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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   28606 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026

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As I looked out my window, I saw the park across from my house. But something was wrong. There was a man sleeping in the park, by the playground fence, in the middle of winter.

I’ve been tracking the weather closely because our fridge went out and we are keeping our cold stuff in the garage. It’s a constant struggle to make sure food doesn’t get too warm or too cold. Lately the outside temperature has been getting down into the single digits at night and while the garage stays a bit warmer it has been hard to keep our food from freezing.

I knew it was under 10 degrees outside and no one can sleep on the ground in that cold. At least, not without a lot more equipment than he had on. This man didn’t even have a hat. So I worried that he might be dying.

As I got myself ready to go outside and check on him I imagined how the interaction might go. I know vagrants can be volatile, unpredictable, and dirty. I thought I would talk to him, tell him he needed to go, maybe offer to take him to a shelter in my car. I could give him my extra winter hat and one of my coats. I was loathe to invite him into my house with my wife and child but my car could be okay. I toyed with the idea of just calling 911 and not interacting with him at all. But I figured I would first observe up close and make a judgment call.

With my winter gear donned, I stepped out the door and walked to where he was laying. I spoke to him, “Hey man, it’s too cold out here. Can I take you somewhere warm?” or something like that. It was quickly apparent that my fears of him were misplaced. He was breathing and shivering slightly. His eyes were open. There was a pain in them, animal-like. Sadness without language. His fingers were curled and stiff. He was in far worse shape than I had imagined him to be.

I called 911 and moved my car closer to the park as a potential warm haven for him. The ambulance was on the way, and we live very close to the hospital so I knew it wouldn’t be long. Approaching the man again, I saw that walking would be out of the picture and to move him would require that he be physically carried. I wasn’t confident in my ability to do so. He was breathing heavily and his eyes were darting around. His limbs looked frozen and stiff.

He appeared to be of Hispanic background, about 50 years old, short with a slim build. And as the ambulance was coming in a few minutes, I decided to do what I could to keep him warm. I put my coat over him and placed my hands on his cold skin. I said whatever little prayers I know from the liturgy in Spanish - “lord have mercy” and “the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit”. I played the Lord’s Prayer in Spanish on my phone and I lay next to him, covering us both with my coat to warm his body with mine. I reverted to praying in English since my Spanish is so limited.

Within a few minutes I heard the ambulance approaching. Still laying next to him, I waved the paramedics in. My hands felt like they were freezing, being outside only 10 minutes or so in the 8 degree weather. His fingers had a grey hue to them and seemed frozen stiff.

The paramedics parked and approached with a stretcher and I gathered my coat and walked off. They didn’t say much to me. One asked me if he had spoken (“not a word”) and one said thanks for calling. The four of them easily lifted him onto the stretcher and took him away.

I didn’t know how much my interventions mattered, besides calling the ambulance. Perhaps someone else would have called the ambulance if I had not. But it’s easy to get used to vagrants sleeping on the ground in an urban area and not put the facts together that given the weather and his dress it was an emergency situation. When there is a crisis, it’s easy for everybody to assume that someone else will handle it. I felt there was a chance that had I not called 911 then the next time my family went outside we would have been greeted by a corpse.

Later, trying to make sense of the incident, I asked Grok about the details of hypothermia and found it was a somewhat less urgent situation than I imagined. The man likely had been outside for 1-2 hours and likely would have been dead in about 3 more. Grok gives a big range of 2-12 hours for death by exposure in similar situations, varying based on the size and health of the person and whether or not they had any alcohol and drugs in their system.

I don’t know anything about the man but I can guess given the circumstances he found himself in. It’s likely that he was new to town and unfamiliar with the homeless support system. He had no friends or family nearby that cared about him. It’s quite possible that he was an illegal migrant — there are quite a few in my city, and my city has declared that it will not cooperate with federal immigration enforcement efforts.

Politically, I am an immigration restrictionist and fairly onboard with MAGA. I don’t see a contradiction in saving a migrant’s life in a tragic situation, and advocating that there be fewer such tragic situations, thousands of miles from home. I am in the party that insists on following the rules, because after a complicated calculus of plusses and minuses I think they make the world a better place. Had the man been picked up by ICE and sent back to Honduras or Ecuador or wherever he came from, I don’t view that as an inhumane outcome compared to a lonely death in a strange land.

The more extreme people on the political left, the kind currently protesting ICE in Minnesota, call people like me “nazis”. Well, if I am a nazi, I am one with a soft heart.

But I’m just guessing about the man’s circumstances. Perhaps he is a legal resident with mental illness or a drug abuse problem who somehow fell through the cracks.

Grok thinks the man will make a full recovery. Probably today, he will be released from the hospital. To go where, is the question. Who will take him in? Where does he belong? Who cares for him? Will he find himself in the same situation again? A blizzard is coming tomorrow.

May the Lord have mercy on us in this deep winter.

I don't think this sentiment is very uncommon. One of the most frequent IRL complaints I have about my neighborhood is the number of homeless/violent drug addicts that wander around it all day. It really bothers me that my kids can't use any of the parks in my town because they have become de-facto homeless shelters/injection sites.

And yet: the number of shoes, clothes, etc. I've given away to people walking through my front yard who need these things is not small. The number of times my family has noticed it's cold, and left boxes of blankets and hand warmers around places where we know these guys congregate is not small.

Love the sinner, hate the sin.

There may be a causal relationship between your second paragraph and your first.

Yeah maybe! It’s definitely a struggle to be upset at the general conditions, but also recognize the human suffering.

I put my coat over him and placed my hands on his cold skin. I said whatever little prayers I know from the liturgy in Spanish - “lord have mercy” and “the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit”. I played the Lord’s Prayer in Spanish on my phone and I lay next to him, covering us both with my coat to warm his body with mine. I reverted to praying in English since my Spanish is so limited.

Uh... pardon me if I'm mistaken, but this is where my bullshit radar started sounding.

When you mention temperatures are you talking F? So, less than -12 C?

Pennsylvania

The US is in the middle of a winter storm. If he lives in the mountains or the north, that's an entirely plausible temperature range.

According to my weather app, the current "feels like" temperature (in the afternoon in the Midwest US) is -20 degrees Celsius. And it's not going to get much warmer for at least a week and a half.

Why the hell is everyone telling me this? I don't doubt that the US can get very cold. I'm just asking what unit of measurement is used. Most of the world uses celsius. In a story where the temperature is highly relevant it would be best to specify the unit.

Why the hell is everyone telling me this? I don't doubt that the US can get very cold. I'm just asking what unit of measurement is used. Most of the world uses celsius. In a story where the temperature is highly relevant it would be best to specify the unit.

In the United States, it's very unusual for native speakers of English to report outdoor temperature in anything other than Fahrenheit. Even among scientists and engineers who regularly use the Metric system.

As a side note, it seems pretty clear to me that Fahrenheit is a much better scale for discussing weather since (1) 0-100 roughly covers temperatures your typical person experiences, including the occasional extreme; and (2) there's no real need to convert to other units like there might be among inches, feet, yards, and miles.

Your comment at a glance reads like the temperature is causing you to doubt the story (because the temperature is unlikely?). Instead, it seems like you meant the two sentences in your comment to be disconnected from each other.

Americans are going to use Fahrenheit, that's just the way of the world. It's probably a better measurement system in many ways but I will never bother to learn it.

You can make whatever argument you want for metric, but F is objectively superior to C in daily life. There's no 'metric' advantage to C, you don't multiple or divide temperatures real world use cases. Both are effectively arbitrary.

However with Farenheit, 0-100 is basically, human habitable range. 0 is dangerously cold, 100 is dangerously hot. With Farenheit, 1-100 are basically every day weathers around the globe and in every day life describing your freezer up to your body temperature. Meanwhile 40-99 C are nearly useless.

The only time these numbers are really relevant in daily life is internal temperature of meats, but it's nearly arbitrary numbers with either measure, so C brings nothing to the table here.

Finally, Farenheit is over twice as precise as C, and right around human noticability. You can distinguish 1 degree F, but not really 1/10th degree Celsius, making F a more useful and intuitive unit.

I've heard this a million times from Americans, but you can just remember what C number means what outdoors (0 is freezing, under 10 is time to wear a proper coat, 20 is the beginning of tshirt weather, 30 is the start of too hot, and 40 is time to get out of Texas), and the only thing I actually need precision in degrees for is cooking/baking, where chemical reactions really do matter. I don't believe for a second that Americans actually use it as a % scale rather than finding their own personal breakpoints just as one does with Celsius (I suppose some do, some people also don't have internal monologues). If you can actually distinguish degrees of 1F, it may be that Irish thermostats are much better than American ones.

The average high in my area of the US is 50°F. It's 10°F right now. Almost the entire lower half of the US got slammed by a winter storm this weekend.

When you mention temperatures are you talking F? So, less than -12 C?

For what it may be worth, there are a lot of places in the United States where the temperature is plausibly in that range.

That being said, the story does feel a bit like it might be concern trolling ("I support immigration restrictions but I have some concerns . . .") or just straight up trolling.

I’d absolutely save a man’s life and send him back to Guatemala without much hesitation. Although to get to the point that both decisions are obvious to me took a lot of life experience and thought

I'd probably do the same thing. The leftist mindset (or at least its narrative) often has no concept of the distinction between political convictions and basic humanity. To a leftist, I must be more universal in my morality or else I'm a nazi. I've been told I hate brown people because of this, yet I'm typing this right now while my brown adopted child (whose bio parent was probably an illegal) keeps saying "Dada look!"

I support restrictive immigration policies to maintain order and to deal with tragedies that I don't have to deal with, but that doesn't mean I don't feel a personal obligation to save a life. I understand the plight of many immigrants, but I strongly believe that we cannot afford to "save" them on a massive level. I support a system that will make these difficult and sometimes sad decisions about immigration so I don't have to. I support this because I believe it is necessary, not because I derive pleasure from turning away millions who want more opportunity.

If you do not have a US birth certificate for your adopted child, you will need to make sure they get citizenship before their 18th birthday. It's relatively easy to do before the 18th birthday, harder after. It's something many adoption agencies forget to help with for some reason.

They were born in the US and issued a birth certificate.

Politically, I am an immigration restrictionist and fairly onboard with MAGA. I don’t see a contradiction in saving a migrant’s life in a tragic situation, and advocating that there be fewer such tragic situations, thousands of miles from home

That's because there isn't any. "I wish these people would not come to my country" is not the same as "I wish these people were dead".

Regardless, you did the right thing. Thanks for posting, as reminders to have a compassionate heart are always helpful in my view.

Not gonna lie, I was happy to see that your story was one of sympathy and compassion. From the tone around here lately, I was half-expecting it to end with "I decided 'Fuck this guy, one less illegal is a good thing.'"

The more extreme people on the political left, the kind currently protesting ICE in Minnesota, call people like me “nazis”. Well, if I am a nazi, I am one with a soft heart.

I think the right and the left are increasingly unable to model one another's thinking. I come here and see people who are celebrating violence and clearly want more of it. I get disgusted, go to other places, and see people... celebrating violence and clearly want more of it. Just directed at different people. I think about a reddit (yeah yeah, I know) post I read the other day, where some woman out of the blue texts her brother basically demanding to know "where he stands" on Trump and ICE. No indication that this had been a previous topic of discussion or that he was MAGA, just suddenly she needs to know if he's aligned with her. When he replies with a sort of mealy-mouthed "It's not a black and white issue, but I love you and family over politics," etc. etc., she informs him that she's going no contact with him and his family forever, and immediately tells their mother that he's cut out of his life. He didn't even say he's a Trump supporter (though I guess one could infer it), just that he's not completely on-board with her TDS.

I recently got into an argument here where I said I know very leftist "woke" people, and they are not evil. I was piled on by Motters saying of course they are, they just haven't turned on me yet. Unsurprisingly, I have had similar arguments in left spaces. "I know conservatives/MAGAs, they aren't Nazis, they aren't evil." "Well, you can say that because they don't want to kill you." (I mean, some of y'all do, but...)

It's just... very sad. And tiresome. Thank you for still having a heart.

From the tone around here lately, I was half-expecting it to end with "I decided 'Fuck this guy, one less illegal is a good thing.'"

And they say being the resident mod bad cop brainbroke Hlynka.

I think the right and the left are increasingly unable to model one another's thinking

Most people aren't good at modeling their own thinking, thus are very bad at communicating it, and the outsider map is more accurate in some ways, less so than others.

I recently got into an argument here where I said I know very leftist "woke" people, and they are not evil.

I've come around to a sort of cold comfort in that what the sides mostly see as "evil" in the other is what the allowable failure modes are, and the selectivity of attention (whiteness studies professors and actual no-joke neonazis aside, those two groups are evil in the regular sense). Maybe this is just warmed-over Arendt, I haven't taken the time to read her in full. A person can't legitimately care about everything, and where one chooses not to care- to draw their blinders close- has outsize effect on how they're seen by people that make the opposite choice.

Politically, I am an immigration restrictionist and fairly onboard with MAGA. I don’t see a contradiction in saving a migrant’s life in a tragic situation... I am in the party that insists on following the rules, because after a complicated calculus of plusses and minuses I think they make the world a better place.

You also called the hospital to leave your financial details right? To make good on the bill in case that man can't pay. Otherwise, net-tax payers and/or patients who do pay their hospital bills will find themselves in the situation of subsidizing your decision-making. Generally, the rule is that a bill is paid by the person or entity who requested the good or service.

I don’t see a contradiction in saving a migrant’s life in a tragic situation, and advocating that there be fewer such tragic situations, thousands of miles from home.

Your choice, at the margin, increased such situations. Whether it be with this migrant in the future finding himself in such situations again, or if other (potential) migrants hear yet another story of the soft-heartedness of gringos and the ultra low cost of consuming public services in the EEUU ($0).

The more extreme people on the political left, the kind currently protesting ICE in Minnesota, call people like me “nazis”. Well, if I am a nazi, I am one with a soft heart.

That's why they call people like you "nazis" and why the discourse is so one-sided. Because it works.

Because you (the general you) have a soft heart and care what they call you, whereas they have a hard heart toward you and people like you and don't care what you call them. Calling you "nazi" gets you to do more of what they want and do less of what they don't want. It makes you shy away from fighting them head on and instead turn toward policing yourself and your own side for Empathy and Compassion, for Going too Far. And then if you're religious they also have the "No, I'm not Christian and I have nothing but contempt for your backwards beliefs" card to play.

I felt there was a chance that had I not called 911 then the next time my family went outside we would have been greeted by a corpse.

For this reason I would had called emergency services to come pick him up, to spare my family this unpleasant sight.

Your choice, at the margin, increased such situations.

Indeed. The fact he reacted to a homeless guy sleeping in a park within sight of his house with “Won’t someone think of the poor homeless guy and help him” is exactly why we are in this mess in the first place. We need more people whose first thought is “Ew, get that disgusting bum out of my park” if we are ever to have hope of solving this.

I do have a bit of feeling of disgust at the sight of a homeless man in the park. Hostility even. It offends me as a sign of lack of public order and I resent the inconvenience I’ve undergone throughout my lifetime on their behalf. But I’m also a Christian and I’m bound to help a fellow man, even if I resent his presence.

You may or may not find it heartening to know that this is almost always a choice.

Every hospital has regulars, people who have medical, psychiatric, substance use problems. Sometimes (but rarely) nothing at all.

We see them once a year, once a month, once a week, once a day. We know them. Sometimes they disappear and it's because they moved on to the next hospital or stop on their rotation.

Sometimes they pass away.

Always. Every time - we make offers. During winter or especially days like today we make many, many offers. Do you want to stay the night? Please this time go to the shelter. Etc.

Scores of bright eyed and scores of burnt out social workers emerge from the offices like lice, all trying to get the patient help.

They usually refuse.

Living on the street is a choice. That choice is often complicated by drugs, and the way someone was raised. Sometimes it's complicated by medical or psychiatric problems and we can often intervene in those.

But most people on the street are there because they made a choice and our society lets people make choices.

They may regret it in the moment in the cold, but they will make the same choice again.

It sucks.

Certainly true for your frequent fliers. A Hispanic guy wearing the wrong clothing for the weather? That sounds like a classic case of "No entiendo, Senor". The people who made the choice for him were the ones who brought him here without mentioning or particularly caring that the US gets real cold compared to Guatemala.

On an individual level, there’s no dissonance here. We should save this man’s life. But let’s zoom out. How many ambulances and EMT workers can be extended in your town? The fact that we have a moral duty to help this man, makes the moral duty to prevent this situation with unsustainable immigration all the more grave.

I’m caught up in this ice storm myself. My wife is currently 9 months pregnant and starting contractions. There is a real possibility we will need an ambulance tonight to get her to the hospital. What if every ambulance is busy with homeless illegals? I don’t want these people not to get help. But I also want a functional infrastructure.

The only dissonance is with the side that refuses to consider the world in any terms other than endless handouts without any trade offs, or worse resolving the dissonance with “fuck whitey”.

I don't think that is very likely in this case. I live 3 blocks from the hospital and the ambulance times are very short. This man was not taking up an ambulance spot for much time.

Anyways, I'm morally obligated to make the right actions given the information I have. I didn't have any information about this being the last available ambulance and someone else needing it more. So I did what I did.

I keep voting for the most immigration restrictionist candidates, as I'm concerned about the same externalities of mass migration that you are.

No I don’t think this or any specific instance is a moral conundrum; my point is that it can’t scale infinitely. At scale illegal kmmigrants and homeless do take up emergency room resources and cause downstream issues.

Were I in your situation I wouldn’t think twice about resolving some moral tradeoff over whether to help him. My issue is the system that grows the problem or anyone trying to frame this is as a contradictory wordview, as your OP pondered

Congrats! Hope for a happy and healthy mom and baby.

Good luck and congratulations! I had my second under similar conditions and in hindsight makes for fun stories.

Some bloodshed is priced into immigration law enforcement, especially after decades of intentionally lax enforcement. Of course, the alternative is not 'no bloodshed', but just different victims in different places and a net increase in bloodshed overall. The rest is propaganda.

Of course, the alternative is not 'no bloodshed'

The alternative is enforcing existing laws against employers of undocumented immigrants in red states where they are concentrated the most. It is it not happening due to fear of backlash - if ICE was hauling away CEO's it would have 90% approval rate. But, instead, you have violent street circus to satisfy sadism and bloodlust of MAGA base. You really do not have to be tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist to understand what is going on.

This reads as nonserious when we JUST had a reveal and discussion of billions with a "B" worth of dollars being fraudulently appropriated for essentially fake businesses run by various immigrant groups, with one standout being the Somalis.

Largely in blue states.

Targeting employers would ignore this particular flow of tax dollars into dubiously legal immigrant communities who have seemingly separated themselves from 'legitimate' society and operate insular networks with outsized political influence.

That seems like a pressing matter that can't be ignored.

Por qué no los dos?

I'd guess the reason we can't currently do both is the sheer amount of enforcement resources that are tied up in dealing with the active interference from protestors and state officials.

In theory, it should be simple enough to identify the largest employers with large numbers of illegals on the payrolls, throw the book at one or two of the CEOs, and let incentives take their course.

I am... very skeptical that the reason the administration isn't going after businesses is that those darn protesters are tying up too many resources, and if they all went home and localities stopped declaring themselves sanctuary cities, we'd start seeing CEOs arrested.

In theory, it should be simple enough to identify the largest employers with large numbers of illegals on the payrolls, throw the book at one or two of the CEOs, and let incentives take their course.

In theory it should be. Yet no one does this. Why?

For many years, I have heard, ironically from both open borders enthusiasts and even immigration conservatives, that we can't "really" crack down on employers because then crops would rot in the fields and restaurants and hotels would have to close. A tacit admission that we have entire sectors of the economy that are completely dependent on the existence of illegal labor.

I always found this a strange thing to admit, especially from liberals. "So... basically you want an underclass of underpaid, easily exploited labor with no real rights so your grocery bills will stay low?"

It's absolutely true that if we could magically teleport every last illegal out of the country, it would wreck a lot of the economy. In the absence of magical deportation rays, a serious effort to go after businesses depending on illegal labor would over time result in rising costs (you'd have to actually pay American citizens American wages to pick those crops and clean those hotel rooms).

I think this would be a good thing, but it seems to be a price even the so-called anti-immigrationists are not willing to pay.

So instead, what we have right now is absolute fucking theater. Does anyone think all this ICE sturm und drang is really going to result in a meaningful reduction in the number of illegals in the country? Because I'd like to check back in on that in one year, two years, and five years.

I agree that not going after hotels and restaurants and farms for illegal labor is hypocrisy. But those in favor of remigration and deportations of such are not in the Trump administration: presumably, he is obliged to the business part of the coalition. This is not a happy marriage. But let it not be said that the good be the enemy of the perfect. If the current spectacle justifies building up the infrastructure so that such a future policy shift is feasible, I'm okay with it.

Illegals do not make massively less than citizens doing the same job. They are simply willing to do jobs it is difficult to get an American labor force on, and far more reliable than the non-working class that would theoretically be doing those jobs.

jobs it is difficult to get an American labor force on

...at what price? If you raise the price, you can likely get American labor force on it. If you don't have to raise the price massively to get American labor force on it (because illegals don't make massively less than citizens doing the same job), then it seems somewhat minor. If you do have to raise the price substantially to get American labor force on it, well then I guess we're back to potentially significant cost increases for various crops/clean hotel rooms/etc.

far more reliable than the non-working class that would theoretically be doing those jobs.

If one raises the price, it is not clear to what extent the people attracted to those jobs will come from the currently-non-working and to what extent it will come from folks working other jobs. You can generally get the reliability you desire by raising the price. Of course, this will compete with other job opportunities, pushing wages up more broadly and likely ending some jobs that are at the low end of value. This could increase costs for other goods/services that don't directly employ illegals now.

The open boarders economists like Bryan Caplan make the argument well that immigration restrictions have effects like ending those low value jobs, reducing overall economic efficiency and total output. I've already observed that, for example, hotels have significantly rolled back on regular room cleanings post-COVID. You could imagine effects that feel kind of like that, possibly still in combination with price increases, as the market adjusts. Some folks think the tradeoffs are worth it (and may point to various different things that are trading off, one prominent example being distributional affects purely in terms of American wages), others disagree, and well, yeah, some are probably ignorant of how they're likely to be connected.

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That's just "We should maintain an arbeiter class" with extra rationalizations.

You can get people to do any job, reliably, if you pay enough. We don't want to pay enough to entice Americans to do this work. So right now, the only way we can get a reliable workforce willing to do it at acceptable wages is by importing illegal labor. If you actually want to end mass illegal immigration, you have to solve the left side of the equation somehow.

In theory it should be. Yet no one does this. Why?

This is a full-on guess from my side.

At the top level, its not great optics. And from the corruption angle, some don't want their donors arrested.

On the practical, ground level where the prosecutions happen:

How do you prove that a CEO was knowingly complicit in the hiring process, was directing people to hire illegals, basically fully aware that the company relied on this to function?

A number of middle manager types would probably take the fall for the guys in charge in most cases.

Its a trickier prospect than proving that someone was de facto here without permission, and thus can be summarily removed.

It's absolutely true that if we could magically teleport every last illegal out of the country, it would wreck a lot of the economy.

I think "correction" is really the term to use. That is, there's clearly a ton of 'distortions' in the economy that will be removed if immigration laws are aggressively enforced.

I have pointed out how they actively compete with working class/poor citizens for housing, and use up healthcare and similar public services, and of course if there's increased crime/decreased public cohesion, that is mostly borne by the poor and middle class as well. Over the long term I think it creates Brazilification..

I think that the benefits and costs are very unequally distributed and we get effects like cheap food on one hand but far more expensive housing, car insurance, and medical care on the other. Distortions in economic distribution due to the presence of an underclass for whom the 'normal' rules are not applied.

Teleporting them all away would, I'd wager, remove a lot of the benefits... which were disproportionately enjoyed by the elite classes... but also would remove the costs that were broadly imposed on the middle/lower classes.

So yes, there might be some 'wreckage.' I would be willing to accept the bet that the pain is mostly endured by the upper class and thus the vast majority of the populace would suffer minimally, especially after the things get reshuffled over the course of months or years.

I mean, I don't think we necessarily need to arrest the CEOs of Tyson Chicken and Walmart (though that would sure send a message). But as it stands, the Trump administration isn't willing to even make a token gesture towards recognizing the actual root cause of illegal immigration. Which makes me think they are fundamentally unserious about addressing it as a real economic/social issue and are mostly engaging in performative theater to please their base.

I would accept such an economic "correction" if they were really serious about it, even if that meant I felt some of the pain. But they won't do it.

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Yeah, I have a hunch it's much more about lack of political will than lack of resources.

Here is a DOJ guide intended for employers to understand their obligations and responsibilities with regard to I-9 work authorization forms. I don't know what year it is from, but reading it gave me a much greater appreciation for why we ended up in this mess. Some choice quotes (emphasis mine):

"While not required by law, an employer may conduct an internal audit of Forms I-9 to ensure ongoing compliance with the employer sanctions provision of the INA. An employer may choose to review all Forms I9 or a sample of Forms I-9 selected based on neutral and non-discriminatory criteria. If a subset of Forms I-9 is audited, the employer should consider carefully how it chooses Forms I-9 to be audited to avoid discriminatory or retaliatory audits, or the perception of discriminatory or retaliatory audits."

"Internal audits should not be conducted on the basis of an employee’s citizenship status or national origin"

"An employer is required to accept original Form I-9 documentation that reasonably appears to be genuine and to relate to the individual presenting the documentation. If an employer subsequently concludes that a document does not appear to be genuine or to relate to the person who presented it, the employer should address its concern with the employee and provide the employee with the opportunity to choose a different document to present from the Lists of Acceptable Documents. An employer may not conclude without foundation that a photocopy of an employee’s Form I-9 documentation is not genuine or does not relate to the individual. In the context of an internal audit, for an employer that has photocopied Form I-9 documentation, it should recognize that it may not be able to definitively determine the genuineness of Form I-9 documentation based on photocopies of the documentation. An employer should not request documentation from an employee solely because photocopies of documents are unclear."

"While tips concerning an employee’s immigration status may lead to the discovery of an unauthorized employee, tips and leads should not always be presumed to be credible. An employer is cautioned against responding to tips that have no indicia of reliability, such as unsubstantiated, retaliatory, or anonymous tips. Heightened scrutiny of a particular employee’s Form I-9 or the request for additional documentation from the employee based on unreliable tips may be unlawful, particularly if the tip was made based upon retaliation, the employee’s national origin or perceived citizenship status."

There are two contradictory regulatory schemes here. One is considered more important than the other. It's basically illegal for employers to enforce immigration law.

My abject guess:

On the top level its an optics thing.

On the rubber-meets-the-road level, good luck proving that a CEO or anyone in C-Suite was "knowingly" approving hiring of illegals, especially if the immigrants in question were able to produce sketchy but minimally sufficient papers to prove legitimacy.

Sure there's probably some who put it in an e-mail that you can uncover, but these are the guys who can afford quality legal representation.

Are the businesses hiring illegal immigrants ones that have C-suites? I would have guessed the majority are employed by small firms (potentially contracting for larger ones) as, if nothing else, plausible deniability. And I think quite a few work in cash --- residential construction, yard work, and housekeeping. Are there significant numbers in formal office jobs with tax paperwork?

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JUST had a reveal

This emphasis is just bollocks when the fraud was out in the open and essential shut and close by 2025 if what I am reading here is correct https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020s_Minnesota_fraud_scandals

Anyway, ICE can do both and should do both. Let’s round up the illegal immigrants (kindly) AND prosecute the employers that employ them (kindly). I bet that if we crunch the numbers it would also be “B” worth of dollars that employers “took” from an equivalent hypothetical American worker.

If we think of the population of illegal immigrants as the “supply” of illegal work meeting the “demand” of cheap labor then it makes sense to shut off the supply. But we can also think the “supply” of willing dollars to employ shadily/illegally is meeting the “demand” of people wanting better economic future, then it’s just as important to shutoff that supply too.

Let’s round up the illegal immigrants (kindly) AND prosecute the employers that employ them (kindly).

And if the state in which the persons in question reside not only refuse cooperation, but actively interfere, can we also go after the officials who are thwarting any enforcement at all?

Can we also arrest them?

I just want to know where the limits of 'accountability' stop and why it should extent to employers but not state actors.

Why not? Maybe if you go after the CEOs, the people of the state would not vote in the politicians that “helps the helpless” because clearly CEOs aren’t helpless.

When you have lax immigration enforcement for decades, the whole structure of the economy rearranges around the presumption that illegal labor will be available. You can't just pull the rug out from under that in an afternoon. Those kind of structural changes take years to work out. The fault lies with the previous administrations, both red and blue, who intentionally allowed this to happen. Indeed, they were counting on it: "Oh well, I guess we can't deport now! Too costly, too unpleasant". And they are kind of right, because restructuring the economy is painful, and deporting millions is costly and often ugly. Unfortunately, it is necessary to pick and choose your priorities, where progress can be made quickly and where it must be made more slowly.

In principle, I'd like to do what you say, but I think it comes from a place of bad faith. The purpose of that suggestion is to maximize short-run economic pain and suffering, to maximize difficulties with politically influential businesses. The purpose is to make immigration enforcement so painful that it is essentially abandoned altogether, which is the same purpose that is driving things in Minnesota right now.

The pragmatic response is to acknowledge that immigration enforcement needs to proceed with some appreciation for the fact that we have dug ourselves into in a very deep hole. The laws weren't really written for a world where they would be neglected or subverted for decades before finally being enforced, and they would likely have been written quite differently had that circumstance been taken into account.

The pragmatic response is to acknowledge that immigration enforcement needs to proceed with some appreciation for the fact that we have dug ourselves into in a very deep hole. The laws weren't really written for a world where they would be neglected or subverted for decades before finally being enforced, and they would likely have been written quite differently had that circumstance been taken into account.

Hmmm, just jumping in here but what are your proposals? What are these “pragmatic responses”. On some level I think the wolves should be fed on both sides. Do some mass deportation of illegal immigration AND high profile CEO arrests for employing said illegals.

That is a fake alternative, made up by the left. More detail here: https://www.themotte.org/post/3493/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/405679?context=8#context

The issue right now is this.

Waltz could stop what’s happening in Minnesota by cooperating. Trump could stop it by going after the employers. Neither actually want the problem solved because they both have a lever.

In the absence of this, ICE is the only avenue and they can’t be heckled into giving up. There is absolutely no dissonance with this view and the view that the leaders are failing us at the top on both sides or that homeless lives have inherent dignity and deserve emergency services where possible.

This is assuming that the only way illegals are getting money is via working illegally. There are tons of NGOs that will gladly help.

I think it's worth keeping mind that in a lot of situations, your neighbors end up subsidizing your compassion. For example, in this case, everyone in the community will have to pay for emergency services as well as hospitalization for this individual. Which is not a huge deal in the case of a one-off situation, but as someone who lives near a large American city, I can report that situations like this can multiply rather rapidly. Especially if word of local kindness/compassion makes it back to whatever low-trust society the person came from.

Edit: By the way, I don't know where you are, but assuming that half of the expenses for this guy were reimbursed by the federal government, I would estimate that I personally paid 1 or 2 cents for your decision. Merry Christmas!

I guess I don't think it is a "decision" to save a dying man. I would gladly report him to ICE if I knew he was in fact illegal and I had any contact details for him. But "hey, raid the hospital in my local Pennsylvania town, I'm pretty sure there's illegals there" isn't a great tip.

I guess I don't think it is a "decision" to save a dying man.

It's absolutely a decision. And I don't blame you for making it, but it's one decision among millions which, when combined together, have a very noticeable and significant impact on life in the United States.

I’m a liberal, I don’t think immigration restriction is wrong and would not call you a nazi even though I wish I was in a position to protest. I guess that means I’m not extreme in your books. I wanted to focus on one thing though because I think it highlights one of our differences.

Had the man been picked up by ICE and sent back to Honduras or Ecuador or wherever he came from, I don’t view that as an inhumane outcome compared to a lonely death in a strange land.

I don’t trust that ICE currently would treat the homeless kindly. To me, the way ICE follows the law is not the way I think you follow the law. Would they really get the paperwork right? Would they talk to the man if he’s able to talk? Would they deport him to the correct country? ICE says they followed all procedures, how can I tell? Who can verify? I admit mistakes are just going to be baked into any large scale system, and I’ll hold my final judgment until the dust settles and the stats can be collected. But I don’t feel good vibes at the moment with the way ICE carries themselves. At the very least, what ICE should do is target the companies and individuals that hire illegals, Americans are complicit in creating the initial circumstances of the current situation.

As a last note, “Honduras or Ecuador or wherever he came from” might at least be warmer, but I don’t think it guarantees there won’t be a “lonely death in a strange land” for him still either.

If somebody's gotten all the way to the USA without the communication skills to even identify their country of origin, it seems a very long bow to draw that they've both managed to do it entirely under their own power and that they're going to have a particularly successful integration.

I've done a bunch of traveling. The vast majority of countries in the world are broadly fine in the year 2025. Starvation and absolute poverty's been fairly effectively combated, especially amongst those with the resources and gumption to actually manage to get all the way to a Western Democracy. There are definitely places with less opportunity than Western democracies, but a reasonable floor of life quality can generally be accomplished

Well we are talking about a possible illegal that is definitely homeless and was in the process of dying of exposure, this isn’t the usual illegal that has under-the-table jobs and has some level of resources and gumption as you say.

Later, trying to make sense of the incident, I asked Grok about the details of hypothermia and found it was a somewhat less urgent situation than I imagined. The man likely had been outside for 1-2 hours and likely would have been dead in about 3 more.

I think it was still pretty urgent, given frostbite...

Some Nazis were known for having a soft heart. John Rabe is a famous one. He seemed to misunderstand the nature of the larger movement.

On 23 February 1938, Rabe left Nanjing. He traveled first to Shanghai, returning to Berlin on 15 April 1938. He took with him a large number of source materials documenting Japanese atrocities in Nanjing.[14] Rabe showed films and photographs of Japanese atrocities in lecture presentations in Berlin, and he wrote to Hitler, asking him to use his influence to persuade the Japanese to stop further violence. Rabe was detained and interrogated by the Gestapo; his letter was never delivered to Hitler.

It's not like joining the Nazi Party immediately overrode your general moral compunctions. A lot of things in life are a matter of finding the path of least resistance, especially with Rabe spending the vast majority of his time between 1910 and 1938 in China working for Siemens during the rise of the Nazi party during an era of middling communications and joining the party after they already assumed power.

I was driving my daughter to school on Friday when I saw a man laying down on the side of the road, just by my house. He was very underdressed, looked cold, and had tears in his eyes. I'm guessing he was high and confused. Most homeless around here are white, but this one had dark skin. I didn't think he would last long at all with how cold it was and how underdressed he was.

I didn't want to stop with my daughter in the car so I texted my wife and said could you just take a quick look and call 911? Just eyeball him from the front yard and see if you agree with calling 911

She texted me back later to say he seemed fine, he was bundled up and had another homeless friend with him.

I thought that was odd but did the school drop-off and came back home, then we spoke about it. It became evident then, that she thought I was talking about a different homeless person. The two she spotted were curled up in an alley behind a restaurant on the corner while the guy I was talking about was on the sidewalk in front.

But he wasn't there anymore. I don't know what happened to him.

The more extreme people on the political left, the kind currently protesting ICE in Minnesota, call people like me “nazis”. Well, if I am a nazi, I am one with a soft heart.

Hah, I love this. Very much agree. I'm a conservative and similar to you, but I am also a softie in many ways. I think that's the correct way to be.

Many conservatives seem extremely drawn to strict, overly rigid systems and get almost addicted to the authority derived therein. Personally I think the most virtuous way to be a conservative is to see the rules as sometimes harsh and cruel but necessary for greater flourishing down the road. Ideally we don't revel in causing others pain or hardship.

There's a lot of people online - including some of the official Twitter accounts - that seem to think, as the saying goes, that "the cruelty is the point".

I think a lot of people feel like their empathy has been abused over time. You are a nazi if you question tran kid surgeries and a Nazi if you do genocide.

To get immigration enforcement you not only need to win a lot of elections. You also need to be good at working the processes in the bureaucracy or ignoring them. Then apparently there is still a hecklers veto. If you try to do things the right way you’re never going to win. At some point a lot of us just decided if your going to call me a Nazi anyway then maybe I will just be the bad guy.

Doing things “cruelty” actually works. Shooting protestors - eventually gets rid of protestors. Being mean to migrants discourages future migrants in the future when the other side is in power. So yes I think the right has learned that just be the bad guy has a lot of benefits.

I think the right would prefer to be nice guys and when we win elections we get to do the stuff we want to do. Dealing with things like the hecklers veto it’s going to be much easier to be the bad guy.

There is definitely an element of revenge and signaling. There is a lot of cruelty, neglect, and betrayal in enabling mass illegal immigration for decades. This is not counted, but it is felt by many. They are angry, and they want to see cold and harsh enforcement; they want no quarter to be given and if a few troublesome protestors die that is more than a price they're willing to pay. If they allow ICE to fail because it's hard and upsetting, then they lose their country.

Indeed. It's the ugliest part of the modern conservative movement, in my personal opinion.

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