5 ms·

The illegal immigration problem can't be solved purely by making sure that anyone coming into the country illegally cannot be employed. Too many jobs are paid u

The illegal immigration problem can't be solved purely by making sure that anyone coming into the country illegally cannot be employed. Too many jobs are paid under the table and while almost all of the people entering illegally today are economic migrants looking for higher paying jobs, in the very near future we'll be looking at floods of climate refugees who literally won't have homes to go back to. Having otherwise open borders or just handing out green cards to anyone who asks also fails to address security concerns. No matter what, we need to be able to monitor and regulate who is coming in to the country and what they are bringing in with them (drugs, weapons, human trafficking victims, etc). I agree that we should be strongly enforcing employment eligibility as well and that it would do a lot of good, but doing that won't mean that we can just leave our borders open and unmonitored.

ajross 2y ago
> The immigration problem can't be solved Seems, again, like you need to first define what "the immigration problem" really is. I mean, if you mean it like I think you mean it, the truth is a lot of us don't think that's a problem worth solving at all. This isn't the forum, obviously, but maybe step back and have some discussions across the aisle before planning out policy.
- autoexec 2y ago
  It seems like the people who don't think illegal immigration is a problem in the first place are living very far from the border and don't see the impacts, or are unaware of the impending crisis of billions of extremely desperate climate refugees, or don't consider the risks or criminals and terrorists entering and leaving the country without any record to be a legitimate concern.
  - ajross 2y ago
    With all respect, that sounds like a campaign speech, so I'm almost guaranteed to tune it out. Do you have links that quantify all that stuff to demonstrate why it's a problem?
    - autoexec 2y ago
      Massive numbers of people suddenly showing up in your town is a real problem: https://www.npr.org/2023/11/08/1211632902/major-cities-are-struggling-to-house-large-numbers-of-migrant-refugees https://www.npr.org/2023/11/08/1211632902/major-cities-are-s... https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2023/08/09/nyc-mayor-says-migrants-could-cost-city-12-billion-by-2025-without-federal-and-state-help/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2023/08/09/nyc-ma... https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/denver-struggles-cope-40000-migrants-rcna135555 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/denver-struggles-cope-4... Climate refugees are coming and it's a problem: https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/10/world/climate-global-displacement-report-intl-hnk-scli-scn/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/10/world/climate-global-displace... https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/23/magazine/climate-migration.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/23/magazine/clim... https://www.wired.com/story/migration-climate-environment-refugees/ https://www.wired.com/story/migration-climate-environment-re...
      - ericjmorey 2y ago
        It doesn't seem like this is a problem solved by trying to put up walls and pay for more law enforcement officers and military equipment.
        knowaveragejoe 2y ago
        It's not. This is a problem solved by reforming the immigration system. I'll let you try to figure out which of the two parties in power has stonewalled progress on that front for the last 30 years.
        autoexec 2y ago
        It's a problem where regulating the number of people coming into the country today can help substantially. That very well may mean putting up walls and paying for enforcement officers, but at a minimum is must mean monitoring the rate of people entering the US and being able to keep our cities from being overwhelmed by economic migrants so that we're able to accommodate as many of the climate refugees as we can in a way that doesn't cause the same problem or further destroy the environment creating even more climate refugees and further displacement within US borders as our remaining resources grow increasingly strained.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > the people who don't think illegal immigration is a problem in the first place are living very far from the border I used to live in New York. It didn't hit home until we had our own refugee crisis. This is absolutely something you don't get a handle on until you've seen it in person. (We also have a bad habit of conflating legal high-skilled immigration, legal low-skilled immigration, refugees, asylum seekers and illegal migrants.)
- HaZeust 2y ago
  While I get where you're coming from, I think there's a middle ground that isn't just "let everyone in" or "shut it all down." One idea is a market-based immigration system—basically, you pay an entry fee to immigrate, which adjusts based on things like age. So younger people who have their whole working lives ahead of them would pay less, older folks would pay more. This could replace the broken discretionary system we have now, where it’s all about family ties and not what we need economically. Plus, it would cut down on smuggling, raise a ton of revenue, and make immigration more efficient. It’s a practical way to let people in, without completely open borders, and would bring in the workers we actually need. It’s not about scrapping border security—just rethinking how we approach immigration to make it work better for everyone.
  - kmeisthax 2y ago
    Family reunification visas have helped America dodge several bullets when it comes to immigration. We're actually one of the easier countries to get admitted to, and we know how to integrate large numbers of unskilled migrants at scale. The trick is that family members already provide a support structure for new migrants, who integrate, and form the support structure for the next wave of migrants. Do this across every nationality ever and you have basically the US's current demography. A "What we need economically" immigration system is what's currently eating the EU alive. EU countries basically don't do any work integrating immigrants, they expect everyone to be an economically desirable immigrant that can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Which is great until you have a refugee crisis, or two, and now your country's flooded with people you don't know how to integrate, your native population is turning hard-right, and the migrants are too but in just an ever so slightly different way that somehow makes them more of a threat to the right than left-wingers and liberals. We already have a "market-based immigration system", it's called a "golden visa", except the cost tends to be in the six to seven figures. It's a way for really rich people to buy their way into a country, not a serious means to admit large numbers of economic migrants. The above also applies to points systems like Canada's, which selects for middle-income countries that have lots of university-educated English or French speakers. That's great if you want to import half of India and China, not so much if you want a diverse immigrant pool.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

ajross 2y ago

> The immigration problem can't be solved Seems, again, like you need to first define what "the immigration problem" really is. I mean, if you mean it like I think you mean it, the truth is a lot of us don't think that's a problem worth solving at all. This isn't the forum, obviously, but maybe step back and have some discussions across the aisle before planning out policy.

autoexec 2y ago
It seems like the people who don't think illegal immigration is a problem in the first place are living very far from the border and don't see the impacts, or are unaware of the impending crisis of billions of extremely desperate climate refugees, or don't consider the risks or criminals and terrorists entering and leaving the country without any record to be a legitimate concern.
- ajross 2y ago
  With all respect, that sounds like a campaign speech, so I'm almost guaranteed to tune it out. Do you have links that quantify all that stuff to demonstrate why it's a problem?
  - autoexec 2y ago
    Massive numbers of people suddenly showing up in your town is a real problem: https://www.npr.org/2023/11/08/1211632902/major-cities-are-struggling-to-house-large-numbers-of-migrant-refugees https://www.npr.org/2023/11/08/1211632902/major-cities-are-s... https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2023/08/09/nyc-mayor-says-migrants-could-cost-city-12-billion-by-2025-without-federal-and-state-help/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2023/08/09/nyc-ma... https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/denver-struggles-cope-40000-migrants-rcna135555 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/denver-struggles-cope-4... Climate refugees are coming and it's a problem: https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/10/world/climate-global-displacement-report-intl-hnk-scli-scn/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/10/world/climate-global-displace... https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/23/magazine/climate-migration.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/23/magazine/clim... https://www.wired.com/story/migration-climate-environment-refugees/ https://www.wired.com/story/migration-climate-environment-re...
    - ericjmorey 2y ago
      It doesn't seem like this is a problem solved by trying to put up walls and pay for more law enforcement officers and military equipment.
      - knowaveragejoe 2y ago
        It's not. This is a problem solved by reforming the immigration system. I'll let you try to figure out which of the two parties in power has stonewalled progress on that front for the last 30 years.
      - autoexec 2y ago
        It's a problem where regulating the number of people coming into the country today can help substantially. That very well may mean putting up walls and paying for enforcement officers, but at a minimum is must mean monitoring the rate of people entering the US and being able to keep our cities from being overwhelmed by economic migrants so that we're able to accommodate as many of the climate refugees as we can in a way that doesn't cause the same problem or further destroy the environment creating even more climate refugees and further displacement within US borders as our remaining resources grow increasingly strained.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > the people who don't think illegal immigration is a problem in the first place are living very far from the border I used to live in New York. It didn't hit home until we had our own refugee crisis. This is absolutely something you don't get a handle on until you've seen it in person. (We also have a bad habit of conflating legal high-skilled immigration, legal low-skilled immigration, refugees, asylum seekers and illegal migrants.)
HaZeust 2y ago
While I get where you're coming from, I think there's a middle ground that isn't just "let everyone in" or "shut it all down." One idea is a market-based immigration system—basically, you pay an entry fee to immigrate, which adjusts based on things like age. So younger people who have their whole working lives ahead of them would pay less, older folks would pay more. This could replace the broken discretionary system we have now, where it’s all about family ties and not what we need economically. Plus, it would cut down on smuggling, raise a ton of revenue, and make immigration more efficient. It’s a practical way to let people in, without completely open borders, and would bring in the workers we actually need. It’s not about scrapping border security—just rethinking how we approach immigration to make it work better for everyone.
- kmeisthax 2y ago
  Family reunification visas have helped America dodge several bullets when it comes to immigration. We're actually one of the easier countries to get admitted to, and we know how to integrate large numbers of unskilled migrants at scale. The trick is that family members already provide a support structure for new migrants, who integrate, and form the support structure for the next wave of migrants. Do this across every nationality ever and you have basically the US's current demography. A "What we need economically" immigration system is what's currently eating the EU alive. EU countries basically don't do any work integrating immigrants, they expect everyone to be an economically desirable immigrant that can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Which is great until you have a refugee crisis, or two, and now your country's flooded with people you don't know how to integrate, your native population is turning hard-right, and the migrants are too but in just an ever so slightly different way that somehow makes them more of a threat to the right than left-wingers and liberals. We already have a "market-based immigration system", it's called a "golden visa", except the cost tends to be in the six to seven figures. It's a way for really rich people to buy their way into a country, not a serious means to admit large numbers of economic migrants. The above also applies to points systems like Canada's, which selects for middle-income countries that have lots of university-educated English or French speakers. That's great if you want to import half of India and China, not so much if you want a diverse immigrant pool.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]