site banner
PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   22283 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 9, 2025

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Breaking news: Trump is saying he will not be deporting illegal immigrants who work on Farms and in Hotels.

Gavin Newsom is claiming it for a win for the violent riots that have taken over LA and other major cities.

This is a bit of a let down for Trump Supporters and anyone who wants to take America back from those who were not invited. Especially with Gavin Newsom rubbing it in the public's face. Especially with American Approval of deportation efforts have been increasing.

Trump's rationale appears to be:

  1. Hotels/farms are low hanging fruit, it's easy to pick up illegal immigrants from these locations.

  2. After swooping these groups first, then the only applicants to these positions (at the wages the farms and hotels are willing to pay) are the criminal illegal immigrants.

  3. So focus on criminality first.

Does this mean that, once every last criminal is deported, he will then do sweeps of farms and hotels? Left ambiguous.

One problem is the effect of exploitable labor goes in one way. Over the past 2 decades, Landscaping businesses that employed high school students and ex cons went out of business because they couldn't compete against undocumented workers.

If one farm gets raided, and one farm growing similar things does not get raided for another year, then the first farm needs to hire more expensive people and raise prices while the second farm will still benefit from the lowered wages. The farm that got raided first goes out of business first, the second farm maybe gets to buy up the first farm, then when they are inevitably raided they still stay in business and make more money now.

It's not fair. It's not fair that the government has not enforced its own rules surrounding hiring employees uniformly across industries.

The fair thing would be to deport 100% of everyone deportable all at once. The shock of that will be destructive to every industry that is predominately illegal immigrants.

The next fair thing might be to deport 10% of employees in every business all together, then another 10% later, and so on until the bottom is reached.

Of course, the above two "fair" plans are ridiculous. We do not have the man-power to do it.

Any other fair ideas? Besides Trump's new plan of "Don't try to tackle this right now."

Does this mean that, once every last criminal is deported, he will then do sweeps of farms and hotels? Left ambiguous.

It's a potentially difficult policy to execute. Despite the many weird messages various administrations have given illegal immigrants, "Our official policy is to deport you last, but we'll definitely deport you in 2028," would probably be the weirdest. Also, come time to deport them, the citizenry may find them to be the least problematic and most sympathetic illegal immigrants; hospitality workers are necessarily, well, hospitable farm laborers are mostly minding their own business out in the sticks, so long as 99% of the country is concerned.

  1. An infinite supply of slave labor is as much of a resource curse as infinite oil. As the people become a less crucial resource, it warps the incentives of those in power away from investing in the people towards exploiting their cursed resources. Rome collapsed as landowners farmed their estates with slave labor, and foreign mercenaries were hired for defense. Meanwhile Roman citizens were given bread and circuses. On the other hand, the Industrial revolution was kicked off by a labor shortage, which spurred investment in things that would skyrocket labor productivity.

  2. How low is "unemployment" really? Teens don't work anymore. Men don't work as much as they used to. You also have to remember that labor is substitutable. Nobody is suggesting that high school students go work on the farm. We're suggesting that high school students work at McDonalds, and the possibly legal Mexicans who currently work at McDonalds can go work at the farm, both at higher wages than are currently paid for those jobs. And no, working a service job is not a degrading thing to do for a kid.

  3. Labor is substitutable for capital to a degree If wages go up, that doesn't directly translate to a 1:1 cost increase to the consumer, because farmers can choose to use techniques that save labor but require more of other inputs such as chemicals or equipment.

  4. Goods are substitutable too. If prices for some goods go up, consumers will choose to buy other goods that are less affected. So the overall cost of living will increase less than the increase of the affected goods. For me, beef has been expensive recently, so I've been eating more pork, which is dirt cheap. This is in stark contrast to across the board inflation, where anything and everything is up.

  5. If you paid enough and also improved working conditions, you could guaranteed get better people to work on the farm. And if you did hire high IQ high conscientiousness people to do the work, they would actually do a better job than the illegals. All the "experiments" to get local people to work on the farm failed because they didn't seriously try and it was too easy to give up and say it's impossible. If your life is on the line you'll find people to do the work.

Men don't work as much as they used to.

Most of that is students and retirees. If you look at the male labor force participation rate aged 25-54, it's 89.5%. Number is going to be higher for white men. Perhaps the MAGA Maoists want the students and retirees to work in the fields as part of their Bangladeshification campaign.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LRAC25MAUSM156S

Nobody is suggesting that high school students go work on the farm. We're suggesting that high school students work at McDonalds, and the possibly legal Mexicans who currently work at McDonalds can go work at the farm, both at higher wages than are currently paid for those jobs. And no, working a service job is not a degrading thing to do for a kid.

What happens if the Mexican decides he'd rather stay at McDonalds and the employer decides he'd rather keep the Mexican than cycle through a bunch of high school students? Is central planning the economy on the basis of race part of the plan?

And if you did hire high IQ high conscientiousness people to do the work, they would actually do a better job than the illegals.

MAGA Maoism. Take computer programmers and make them do the job of Bengali peasants, but we'll be 10x richer than Bengali peasants because of high IQ. It has the same vibe as "guy who says he supports eugenics to piss of the libs, but opposes any actual eugenic policy because it supposedly conflicts with his religion." You know IQ-realism is based, but disrespect actual high-IQ people working high-IQ jobs.

Nice strawman. The namecalling really helps your argument too.

If you paid enough and also improved working conditions, you could guaranteed get better people to work on the farm

I'm not sure about this. For one, while you made good point about cost/substitution, there is a ceiling on how much you can pay farm manual labour.

Especially because of how seasonal the work is. No first world citizen wants a job for 6 months and then ??? for the other 6.

No first world citizen wants a job for 6 months and then ??? for the other 6.

IT freelancing may disagree, unstable short-term work is acceptable for some if it pays N times more.

N depends on situation, but for extreme cases can become hilariously large. I assure that many would be fine with 2 weeks of work and then ??? if you get yearly wages in that time of work.

Yeah totally agree, just doesn't fit great with the economics of farm labour.

But maybe it would, we'll never know because it's easier to just exploit Mexicans

No first world citizen wants a job for 6 months and then ??? for the other 6.

There's a lot of seasonal work in the First World, construction perhaps being the most common.

Yeah I stand corrected on this, although I think farm labour has far too many negatives and will never pay enough to make Americans think it's worth it (demonstrated by the current situation) but with enough market distortions/minimum wage I'm sure you could get there.

Whether society is better at the end, hard to know, and we never will, because everyone in power, despite saying otherwise, loves exploiting Mexicans instead

The work not being done until the wages raise to a level where workers are willing to do it is not a market distortion, it is the market working as intended.

Illegal immigrant workers are the market distortion; international borders (not market forces) that have very stark difference in cost of living on one side compared to the other create the incentives for people to go work for way below local market rates. Not that I'm arguing for open borders, but that is one situation where governments create bad incentives (by not having an open market with a poorer neighbors) for reasons that can be desirable for other reason than economic, and where it should also work to compensate for it (by policing illegal immigration properly to counter the incentives they've created).

Illegal immigrant workers are the market distortion...

No they aren't, at least not any more than importing any other economic input is a market distortion. Telling an employer that he can't use labor from Mexico isn't fundamentally different than telling him he can't use iron ore from Australia, or electronic components from South Korea. You can make public policy arguments for why certain market distortions are necessary, but they're only distortions if you presuppose some kind of Peronist ideal where the only economic activity that matters is that which takes place inside your own borders. As @AlexanderTurok says, MAGA Maoism.

Yeah fair I misspoke

I think what I mean is I predict trying to replace illegal immigrant farm workers with American farm workers would reduce American agriculture competitiveness worldwide and make Americans very mad about the price of their food.

Hence why politicians love to talk a big game but never do anything to actually fix it (punish businesses who hire illegals)

That’s not true, if you’ve lived in or near a beach town or ski town there’s plenty of serving staff who only work in a restaurant a portion of the year, every year.

They just work like crazy to make enough money to support themselves on a part time job or unemployed for the remainder for the year.

It’s like a tour of duty. There’s lots of industries that are hyper seasonal and / or are intensive for short amounts of time.

Oil workers are like that, for example. Fisherman, cowboys, that’s just off the top of my head.

Some people really love the freedom of working extremely hard for part of the year and consequently fucking off for the rest of the year.

It’s like a tour of duty. There’s lots of industries that are hyper seasonal and / or are intensive for short amounts of time.

Oil workers are like that, for example. Fisherman, cowboys, that’s just off the top of my head.

We've got plenty of this sort of seasonal work up here in Alaska — and not just the oil workers and the crab boats, but also a lot of tourist-adjacent jobs, ranging from seasonal airport baggage handlers to RV park attendants.

That's a great point actually

I'm concerned that all these jobs are significantly more productive than farm labour, and thus command higher wages.

I guess we can price floor farm work wages but I have a feeling Americans will freak the fuck out when strawberries get more expensive.

I live near a popular tourist area, and we get flooded with Eastern European's on guest worker visas every summer. The jobs are in hospitality, which isn't that much more productive than farm work, if it is at all.

Yeah fair enough

I've been vibe analyzing this so happy for feedback lol

Shame we'll never know because Trump backed off

Shame we'll never know because Trump backed off

We can't really say that based on this. Total number of hotel and farmworkers in the US is around 4 million. Even if they're all illegals, there's 20+ million illegals in the US, and some estimates put the number much higher. "Target that group last" is very different from just giving up altogether.

I'm really not a gambler by nature but I'd be willing to put money down IRL that there is never any coordinated significant deportation of farm workers in the USA during Trump's term

Maybe a farm worker or 1000 will get inadvertently sniped as ICE roams around, but there's no shot they deliberately up the pressure on farmers. My basis for this reasoning is the fact red states don't bother to use e-verify or crack down on the American farm owners who freely choose to hire illegal immigrants, despite claiming they hate immigration and there being some relatively straightforward solutions they refuse to use.

Rome collapsed as landowners farmed their estates with slave labor, and foreign mercenaries were hired for defense. Meanwhile Roman citizens were given bread and circuses.

Three events that took place separately over about four centuries.

Any other fair ideas?

Open borders. Pure capitalism. Unlimited cheap labor. Save hundreds of billions on immigration enforcement.

So, zeroing out of welfare and massive reduction in taxes too?

But then there's no more American people. Who will our elected leaders serve? "The people currently standing on the territory formally known as the USA?" Whose long-term interests do they protect?

Our leaders should have a referent "American people" and put the interests of these "American people" first. I assure you that leaders of other countries understand who "their people" are and serve their interests to the detriment of our own. If we do not have leaders who look out for our interest, then we will taken advantage of at every turn.

Who are the American people? Citizens, their children, and those they adopt in. Adoption isn't an uncaring, unnoticed act. It's always personal and usually planned for. The adoptee needs to want to join the family and take on the family's customs.

I assure you that leaders of other countries understand who "their people" are and serve their interests

That doesn't seem to work out very well for them, other countries suck and all of their people want to come to America. The American identity survives regardless of who makes up our population. Countries whose identity is only their people and their genetic lineage don't have a persistent set of ideals like America does. Germany has gone from a colonialist empire, to a liberal democracy, to fascist, to half liberal and half communist, to centrist and authoritarian. What does it mean to be German? Nothing. There is no persistent trait or moral value that Germany has had for the past 100 years, let alone 250 like America has. You can justify anything as "serving the interests of our people." Every shithole country has their own "unique" identity and feels pride in their sovereignty, with their special little flag and theme song and their soccer team, and they're all the same.

The American identity survives regardless of who makes up our population

I wouldn't call the country splitting into two halves who hate eachother 'surviving'.

Meanwhile Germany, in spite of the political changes you mention is the most politically stable country in the world (I didn't go looking for a list with Germany at the top I swear, I googled 'least partisan countries' and that's what came up).

Germany's form of government may have changed, but it doesn't matter because it has a core ethnic group whose similarity transcends political organisation. Meanwhile in the multiracial proposition nation, everyone hates eachother and can't agree on anything.

That doesn't seem to work out very well for them, other countries suck and all of their people want to come to America

Same was true for Rome vs non-Roman Europe, but it didn't stop the empire from collapsing.

What consistent moral traits has the US had over the last 100 years?

The US used to be a racially segregated, eugenicist, male-dominated, highly industrialized, colonial power with a small state apparatus. Sodomy was banned, along with miscegenation and pornography. In all reasonable senses America has changed hugely.

And yet elements of the US character are preserved over the centuries due to the people that make it up, though this is changing. There's a certain level of non-conformism, religiosity, optimism, innovativeness, individualism...

It's the same with Germany. There are certain German traits that remained consistent over the century. The high status of technical research for one thing, prestige going more towards engineering and hard sciences compared to (in the UK) classics. Even that is a relatively surface-level cultural difference, compared to underlying matters like relationship between citizen and state, class v meritocracy, systematic thinking...

It's extremely reductive to view a state's character solely by the most obvious features of its government.

The American identity survives regardless of who makes up our population.

Can you offer a description of this "American Identity"?

Can you even conceive of the idea that someone could think open borders would be good for Americans?

Yes, there are plenty of people who have no contact with illegal immigrants and suffer from a virulent Typical Mind Fallacy.

I have contact with illegal immigrants every day at work, they mostly seem like hard-working and friendly people. I respect their willingness to defy arbitrary rules.

A lot of words are abused in modern discourse but "arbitrary" is certainly one of the most abused words. Citizenship and borders are not arbitrary. They could be otherwise of course, but that isn't what arbitrary means. The modern world order would fall apart if we did away with borders and citizenships, one can imagine a different world order but we don't live under that world order.

I respect their willingness to defy arbitrary rules.

This one sentence has done more to help me clarify my thoughts on illegal immigration than everything else written in this thread. To the extent that there is an "American spirit" that has been consistent over the past 500 years, it has been the desire to defy arbitrary rules.

I straight up don't believe you. Many are friendly enough (to the limited extent they can be, without a common language), but an illustrative experience was spending fifteen minutes trying to use translation software to explain to a woman the difference between a square and a rectangle while she just looked at me sadly and said "no comprendo..." Then she asked me to help her commit welfare fraud.

There are immigrants and then there are immigrants. Mexicans are pretty harmless. But open borders means taking in every random Indian, African, and Arab that wants to come in; that's a problem.

Trump support doesn't correlate much with the presence of illegal immigrants.

Sure, I can conceive that someone could be incorrect. But my point is, what do you mean by "American" here?

As a Shareholder-American, it sure would be great for me. Not so sure about others, though.

The rationale on hotels would most obviously seem to be that Trump owns hotels. Whether this means he is self-dealing or is simply more sympathetic to labor supply complaints for hotels is perhaps up for debate.

He is friends with large numbers of other hotel and casino owners / real estate investors who have obviously called him and said they don’t want this, and it is also very possible people in his own business that he trusts have said it too.

Farms are one of those things where you just can't get Americans to do it. You can pay well-above market rate, they won't do it. You can hire out of the parole office, they'll still quit knowing they stand a good chance of going to jail for it.

Like duh, Trump was never going to crack down on fruitpickers and no one really wanted him to.

Interesting question - what is the richest country (except city-states like Singapore with no agriculture) that doesn't make large-scale use of itinerant foreign farm workers? My initial guess was Japan, but they finally cracked and brought in an agricultural guest worker visa in 2019. South Korea and Taiwan also use guest workers on a large scale. Poland have scaled back their farm worker scheme because they can get Ukrainian refugees to do the work, but that isn't getting Poles to do it.

Poland have scaled back their farm worker scheme

It was mostly Ukrainians at the start, too.

My guess would be Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, or China. None of them wealthy, all of them with near-third-world-poor hinterlands that make the only difference here the ‘foreign’ part. Working in say, Chihuahua or Baja California Dei Sur is a much better deal than in Chiapas even if they’re technically the same country. Likewise why import workers from Laos when guizhao is right there.

I’ve heard that even Lebanon doesn’t have native Lebanese working the fields, Syrian refugees do it for Pennies. Even Iran seems to, de facto, make use of much poorer Afghanis and Tajiks for stuff like that.

My guess would be Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, or China.

Checking the list, Romania is richer than all of those, and appears to still be a net exporter of migrant farm workers. But googling suggests that Romania is importing sub-Saharan African migrants to do the jobs Romanians will only do for western European wages.

Argentina has significant numbers of migrant farm workers from poorer South American countries.

I think that leaves China as the most likely answer - it is richer than Brazil or Mexico now.

Northern Mexico is wealthier than China and makes use of migrants from the India-poor south, although I suppose if we’re not counting workers from guizhao in shandong we’d best not count them either. So yeah, probably China- assuming they aren’t just importing Laotians and Cambodians.

Argentina

Not us, we just had a retarded de facto open borders policy.

Haven't the countries of Mercosur implemented open borders de jure, not merely de facto?

I don't believe that has come fully into effect. Nonetheless, none of the other members had the bright idea of combining it with generous welfare policies.

Ok fair, I forgot about Paraguay.

You can pay well-above market rate, they won't do it.

That's not really what "market rate" means. It doesn't really come free-floating, without reference to a population of suppliers/potential suppliers. Yes, there is a MarketRate1, where the set of suppliers/potential suppliers includes everyone who can walk across the border. Yes, MarketRate1 < MarketRate2, where MarketRate2 is with reference to the set of suppliers/potential suppliers who are legally authorized to work in the United States. But if we just lived in World2, there would be no talk about paying "well-above market rate (MarketRate2)", because MarketRate2 would just be the clearing price in World2.

Supply curve slope upwards. Demand curves slope downwards. For there to be no non-zero equilibrium, the supply price at zero quantity supplied must be higher than the demand price at zero quantity demanded. This may be true for some goods (say, anti-matter-powered light bulbs), but it seems highly unlikely that it is the case for food.

This may be true for some goods (say, anti-matter-powered light bulbs), but it seems highly unlikely that it is the case for food.

It could be true for certain crops grown in the United States though.

Possibly so. One would need further analysis on things like labor/capital required on any particulars. For example, how much raw cocoa is farmed in the US? I think almost none. Is this due to the labor supply curve? I'm not sure. My hunch is that, in the absence of any importation, capital could be applied to make some amount of suitable growing conditions... but that it might take quite a bit of capital. If that capital were invested, what would the labor supply curve look like to work in such facilities? I don't know.

Whereas most of the food products that are the subject of the current discussion already have proven growing capacity with acceptable capital expenditures, and we're mostly discussing the labor supply curve, much more in isolation. It is in that setting that I discussed the relative supply/demand curves and the use of the term "market rate". I admit that my example was perhaps not the most apropos, as anti-matter-powered light bulbs probably also require significant capex... and TBH, that's probably the real limiting factor there. I'm not sure there's really a way to just apply labor (at some higher price) with relatively-existing capital stock to get some supply of anti-matter-powered light bulbs.

Aside from Puerto Rico and Hawaii, I'm pretty sure the climate is unsuitable for cocoa. It appears there is commercial cocoa production in Hawaii and Puerto Rico (also the Virgin Islands and Guam), and also some basically hobby growing in South Florida. I was talking about crops which are grown in the US now, though. Get rid of migrant labor and cereal grains aren't going anywhere, but a lot of fruit might become too expensive to grow in the US.

Aside from Puerto Rico and Hawaii, I'm pretty sure the climate is unsuitable for cocoa.

Thus the need for significant application of capital. :)

Get rid of migrant labor and cereal grains aren't going anywhere, but a lot of fruit might become too expensive to grow in the US.

Possibly so. There are obviously multiple interacting legal regime possibilities. The current administration seems(seemed?) keen on shutting down both imported labor and imported goods, with the simplest model being two binary variables. Shut down imported labor and keep imported fruit, perhaps there is no intersection of domestic supply/demand curves. Shut down imported labor and also imported fruit, maybe markets clear at a higher price, maybe quantity supplied still goes to zero and people just have less heterogeneity in their access to goods, maybe black fruit markets develop. Keep imported labor and also imported fruit is the status quo. Keep imported labor and shut down imported fruit, and the effects are probably again specific-dependent, but if it's a good that is already produced in reasonable quantity domestically, my guess would be minor increases in price and decreases in quantity supplied (goods that aren't produced in reasonable quantities domestically already may suffer a similar fate as above). Each of them has a corresponding MarketRateX for the labor involved, except possibly in cases where there is no intersection for domestic producers.

I take no position as to which of these cases are more/less desirable. Those questions get more complicated and require agreed-upon value functions to compute. For an example of the complications, see my comment here:

Sure, North Korea now "produces" its own airplanes. Which I guess is cool if you want to make sure that you have whatever metric of "adversary-proof" (I'm not convinced it actually is, but it depends highly on the metric you use) and if you're okay with only being able to produce what are essentially copies of extremely old Cessnas. Maybe in 50 years, they'll be able to produce their own WWII-era fighter jets, which I guess is "adversary-proof" to one metric, but probably not all that "adversary-proof" according to other metrics.

Some people may value domestic production very highly for its own sake, and they'd be willing to trade off access to a wider variety of goods. I'm not going to have some knock-down argument to say someone is wrong if they have such a value and are willing to prefer a world where cocoa simply is not accessible (at the moment, with the current set of ideas/technologies for how to use capital to produce cocoa in US climates) to a world where it is imported. I mostly care that everyone is clear about how the curves/terms work.

I’m not convinced you couldn’t get American workers to do it. Much like construction and hotels and housekeeping and so on — Americans used to do all of it. And keep in mind that you have ex-cons and teenagers trying to build a good work history.

Left: we need to move blacks up the ladder so more of them work as doctors, lawyers, politicians, and businessmen.

Right: we need to move whites down the ladder so more of them work day labor in the sun.

Human beings have worked in agriculture picking crops for thousands of years. Modern technology (including novel reflective materials) makes fruit picking more comfortable than ever. Change the incentives and people will do it. Put simply, if I had the choice between starving and picking fruit, I’d pick fruit. Everything else is just moving incentives along a scale.

The high school kid who picks the most fruit gets guaranteed entry to Harvard, suddenly every child of every tiger mom and pushy Indian dad in America is out there training their kids to pick strawberries from the age of 8. You can literally do anything, it’s not hard.

You can literally do anything, it’s not hard.

Yeah no s***, if we really set our minds to it, we can move down the tech tree and make our country's economy more similar to Bangladesh. Why anyone would want to is beyond me.

  • -13

Yeah no s***, if we really set our minds to it, we can move down the tech tree and make our country's economy more similar to Bangladesh. Why anyone would want to is beyond me.

How is promoting higher wages for manual labor and trying to keep those jobs going to actual American citizens "moving down the tech tree?" This seems like a huge jump to me.

Because fit, healthy American citizens with good work ethics already have better jobs than picking fruit.

The unemployment rate is very low, those workers are going to come at the expense of jobs that are higher up the tech tree. I know the MAGA plan is to make the economy more like the agrarian-industrial economy of Bangladesh while maintaining American standards of wealth, because the government can just wave its hand and make these jobs high-paying. It will not work.

Frankly I don't believe the unemployment rate actually reflects the labor pool in the U.S. A ton of people in the U.S. are not working, or are on disability or some other program that hides their labor.

Also, I disagree that working a farm is a worse job than being a cashier for instance at a gas station. It's demeaning work (I have done many low wage service jobs including gas stations), you are directly aiding people in deep sin (selling lotto ticket to degenerate gamblers and booze to alcoholics) and generally is just bad for your psyche, even from a purely psychological view.

On top of that, as others have pointed out I do believe in the self-correcting nature of markets, I find it ironic that you as an economist don't! If we cut the labor pool, the wages and benefits will rise for these jobs.

More comments

I really don’t get the proposal here. Is it that we naturalize the children of foreigners generation over generation for the service of doing work no one else wants to do, or that we maintain a permanent underclass of legally distinct residents who are restricted to such work? Those are the only two iterated versions of the model that I’m aware of, both have been tried in American history, and the second crashed and burned in a famous way while the first is currently in the process of doing so. So saying, in effect, “we already have a solution” seems a little strange here.

The first isn't crashing and burning though.

And the latter is also possible, just look at the U.A.E.

And the latter is also possible, just look at the U.A.E.

But does the UAE scale? Further, the UAE isn't exactly a democracy, especially not one with birthright citizenship. I've seen some open borders advocates argue for a "billion immigrants" America that follows the UAE model (Nathan Smith for one), but none of them seem very clear on how to get there from here — well, beyond something like just throwing open the floodgates and hoping that the resulting effects force our political elites to make the desired changes and adopt the desired system in order to keep the country from collapsing (and the answers to "and if that doesn't work?" tend to be rather disheartening).

More comments

You do get that there's already people doing this down-the-tech-tree work, right? If you're this upset at the thought of some college kid or NEET picking fruit instead of playing video games, why do you want to import massive amounts of low functioning foreigners?

You do get that there's already people doing this down-the-tech-tree work, right? If you're this upset at the thought of some college kid or NEET picking fruit instead of playing video games, why do you want to import massive amounts of low functioning foreigners?

So Americans can go to college and get work in offices instead of picking onions in the sun. The foreigners benefit too, win-win.

And when those foreigners are heavily subsidized by tapping into the American welfare systems? When they start voting to pick your pocket, and turn America into Mexico?

Tell you what, let's do 20 million deportations, and we'll save the million or two doing farmwork for last. And on the way, we'll see what effects that had on entitlement spending.

More comments

Mildly coercive labor practices+pay well above the going rate for unskilled labor has historically failed at staffing American farms with native workers. You could fly in a different set of third worlders, hold their pay in arrears until they get on the plane to go home- but you can't replace the need for migrants from shithole countries.

We haven't tried government issued BFs/GFs yet as an incentive. Hell, government issue hoes with government handler Pimps too.

As @Iconochasm says, if you’re a 19 year old white English-speaking American college student without a summer job, making $30 an hour picking fruits with other white, English-speaking American college students on summer break (who you can chat, joke, flirt with) is a completely different proposition to making $12 (or indeed $30) an hour as the odd one out in a group of only-Spanish-speaking 40 year old Oaxacans with whom you cannot really communicate or talk.

Yeah I have actually done one of these jobs at a plant nursery. It absolutely blows when nobody on your team speaks even the littlest bit of English.

I did pick up a lot of spanish as a result, but still it was not a very fun job.

There is a farm near me that a lot of kids wanted to work at because they hired 14 year olds. Few lasted. You don't get paid by the hour, you get paid by the bushel, and it's well under a dollar per bushel. You aren't chatting with your friends because no talking is allowed. Sunup to sundown every day, and you can forget about taking a vacation. And this was a family farm with a grocery store and a pumpkin patch with hayrides, not some agribusiness with thousands of acres.

"Not paid enough" and "doesn't have good working conditions" are in the same category and both can be improved. They could allow talking (especially if they pay by the bushel so talking wasting time won't hurt them), they just didn't.

Also, people think of family businesses too favorably. Family businesses are often inefficient, and their owners vary much more in pettiness than big businesses.

You aren't chatting with your friends because no talking is allowed. Sunup to sundown every day, and you can forget about taking a vacation.

This is all stuff that can be changed.

The American people famously never get extremely mad about the cost of living.

I'm sure there will be absolutely 0 societal backlash from the resulting increase in prices when farm worker pay goes up and productivity goes down.

If food spending goes up by $300 per year, the media will have an amazingly hypocritical freakout about it. But if, at the same time, rents drop by 10%, ER wait times go down, and many common areas feel less crowded by people who don't share a common culture or language, I think the American people would be quite happy with the outcome.

More comments

What year was this?

Late 90s early 2000s

This is a reasonable factor, but I think you’re significantly underrating how bad fruit-picking is. Getting college kids to do it is a no go when you can’t get ex-cons to do it.

Ex-cons are notoriously lazy, many of the laziest, most ADHD, most high time preference people in the underclass become criminals precisely because they can’t / won’t keep down a normal job (which they are usually capable of getting). They don’t do anything “for free” and are usually too lazy even for paid employment unless it’s very fast money like selling drugs.

Meanwhile college students do hours of boring, grinding work and studying in the hope that in 4 years they can get a solid entry level job. They are mostly low time preference.

Not defending the work ethic of ex cons, but that is the usual source of native labor for shitty low-skilled jobs because they will be arrested if they don’t hold down a job and decent ones aren’t available to them. Georgia’s program to replace illegals with de-facto corvée labour from the states parole and probation population didn’t go well.

Also college kids are by and large uninterested in doing much higher-paying, more exciting seasonal physical labor as it actually exists- there’s not a ton of guys working on their engineering degrees on fishing boats and oil rigs.

Meanwhile college students do hours of boring, grinding work and studying in the hope that in 4 years they can get a solid entry level job

Do they, though? What with AI and grade inflation, they increasingly can't really read or do basic math. I don't think this stereotype is as universally applicable as it was before.

Worth noting that "all the coworkers are illegal immigrants" is a major disincentive to taking a particular job. Even aside from status stuff, just being able to shoot the shit in a common language vs being the only gringo is a big deal.

Literally saw this dynamic last week when the neighbors behind us were getting their lawn installed. A single white guy on the crew, and the rest of the crew were shouting jokes to each other in Spanish that he couldn't understand.

I worked on an orchard as a teenager and I was the only legal citizen there. They made me do all the shit jobs.

I got pretty good at smoking bees, though, so I've got that going for me.

I wanted to work as a fruitpicker but I saw all the Mexicans yapping in their mumbo-jumbo language and so I became a computer programmer instead. What a country.

  • -18

Consider the possibility that your personal range of options doesn't perfectly generalize to the entire population.

Even the guy who's too dumb to do anything but flip burgers prefers the air-conditioned environment of McDonalds to picking fruit in the sun. You don't make a country richer by moving it down the tech tree.

  • -11

I don't actually believe this but it definitely seems possible that the markets clear at prices that would be noticeably bad for the consumer.

down on the farm, labor costs are typically less than 20% or for specialty crops close to 40% of total operating costs, and the price from the farm is about one-third the price on the shelf...

Quadrupling those wages might cost the typical family $300 in a year.

From Oren Cass' "Jobs Americans Would Do" https://americancompass.org/jobs-americans-would-do/

Technically noticeable, but barely! Very interesting if true.

If I had to guess there's probably better ways to make farm work attractive, too, besides that – the article says that the average wage is $28/hour right now. For instance, normalizing shorter workdays (two shifts) or work weeks and paying more might generate a lot more interest and keep costs lower than simply quadrupling wages. But I'm spitballing (and not terribly familiar with what's normal in big ag right now anyway).

Quadrupling those wages might cost the typical family $300 in a year.

These people really want a blue wave next year.

300 over a whole year is small compared to the inflation we've beeen seeing recently. And if it's coupled with increased wages then it's not too bad.

It's coupled with increased wages for the <1% of people who work on farms. The other 99% just pay higher prices.

Except all across the board, in this scenario, the country removes the downward pressure to wages caused by the underclass who can get paid under the table, who cannot ask for help if they are abused, and who are desperate to accept any wage to avoid going back home. That changes the wage equilibrium everywhere.

If farm wages double (not quadruple, like in the example above - I think that the quadrupling was a hyperbole) and farm workers make $40 an hour, price of groceries increases $150/year per family of four. Let's say $50/year for a single person.

Then anyone else in a shitty job can say, "is this really any better than making 40/hr picking corn?" And so now Amazon has to raise wages, or provide better working environments, to at least be better than farm work. And so it goes, rippling through the economy. Wages for the bottom third of the country should rise more than 150/yr.

Except all across the board, in this scenario, the country removes the downward pressure to wages caused by the underclass who can get paid under the table, who cannot ask for help if they are abused, and who are desperate to accept any wage to avoid going back home.

Machinery is also abusable and doesn't require any wage at all, should we increase wages by banning it?

More comments

the underclass who can get paid under the table, who cannot ask for help if they are abused, and who are desperate to accept any wage to avoid going back home

There's a very straightforward way to resolve the humanitarian concern here.

More comments

If other low-wage employers are increasing wages to compete with the new high-wage farm jobs, then the total cost to consumers will be more than the $150/year/family.

We know how this works out, because the main feature of the Biden economy was higher low-end wages paid for out of higher consumer prices. The median voter hated it enough to vote for the crook.

More comments

When Georgia the state had a program to replace migrant farm workers with parolees, the produce rotted in the fields. Parolees almost by definition are more used to crappy, unpleasant conditions than the general public(they had after all just been in prison) and they stand a good chance of being imprisoned if they don't hold down a job- meatpacking plants, low level manufacturing, other big employers in shitty jobs love them for that reason.

Getting first worlders to do heavy agricultural labour is clearly an extremely difficult problem which has not yet been solved. In an ideal world we'd fly people in from the Nigeria, India, etc and fly them back with a fat stack of cash from US wages, but the US won't do that. Non-forced labour from the first world is not a viable replacement for migrant farmworkers.

In an ideal world we'd fly people in from the Nigeria, India, etc and fly them back with a fat stack of cash from US wages, but the US won't do that. Non-forced labour from the first world is not a viable replacement for migrant farmworkers.

Canada has many immigration issues, but the temporary foreign worker program for agriculture is actually a huge success. Absolutely dialled work groups from Jamaica/Guatemala/etc come in for various picking seasons, make a fat stack of cash, and then leave to a different country elsewhere for another harvest season.

There is actual competition between farmers for the best/highest skil work groups because the boys are absolutely dialled at their various fruit/vegetable harvesting skills.

The huge issue with farm work is that it isn't year round, which is a massive issue for western workers.

Guest workers as used in eg. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are non-viable because - 60 years later - everybody knows that they don’t go home. The Turks in Germany were “temporary”, they were promised to never receive citizenship, the German public were told clearly that they would work for 3 years and then go home, every single one. Even renewals were initially banned.

Of course what happened is that businesses that employed “guest workers” didn’t want them to leave at the end of the 3 year period because recruiting new guest workers was expensive and required training them. So the periods were slowly extended, then in-country renewals were allowed, so the Gastarbeiter didn’t have to go home in between stints which was disruptive (and most stopped following the rules after a while anyway).

Then, they were slowly allowed to benefit from the growing postwar welfare system, and to bring over more and more relatives. Lastly, to avoid “social unrest” as a consequence of having a huge non-citizen population that was clearly not going to leave they were granted citizenship.

In 1982 Kohl told Thatcher that he would deport at least half the Turks in Germany. But then it seemed like a lot of effort, his ‘self deportation scheme’ (paying them to leave) led only 100,000 to return, and the military coups of the 1980s doubled the Turkish German population as they brought over wives and children and brothers and cousins (who promptly declared asylum) even though Turkish guest worker recruitment ended in 1973.

In 2000, Kohl’s own son married an (upper middle class, but still) Turkish woman and the Germans slowly started amending nationality law to essentially hand out citizenship to Turkish migrants and their children in an effort to assimilate them.

The point is simple: Western countries are incapable of approaching a guest worker workforce with the necessary maturity. The only way they come and leave is if their home country is at least 60-80% as prosperous as the country they move to (which usually means they are unviable as guest workers unless you’re like Switzerland hiring German doctors).

Since 2000, the Republican majority in congress and very careful lobbying by those on the right of the congressional party has successfully killed another amnesty bill that would hand out citizenship. Eventually the dam will break and a Democratic president will pass another amnesty, though it has been a valiant effort. But it doesn’t actually matter, because as Trump’s capitulation shows, the vast majority of migrant workers will never actually be deported.

If Americans don’t want to do ag work, then the fields can rot. It’s OK. Robotics and multimodal AI are progressing at breakneck speed. In less than a decade robots will pick our strawberries (and all the people we might import still won’t leave). In the meantime we can import them from overseas (and in the event of some kind of truly catastrophic global crisis, ex-PMC Americans will pick them diligently rather than starve, I assure you).

Singapore, Malaysia, Gulf States etc have all managed to keep temporary worker visas under control. It's just difficult under a Western system.

Malaysia has a big undercurrent of anger about migrant workers not going home, it’s just rarely reported on in the West. Malaysia has 35 million people and as many as 2.5 million illegal immigrants according to some estimates, higher proportionally than the US.

I live in Malaysia and there's kind of an automatic disgruntlement from the Malays on any opposing ethnic group since they're largely nonproductive. They are very hardline on not giving citizenships though due to prior experience with the Chinese and Indians. Malaysia also better adapted to giving illegal immigrants something to do and relatively low tolerance of violent crime.

In an ideal world we'd fly people in from the Nigeria, India, etc and fly them back with a fat stack of cash from US wages, but the US won't do that.

Why is that better than the traditional solution of using Mexicans?

Because the Mexicans, even if deported, can simply walk back.

The difference in prevailing lower blue collar wages between the parts of Mexico and Honduras which still have subsistence agriculture and even the poorest parts of the U.S. are vast, even if purchasing power in rural Mississippi and Monterrey or the DF is closer than you might think. And people who are willing to pick strawberries for a living are also willing to walk thousands of miles. There will always be someone willing to pay cash under the table for a slight discount to clean toilets or do temporary construction work or whatever at a daily rate greater than the typical unskilled laborer weekly salary in Guatemala or Chiapas. There will always be someone willing to rent out a spare bedroom for a week’s day laborer pay, in cash. I have heard illegal immigrants speak about this- o, so and so went home to Oaxaca, when he runs out of money he’ll walk back, and this time he’ll learn his lesson and stay. I kept his number in case there’s a big job after he comes back. And even with the difference in costs, those Oaxaca laborers are eating rice and beans and wearing rags at home, and hamburgers with jeans in good repair here.

In contrast Nigerians have little choice but to wait in line to do it legally if they want US wages again.

Because the Mexicans, even if deported, can simply walk back.

Why would they be deported? If there's work, we can hand them a temporary visa and they work. If there isn't, no visa. And if they want to work at things not covered by these visas, they can walk in illegally regardless of whether these visas exist.

My biggest disgust here is not about the object level position, but the fact that for the past 2 weeks, MAGA has been pushing all the fiscal irresponsibility of the BBB and slandering any detractor as traitors to the border under a message that this now completely and totally undermines.

None of the argument for raising the debt ceiling or SALT deductions or anything else have any leg to stand on.

Salt cap expires by default this year, so keeping any cap requires deliberate action. A higher salt cap is a shitty compromise but it's much better than no salt cap, which is what we would get if the dems were in charge.

The whole movement is bankrupt. While I theoretically understand "imperfect instrument" or "who cares about corruption if they still solve problems", it's literally not clear that MAGA is better for libertarians, conservative christians or anyone with a desire for intergenerational stability.

any other fair ideas

Fine companies a multiple of the wages paid to illegals. This pays for itself. Do it aggressively. Illegals will not want to be here if there is not work for them to do, so they will self deport.

That is, as always: align incentives. Don't try to make people do what you want. Make people want what you want.

The fact that the federal government invented e-verify and then doesn't make anyone use it is such blatant evidence they don't actually want to fix this.

They literally invented a perfect solution but won't use it...

E-verify was a compromise at a time when Republicans’ biggest fear was permanent Democratic victory due to demographic change resulting from mass immigration. Republicans didn’t want to deport illegals (for the same reason Trump is demurring now), but they wanted to redirect as many as possible to blue states that would impose so many restrictions on e-verify that it would be effectively unusable (as California does) except by ideologically committed Republican business owners. Red states, meanwhile, could pass laws that slowly increased pressure on employers to use e-verify while exempting (explicitly or implicitly) sectors run by wealthy conservatives that relied on illegal labor.

It is noteworthy that the well-run red states (Texas and Florida) don't have mandatory E-verify for private sector employers, and the badly-run red states do.

But then the GOPe never tried to conceal that they were using illegals to undermine worker protections. The main thing Bush Jr did to enforce the immigration laws was sending fake OHSA inspectors into workplaces and deporting any illegal who tried to report a safety violation.

Florida requires E-verify now: https://www.paychex.com/articles/compliance/florida-e-verify-requirements-for-private-employers

And so far it hasn't tanked their economy. In 2023 and 2024 Florida lead the nation in GDP growth with 9.2%. The number of construction jobs actually increased.

TACO?

This is a bit of a let down for Trump Supporters and anyone who wants to take America back from those who were not invited. Especially with Gavin Newsom rubbing it in the public's face. Especially with American Approval of deportation efforts have been increasing.

I get the impression there's a fair amount of tension in the Trump administration between hardcore xenophobes like Miller and traditional conservative economic interests. As I have noted on numerous occasions:

a) Enthusiasm for mass deportations amongst the public tends to taper off when confronted with the implications. The average voter might be willing to wave a magic wand that would make every immigrant go away with no costs or downsides, but they'll balk at the reality of what mass deportation means and looks like.
b) the business gentry that dominates the GOP has no interest in large scale expulsion of immigrant workers. Their businesses rely upon it, not just as a matter of cost but because there's no viable alternative labor pool for a lot of this work.

Any other fair ideas?

Focus exclusively on deporting dangerous criminals. Create a large scale pseudo-amnesty guest worker program where people currently working under the table can become documented and gain temporary legal status. Combine this with mandatory e-verify (with strict punishment for violations) to make it harder to employ illegal immigrants and bring the whole system 'into the light', so to speak. You're not going to expel millions of people overnight, but it will give you more control over the flow and you can ratchet down the number of GW visas over time. In the long run, focus on economic and political development in Latin America to undercut the 'push' factor driving immigration.

Unfortunately for nativist policy ambitions, effective long-term measures are going to require cooperation from Senate Dems, and the Trump administration is not exactly putting on a master class in making friends and influencing people. And, as mentioned, GOP business elites are not terribly interested in serious immigration reform, and especially not in a way that makes them potentially liable.

Breaking news: Trump

Why, after all these years, can't we learn a simple lesson such as: wait two weeks before even beginning to formulate a conclusion about "breaking news" related to Trump, especially if they originate on Twitter/Truth?

Because, as it is below, the controversy is the point.

One problem is the effect of exploitable labor goes in one way. Over the past 2 decades, Landscaping businesses that employed high school students and ex cons went out of business because they couldn't compete against undocumented workers.

Alternatively, high school students didn't want to do manual labor in the sun. That's a better hypothesis since it fits with the fact the unemployment rate is near-zero.

For landscaping you can absolutely hire high schoolers. They just have lower flexibility.

High school students are not included in the unemployment rate.

Untrue:

James and Elyse are high school students. James works after school at a fast food restaurant, and Elyse is seeking a part-time job at the same establishment (also after school). James' job takes precedence over his non-labor force activity of going to school, as does Elyse's search for work; therefore, James is counted as employed and Elyse is counted as unemployed.

https://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm

Yeah the BLS does good stats.

They also do various measurements for "unemployed" too https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm

All Trump's actions have done is ensure the next Dem president grants a mass amnesty to all illegals in the USA so something like this can never happen again.

That would only show the real solution is to put illegals in a state where they cannot return or be amnestied. No one has the mettle for that right now but who knows about the future.

Could you clarify what you mean by "a state where they cannot return or be amnestied"?

Oh, come on. He obviously means to kill them. Which is morally abhorrent; hence the coy phrasing.

Yes, obviously. However, I would prefer people to say it out loud.

I want Trump to be so cruel and arbitrary to the illegals that the next time someone tries to pull a Biden and import billions, nobody wants to come because they're afraid.

High time preference populations aren’t going to be worried about what happened to the last group of migrants 10 years ago.

A country capable of such measures is not worth defending.

So, most of the countries that have existed in the entirety of human history are not worth defending?

Inter-ethnic conflict that expresses itself in “cruelty as deterrent” is as historically common as the summer rain. It’s currently happening in multiple places, and depending on where you live, it’s happened in the recent past. In your backyard.

I find it rather hubristic to tell someone from the baltics, the balkans, the eastern Mediterranean, Eastern Europe, or Southeast Asia that their country isn’t worth defending.

This is very “rootless cosmopolitan” coded.

Inter-ethnic conflict that expresses itself in “cruelty as deterrent” is as historically common as the summer rain.

A lot of things are historically common, but we still condemn them as bad; inter alia, chattel slavery, spousal and child abuse, and many types of war crimes.

This is very “rootless cosmopolitan” coded.

Fair cop; I'm the kind of person who, as Scott Alexander described, sees a headline 'Victory for Man United' and feels inspired until I look at the article and realise it's just some sportsball thing.

The difference between those things you’ve described as historically common, which I agree is accurate, and a more generic “deliberate cruelty as deterrent for mass illegal migration” is that the latter has not been supplanted by anything clearly superior.

The Industrial Revolution killed chattel slavery & most extreme institutional types of patriarchy. It substituted a physical technology in place of a social one; it was made possible to permanently discard old ways through sheer power of technology.

The same cannot be said about of the problem of mass migration and the erosion of the hosts’ social environment that it causes.

As I’ve stated before, the only possible way this can be completely ignored is if the framing simply doesn’t acknowledge or value the social solidarity provided by the nation at all; it requires a wholesale denial or blindness to the glue that binds various societies together since time immemorial.

As a former libertarian, I’m frankly embarrassed by how blind I was to these basic social truths. On X, a pithy little tweet described libertarianism as “truly the only equivalent of feminism for men.” Which made me chuckle; the theory only works if you’re willingly or unknowingly blind to social forces which make the political possible in the first place.

the baltics, the ballans, the eastern Mediterranean, Eastern Europe, or Southeast Asia

America isn't Lwow 1918 though. In Florida and Texas the majority of Hispanics voted the same way as the majority of whites.

Do you think it's worth defending now? Do you think it ever was?

I suspect his list of “countries worth defending” is paper thin in both time and space, as if political morality only started 70 years ago.

Liberal internationalists are almost all like this. It’s terminal recency bias.

It’s like that meme about liberals lecturing Christians about Jesus; “No, I don’t believe in your backwards ideas, but if I say the right things you might do what I want.”

Substitute The Nation for Jesus and you’ve got it pegged; in reality they don’t think any nation is really worth defending on its own terms, they never have, and they never will. It’s total anathema to them. When pressed, they don’t even think The Nation exists or should exist, or they believe in it in only the vaguest, wishy washy terms.

they don’t think any nation is really worth defending on its own terms

Correct. Individual human beings are worth defending as an end in themselves; all organisations, from the nation to the East Cupcake Middle School Parent-Teacher Association, have value as a means to an end. (cf. Immanuel Kant).

I disagree. Institutions and memeplexes exist in a positive or negative feedback loop in relation to its constituents, it’s not unidirectional like an impossibly neat organizational chart; not only is the whole more than the sum of its parts, but the sum of the parts are a function of the sum of the whole.

Individuals and institutions push and mold each other and they have values independent of each other but separately the whole equation shifts.

When I was younger I saw as criticism of globalism & neoliberal economics a term; “Autistic economics”. I laughed when I saw it at first but I think there was a there there in the criticism.

I'm afraid to reach such a level of fear, he'd have to be cruel and arbitrary to at least one white citizen who looks illegal.

I'm not completely opposed to telling brown legal immigrants and citizens in illegal immigration hotbeds (kind enough to label themselves "sanctuary cities") that they really ought to start carrying their papers, provided that the state of exception doesn't last too long.

My bet, though, continues to be on nothing ever happening. The browning of America will continue apace, and the Trump deportation spree barely a blip in the grand scheme of things.

Isn't the whole point of being white that you don't "look illegal?"

Can they do that? Doesn't Congress need to sign off on that? Reagan's "amnesty" was a law passed by Congress.

Excluding for now the possibility of a Dem trifecta, there's a lot of problems with the text of the INA. For a simple example... Under the conventional reads no; non-citizens must "immediately preceding the date of filing his application for naturalization has resided continuously, after being lawfully admitted for permanent residence, within the United States for at least five years", with a limited number of exceptions not relevant for most cases.

... so what's, exactly, the definition of "being lawfully admitted for permanent residence"? Barring some exceptions not relevant here, "the status of having been lawfully accorded the privilege of residing permanently in the United States as an immigrant in accordance with the immigration laws, such status not having changed". Historically that's been understood to require an LPR (aka green card).

But would a Dem President be un_able_ to change that? All the processes are executive branch, even the judges. Would anyone have standing to even bring a case challenging such a change? Would SCOTUS be willing to claw back the citizenship of hundreds of thousands of people?

And that's one of the less plausible ones.

Can you give an example of a potential EO rule to change this? I don't see the power you're thinking of. Also, hasn't SCOTUS been pretty open to claims of standing by states challenging Federal policy?

A lot of people seem to think and talk like their default assumption is that Democrats can just do whatever they want.

In this case, refusing to enforce the law while actively tyrannizing lower levels of government and citizens who object appears to be quite viable.

Just something to keep in mind when the next election rolls around, for anyone whose vibes are feeling blue.

In this case, refusing to enforce the law while actively tyrannizing lower levels of government and citizens who object appears to be quite viable.

Yes, but they already did that and they'll do it again regardless of what Trump does.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats