8 ms·

Protesting Chinese censorship, I get that. But they lost me at "protesting projects with ICE". I happen to think that immigration and customs enforcement is a n

by m0zg 8y ago

Protesting Chinese censorship, I get that. But they lost me at "protesting projects with ICE". I happen to think that immigration and customs enforcement is a net positive. Those people deal with human trafficking, seize a ton of dangerous drugs (2370lbs of Fentanyl alone in 2017), and send a lot of people who shouldn't be here back to where they should be (or to jail if they've committed other crimes).

throwanem 8y ago
Yeah, I'm really happy to be protected from all those hardened criminals they've been keeping in baby jail. That's exactly the kind of thing I want to support in my federal agencies!
HumanDrivenDev 8y ago
I happen to think that immigration and customs enforcement is a net positive. I guarantee those people would be as well if they were effected by it personally. If you're not personally doing the kind of jobs an illegal immigrant can do for less, then you can only benefit - it lowers the cost to you for many things in your life. As a bonus, you get to pretend that makes you a good person. An episode of South Park addresses this brilliantly, though people conveniently only remember the first part. Time travellers from the future come into South Park and take all the menial jobs. The blue collar americans yell "they took our jerbs!" Randy - a geologist - admonishes them as racists, until he finds out his own white collar positionhas been given to an alien, and then he too is complaining about how they took his job. The day the wealthy Californian tech companies start hiring illegal immigrant developers at a lower cost is the day the echo chamber changes its tune.
- IOT_Apprentice 8y ago
  Have you heard of outsourcing? Or the term Offshoring? Or Tech Companies using H1B Visas? I mean it is already happening, perhaps you just missed it.
  - drankula3 8y ago
    Sure, and there is resistance to that too.
- MitchellKnight 8y ago
  > I guarantee those people would be as well if they were effected by it personally. That argument goes both ways. If your family was impacted by violence, corruption, and poverty wouldn't you pack up and look for a better life? Don't forget we caused many of these problems. See: https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/index.html https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/index.html
  - HumanDrivenDev 8y ago
    That argument goes both ways. If your family was impacted by violence, corruption, and poverty wouldn't you pack up and look for a better life? Absolutely, and I would never deny it.
- SamReidHughes 8y ago
  Not just production. You also compete in consumption. The rent is higher and there is more traffic.
dbt00 8y ago
It's a mixed bag. There are projects in ICE that are necessary, and there are people administering programs where children are separated from their parents and thrown in cages. If you want nuance, fine. But ignoring the evil they're doing because other parts of the org aren't doing evil isn't really the standard of behavior we should have for our (my? I'm assuming about you) government.
- m0zg 8y ago
  It's my government, too. I'm a naturalized citizen, so you're assuming correctly. But please, can we stop the "cages" propaganda? Those photos were from the Obama years and they were debunked again and again ad nauseam. https://www.businessinsider.com/migrant-children-in-cages-2014-photos-explained-2018-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/migrant-children-in-cages-20...
  - rhcom2 8y ago
    That article is just debunking the use of specific photos. Further in the article it explains conditions are virtually the same but now include children separated from parents. > Though the photos are nearly identical to those from 2014, there is one key difference between them: the 2014 photos showed only children who arrived at the border unaccompanied. The 2018 photos also show families that have been separated from one another.
    - m0zg 8y ago
      Yes, generally when you go to jail you should expect to be separated from your children. That's how jails work. Children, by definition, don't go to jail. So unless you're suggesting sending people back without a court hearing (which as of today would be illegal), or jailing the children along with parents, or releasing them into the US, I see a dearth of available options.
      - rhcom2 8y ago
        I wasn't commenting on the options and treatment of asylum seekers to the US, I was pointing out that your own article shows it isn't ""cages" propaganda" and hasn't been "debunked". The separation part for families is not to be expected because, like the article you posted mentioned, it is unique to this administration.
ball_of_lint 8y ago
I'd agree that ICE is an important part of the government and that illegal immigration is a problem, but that doesn't excuse other things that ICE has done such as separating children from their parents: https://www.npr.org/2018/06/19/621065383/what-we-know-family-separation-and-zero-tolerance-at-the-border https://www.npr.org/2018/06/19/621065383/what-we-know-family...
- bargl 8y ago
  You are correct in saying that we shouldn't forgive what they've done wrong but also shouldn't discard the organization as a whole as evil. I'd say that this evil falls squarely on the legislators who have ignored it for as long as they have. It's a problem that needs to be addressed not used for political advantage. We need ICE (maybe not in it's current form) but we need someone to protect our borders. How we protect our borders is up to legislators to determine. This doesn't mean that individuals doing this aren't responsible as well but it's also a systemic problem at this point.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  Those parents are in jail. That's what detainment is. If people go to jail domestically, then the kids go back to their home or stay with relatives. In the situation ICE has to deal with, those aren't options. This makes me wonder what other countries do in this case. According to the NPR article, there was separation under the Obama administration, but the policy was changed to allow families to stay together.
  - ball_of_lint 8y ago
    > According to the NPR article, there was separation under the Obama administration, but the policy was changed to allow families to stay together. I don't know where you got that from, but it's not in the article I linked. The article specifically states: > The Obama administration established family detention centers that kept families together while their cases were processed. Other sources tell me that the Obama administration did separate some families in extreme cases such as a parent carrying drugs. But all that is besides the point. I've made no claims about Obama. The point here is that ICE has done things that were worth protesting against: systematically and needlessly separating children from their families.
drugme 8y ago
I happen to think that immigration and customs enforcement is a net positive. You might want to take stock of recent news coverage of what the ICE has been up to recently. And not just recently - over several decades actually. It's really quite horrible in fact.
- 0x8BADF00D 8y ago
  All law enforcement will eventually devolve into abuse. That is what the phrase “monopoly on violence” means.
  - drugme 8y ago
    That is what the phrase “monopoly on violence” means. Actually that's not what it means. And there's no evidence that decentralized agencies of force (where these can be stable for any length of time) are any likely to devolve into abuse.
    - 0x8BADF00D 8y ago
      State coercion is an abuse on individual liberty, plain and simple. It’s just that the State has legitimacy and the monopoly on violence. So it will not be construed as abuse as such. We all collectively give up some rights for collective safety. The real check on the monopoly of violence is the 2nd amendment. That’s the only reason that LE is not totally out of control in the US.
      - drugme 8y ago
        State coercion is an abuse on individual liberty, plain and simple. It's not, but if you prefer to believe that it is, hey, that's your right.
    - drugme 8y ago
      EDIT: "are any less likely ..."
roenxi 8y ago
ICE is a hugely complicated issue. Eg, I can see a political thread that illegal immigrants should be allowed into the country, and a notionally separate thread that the most vulnerable should be supported by the government (eg, medically, minimum income, etc). How are these two threads expected to interact? To me, at a strategic level, they are mutually exclusive. Not mentioning all the very well discussed stuff like humanitarian issues, effect on the jobs market, fairness, long histories, etc. I don't see how protesting in the tech sector is a fair and reasonable way of of resolving these issues - too many people involved are not part of the tech sector. Resolving such issues fairly is one of the reasons the West has a complicated systems of public voting and it seems a bit naive of the political system to try and force change at the corporate level. It also hopefully won't work as corporations are stripped of power by Ye Invisible Hand of the Market finding companies that will just do what is asked of them. Corporate political activism annoys me, I don't want to be told what is moral by a corporate entity or its non-representative employees.
- m0zg 8y ago
  Yep. Some simple numbers. There are about 12M of illegal aliens in the US today. Between them they pay $11.6B in taxes (approximated). The math is just not very complicated, particularly if you consider that public schooling for a single kid in the US costs about $10k/yr.
  - tomatotomato37 8y ago
    ~$1000 per head in taxes really isn't a lot; just the federal tax rate on a full-time $7.50 minimum wage comes out to $1,500 in taxes after marriage deductions, and with state and local taxes that could rise to over $2000. For reference the simplistic average rate for the American household of $10500 spread over an average household size of 2.5 comes out to around at $4200 per head, which yields $50.4B in potential taxes over an equivalent sized population.
    - m0zg 8y ago
      That's what I was pointing out, essentially. And that's just the very tip of the iceberg of how much it costs to de-facto have no Southern border.
tfehring 8y ago
> I happen to think that immigration and customs enforcement is a net positive. But is it a net positive at the margin? Protests by the tech community won't get rid of ICE. They might make it less efficient, forcing it to spend some of its budget on, say, migrating to new tech platforms. Seizing drugs is (hopefully) a higher priority for ICE than locking up children, so a reduction in available budget should lead to a reduction in the latter, not the former.
- Kalium 8y ago
  You could be right! Of course, it might also just lead to ICE having an easier time getting a bigger budget next year so that they don't have to let any services slip. Or maybe they just cut back on cultural sensitivity training. Perhaps something else entirely! There's really no way for us to meaningfully predict outcomes from where we are. We may as well be generating random numbers. Your hypothesis is intriguing. I would love to see data.

by m0zg 8y ago

throwanem 8y ago

Yeah, I'm really happy to be protected from all those hardened criminals they've been keeping in baby jail. That's exactly the kind of thing I want to support in my federal agencies!

HumanDrivenDev 8y ago

I happen to think that immigration and customs enforcement is a net positive. I guarantee those people would be as well if they were effected by it personally. If you're not personally doing the kind of jobs an illegal immigrant can do for less, then you can only benefit - it lowers the cost to you for many things in your life. As a bonus, you get to pretend that makes you a good person. An episode of South Park addresses this brilliantly, though people conveniently only remember the first part. Time travellers from the future come into South Park and take all the menial jobs. The blue collar americans yell "they took our jerbs!" Randy - a geologist - admonishes them as racists, until he finds out his own white collar positionhas been given to an alien, and then he too is complaining about how they took his job. The day the wealthy Californian tech companies start hiring illegal immigrant developers at a lower cost is the day the echo chamber changes its tune.

IOT_Apprentice 8y ago
Have you heard of outsourcing? Or the term Offshoring? Or Tech Companies using H1B Visas? I mean it is already happening, perhaps you just missed it.
- drankula3 8y ago
  Sure, and there is resistance to that too.
MitchellKnight 8y ago
> I guarantee those people would be as well if they were effected by it personally. That argument goes both ways. If your family was impacted by violence, corruption, and poverty wouldn't you pack up and look for a better life? Don't forget we caused many of these problems. See: https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/index.html https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/index.html
- HumanDrivenDev 8y ago
  That argument goes both ways. If your family was impacted by violence, corruption, and poverty wouldn't you pack up and look for a better life? Absolutely, and I would never deny it.
SamReidHughes 8y ago
Not just production. You also compete in consumption. The rent is higher and there is more traffic.

dbt00 8y ago

It's a mixed bag. There are projects in ICE that are necessary, and there are people administering programs where children are separated from their parents and thrown in cages. If you want nuance, fine. But ignoring the evil they're doing because other parts of the org aren't doing evil isn't really the standard of behavior we should have for our (my? I'm assuming about you) government.

m0zg 8y ago
It's my government, too. I'm a naturalized citizen, so you're assuming correctly. But please, can we stop the "cages" propaganda? Those photos were from the Obama years and they were debunked again and again ad nauseam. https://www.businessinsider.com/migrant-children-in-cages-2014-photos-explained-2018-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/migrant-children-in-cages-20...
- rhcom2 8y ago
  That article is just debunking the use of specific photos. Further in the article it explains conditions are virtually the same but now include children separated from parents. > Though the photos are nearly identical to those from 2014, there is one key difference between them: the 2014 photos showed only children who arrived at the border unaccompanied. The 2018 photos also show families that have been separated from one another.
  - m0zg 8y ago
    Yes, generally when you go to jail you should expect to be separated from your children. That's how jails work. Children, by definition, don't go to jail. So unless you're suggesting sending people back without a court hearing (which as of today would be illegal), or jailing the children along with parents, or releasing them into the US, I see a dearth of available options.
    - rhcom2 8y ago
      I wasn't commenting on the options and treatment of asylum seekers to the US, I was pointing out that your own article shows it isn't ""cages" propaganda" and hasn't been "debunked". The separation part for families is not to be expected because, like the article you posted mentioned, it is unique to this administration.

ball_of_lint 8y ago

I'd agree that ICE is an important part of the government and that illegal immigration is a problem, but that doesn't excuse other things that ICE has done such as separating children from their parents: https://www.npr.org/2018/06/19/621065383/what-we-know-family-separation-and-zero-tolerance-at-the-border https://www.npr.org/2018/06/19/621065383/what-we-know-family...

bargl 8y ago
You are correct in saying that we shouldn't forgive what they've done wrong but also shouldn't discard the organization as a whole as evil. I'd say that this evil falls squarely on the legislators who have ignored it for as long as they have. It's a problem that needs to be addressed not used for political advantage. We need ICE (maybe not in it's current form) but we need someone to protect our borders. How we protect our borders is up to legislators to determine. This doesn't mean that individuals doing this aren't responsible as well but it's also a systemic problem at this point.
stcredzero 8y ago
Those parents are in jail. That's what detainment is. If people go to jail domestically, then the kids go back to their home or stay with relatives. In the situation ICE has to deal with, those aren't options. This makes me wonder what other countries do in this case. According to the NPR article, there was separation under the Obama administration, but the policy was changed to allow families to stay together.
- ball_of_lint 8y ago
  > According to the NPR article, there was separation under the Obama administration, but the policy was changed to allow families to stay together. I don't know where you got that from, but it's not in the article I linked. The article specifically states: > The Obama administration established family detention centers that kept families together while their cases were processed. Other sources tell me that the Obama administration did separate some families in extreme cases such as a parent carrying drugs. But all that is besides the point. I've made no claims about Obama. The point here is that ICE has done things that were worth protesting against: systematically and needlessly separating children from their families.

drugme 8y ago

I happen to think that immigration and customs enforcement is a net positive. You might want to take stock of recent news coverage of what the ICE has been up to recently. And not just recently - over several decades actually. It's really quite horrible in fact.

0x8BADF00D 8y ago
All law enforcement will eventually devolve into abuse. That is what the phrase “monopoly on violence” means.
- drugme 8y ago
  That is what the phrase “monopoly on violence” means. Actually that's not what it means. And there's no evidence that decentralized agencies of force (where these can be stable for any length of time) are any likely to devolve into abuse.
  - 0x8BADF00D 8y ago
    State coercion is an abuse on individual liberty, plain and simple. It’s just that the State has legitimacy and the monopoly on violence. So it will not be construed as abuse as such. We all collectively give up some rights for collective safety. The real check on the monopoly of violence is the 2nd amendment. That’s the only reason that LE is not totally out of control in the US.
    - drugme 8y ago
      State coercion is an abuse on individual liberty, plain and simple. It's not, but if you prefer to believe that it is, hey, that's your right.
  - drugme 8y ago
    EDIT: "are any less likely ..."

roenxi 8y ago

ICE is a hugely complicated issue. Eg, I can see a political thread that illegal immigrants should be allowed into the country, and a notionally separate thread that the most vulnerable should be supported by the government (eg, medically, minimum income, etc). How are these two threads expected to interact? To me, at a strategic level, they are mutually exclusive. Not mentioning all the very well discussed stuff like humanitarian issues, effect on the jobs market, fairness, long histories, etc. I don't see how protesting in the tech sector is a fair and reasonable way of of resolving these issues - too many people involved are not part of the tech sector. Resolving such issues fairly is one of the reasons the West has a complicated systems of public voting and it seems a bit naive of the political system to try and force change at the corporate level. It also hopefully won't work as corporations are stripped of power by Ye Invisible Hand of the Market finding companies that will just do what is asked of them. Corporate political activism annoys me, I don't want to be told what is moral by a corporate entity or its non-representative employees.

m0zg 8y ago
Yep. Some simple numbers. There are about 12M of illegal aliens in the US today. Between them they pay $11.6B in taxes (approximated). The math is just not very complicated, particularly if you consider that public schooling for a single kid in the US costs about $10k/yr.
- tomatotomato37 8y ago
  ~$1000 per head in taxes really isn't a lot; just the federal tax rate on a full-time $7.50 minimum wage comes out to $1,500 in taxes after marriage deductions, and with state and local taxes that could rise to over $2000. For reference the simplistic average rate for the American household of $10500 spread over an average household size of 2.5 comes out to around at $4200 per head, which yields $50.4B in potential taxes over an equivalent sized population.
  - m0zg 8y ago
    That's what I was pointing out, essentially. And that's just the very tip of the iceberg of how much it costs to de-facto have no Southern border.

tfehring 8y ago

> I happen to think that immigration and customs enforcement is a net positive. But is it a net positive at the margin? Protests by the tech community won't get rid of ICE. They might make it less efficient, forcing it to spend some of its budget on, say, migrating to new tech platforms. Seizing drugs is (hopefully) a higher priority for ICE than locking up children, so a reduction in available budget should lead to a reduction in the latter, not the former.

Kalium 8y ago
You could be right! Of course, it might also just lead to ICE having an easier time getting a bigger budget next year so that they don't have to let any services slip. Or maybe they just cut back on cultural sensitivity training. Perhaps something else entirely! There's really no way for us to meaningfully predict outcomes from where we are. We may as well be generating random numbers. Your hypothesis is intriguing. I would love to see data.