can use it better/longer. Does that mean we don't give any health care to 85-year-olds? No, and to argue it is so is a slippery slope fallacy. It's why we don't have lights on all 4-way stops even though it's safer than stop signs. Given that we make these judgements, the problem with your argument is that you paint the GP as some sort of monster for making the judgement and picking a spot on the scale. It's a valid thing to disagree with where he picks on the scale; it is invalid to argue that there should be no scale.
    - mlnj 4mo ago
      > it is invalid to argue that there should be no scale. And to put that into policy gets rid of the scale for everyone. You can see it with abortion restrictions in various states. Instead of the doctor's expertise, the lawyers are the ones to decide. Then again this is very much on point for the US. There are no experts other than lawyers. /s

tick_tock_tick 4mo ago

> This is the part that is the wildest to me. The current system seems to generate a collection of second-class citizens What do you mean seems too. The biggest proponents of immigration routinely ask "who's going to work the fields?" As a call to allow immigration. I don't know how to interpret that as anything but importing an underclass.

rcxdude 4mo ago

[dead]

JOnAgain 4mo ago

Kids. Kids are the piece of this policy you haven’t considered. Poor people have kids too. Then you have starving babies in the street and 5 year olds trying to find work to pay for food. Then you might think, “okay, maybe we take care of kids. Healthcare? Food? Education?” Great. But do you have forced separation from parents in order to provide these services just to the kids? What if the parents eat the kids food because they’re starving. Now you have to feed the parents. And providing care for orphans costs more than healthcare for parents, so probably rational to give them healthcare too. And do you want to create a system where having a kid gets you food and healthcare? Probably don’t want that incentive. So now you’re maybe giving food and healthcare to people without kids. So, whenever you think about purely capitalistic policies with no social policies, we just have to be okay with having a large number of babies and toddlers starving on the streets in front of us. When you hear about republicans cutting $900 billion from Medicaid, and millions of families losing coverage, that means children. Almost 50% of Medicaid recipients are children. Most of the other 50% are their parents. So millions of children now do not have healthcare. Your post advocates for millions more to lose coverage. That translates to children dying and having lifelong disabilities from otherwise preventable illnesses. The other inevitable outcome of policies like this is exploitation of women. It might start with “voluntary” sex work, but it becomes a bigger business that invites true exploitation and rapidly leads to human trafficking. Btw, that “voluntary” is there because it’s usually a choice between sex work and spiraling into homelessness and poverty - so not super voluntary to begin with. And we’re not even counting women more women who stay in abusive relationships because they are fully dependent on their partner for sustenance and shelter. All that is to say that anytime advocate for a certain set of social policies over another, it’s usually informative to look at how they impact the most vulnerable in our society. Start with kids, then consider disabled and women. And finally ask why we’re generally okay with men starving on the street but not toddlers.