If Trump actually follows through on his plans, it will crash the US economy

@sarabee1995 I am afraid the problems you are discussing are far more complicated. Immigration has neither resulted in increased crime, nor a drain on the economy. The data is there to prove both of my statements. I am afraid it is rampant xenophobia, and the lifeboat syndrome, those who get into the lifeboat try to prevent anyone else, for fear it will capsize. Remember what this country was developed upon.

the economic situation will be very interesting, will they just kick the can down the road by further increasing the national debt?

@samueltyler2 I didn't say it did.

Perhaps for some. But could it also be a desire to live in a nation of laws? If we want to have open borders, lets have that debate and put it to a vote. Until then, let's enforce our laws just like Canada does.

Yes, lets. I am a daughter of immigrants on both sides; three out of my four grandparents were born in foreign countries (Germany, England, Ireland). All three came here legally and followed the rules in obtaining green cards and eventually citizenship. This country is built on LEGAL immigration and now is no time to change that.

@sarabee1995
[Washington Post reporting]

President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to clamp down on migrant crossings at the southern border by quickly restoring the policies of his first term, including “Remain in Mexico,” which required asylum seekers to wait outside U.S. territory while their cases were decided.

But when he returns to office in January, Trump stands to inherit enforcement tools from the Biden administration that are even more powerful than the policies at his disposal last time.

Biden administration officials, for example, have implemented emergency border controls this year that essentially ban asylum for migrants who enter unlawfully. While Trump’s Remain in Mexico policy provided asylum seekers with access to U.S. courts, President Joe Biden’s asylum restrictions afford no such process, allowing U.S. officials to summarily deport migrants and threaten them with criminal prosecution if they return.

The asylum restrictions have helped the administration slash the number of illegal crossings at the Mexico border by 78 percent since December to levels even lower than during the end of Trump’s first term.

@Northwest Yes, in accordance with current US and international law and custom. When fleeing persecution from any country (which is required if seeking asylum), you are required to request that asylum in the first country you come to. So, if you are fleeing Venezuala and wish to seek asylum in the USA (or Canada or the UK or Germany), you go to the embassy in Columbia and request asylum. This is how the system is set up. It is how every other country operates.

If, instead, you blow through Columbia, then you should go to the embassy in Panama and request asylum. Small violation by going to the second country, but maybe you could make the case that you would be persecuted in Columbia too. But then you blow through Panama ... and Costa Rica and Honduras and Guatemala and Mexico and reach the US border. At some point you stopped being a legitimate asylum seeker. So, yes, the current law requires you to wait outside the US while your case is adjudicated.

I'm not opposed to debating whether this should or should not be the case. Maybe we should be the first country in the world that allows asylum seekers to jump the lines all over the world and come directly in. Go ahead and make your case for it and we can have the public debate and maybe change the laws. Until then, I want to live in a nation of laws. I want immigrants like my grandparents who want to abide by our laws and who want to teach their kids to abide by our laws.

@sarabee1995 we now have a President elect that disregards laws for himself. How does that work?

@Handfull1 good question!

@Handfull1 @samueltyler2 You'll not get any defense of him from me. I've only been able to vote for three presidential cycles and I've not voted for him a single time.

@sarabee1995 i didnt vote to r him either. I didn't have to admit that I hoped that he, as a businessman and not a lawyer, would bring a different mind set to the presidency. Unfortunately he was really not very successful in business and his presidency enriched has myself and his family, and some other rich people and did little to help others. His handling of COVID was almost a complete disaster.

@samueltyler2 Are we now moving away from tariffs and immigration and onto why we hate Donald Trump??

It's fine if we are, I'm just trying to stay up on the current topic of the conversation and I thought we were discussing immigration and tariffs.

@sarabee1995
I agree but what Trump proposes will go beyond that. Aside from being undocumented, there are not ten million immigrants who have committed crimes. IF Trump is serious on this (and yes, we should take him with a pinch of salt) then this would involved ICE going around breaking into homes and throwing people into trucks on a massive scale. Just for being undocumented.


It is a good point and one many on here have missed. They are treated appallingly and this happens in the UK too. However, Trump's immigration policy (and all similar variations) is not designed to help them. See above.

A less brutal solution to this would be to go after people traffickers and illegal exploitative employers. I would be in favour of that but it would cost a lot on terms of resources and would be a hard political sell given nobody cares about migrants. They have already been dehumanised and are seen as 'illegals' for just being there.

Whilst I am generally pro-immigration: America has had a lot in the Biden years and perhaps border security needs to be improved. However, a mass deportation would be extremely cruel on the people targetted and would also damage the US economy.

@Burnley123 This point is not missed by many. Just not the focus of this thread. In the part of the country I live in, immigrants, both legal and illegal, are treated about the same. The state does not really make a difference.

Back in the day, the illegals used to be in hiding, due to ICE raids. THAT forced them into an exploitation cycle. That is no longer the case. I'm pretty certain the crew that cleans my house is perfectly legit, but they're getting the equivalent of $40 per hour per person. I find it fair, because it's hard work.

This also used to be the case for farm workers, who got exploited due to fear of ICE raids (wine industry, apples, fruit, vegetables, etc.). No longer the case.

@Northwest unfortunately, your state will not be spared now. Or highly unlikely. It will change things!

@Handfull1 We'll see. My state just re-elected the only GOP Congressman this year, who voted to impeach Trump. He was running against a guy hand picked by Trump, and he's in the middle of the agriculture portion of the state.

The Trump appointee is going to try to target us, Oregon and California, but for kicks, but there will be no local cooperation. Not that people here like breaking the law, but these folks are here now "legally".

@Burnley123 Actually, being undocumented is a crime. It is a crime in the UK and in the US. I'm not saying what should or shouldn't be done about it, but I'm tired of people telling me they haven't broken any laws. There are 50 border crossings with Mexico. If you came across the southern border any other way, then you broke the law.

Omg no. It would be so cheap. I have proposed a solution to our immigration woes for years and it would be so simple and cheap to implement. Actually, it might even be revenue positive.

We have an existing immigration law and policy put in place in a great compromise between President Reagan and Speaker of the House Tip O'Neil (from Massachusetts 😁). Ever since then (the mid eighties) every person getting a legitimate job in the USA has had to provide two things to their new employer:
1) proof of identification (driver's license, state ID card, etc)
2) proof of right to work (birth certificate, green card, etc)
This is done by completing a Form I-9 on your first day of employment.

With me so far?? Okay, for those eavesdropping on our little chat here and in the US, go to your HR department and get the I-9 you filled out on day #1. Turn it over and look at the back. You will see that for the first undocumented (yes, this is where the term "undocumented" comes from) worker the company owes a fine of $1,000. Just a thousand dollars you say?? Heck, they save that in the first few months of employing an undocumented worker.

But wait ... keep reading. For the second and every subsequent undocumented worker, the penalty is $10,000 each. Ten undocumented workers, $100,000 fine. Get it now?? And yes, this law is on the books. There is even a number beyond which the violation is criminal and not civil (which means free shiny chrome bracelets provided by federal law enforcement - FBI).

So, you want to solve the immigration issue tomorrow???

Simple. Find a test case. Let's say a factory in Massachusetts ... the city of New Bedford (yes, this is an actual case). Raid that factory with ICE agents and find 350 undocumented workers (yup, this happened).

In the actual case, the ICE agents
1) arrested the undocumented workers
2) assessed no fine, not one penny
3) took a total of ZERO company executives into custody

🤦‍♀

If instead of arresting 350 workers and incurring hundreds of thousands of dollars in court and detainment costs, if instead of that we arrested the CEO and put him on the evening news in bracelets, the next day there would not be a single job available in America for undocumented workers. They would go home on their own the same way they got here.

Can you imagine the CEO of Marriott or Tyson Foods or Monsanto risking jail? Not going to happen.

Our undocumented worker population or illegal immigrants or criminal aliens (I personally don't care what term you use) is here by invitation!!!

Until we stop corporate America from inviting them in it will not matter how many miles of wall we build.

But,

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Look ... I demand good governance. We NEED migrant workers, but I have no idea how many. It's not my job to know. But the Department of Labor knows (or should know). They should report how many migrant workers are need to pick California's next crop of iceberg lettuce. They should check to see how many American migrant workers we have. The difference should be reported to the Department of State to issue migrant worker VISA's at our embassies ALL AROUND THE WORLD (not only from our neighbors to the south). Those workers should come in under those VISAs as work with the benefit of social security, OSHA, Workmen's Comp, and every other benefit of working in the US economy. And then, at the end of the harvest, they would go home and be given priority for the next harvest season. Doing this a few times should earn them a green card.

This is not a complicated issue. I demand good governance.

@sarabee1995 I bet you live around a lot of white people, huh?

@Northwest I don't know much about your state or your congressman. I'm happy to continue the conversation on immigration and tariffs, but neither of us are fans of Pres-Elect Trump so discussing how much we dislike him is not fruitful. 🤷‍♀

@Ynotisay Just tried to quickly look up the racial mix of my town ... found this:



But the trends are rapidly increasing non-white populations and declining white population. This data is already four years old, so it would likely be closer to 50-55% white at this point.

Not sure of the relavancy to the conversation though.

@sarabee1995 You seem to have discovered what President Bush and just about every Democrat who's been in office in modern times: visa program allowing agricultural and seasonal workers to work in the US legally.

The GOP has rejected it, including the Bush proposal. They need to sort out some thorny issues, such as birthright.

@Northwest I'm of mixed thoughts on birthright citizenship. The Constitution is not clear on it, but it implies born here = citizen. But we make exceptions for children born abroad to US service members.

I don't think that a baby born here with zero other connections to the US should automatically be a citizen because this creates all kinds of other issues. But with that said, someone who has been issued citizenship, birth right or otherwise, cannot be stripped of that citizenship without due process.

@sarabee1995 Well said.

@sarabee1995 Oh. I said there wasn't the kind of understanding that comes from those who live around a lot of immigrants. You know, the working below minimum wage and no protections stuff. But if you want to say you're concerned about them then why not support legalizing them as quickly and efficiently as possible? Because yeah. It IS a moral issue. And if look in to what this administration has done in the past, and is proposing to do even more of, if you don't see the morality in it then that's a 'you thing.'

@Northwest
I wasn't talking about people on this thread.

I was talking about the (many) people - including on the rest of the post - who assume that undocumented migrants don't work and are just a burden.

Also, there was somebody who called me deluded and ignorant of economics. She then referenced an economist who is on public record for being against her own position on tariffs. I pointed this out and she kept arguing and insulting me: eventually saying that she thinks I have a small dick.

The level of debate on this thread is a lot better.

@sarabee1995 0.3% native American in your Massachusetts town. Is that Liz Warren? 😇

@Burnley123 🤭