The Border

[Dreiko]

I'm not sure how this relates to what I said, or even really what the point being made is.

If you rather have people willing to work and raise families in the place of oligarchs, you can do that better by paying domestic workers more from the money these oligarchs would save by hiring immigrants for slave wages. Otherwise you're solidifying them as oligarchs all that much more firmly.

 

[Silvanus]

If you rather have people willing to work and raise families in the place of oligarchs, you can do that better by paying domestic workers more from the money these oligarchs would save by hiring immigrants for slave wages. Otherwise you're solidifying them as oligarchs all that much more firmly.

Or by paying workers better across the board, regardless of where they come from.

 

[Trunkage]

Do you understand how unhinged this prediction is? It's like if a crazy redneck Republican said the next Democrat was going to make it mandatory to worship satan in kindergarten.

Well, I wouldn't go that far

While there arent any satan worship in Kindy, there are some NRA peeps who go down to the border to shoot immigrants if they try to cross

It's a possibility, but you are right. Most Republicans wouldn't do this

 

[Trunkage]

If you rather have people willing to work and raise families in the place of oligarchs, you can do that better by paying domestic workers more from the money these oligarchs would save by hiring immigrants for slave wages. Otherwise you're solidifying them as oligarchs all that much more firmly.

This is not the fault of immigrants

 

[immortalfrieza]

I mean, you aren't wrong, even ignoring polemics. There's a strong case to be made on ethical and economic grounds that open boarders tied with workplace protections to avoid exploitation is a good move to make. Gets everybody into paying taxes, prevents the idea of paying undocumented workers a sub-minimum wage which depresses other labor wages, allows immigrants to seek protection and recourse for illegal workplace practices and safety hazards, etc.

It's not like we haven't had an entire much larger border open for pretty much the entirety of U.S. history which the people from that country can come in effectively whenever they want to... and it hasn't caused a total collapse of American society.

For those who don't get it, here's a hint:

The reason people keep coming in from the south is because the countries they're coming in from are so awful that even now we still look like an improvement. Even being dirt poor in the U.S. is better than being the same in Mexico or Cuba or wherever. Ultimately the only way to stop illegal immigration would be to make it much easier and more beneficial to immigrate legally... which opens a whole other can of worms. Mostly based on the idea that immigrants are gonna tek yer jobs!, ones that the businesses aren't going to hire American workers for anyway because they'd have to pay them fairly and make sure they work in decent conditions. On that note...

Call me crazy but I think getting the oligarchs to pay bountiful wages to americans to do these jobs is gonna deal them a heavier blow than importing more desperate indentured servants for them to exploit. We already have people willing to work here, we just don't pay em enough.

If U.S. companies couldn't hire immigrants and pay them a pittance they'd just find another group to exploit or move out of the U.S. completely into some incredibly poor country where they could. Either way American workers and immigrants would not end up with the money that they should be getting in the first place. The reason so many businesses are outsourcing and hiring immgrants rather than hiring American workers is because of the worker protections our country has, which paradoxically makes there be less jobs for American workers and thus less money being paid to said workers overall.

Not to say it's not horrible, but no jerkass greedy criminal sensible business would ever hire American workers or immigrants being paid the same as when they could exploit some kids halfway around the world for next to nothing. It's come to the point that those countries full of people being exploited are dirt poor, but if we somehow were to force these businesses to both stay in the U.S. and pay American and immigrant workers fair wages those countries they used to exploit are so dependent of the pitiful wages from these businesses they'd be way worse off if not have their entire economy collapse completely.

It's the Catch 22 of American business and first world countries in general. All first world countries are to some extent exploiting third world countries across the globe so that they can avoid paying fair wages. Which for the American people means lower prices on everything (though nowhere near as low as they could be) and thus unintentionally support by buying things because they're lower priced. It's a vicious cycle that since it was allowed to come into being in the first place has become so entrenced as to now be effectively impossible to remove.

They could take care of the current population. They choose not to-- They choose to concentrate the available resources among a tiny proportion instead, and then fritter away billions more on unnecessary expenditures.

Like for instance the expenditures on a military that hasn't done anything useful or fought a war that's actually benefited the United States in over 70 years. It's not like we don't have enough hardware in storage right now to utterly curbstomp nearly any other country on the planet and make the rest think twice... oh wait, we totally do. There's a lot of other unnecessary expenditures too, but just cutting down the vast majority of the military would deal with the lion's share of our expenses right there.

 

[Terminal Blue]

The reason people keep coming in from the south is because the countries they're coming in from are so awful that even now we still look like an improvement. Even being dirt poor in the U.S. is better than being the same in Mexico or Cuba or wherever.

This is not necessarily as true as it seems.

The majority of people who migrate from poorer countries to wealthy ones don't plan to live out the rest of their lives there. Generally, the goal is to exploit the relative purchasing power. A US dollar in Cuba buys a lot more than a US dollar does in the US, so even by earning a very low wage working in the US a person can send that money home and provide their family with a better standard of living than they could working in their own country. Moving your family to the US to live there would wipe out a lot of those advantages because your family would now be spending those dollars to buy goods in the US where the purchasing power of the dollar is much lower.

Sure, a lot of economic migrants will change their minds and decide they like living in their adopted country and want to stay. Some people migrate for political reasons or because they are drawn to the idea of living in another country, but unless they're extremely desperate those people are likely to seek legal channels to do that That's one reason why official asylum or naturalization procedures don't pick people up, because most people migrating for economic reasons don't necessarily want naturalized status or asylum, they just want to be able to work for a bit and earn enough to give their family a better life.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

It's not like we haven't had an entire much larger border open for pretty much the entirety of U.S. history which the people from that country can come in effectively whenever they want to... and it hasn't caused a total collapse of American society.

For those who don't get it, here's a hint:

I miss not needing a passport.
Now that I have money, I'd love to be able to just pop over to, say, Calgary and visit the zoo. But no, now it's a whole *thing*

 

[tstorm823]

They've loudly and unambiguously claimed support for those things in their own fucking words.

The bit about funding is just a straight-up lie. The Democratic Party did funnel some money into fringe Republican candidates in a moronic and self-defeating electoral effort, that's true-- but the Republican Party is the one that put forward those candidates; its voters were the ones who chose them; and the Republican Party put far more money into their election.

I live in Pennsylvania. Democrats spent more money on tv ads saying Doug Mastriano is conservative and loyal to Trump than Mastriano spent on tv ads himself. Democrats bankrolled ad campaigns about how Dr. Oz is pro-life, as though that's the reason not to vote for Dr. Oz. They signal boost the candidates they want to run against.

 

[Silvanus]

I live in Pennsylvania. Democrats spent more money on tv ads saying Doug Mastriano is conservative and loyal to Trump than Mastriano spent on tv ads himself. Democrats bankrolled ad campaigns about how Dr. Oz is pro-life, as though that's the reason not to vote for Dr. Oz. They signal boost the candidates they want to run against.

Yes, I know. We're not talking about "Pro life" or "loyal to Trump", are we? This doesn't change the fact that Republican congressmen and midterm candidates promoted the Satanic-paedophile conspiracy theory, and that the Republican Party was the one that selected those candidates and funded them, and Republican voters were the ones who endorsed them. As two quick examples: both extreme-right conspiracy theorists Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert had as their largest backer the heavily Republican-aligned House Freedom Fund.

Your party is absolutely welcoming of dangerously "unhinged" attack lines.

 

[Dreiko]

If U.S. companies couldn't hire immigrants and pay them a pittance they'd just find another group to exploit or move out of the U.S. completely into some incredibly poor country where they could. Either way American workers and immigrants would not end up with the money that they should be getting in the first place. The reason so many businesses are outsourcing and hiring immgrants rather than hiring American workers is because of the worker protections our country has, which paradoxically makes there be less jobs for American workers and thus less money being paid to said workers overall.

Not to say it's not horrible, but no jerkass greedy criminal sensible business would ever hire American workers or immigrants being paid the same as when they could exploit some kids halfway around the world for next to nothing. It's come to the point that those countries full of people being exploited are dirt poor, but if we somehow were to force these businesses to both stay in the U.S. and pay American and immigrant workers fair wages those countries they used to exploit are so dependent of the pitiful wages from these businesses they'd be way worse off if not have their entire economy collapse completely.

It's the Catch 22 of American business and first world countries in general. All first world countries are to some extent exploiting third world countries across the globe so that they can avoid paying fair wages. Which for the American people means lower prices on everything (though nowhere near as low as they could be) and thus unintentionally support by buying things because they're lower priced. It's a vicious cycle that since it was allowed to come into being in the first place has become so entrenced as to now be effectively impossible to remove.

If the lower prices you pay at wallmart come out of your paycheck anyways then there's no real benefit, and usually they come at the cost of quality. It is not our responsibility to support the economies of foreign countries, that is their responsibility. If just one thing changing makes the whole economy collapse that's not a good system. It's like what happened with venezuela where oil prices going down just ruined their economy in the blink of an eye.


Basically this is a crutch, why invent yourself out of your poor status when you just get money for manual labor at some foreign factory. If you remove the crutch you give those poor countries a chance to come into their own.

It's not like it's impossible, China managed to become a powerhouse despite being extremely poor only a few decades ago.

Or by paying workers better across the board, regardless of where they come from.

You pay what workers are willing to accept, and the reason people hire immigrants is not because they "hate america" or some nonsense but because americans aren't willing to work for those low wages. If your immigrants consist only of people who are willing to accept wages that americans are then there's no issue, but if they would undercut the american worker who is trying to get a fair wage and accept the job at a tenth of that wage, that's a huge issue.

This is not the fault of immigrants

Sure, and the invasive cats that overran Hawaii and are a danger to the native bird population that have bred out of control and are numbered in the millions are not at fault either, the people who brought em over as pets but then abandoned them outside to fend for themselves are at fault.

But they still catch and euthanize these cats despite that, cause that is how you stop the harm they're causing, through no fault of their own.

 

[Silvanus]

You pay what workers are willing to accept, and the reason people hire immigrants is not because they "hate america" or some nonsense but because americans aren't willing to work for those low wages. If your immigrants consist only of people who are willing to accept wages that americans are then there's no issue, but if they would undercut the american worker who is trying to get a fair wage and accept the job at a tenth of that wage, that's a huge issue.

It is indeed a huge issue-- not least because of the exploitation and inequity faced by the immigrant worker in this scenario.

Employers will pay as poorly as they can get away with, yes, that's capitalism. This is all an argument for minimum wage increases, regulation, and labour organisation/ collective bargaining among both domestic and immigrant workers. It is not an argument for arbitrarily restricting some groups of workers depending on where they're from.

Target the source of the issue, not the victim.

 

[tstorm823]

As two quick examples: both extreme-right conspiracy theorists Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert had as their largest backer the heavily Republican-aligned House Freedom Fund.

That statistic means literally nothing. Did either of them have any large backers? Does that fund have obligations to back members of the House Freedom Caucus? Does the Republican Party at large have any legal ties to that fund? This tells us nothing.

 

[Silvanus]

That statistic means literally nothing. Did either of them have any large backers? Does that fund have obligations to back members of the House Freedom Caucus? Does the Republican Party at large have any legal ties to that fund? This tells us nothing.

It means their largest financial backer is not, as you insinuated, the Democratic Party.

You chose to make that connection; to say these unhinged conspiracists get their funding from the Democratic Party. Don't gripe because the disproving fact doesn't fulfil some other irrelevant criterion.

Your Party chose these candidates. Own it, for Bast's sake.

 

[Dreiko]

It is indeed a huge issue-- not least because of the exploitation and inequity faced by the immigrant worker in this scenario.

Employers will pay as poorly as they can get away with, yes, that's capitalism. This is all an argument for minimum wage increases, regulation, and labour organisation/ collective bargaining among both domestic and immigrant workers. It is not an argument for arbitrarily restricting some groups of workers depending on where they're from.

Target the source of the issue, not the victim.

I support a maximum wage of at most x5 that of the lowest paid worker in a business and a UBI that would cover food, housing and appliances including an internet line, so I already have concluded targeting the cause of the issue, now my focus is on not worsening it until my cures take effect.


Just because an illness causes you to have a fever it doesn't mean there's nothing you can do to help or harm the patient besides giving them the cure for the illness or not. You can still help em by putting a compress over their forehead to help break the fever while the cure takes its time to heal them and you can harm them by sticking em in a sauna and overheating them even more.

Just because we can't cure the patient yet, despite knowing the cure, it doesn't make it ok to make them even sicker and just pout that we aren't being allowed to cure them. We can still help a little in the short term.


Immigrants and immigrant workers are two different groups, we already have established ties with some quantity of them, and I'm not suggesting something as counter-productive as just kicking em all out (even if they're illegal), but the new ones coming in today are not yet workers so we have no bonds with them yet and owe em no loyalty or favors.

 

[Silvanus]

I support a maximum wage of at most x5 that of the lowest paid worker in a business and a UBI that would cover food, housing and appliances including an internet line, so I already have concluded targeting the cause of the issue, now my focus is on not worsening it until my cures take effect.

Not quite-- you favour ensuring the issue only affects certain people, and not others, until the cure takes effect-- based on accidents of birth. Another way of stratifying society and entrenching inequalities.

Just because an illness causes you to have a fever it doesn't mean there's nothing you can do to help or harm the patient besides giving them the cure for the illness or not. You can still help em by putting a compress over their forehead to help break the fever while the cure takes its time to heal them and you can harm them by sticking em in a sauna and overheating them even more.

Just because we can't cure the patient yet, despite knowing the cure, it doesn't make it ok to make them even sicker and just pout that we aren't being allowed to cure them. We can still help a little in the short term.

If we're to continue the medical analogy, denying wages to some workers in order to raise the wages of others would be akin to introducing that pain relief... at a cost of taking the medication away from another patient. All while an alternative avenue exists to cure both.

Immigrants and immigrant workers are two different groups, we already have established ties with some quantity of them, and I'm not suggesting something as counter-productive as just kicking em all out (even if they're illegal), but the new ones coming in today are not yet workers so we have no bonds with them yet and owe em no loyalty or favors.

Nor do I "owe loyalty or favors" to most of my own countrymen.

The compulsion to help doesn't come from anything so cold and transactional; it comes from basic compassion, which I feel equally towards those seeking equitable work in my own country and abroad.

 

[Kae]

Thanks for reminding of why I left this site.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Thanks for reminding of why I left this site.

Yeah, been mostly lurking around the Off-Topic and Movie & TV forums for much the same reason.

 

[Dreiko]

Not quite-- you favour ensuring the issue only affects certain people, and not others, until the cure takes effect-- based on accidents of birth. Another way of stratifying society and entrenching inequalities.

No, I'm for it affecting all americans. And I don't believe in imposing our political conditions on foreign countries which get to be autonomous.

If we're to continue the medical analogy, denying wages to some workers in order to raise the wages of others would be akin to introducing that pain relief... at a cost of taking the medication away from another patient. All while an alternative avenue exists to cure both.

You're not denying wages to anyone, you're just using your medicine and not donating it to the next hospital for no reason when you still have people who need it at your own.

Nor do I "owe loyalty or favors" to most of my own countrymen.

The compulsion to help doesn't come from anything so cold and transactional; it comes from basic compassion, which I feel equally towards those seeking equitable work in my own country and abroad.

Well that's silly. At the very least if you pay your taxes you are literally participating in a system that is intended to produce favors for your countrymen, and the principle behind why that is, is that we indeed owe loyalty and camaraderie to our countrymen like one would a teammate. The entire point of having a country is to draft the most suitable of players that can pursuit a goal that most closely matches your own, and living in a country is tacit approval for said goal's pursuit. That's why for example people interested in high quality technical education move over to the US to go to college, and why people against restrictions on free expression and limits placed on creativity find solace in our team.

But yeah, you said it right, it's a compulsion to you, not something you do because it makes sense, it just feels bad to see people in a hard way and not help em. And sure I get it, so once we first get everyone in our country out of that state, then we can start accepting others from elsewhere. We owe a duty of relief to those who are actually americans first, which is a higher level of responsibility than charity. And hell, it's not like foreign people can't become americans anyways, I know cause I did lol. So I'm not actually excluding anyone here.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

The solution is that you have to enhance the processing capacity for these people and summarily conclude their business so they don't need to remain at the border for long periods of time. Just reject them quickly and efficiently or let them get their business sorted so they can begin contributing to the country. You have to divert the money going to housing them into processing them. You also cut down on the cost of policing the border tremendously that way too.


I don't understand why you need to house all those people inside the country in some crappy campsite or what have you when you could just be rid of them one way or another, it's totally inefficient. And if it's a case of kids just coming over by themselves, you can just have a policy of deporting them on the spot if they come without parents to remove the need for housing them in the country when they can't support themselves.



Call me crazy but I think getting the oligarchs to pay bountiful wages to americans to do these jobs is gonna deal them a heavier blow than importing more desperate indentured servants for them to exploit. We already have people willing to work here, we just don't pay em enough.

Holy shit. Someone offering potential solutions!

 

[Silvanus]

No, I'm for it affecting all americans. And I don't believe in imposing our political conditions on foreign countries which get to be autonomous.

Offering an equitable wage is not "imposing our political conditions on foreign countries". If overseas businesses want to pay their workers poverty-wages, and feel they're getting undercut by alternatives offering better pay, that's not an element of "autonomy" I feel is worthy of respect.

You're not denying wages to anyone, you're just using your medicine and not donating it to the next hospital for no reason when you still have people who need it at your own.

...When you have enough for both.

Well that's silly. At the very least if you pay your taxes you are literally participating in a system that is intended to produce favors for your countrymen, and the principle behind why that is, is that we indeed owe loyalty and camaraderie to our countrymen like one would a teammate. The entire point of having a country is to draft the most suitable of players that can pursuit a goal that most closely matches your own, and living in a country is tacit approval for said goal's pursuit. That's why for example people interested in high quality technical education move over to the US to go to college, and why people against restrictions on free expression and limits placed on creativity find solace in our team.

I completely reject this characterisation of the purpose of a country. The "point" of a country is not to unite people behind some nebulous "goal", and the "goals" I have are not shared by most employers in my country, and are certainly not shared by my country's government and ruling classes.

I pay my taxes to fund public services. Absolutely nothing to do with producing favours. And living her is not "tacit approval" for any goal; it's a legal right the government is obligated to provide.

But yeah, you said it right, it's a compulsion to you, not something you do because it makes sense, it just feels bad to see people in a hard way and not help em. And sure I get it, so once we first get everyone in our country out of that state, then we can start accepting others from elsewhere. We owe a duty of relief to those who are actually americans first, which is a higher level of responsibility than charity. And hell, it's not like foreign people can't become americans anyways, I know cause I did lol. So I'm not actually excluding anyone here.

I'm simply not convinced that one has to come before the other. We have the means to help both.

Of course the American government's targeted relief is going to be within American borders, because that's the only area over which they have full direct political control. But to prevent access is to determine that this "duty of relief" is dependant on an accident of birth.