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0 pointspalmotea2d ago0 comments

> The primary reason for the strong border is allowing farms and construction companies to find cheap labor which can't complain about mistreatment.

That doesn't make any sense. If you want "cheap labor [that] can't complain about mistreatment," you want a weak border, not a strong one, because a weak border creates a larger pool of illegal immigrants to draw from.

A strong border, at a minimum, reduces the supply of illegal immigrants, and may even push the employer into hiring people with legal immigration status who can complain and sue over mistreatment.

> It helps that a decent portion of the population hates and/or is fearful anyone different from themselves. That is what's allowed for these even more draconian and brutal measures.

I'd put it another way: a large part of the population has been put under a lot of stress and pressure, while simultaneously being intensely conditioned to not blame the people actually responsible. That stress has to go somewhere. Don't blame the little guys, even if you find them contemptible because they're not from your culture. Blaming the little guy (for "hat[ing]...anyone different from themselves") is another aspect of the conditioning that protects those actually responsible.

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sokoloff2d ago

Strong border policies with moderate (weaker) and selective enforcement will give the combination that GP describes: enough supply backed by the threat of strong individual penalties if someone here illegally “gets out of line”.

cogman102d ago

> because a weak border creates a larger pool of illegal immigrants to draw from.

A larger pool with more rights and less fear of being deported. That means it's easier for them to pick and choose the jobs they do or even to start their own businesses.

They could, for example, form a union without the fear of deportation.

Look, if this were all about stopping illegal immigration, there are very fast paths to doing that. A prime one would be punishing not the immigrant, but the employer of the immigrant. Fine every farm in the US that employs an illegal immigrant and you'd quickly see the number of those jobs being worked drop.

But that's not what ICE is about which is why they and legislators haven't done that really basic enforcement.

Heck, at the start of this admin, Trump had to pull back ICE from raiding farms because the business interests of the farmers collided with the xenophobia of Steven Miller.

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