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Throwing in a quick post because I'm surprised it hasn't been discussed here (unless I missed it!), Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago sets up "ICE-free zones" in Chicago.
This comes on the heels of Trump sending in the national guard after Chicago PD apparently wouldn't help ICE agents under attack. I haven't read all the stuff about this scenario, but on the surface level it seems pretty bad, I have to say.
There's a video clip where that mayor is saying that Republicans want a "redo of the Civil War," amongst other incredibly inflammatory things. The Governor of Illinois is apparently backing the mayor up.
This refusal to help ICE and even outright claim that you're fighting a war with them I mean... I suppose Democrats have been doing it for a while. This seems... bad. I mean sure you can sugarcoat it and point to legal statues and such, but fundamentally if the local governments of these places are going to agitate so directly against the President, I can't blame Trump for sending in the national guard.
Obviously with the two party system we have a line and such, but man, it's a shame that our politicians have fully embraced the heat-over-light dynamics of the culture war, to the point where they really are teetering on the brink of starting a civil war. Not the social media fear-obsessed "civil war" people have been saying has already started, but real national guard vs. local pd or state military type open warfare. I just don't understand going this far, unless the Mayor of Chicago thinks that he can get away with it and Trump will back down.
Even then, brinksmanship of this type seems totally insane!
I suppose Newsom in CA has been doing it too, now that I mention it. Sigh. I hope that we can right this ship because man, I do not want to have to fight in a civil war I have to say. Having studied history, it's a lot more horrible than you might think.
Do the people opposing ICE really believe that large scale unregulated immigration from Latin America will actually benefit the US? Mexico is in a state of permanent civil war. The countries that the migrants are coming from are low trust, violent societies with major dysfunction. I am not really seeing the endgame here. Importing labour in an unregulated way from third world countries is going to dump wages.
It seems like they are taking a position which they themselves know is losing in the long term for some other benefit that I can't see.
It is precisely because the migrants' home countries are terrible that white progressives support them. After all, we can't blame them for wanting to escape poverty; in fact we have a duty to share our wealth, which we probably stole from them one way or another. White leftists believe that we're already so much better off than everyone else that to advocate for our own interest is disgustingly mercenary; all their other arguments for migration are downstream from this impetus.
The quibble is that if Jose is willing to work on a farm in California for what are shit American wages but still a better deal than staying home, the progressive view is that allowing Jose to stay is not advocating against our own interests or wealth redistribution, it's Jose contributing his labor to the economy and getting paid.
Progressives simply don't care that he had to enter illegally to get to this point because they'd rather immigration be expanded in the first place. I'd personally rather more expansive work visas that allow them to do this while still being vetted, and with better wage/labor controls. The conservative view seems to be that if we got rid of all the illegals farmers would pay more and Americans would do it, of which I am skeptical.
I mean, at some point one of three things is going to happen.
A more complete account of (1) may look like: the price of farm labor will climb high enough, and American living standards will sink low enough, that Americans will do it.
Not everything can be automated, and as farming labour gets more expensive, Americans (who buy things downstream from farms) will need more money and hence higher wages to sustain the same lifestyle.
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Before 3 happens you get "the price of food rises enough that the voters get unhappy, and unhappy voters are bad for reelection chances".
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This is what happens. Western wage demands and a global food market cannot work together, full stop.
America could import a ton more food, every agricultural exporting country would love to sell more avocados to America.
America doesn't want to give up food security, which is the right choice.
So then you can:
tariff food imports until for prices rise such that the wage cost can be met
go full socialism and subsidize farmers even harder than the USA already does to make up the wage cost without impacting food prices which would be hilariously expensive
If the automation existed it would already be in use all over the world
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Open border, a functioning economy, a robust welfare state. Pick two, and the welfare state is functionally non-negotiable. This version of the progressive take is simply a lie. They manifestly don't care if Jose works, and would rather shut down the government than accept a limitation on their ability to give him taxpayer money.
Or that it could just be automated, and that it's insane to import tens of millions of farm workers right as we're looking at an AI/robotics era-defining revolution.
Ah yes, how could I forget all the wonderful government benefits that illegals most definitely qualify for. The rest is quite frankly a parody of how other people think and what motivates them.
A, if they could be easily automated they already would be. B, Honestly the entire farm industry sounds like a mess to me with smaller farmers being pushed out of the market or being beholden to shitty John Deere's locked-down repair practices. I'm not as anti-AI as your average lefty, but I don't think this is coming in the next let's say 10 years and I don't think it'll be all that great when it arrives.
They explicitly do in blue states. I tangentially interact with the process on a daily basis. And deeper than that, there's a thriving market in fraud and fake SSNs. Things like "free healthcare for illegals" are fucking budget items in California. NY and other states spent billions on free housing, free benefits and free money for illegal immigrants. This was widely covered. The relentless playing stupid about this is honestly kind of breathtaking and intellectually damning.
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