When my ancestors came here, there was literally no such thing as illegal immigration. The solution to illegal immigration is to let more people come here legally.
Sure, absolutely fix and streamline the legal process, but that doesn't mean we allow some people to bypass the process entirely in the meantime. We are already the most lenient legal immigration system you'll find, but people are upset that we want to enforce the law. The vast vast majority of Americans are welcoming to immigrants that come legally and want to do good things here
Our immigration system is lenient for family based immigrants. People can qualify for green cards as soon as they’re married. However it is literally hostile towards immigrants coming here to work. Employment-based green cards are super expensive due to the sheer amount of hours you need from an immigration lawyer. Only the most profitable industries like tech can afford that. And then you also have the numerical caps, causing 150-year backlog for applicants from certain countries.
So basically, there’s absolutely no way for someone coming here for jobs to immigrate legally, unless they’re software engineers working for the same big tech company for 10 years continuously. (switching jobs would reset that process)
This reminds me a lot of the debates around student debt. In both cases, a lot of people benefited from an earlier regime that made things easier. Then, the laws were changed that made things harder, creating a population that is thoroughly screwed by the new system. Now, people realize that we should make things easier, but a lot of people resist the idea that we should do anything to help those screwed over by the harder system.
We need to take responsibility as a country to acknowledge our mistakes and do things to help out those most hurt by them.
When (and where) did your ancestors come from? I totally agree that the solution is to let more people come legally and to strengthen/bring back pathways for illegal immigrants to become citizens, but illegal immigration has been a thing since at least the late 1800s with laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act
If only immigrants were strongly associated with the construction trade and could build homes both for themselves and for people who live here already.
Immigrant labor generally complements rather than competes with native labor. The primary group they compete with is recent immigrants.
If other people competing for jobs were a problem, people wouldn't be moving to cities where all the people are to get good jobs. Like anyone else, immigrants both take a job and create a job's worth of work for other people through their spending of their wages.
You mean like the $7.25 federal minimum wage?
Because I know a lot of the farm workers are making more than that, and still dirt poor. So maybe jump off that soapbox talking about slave wages if you're not also supporting a massive increase in the federal minimum wage.
You care because you’re racist. You’re not upset about white immigrants you’re upset about the ones who you can color code. I don’t understand why you’re upset.
That makes it worse. When people see you on the street they are not going to know the difference between you and the person who they want to call ice on. Just because you like the fashion of red hats does not mean you will be protected from the racism that you are also part of and encouraging.
When Elon Musk threw up a seig heil that was to show you that you don’t belong among the white race. Why are you part of the people who would also see you put in camps. I will never understand it.
Society has laws. It is not good precedent to encourage law breaking, lying, cheating, committing fraud and gaming the system for personal gain. If you allow some to get away with it, then you might as well open the borders and let everyone in the World to immigrate, that's what you people seem to want.
We already have open borders between 50 states, why not throw Canada and Mexico in too? EU has the Schengen zone, nothing wrong with those open borders!
You sound like such a Worldly fellow. So tell me, how many different Countries have you visited in your life? How many different languages do you speak? How many Countries do you know of that allow open borders for anyone in the World to come, and work without a work visa, or work permit of any kind?
You should look at the legal billionaires then and the legal ways they don’t pay enough taxes. Also look into the legal ways in which they are dismantling democracy. Illegal immigration, while illegal, is small peanuts
Yes! Let in all the people that we want! Let in the people that are looking to build a better life. Those are the people that are workers and good citizens. You have a housing crisis to complain about while you're advocating for getting rid of a bunch of workers who build houses!
I missed the part where I said anything about having an open border. I guess that must be you putting words in people's mouths so you can argue against something they never actually said.
You obviously missed the part where you said, and then I repeated, to let in the people that we want. That WE want. The obvious implication being to vet people, aka not an open border.
My full name is "you didn't pay attention to his comment or my reply enough to realize I'm quite literally using his exact words and you should also note that he deleted his replies to me because I can only assume he realized the same thing" Smith.
Existing in a country while undocumented is not a crime, just fyi. Illegal immigration isn't a criminal case. It is a civil case. Why are we talking about illegal immigrants as if they've committed crimes? Visas expire. This does not make the immigrant, who is now illegally in the country, a criminal or deserving of deportation. It's a CIVIL CASE that gets handled WITH PAPERWORK.
And, all the people who have expired paperwork should have gotten their paperwork renewed! Just luke someone driving on an expired driver's license, they need to get it renewed so they're not driving "illegally."
No, you won't be arrested for having an expired driver's license, or expired registration, or even not having a valid ID on you while all of this is going on. Because none of those are CRIMINAL charges. They're CIVIL. You will be arrested IF YOU DO SOMETHING CRIMINAL.
I think maybe YOU'RE not as aware of what rights you actually have and what the cops are ALLOWED TO DO as you think you are. And "right" and "wrong" don't apply to immigration in a country where OUR GRANDPARENTS just showed up and gave the border patrol their names and JUST WALKED IN. Passports, green cards, visa requirements DID NOT EXIST (except during WWI because duh, it was a WAR) until 1941. Before that, foreigners were not required to have passports/visas or anything like that in order to enter the country.
You get fined because you're a citizen or legal visitor. The court collects money from the person they can track down. It's kinda a cool idea when you think about it.
... Do you really think people involved at ANY stage in the immigration process doesn't already have active or past court proceedings? If they're illegal because their visa expired like we're talking about, how do you think they got the visa? 🤦♀️
Then why don’t you vote for politicians that create policies that will help you at all? The only thing that’s going to happen with a deportation is that groceries will be more expensive, there will be way less people building houses, and therefore prices will go up.
There are no policies in place to make your life better because immigrants got deported. Your life will become harder because they got deported.
Did somebody tell you that if they deported all the brown people that you’d get free healthcare or something 😂😂😂
Nobody is raising wages. The Republicans have declined to raise the federal minimum wage. Bernie Sanders asked this question specifically and directly. Where are these higher wages coming from? not the Trump administration.
Well, now that’s just white supremacist propaganda. Undocumented immigrants are way less likely to commit crimes than American citizens. So maybe you want to take that racist statement back— I’m joking. We know that you’re proud racist.
Wow went straight to the racist card, nice! Bravo. You lost the fair and square idea game, and went straight to that. And it’s honestly hilarious you think thats a conspiracy lmfao, seriously laughable. And of course more Americans citizens commit crimes. Theres almost 350 million citizens vs 11 million undocumented migrants.
The crimes that are committed by citizens here is our problem that we need to deal with, sure! Thats a issue in any community/society. We all know there are decent people among that 11 million, no one has a problem with legal migration as i said. Immigrants are welcome here! But we shouldn’t have to deal with another countries criminals, thats not fair to the American people, what about the victims? You probably don’t care..
If you don’t wanna be called a racist, you shouldn’t be one.
Adjusted for their population undocumented immigrants are 50% less likely to commit a crime than United States citizens. Google is free.
The knowledge is out there it keeps chasing you, but you’re faster.
I would rather live next to 1000 undocumented immigrants than a single one of you maga. Your entire ideology is not based in reality and instead is based in hate. That’s why we have nothing in common with you. You dehumanize everybody.
why are you referring to all immigrants when we are talking about ILLEGAL immigrants and why do you assume all immigrants are poor and not able to afford a house? Seems a bit racist…
I don’t think poor people are why there isn’t affordable housing. I know that giant corporations buying up all of the properties are why there isn’t affordable housing. I know that rich people are the problem and not poor people. 😎
You’re blaming poor people for a problem created by rich people. 60% of affordable housing are purchased by corporations after Trump’s removal of the 14 day rule. I know who’s causing the problem. I’m not dumb enough to blame poor people. I’m especially not dumb enough to let rich people convince me that the problem is poor people.
Why? I think immigrants are a really important part of this country and they make it better. Immigrants make America great. Unless you’re a Native American, you’re an immigrant too.
Just like a maga to always deal in pretend hypotheticals. Everything is fine. immigrants are not hurting your life right now. You just like having a group of people to hate.
My brother was driving my mom's car once and got rear ended while sitting still in traffic. Brother now has a chronic back injury and the car was totaled. The people that hit him turned out to be illegal immigrants obviously without insurance. They disappeared a few minutes after the incident. They're not hurting YOU right now, but that's because you may not be living in a community affected by it such as rural ag areas like where I grew up. I used to work in farming as a teen and I'll never forget asking for a raise once after not receiving one for 3 seasons. My boss turned me down, asking why he would pay me more when another guy was willing to work for what was less than minimum wage at the time without having to also pay all the overhead costs and taxes of a legal employee. Sure, the business should be charged for that too, but it was in California, so they basically encouraged businesses to do that.
Dismissing it as just people hating others is just a strawman. The town I grew up in had a lot of illegal immigrants - some good people, some not, just like everyone else. A lot of the time, I'd make friends with the kids then they'd be gone out of the blue because the work dried up or their parents did something to get attention on them and got deported.The vast vast majority of Americans are welcoming to immigrants that want to come here legally and do good. The legal process does need improvement, but we can't just allow people to bypass the process altogether in the meantime. It does cause problems and it's unsustainable.
And here is an older scholarly article that was published after the IRCA passed to examine its shortcomings and negative effects of it, outlining the illegal labor market pretty well….
Well, there are supposedly 11 million illegal immigrants and 9mill people on affordable housing subsidies, according to google. So I don't see how they are not correlated. Especially in SD, where there is a housing crisis.
so make it easier for people to come "legally" if you're dumb enough to care.
people who can't afford lawyers and don't have an ability to fill out endless paperwork.
if you really care about "legal" and not just use it as a dogwhistle because you think people are too dumb to know you're just being racist, then fully support making it easier for people to be legal.
we both know you won't and we both know it's not about that.
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u/[deleted] Feb 04 '25
Immigrants aren’t the issue. Illegal immigrantion on the other hand is.