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> Why don't the employees at all these other companies object like Github employees? Why do Github employees get a special right to withhold consent for their p

> Why don't the employees at all these other companies object like Github employees? Why do Github employees get a special right to withhold consent for their product to be used in a setting they might object to? Why is ICE the only company that they object to? Why do some causes get their favor and not others? Wokeness and the recent trend of trying to cancel anything that doesn't align within a narrow spectrum of progressive viewpoints is a big reason here.

si1entstill 7y ago
I'm sure these people have varying viewpoints across the spectrum on a variety of issues, but this is a direct contract with a client that currently has a large target on it's back. These employees agree they would prefer not to be a partner. Saying all of those who petitioned share a narrow viewpoint is reductive.
KyeRussell 7y ago
"ICE is currently doing some bad things" is a viewpoint shared by a pretty large group of people. Honestly it just sounds like you're projecting.
- tomschlick 7y ago
  ICE is getting raked over the coals in the court of public opinion because they don't have the funding nor the manpower to deal with 100k people coming over the border each month. Many asylum seekers are just exploiting the asylum system with invalid cases as economic migrants to delay the process so they don't get sent back home. All the while congress hasn't done much at all to fix the obvious problems in the law (some of which lead to family separation in detainment), nor do reasonable things like give a pathway to citizenship for the dreamers. Simply saying they are doing bad things is reducing the problems to a soundbite.
  - KyeRussell 7y ago
    K.
    - tomschlick 7y ago
      Glad to see reasonable discussion is still alive and well on HN. /s
      - p1necone 7y ago
        The current US government is blatantly and overtly criminal, it seems reasonable to me to assume anyone arguing in their favor is arguing in bad faith and disengage.
        tomschlick 7y ago
        > it seems reasonable to me to assume anyone arguing in their favor is arguing in bad faith and disengage. I'm not arguing in their favor. I would like nothing more than for us to have strong border control and a functional immigration system that isn't overloaded with false asylum claims so that the real ones can get through. We definitely need to overhaul things like the H1B programs as well. My argument here is that no country's immigration system could handle this type of steady influx of 100k+ people per month [1] exploiting the asylum claims. Many of which only claim such after they illegally cross (yes i know you can technically claim whenever, but that's mighty convenient after crossing illegally). The systems were not built for this kind of thing. Basically under current law you have the choice to detain people until their asylum case is heard or release them on their own recognizance inside the country and hope they return for court. The family separation thing has happened because of a court ruling saying that kids and adults couldn't be detained together because of abuse concerns. If the same thing happened to Canada their systems would be in shambles just like ours. There needs to be a mixture of border security and fixes to immigration law to remedy this problem but none of that can happen while Congress sits on it's hands playing politics. [1] https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/sw-border-migration https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/sw-border-migration
      - heyoni 7y ago
  - daveFNbuck 7y ago
    They have the manpower, they're just doing everything as inefficiently and inhumanely as possible in order to arrive at this outcome. This is a choice that the administration is making, and ICE is implementing it.
    - tomschlick 7y ago
      > They have the manpower, they're just doing everything as inefficiently and inhumanely as possible in order to arrive at this outcome. Source? Last I checked the system was still drastically in need of border patrol, immigration judges, case workers, beds to house people, etc. Those things can't just spin up in a week and be effective.
      - daveFNbuck 7y ago
        I don't have the time to look up a source at the moment, but Trump changed policy to detain immigrants until their hearing rather than releasing them. He's also keeping them in custody longer in order to force them through court proceedings rather than just deporting them. The system was already desperately in need of resources before Trump added this strain. We could go back to an Obama-era level of need, but instead we've chosen to ramp up the problem and force this outcome.
        tomschlick 7y ago
        > but Trump changed policy to detain immigrants until their hearing rather than releasing them. Yes because releasing them on their own recognizance meant releasing them into the country hoping they would show up to their court date. Many did not because they knew they would get deported. This was known under Obama as "catch and release" and was highly controversial. Doing this with the current influx of invalid asylum claims would lead to an even larger influx of invalid claims as it would be an easy way to enter the country and ICE / the court system would not be able to keep up.
        daveFNbuck 7y ago
  - zer00eyz 7y ago
    Prior world war II the illegal immigration from Mexico was a genuine issue for America. DO you want to know how they stopped illegal immigration cold? They simply fined any business or employer who employed them severely. The problem quickly resolved itself without having to lock people up. It is entirely possible to curtail the number of people coming here once there is NO work or services for them. It works, and we know it works, because we have done it before. No one wants to "solve it" because our entire food supply and production (meat packing to local restaurants) is powered by illegal immigrants. Lawn care, construction, plenty of industries run on cheap (illegal) immigrant labor.
    - tomschlick 7y ago
      > DO you want to know how they stopped illegal immigration cold? They simply fined any business or employer who employed them severely. The problem quickly resolved itself without having to lock people up. I'd be completely in favor of that. Especially in the recent case where ICE raided a factory in the south owned by the Koch brothers. We need congress to act on that though as AFAIK there is not a current framework to prosecute businesses for it. > No one wants to "solve it" because our entire food supply and production (meat packing to local restaurants) is powered by illegal immigrants. Lawn care, construction, plenty of industries run on cheap (illegal) immigrant labor. I agree. Once we stop the illegal flow we could start offering more work visas and other things to the people already here and newcomers. But without stopping the flow the people doing it the legal (hard) way are now competing against the illegal migrants leaving little incentive to do it right.
    - jariel 7y ago
      This is a very good point and I fully agree. Most migration is based on economic opportunity. Trump is kind of a hypocrite on this point: he happily hires illegal labour because it's cheap, but then wants to put up walls politically. FYI I believe that illegal labour is a major source of economic inequality as well: it hurts the working class the most, and the gains go to capital and middle class.
dragonwriter 7y ago
The specific concerns may be new, but the general tactics are neither new, nor specific to progressives; in fact, while the labor movement has had some notable successes with it, the general approach has been most extensively deployed in this country by, and still is extensively used by, conservatives, particularly Christian conservatives, against policies, institutions, art, personages, etc., they disapprove of. They call it “cancel culture” when it is their ox getting gored, but it is not as if no one told them what the harvest is like when you sow the wind...
p1necone 7y ago
> "narrow spectrum of progressive viewpoints" Oh fuck off, the way the US government is currently treating asylum seekers and immigrants is horrifying. Only within the bubble of American politics could someone brush complaining about it off like that.
- shaftoe 7y ago
  These aren't people fleeing genocide. These are people leaving Mexico. And they're being put in hotels and buses. It's easy to pretend you're fellow Americans are monsters, but they're not.
  - zer00eyz 7y ago
    Hotels? If you call jail (on a good day) a hotel then I have a bridge to sell you. And yes we put them on busses to get them back because it is cheeper than flying them. > These aren't people fleeing genocide. https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/mexico-travel-advisory.html https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/... You as an American should not go there, but them fleeing here is problematic?
    - tomschlick 7y ago
      Crime != genocide. And asylum cases require specific threats to your life not just "it's not nice there and I want to come to the US". https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/asylum-or-refugee-status-who-32298.html https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/asylum-or-refugee-st...
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > These aren't people fleeing genocide. These are people leaving Mexico. No, they are people fleeing violence in Central America through Mexico, in large part. That violence, incidentally, is in substantial part resulting from the US training nonviolent drug war criminals into extremely violent criminals in its original and then deporting then to Central America what they have no substantial roots.
Ar-Curunir 7y ago
This is a garbage opinion. Opposing concentration camps is not a "narrow progressive viewpoint"
- bsagdiyev 7y ago
  I didn't realize ICE was rounding them up within our borders, killing the ones unable to work immediately and making the others work to their death.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- tomschlick 7y ago
  There are 2 choices under the law for asylum claims. Either let them go within the country until their court date (hoping they show up) or detain them. The former did not work and was infamous as the "catch and release" policy. Detainment could work in principal but the overflow of the system has caused long wait times, overcrowded facilities and not enough staff to handle the cases. If you suddenly switched back to catch and release we would most likely have a greater influx of people coming in who have no valid claim to asylum and would not show up to their court date. It's a shitty problem all around. And pretending that an overcrowded detention system is a concentration camp is disingenuous at best. If that was the case then California's prison system has been a network of concentration camps for years as they have dealt with constant overcrowding and problems.
chillwaves 7y ago
You are defending literal slave labor. https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/17/us/immigrant-detention-forced-labor-lawsuit/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/17/us/immigrant-detention-forced...
- tomschlick 7y ago
  It looks like that lawsuit is alleging that prisoners only making $1-4 a day is slave labor when to my knowledge that's common in almost all prisons in the US. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2017/04/10/wages/ https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2017/04/10/wages/ That's not to say its a good practice or policy but nothing there looks like its any different for ICE detainees.
  - dandanqu82 7y ago
    The 13th amendment abolished slavery for everyone except prisoners. The fact that migrants are being treated like prison labor is evidence that they are performing slave labor.
    - bcheung 7y ago
      Slavery is still allowed for jury duty as well. You are forced to work and if you don't go they can throw you in prison and/or fine you.
      - admax88q 7y ago
        Oh Hacker News, you never cease to disappoint. "Prisoners are being forced to work for almost no pay, its modern day slavery." "Yeah but think about jury duty, I'm the real slave labour in my middle class lifestyle, having to participate the function of my democracy." I'm sure you think that taxation is theft as well.
- jariel 7y ago
  ??? Your argument is upside down The vast majority of 'bad labour practices' in the US stem from employment of illegal aliens. Consider if those migrants were 'released from detention' they'd be employed illegally somewhere at sub-legal wages, sub-legal conditions, no unions, no complaints, no healthcare etc. etc.. Companies employ illegal labour largely because they can cheat on a variety of labour practices not because 'they can't find the talent'. This creates a toxic effect whereby those trying to 'play by the rules' can be put out of business by lower margin competitors and are forced into to doing this. There are many jobs that Americans would in fact do if wages and conditions were above bar. The primary driver of illegal migrant is jobs - when the economy booms, many more people enter illegally. When it's rough, there's a downturn. It would be much more simple and humane to simply go after the employment of illegal aliens on the basis of humanitarian grounds alone and there's ample ways to do this. FYI this likely would not affect the migrant of true refugees as much, ergo, you have a border system a little more focused on those in need, and less focused on economic migrants. GitHub is a large business in a fairly politically secular area (software) - they should be able to support anything the US government does aside from possibly weapon systems or military activities. The place for employees to get upset is at the ballot box, protest etc. etc..
rtpg 7y ago
But also other company employees are protesting! There have been news stories for multiple employee protests (including Delta refusing to deport some people) Maybe you and GP are not seeing the stories because the outlets you read choose not to cover this
lordlic 7y ago
"Kids these days with their wokeness. Back in my day we didn't care about things like human rights, wealth inequality, the plights of underrepresented groups, or destroying the planet. All these damned messy ethics are interfering with business!"

si1entstill 7y ago

I'm sure these people have varying viewpoints across the spectrum on a variety of issues, but this is a direct contract with a client that currently has a large target on it's back. These employees agree they would prefer not to be a partner. Saying all of those who petitioned share a narrow viewpoint is reductive.

KyeRussell 7y ago

"ICE is currently doing some bad things" is a viewpoint shared by a pretty large group of people. Honestly it just sounds like you're projecting.

tomschlick 7y ago
ICE is getting raked over the coals in the court of public opinion because they don't have the funding nor the manpower to deal with 100k people coming over the border each month. Many asylum seekers are just exploiting the asylum system with invalid cases as economic migrants to delay the process so they don't get sent back home. All the while congress hasn't done much at all to fix the obvious problems in the law (some of which lead to family separation in detainment), nor do reasonable things like give a pathway to citizenship for the dreamers. Simply saying they are doing bad things is reducing the problems to a soundbite.
- KyeRussell 7y ago
  K.
  - tomschlick 7y ago
    Glad to see reasonable discussion is still alive and well on HN. /s
    - p1necone 7y ago
      The current US government is blatantly and overtly criminal, it seems reasonable to me to assume anyone arguing in their favor is arguing in bad faith and disengage.
      - tomschlick 7y ago
        > it seems reasonable to me to assume anyone arguing in their favor is arguing in bad faith and disengage. I'm not arguing in their favor. I would like nothing more than for us to have strong border control and a functional immigration system that isn't overloaded with false asylum claims so that the real ones can get through. We definitely need to overhaul things like the H1B programs as well. My argument here is that no country's immigration system could handle this type of steady influx of 100k+ people per month [1] exploiting the asylum claims. Many of which only claim such after they illegally cross (yes i know you can technically claim whenever, but that's mighty convenient after crossing illegally). The systems were not built for this kind of thing. Basically under current law you have the choice to detain people until their asylum case is heard or release them on their own recognizance inside the country and hope they return for court. The family separation thing has happened because of a court ruling saying that kids and adults couldn't be detained together because of abuse concerns. If the same thing happened to Canada their systems would be in shambles just like ours. There needs to be a mixture of border security and fixes to immigration law to remedy this problem but none of that can happen while Congress sits on it's hands playing politics. [1] https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/sw-border-migration https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/sw-border-migration
    - heyoni 7y ago
- daveFNbuck 7y ago
  They have the manpower, they're just doing everything as inefficiently and inhumanely as possible in order to arrive at this outcome. This is a choice that the administration is making, and ICE is implementing it.
  - tomschlick 7y ago
    > They have the manpower, they're just doing everything as inefficiently and inhumanely as possible in order to arrive at this outcome. Source? Last I checked the system was still drastically in need of border patrol, immigration judges, case workers, beds to house people, etc. Those things can't just spin up in a week and be effective.
    - daveFNbuck 7y ago
      I don't have the time to look up a source at the moment, but Trump changed policy to detain immigrants until their hearing rather than releasing them. He's also keeping them in custody longer in order to force them through court proceedings rather than just deporting them. The system was already desperately in need of resources before Trump added this strain. We could go back to an Obama-era level of need, but instead we've chosen to ramp up the problem and force this outcome.
      - tomschlick 7y ago
        > but Trump changed policy to detain immigrants until their hearing rather than releasing them. Yes because releasing them on their own recognizance meant releasing them into the country hoping they would show up to their court date. Many did not because they knew they would get deported. This was known under Obama as "catch and release" and was highly controversial. Doing this with the current influx of invalid asylum claims would lead to an even larger influx of invalid claims as it would be an easy way to enter the country and ICE / the court system would not be able to keep up.
        daveFNbuck 7y ago
- zer00eyz 7y ago
  Prior world war II the illegal immigration from Mexico was a genuine issue for America. DO you want to know how they stopped illegal immigration cold? They simply fined any business or employer who employed them severely. The problem quickly resolved itself without having to lock people up. It is entirely possible to curtail the number of people coming here once there is NO work or services for them. It works, and we know it works, because we have done it before. No one wants to "solve it" because our entire food supply and production (meat packing to local restaurants) is powered by illegal immigrants. Lawn care, construction, plenty of industries run on cheap (illegal) immigrant labor.
  - tomschlick 7y ago
    > DO you want to know how they stopped illegal immigration cold? They simply fined any business or employer who employed them severely. The problem quickly resolved itself without having to lock people up. I'd be completely in favor of that. Especially in the recent case where ICE raided a factory in the south owned by the Koch brothers. We need congress to act on that though as AFAIK there is not a current framework to prosecute businesses for it. > No one wants to "solve it" because our entire food supply and production (meat packing to local restaurants) is powered by illegal immigrants. Lawn care, construction, plenty of industries run on cheap (illegal) immigrant labor. I agree. Once we stop the illegal flow we could start offering more work visas and other things to the people already here and newcomers. But without stopping the flow the people doing it the legal (hard) way are now competing against the illegal migrants leaving little incentive to do it right.
  - jariel 7y ago
    This is a very good point and I fully agree. Most migration is based on economic opportunity. Trump is kind of a hypocrite on this point: he happily hires illegal labour because it's cheap, but then wants to put up walls politically. FYI I believe that illegal labour is a major source of economic inequality as well: it hurts the working class the most, and the gains go to capital and middle class.

dragonwriter 7y ago

The specific concerns may be new, but the general tactics are neither new, nor specific to progressives; in fact, while the labor movement has had some notable successes with it, the general approach has been most extensively deployed in this country by, and still is extensively used by, conservatives, particularly Christian conservatives, against policies, institutions, art, personages, etc., they disapprove of. They call it “cancel culture” when it is their ox getting gored, but it is not as if no one told them what the harvest is like when you sow the wind...

p1necone 7y ago

> "narrow spectrum of progressive viewpoints" Oh fuck off, the way the US government is currently treating asylum seekers and immigrants is horrifying. Only within the bubble of American politics could someone brush complaining about it off like that.

shaftoe 7y ago
These aren't people fleeing genocide. These are people leaving Mexico. And they're being put in hotels and buses. It's easy to pretend you're fellow Americans are monsters, but they're not.
- zer00eyz 7y ago
  Hotels? If you call jail (on a good day) a hotel then I have a bridge to sell you. And yes we put them on busses to get them back because it is cheeper than flying them. > These aren't people fleeing genocide. https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/mexico-travel-advisory.html https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/... You as an American should not go there, but them fleeing here is problematic?
  - tomschlick 7y ago
    Crime != genocide. And asylum cases require specific threats to your life not just "it's not nice there and I want to come to the US". https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/asylum-or-refugee-status-who-32298.html https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/asylum-or-refugee-st...
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > These aren't people fleeing genocide. These are people leaving Mexico. No, they are people fleeing violence in Central America through Mexico, in large part. That violence, incidentally, is in substantial part resulting from the US training nonviolent drug war criminals into extremely violent criminals in its original and then deporting then to Central America what they have no substantial roots.

Ar-Curunir 7y ago

This is a garbage opinion. Opposing concentration camps is not a "narrow progressive viewpoint"

bsagdiyev 7y ago
I didn't realize ICE was rounding them up within our borders, killing the ones unable to work immediately and making the others work to their death.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
tomschlick 7y ago
There are 2 choices under the law for asylum claims. Either let them go within the country until their court date (hoping they show up) or detain them. The former did not work and was infamous as the "catch and release" policy. Detainment could work in principal but the overflow of the system has caused long wait times, overcrowded facilities and not enough staff to handle the cases. If you suddenly switched back to catch and release we would most likely have a greater influx of people coming in who have no valid claim to asylum and would not show up to their court date. It's a shitty problem all around. And pretending that an overcrowded detention system is a concentration camp is disingenuous at best. If that was the case then California's prison system has been a network of concentration camps for years as they have dealt with constant overcrowding and problems.

chillwaves 7y ago

You are defending literal slave labor. https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/17/us/immigrant-detention-forced-labor-lawsuit/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/17/us/immigrant-detention-forced...

tomschlick 7y ago
It looks like that lawsuit is alleging that prisoners only making $1-4 a day is slave labor when to my knowledge that's common in almost all prisons in the US. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2017/04/10/wages/ https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2017/04/10/wages/ That's not to say its a good practice or policy but nothing there looks like its any different for ICE detainees.
- dandanqu82 7y ago
  The 13th amendment abolished slavery for everyone except prisoners. The fact that migrants are being treated like prison labor is evidence that they are performing slave labor.
  - bcheung 7y ago
    Slavery is still allowed for jury duty as well. You are forced to work and if you don't go they can throw you in prison and/or fine you.
    - admax88q 7y ago
      Oh Hacker News, you never cease to disappoint. "Prisoners are being forced to work for almost no pay, its modern day slavery." "Yeah but think about jury duty, I'm the real slave labour in my middle class lifestyle, having to participate the function of my democracy." I'm sure you think that taxation is theft as well.
jariel 7y ago
??? Your argument is upside down The vast majority of 'bad labour practices' in the US stem from employment of illegal aliens. Consider if those migrants were 'released from detention' they'd be employed illegally somewhere at sub-legal wages, sub-legal conditions, no unions, no complaints, no healthcare etc. etc.. Companies employ illegal labour largely because they can cheat on a variety of labour practices not because 'they can't find the talent'. This creates a toxic effect whereby those trying to 'play by the rules' can be put out of business by lower margin competitors and are forced into to doing this. There are many jobs that Americans would in fact do if wages and conditions were above bar. The primary driver of illegal migrant is jobs - when the economy booms, many more people enter illegally. When it's rough, there's a downturn. It would be much more simple and humane to simply go after the employment of illegal aliens on the basis of humanitarian grounds alone and there's ample ways to do this. FYI this likely would not affect the migrant of true refugees as much, ergo, you have a border system a little more focused on those in need, and less focused on economic migrants. GitHub is a large business in a fairly politically secular area (software) - they should be able to support anything the US government does aside from possibly weapon systems or military activities. The place for employees to get upset is at the ballot box, protest etc. etc..

rtpg 7y ago

But also other company employees are protesting! There have been news stories for multiple employee protests (including Delta refusing to deport some people) Maybe you and GP are not seeing the stories because the outlets you read choose not to cover this

lordlic 7y ago

"Kids these days with their wokeness. Back in my day we didn't care about things like human rights, wealth inequality, the plights of underrepresented groups, or destroying the planet. All these damned messy ethics are interfering with business!"