Comment on "Border Czar" Tom Homan unveils new deportation plan
the_toast_is_gone@lemmy.world 4 weeks agoThere are a huge number of illegal immigrants and people abusing the asylum system. Deporting most of them is the only solution; we’ve given enough amnesty over the years.
Keeponstalin@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
The only difference between legal and illegal immigrants are paperwork. There is nothing wrong with people seeking asylum. That is not ‘abusing the system’. There is nothing wrong with immigrants. They are not ‘bringing in crime’ or ‘abusing social services’. They are responsible for less crime per capita than US citizens and contribute far more to social programs than they take out. Not that either of those would justify their forced removal.
The only problem with immigration is that illegal immigrants are exploited with a two-tier immigration system. Where companies, mainly agriculture and construction, exploit them with incredibly low wages and zero worker protections because they know illegal immigrants have no recourse.
Not only would mass deportations result in concentration camps, which is overtly fascist, they would also cripple the US economy by removing that pool of over-exploited labor from US businesses.
Denying asylum and mass deportations come from a white nativist sentiment. There is plenty of evidence that disprove each of those sentiments. The insanity of mass deportations are matched only to the rampant racism used to justify them.
Economic Impact
Myth : Immigrants are a drain on the U.S. Economy and Reducing Immigration would make our economy stronger. Fact : The United States needs immigrants to stay competitive and drive economic growth, Particularly as our economy starts to reopen, individuals who create jobs are absolutely critical to our recovery. Immigrants are innovators, job creators, and consumers with an enormous spending power that drives our economy, and creates employment opportunities for all Americans. Immigrants added $2 trillion to the U.S. GDP in 2016 and $458.7 billion to state, local, and federal taxes in 2018. In 2018, after immigrants spent billions of dollars on state and local, and federal taxes, they were left with $1.2 trillion in spending power, which they used to purchase goods and services, stimulating local business activity. Proposed cuts to our legal immigration system would have devastating effects on our economy, decreasing GDP by 2% over twenty years, shrinking growth by 12.5%, and cutting 4.6 million jobs. Rust Belt states would be hit particularly hard, as they rely on immigration to stabilize their populations and revive their economies.
Taxes and Essential Services
Myth : Immigrants are a burden to essential services like schools, hospitals, and highways. Fact: Immigrants make significant contributions to our economy on virtually every front - including on tax revenue, where they contribute $458.7 billion to state, local, and federal taxes in 2018. This includes undocumented immigrants, who contribute roughly $11.74 billion a year in state and local taxes, including more than $7 billion in sales and excise taxes, $3.6 billion in property taxes, and $1.1 billion in personal income taxes. These billions of tax dollars fund our schools, hospitals, emergency response services, highways, and other essential services. These revenues would increase by $2.18 billion annually if undocumented immigrants were given legal status as part of an immigration reform package. Additionally, immigrants make enormous contributions to Social Security. If current legal immigration levels were cut by 50%, the Social Security fund would lose $1.5 trillion in revenue over the next 75 years.
IRI
> There are 45 million immigrants living in the United States. Making up 14 percent of the national population, immigrants are a vital part of the social, economic, and cultural life of all American communities. > The economic role of immigrants has frequently been misunderstood. On the one hand, immigrants are a big and important part of the economy. And, on the other hand, immigrants are disproportionately concentrated in low-wage jobs. Both things are true at the same time.
Other sources:
Facts About Immigration and the U.S. Economy - EPI
How migration affects housing affordability - The Conversation
A dozen facts about immigration - Brookings
They didn’t do this due to public opinion, legalizing illegal immigrants is far more popular than deportation, despite the Democratic Party not doing any counter messaging against the right-wing narrative. They moved to the right at the expense of voters, it gained them zero voters.
Lovstuhagen@hilariouschaos.com 4 weeks ago
There is nothing wrong with legal immigrants, definitely.
However, illegal immigrants are all 100% guilty of a crime when they enter the country. Of course, it would be rather remarkable if we completely ignored that one crime and it turned out that, on average, they committed less crimes per capita than white Americans, which area good baseline since they are the majority and historic population of the country…
It would be absolutely brilliant if, excluding their illegal status, they committed less crimes than Asian Americans…
But as the legal hispanic popualtion is usually several times more likely than non-Hispanic white Americans to commit crime, it seems doubtful that their illegal counterparts are somehow outperforming them. I am also sure there are statistics which give us some idea of illegal immigrant crime rates, and there’s a reason you are not posting any of those.
Keeponstalin@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Illegal immigrants are not illegal because they want to be. The issue is with the legalization process, which being artificially long to the point of years and the circumstances of seeking asylum attribute to illegal immigration. Deportation does not solve anything, legalization does.
Neither is crime inherent to any ‘race’ or ‘culture’ that is a completely racist idea that has no bases in reality. Crimes comes from poverty and is dramatically reduced when uplifting the material conditions, such as access to basic necessities and education. Deportations are not any solution.
the_toast_is_gone@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Here’s a huge problem with the immigration debate in the US: illegal immigrants are being conflated with legal immigrants in almost every argument in favor of enabling illegal immigrants.
Would you say the same thing about people who drive with or without driver’s licenses? Or practice medicine with or without board certification?
The Biden Administration invited people to flood to the country under a revised asylum system that’s created a six year long backlog of asylum cases. There is no reason that refugees from every other nation on earth should go to the US specifically or during this time period other than the President throwing open the doors to them.
Are legal immigrants making these contributions, or are illegal immigrants doing so? And if asylum seekers are contributing so much to local economies, then why is NYC sounding the alarm on how costly the current system is to the city? They’re slated to spend $12 billion on the problem over the next three years. Furthermore, Congress has found the current policies have cost over $150 billion, with some estimates going as high as $400 billion. We can’t sustain that kind of spending. Also, illegal immigrants categorically do bring in crime, by immigrating illegally.
I agree that we should stop using illegal immigrants as a slave caste. That starts by enforcing the law and treating people who employ illegal immigrants as criminals themselves. But giving amnesty to everyone who breaks the law only incentivizes people to continue breaking the law. Thus, their illicit employees need to be removed, at least for the time being.
Define “concentration camp.” They aren’t being rounded up to do forced labor and be executed like in Nazi Germany. Also, is Obama a fascist?
An economy that would be crippled if slavery was abolished deserves to be crippled. These jobs should go to legal immigrants and citizens.
I don’t care about “white nativism.” I care about the law, our ability to sustain ourselves as a nation, and with limiting security concerns related to bringing in millions of people whose identities can barely be verified at all. None of this has to do with the color of anyone’s skin.
The issue isn’t completely cut and dry. Even among people do support legalizing illegal immigrants, almost everyone insists on a background check and over half would require them to have a job.
Keeponstalin@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
A person’s legal existence is not the same as someone practicing without a license. You know that.
We are in agreement that the way Immigration has been handled under Biden has been absolutely terrible. The process to legalization is unnecessarily long and results in this backlog, which only contributes to illegal immigration and increasing costs to process
Totally agree that companies that exploit illegal immigrants should be prosecuted.
Illegal immigrants are not illegal because they want to be. The issue is with the legalization process, which we’ve touched on already. Deportation does not solve anything, legalization does. For anyone who does crimes, it’s still more affordable to incarcerate than deport but that’s a very small fraction of immigrants that we’re talking about here.
The links I provided have more information. We’re talking about millions of people. I’m certainly against Obama’s cages, it’s completely draconic at the very least if not fascist in some respect.
Yes, and the way to do that is through legalization, not deportation.
Both, and the sources I provided go into it for both legal and illegal immigrants. That wasn’t congress, that was The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) which is an anti-immigration nonprofit with many ties to white Supremacists and it’s findings are completely flawed the tax burden is closer to $3.3 to 15.6 billion, over a magnitude less than the revenue they help provide. The sources I provided previously go into that.
It’s categorically a crime because that’s the entire point of having a two-tier immigration system which I know you don’t agree with. It’s as much as a crime as jaywalking is. It’s an unjust law that only perpetuates the two-tier immigration system. Again, legalization is the way to solve that, not deportation. Legalization would also increase the amount of taxes they would have to pay, like regular citizens.
Then I think you’d genuinely find those sources I linked interesting. I’m not attributing the racism to you, but mass deportations are rooted in racism and white nativism and why that connection exists is important to recognize.
Even within the polls where deportations have majority support, in the same poll, there is much more support for legalization. That contradiction is due to the Biden admin having no counter message against the right-wing framing of the issue since the Dreamers under the Obama campaign
kff.org/…/political-preferences-and-views-on-us-i…
vox.com/…/immigration-border-polls-election-2024-…
news.gallup.com/…/sharply-americans-curb-immigrat…
the_toast_is_gone@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I know. It isn’t about existence. It’s about doing things through the appropriate legal channels. The entire world isn’t entitled to live in the US, just like the entire population isn’t entitled to drive on public roads or practice medicine.
Not only that, but there was a skyrocket of asylum seekers during this administration. They’ve combined to create a system in which people are used as balls in a shell game while their asylum cases are pending. This never should have happened in the first place.
The solution to millions of people breaking the law is not to get rid of the law. Reform the process? Absolutely. But the government saying “We don’t care that you broke the law” for years got us to where we are now. Once our systems aren’t under such severe strain any longer, then we can make clearer decisions about who to let in.
We certainly should make the facilities humane, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t exist. People aren’t being put there to be worked to death or exterminated. It isn’t fascist any more than normal prisons are.
Legalization wouldn’t necessarily end their systematic abuse. It would, however, encourage illicit employers to continue seeking new immigrant employees and disregard citizens in the process. That’s not good for anyone other than the people running these businesses.
That Cato Institute study you linked is from 2017. Even granting it as-is, sanctuary cities like New York are still struggling to care for asylum seekers taking their word seriously. NYC was left spending $4.24 billion to care for asylum seekers compared to the $3.16 billion the Biden administration awarded to homeless programs across the country. Why is one city spending more on a problem that Biden created than Biden is on a problem that’s existed for decades? It’s likely that the impact of immigration and asylum seeking falls somewhere between the Cato Institute’s numbers and FAIR’s.
It doesn’t help that the Biden admin is unpopular in general, as is the media that’s been running its cover for the last four years. Even if the admin had a response, barely anyone would have listened. As far as I’m concerned, they deserved to lose that trust.